Pre-med Colleges

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

My daughters will be applying to colleges soon, and they hope to apply to medical school in a few years. My husband went to USC Med School, and I went to UCSF for Dental School. We both went to UC Davis for college. I think that it was easier back then, in terms for getting into college and professional school. Now, it seems everything is very different, much more competitive.
Personally, I consider college only a stepping stone to the greater goal, which is getting accepted into medical school. Before, a top tier college was the goal, but this may make the end goal much harder. So now the goal is a good college, not a great college. Competition is fierce, so I would like to place my girls in an environment that gives them the best chance of getting all As and staying at the top of their class.

My question is which colleges have the highest acceptance rates into US medical schools.

2

That’s a bad way to gauge schools as those with the highest acceptance rates often sift applicants in house - they only let those apply who they feel certain will get accepted. Others don’t get a recommendation from them, so end up not applying. It’s a way of cooking the numbers. Acceptance rates are really meaningless.

IMO, a better thing to look at is where your daughters will be in the Top 15% - 25% or so of students attending their college, both with SAT/ACT scores and GPA. Then you know they have the foundation needed to be competitive going in and it’s up to them to put in the work and get the ECs needed. At these schools see where recent grads have been accepted. Some schools include Caribbean med schools in their acceptance rates.

Then too, be sure your kids like the school and major chosen. Students do much better when they are in an environment they love rather than one where they feel stressed.

3

ps Yes, I believe it is tougher now. We heard from the head honcho at one very highly rated med school stating that he wouldn’t even be the janitor there if he’d had to compete with today’s applicants. He may have been exaggerating, but the truth is likely in there somewhere. Students heading pre-med need to hit the ground at college running.

4

There is no public data on this. Specific colleges may list “acceptance” rates on their website, but as @Creekland points out there are dozens of ways of cooking the numbers so they appear favorable to school. There is not even any consensus about what “medical school” is for reporting purposes. (MD, DO, NP, Caribbean…some count any health care profession, and some even count naturopaths).

And any reported acceptance rate only considers those student who actually apply to medical school, and not those who consider themselves as pre-meds as freshmen. It’s estimated that between 67-75% of freshmen pre-meds never actually apply to med school.

(D2 tells this story about her undergrad–which is known for its pre-med program. The first week of school, you walk down the dorm hall and everyone is a pre-med. When you come back from winter break, and after gen chem 1 and bio 1 grades have come out, suddenly everyone is an Econ major. Then in the spring, after calc grades have come out, everyone is now a sociology major.)

My advice to find a school that is good fit for your daughters, one where they will be happy because if they’re miserable, they won’t be successful academically. Ideally, the college should be one where they will be in the top 25% of admitted students, maybe even in the top 15% so they will have the best chance to earn the high GPA needed for a strong medical school application. (Keep in mind that at most colleges, the strongest students academically tend to cluster in STEM majors.)

Additionally, the college should offer a range of majors and opportunities for your daughter in case they change their mind about pursuing medicine or are among the ~75% of freshmen pre-meds who end up not applying to med school.

Lastly, your Ds need to minimize undergrad debt. Medical school has become increasingly expensive with some schools’ COA exceeding $100k/year.

Med school admission has becoming increasingly competitive in the last 10 years, with the numbers of students applying increasing far faster than the number of available seats has increased. Last year there were over over 52,000 applicants for 20,000 seats.

Lots of data here–

https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/

and here–

https://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/2018-aacomas-applicant-pool-profile-summary-report.pdf?sfvrsn=2ced2197_4


BTW, the best thing you could do to improve your daughters chances for a med school admission is to relocate to someplace else than CA. CA has the worst med school admission rates of any state in the US. Too many qualified applicants, too few med school seats. 

see: [Applicants</a> to U.S. Medical Schools by In or Out-of-State Matriculation Status, 2018-2019](<a href="https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf%5DApplicants">https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf)
5

Based on https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf that is linked above, it looks like California is not the worst, but is not good either, particularly for lower-cost in-state medical schools (and California public medical schools have higher in-state costs than those in many other states). Lower cost in-state medical schools can be found if you can move and gain residency for them in New Mexico or Texas, though medical school applicants in those states get shut out (of any medical school, including out-of-state or private) at similar rates as those in California. But some other states (particularly in the northeast and some other western states) would not be an improvement from a pre-med standpoint compared to California.

6

largest states in terms of applicants with California show that California in comparison is not keeping up with demand. Both Texas and New York had seats for 31% while California only had seats for 17%. In reality, 60% of all admitted candidates went outside the state. I wonder how many more went to DO schools.

Texas 4,559 1,454 31.9 259 5.7 2,846 62.4

Florida 3,509 720 20.5 517 14.7 2,272 64.7

New York 3,471 1,077 31.0 531 15.3 1,863 53.7

California 6,237 1,043 16.7 1,542 24.7 3,652 58.6