Pre-med rankings

<p>Would someone please post the top 15 pre-med school please? I can't find the recent ranking anywhere. Which schools have the highest medical school acceptance rate? All your help is highly appreciated.</p>

<p>The programs with the highest med-school acceptance rate are obviously all the combined bachelor's/MD programs, which by definition all have 100% acceptance rates.</p>

<p>Another group of schools plays the 'certification-letter' game which basically means that if they don't think you are going to get admitted, then they will refuse to provide you with the dean's certification letter, and without that, you cannot apply. Those schools do this to make their medical-school admissions rates look better, because those rates only deal with students who actually apply to med-school. Hence, some schools manipulate those admissions rates by only allowing their strongest students to apply. Many of these schools boast of a near-100% acceptance "rate".</p>

<p>What are the best schools for pre-med that provides a good education then?</p>

<p>sakky, just a ?, what is your educational background like, what schools did you attend?? Thank you for all the wonderful advice and comments that you have helped so many of us make informed college decisions :)</p>

<p>Some of the best schools for premed are the usual suspects - the Ivy League schools, the elite LAC's, Stanford, Duke, etc. </p>

<p>We also have to distinguish between schools that provide a good education and schools that are good for premed. The evidence seems to indicate that med-school admissions are extremely GPA-oriented. Hence, for the purposes of getting into med-school, it may be better to attend a school that provides you with a bad education, but a good GPA, than it is to attend a school that provides you with a good education and a bad GPA. Obviously if you can get both a good education and a good GPA, that's ideal. But if you can only pick one, you would probably have to pick GPA. That's the reality of the med-school admissions game. </p>

<p>Hence, that is why I am rather skeptical of certain schools that do provide you with an excellent education, but also tend to also hand out lower-than-usual grades. If you want to maximize your chances of getting into med-school, you probably don't want to go to these schools. </p>

<p>To collegekid1988, I don't publish my biographical information publicly. You can ask me privately.</p>

<p>Washington University in St. Louis has arguably the best pre-med program in the country. Competition is very intense and the medical school here is the toughest to get into in the country.</p>

<p>I'm afraid I have to disagree with that, rangerrick, for precisely the reasons that you specified. You said it yourself - the premed competition at WU is very intense. Well, that's precisely what you DON'T want. In fact, ideally, you don't want the program to be intense or to have any competition at all, so that you can get the highest grades possible to look good to the med-school adcoms. </p>

<p>Look at it this way. I agree that WU premed is very good for those who do well in it. But what about those who don't? I think you have to agree that they would probably have been better off doing premed at a less intense and less competitive school.</p>

<p>I'd also like to see the premed admit rates of WU - in other words, the % of WU premeds who get admitted to med-school.. I'm sure they're going to be decent, but I have a hard time believing that they are going to be as good as at, say, Harvard or Yale.</p>

<p>one good thing about wash u is that they don't manipulate their numbers and support anyone and everyone who decides to apply to med school instead of having GPA cutoffs</p>

<p>their admit rate to med school for people with 3.5 GPA is ~95 %, 3.0 ~50%</p>

<p>I would like to see the data on the rates you just put up. </p>

<p>I think that data seems 'better' than it actually is. I think when you say that people with 3.5 get in with a ~95% rate, what you really mean to say is those with a 3.5 or above, including those guys with 4.0's. I agree that people with 4.0's have a very good chance of getting in, but that doesn't necessarly help you out if you only have a 3.5. So lumping in those 4.0's into the 3.5+ category gives you a false impression. The same is true for the 3.0 category, which is probably a 3.0+ category, which still includes those with the 4.0's. Again, if all you have a is a 3.0, then seeing that the 4.0's have a very high chance of success doesn't exactly do you much good. But that's why I want to see the data and find out what is really going on.</p>

<p><a href="http://artsci.wustl.edu/%7Ecollege/Preprofessional_Programs/Life_Sciences/howdoi.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://artsci.wustl.edu/~college/Preprofessional_Programs/Life_Sciences/howdoi.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>That's exactly what I thought - the data is far less optimistic than it was made out to be. As can be seen from the data, if you have a 3.0, you have, at best, a 35% chance of getting in. Actually, it's somewhere between 17-35% if you have a 3.0. The 35% chance applies to everybody who had a 3.0-3.2, so if you have a 3.0, you are on the lower-edge of that gpa range, so you should expect to have a lower-than-35% chance of getting in. Even those with a 3.5 have, at best, a 87% chance, and in reality, the guy with a 3.5 has something between a 55%-87% chance of getting in. This is clearly a far cry from the 95% chance that was asserted previously. </p>

<p>I would also question whether WU Med is really the hardest to get into in the country. Don't get me wrong - I am well aware it's very hard - clearly, it is one of the hardest. But the absolute hardest? I think Harvard Medical may have something to say about that. I am well aware that WU's entering class has the highest numerical criteria (GPA and MCAT score) of any med-school. However, numbers are not the whole story. Strictly speaking, that only tells me that the WU med-school pays more attention to numbers than most med-schools do. I still suspect that Harvard is still more difficult to get into than WU. Harvard turns down plenty of people with stellar GPA's and MCAT scores because numbers don't tell the whole story. I would also point to the cross-school yield ratings and I would assert, and which I think few would disagree, that there are more students at WU Med who would rather be going to Harvard Med, but didn't get in, than there are students at Harvard Medical who would rather be going to WU, but didn't get in. </p>

<p>Again, that's not to say that WU is no good. Indeed, it is one of the elite med-schools in the country. But to say, categorically, that it is the toughest one to get into, I think that's too strong of a statement.</p>

<p>Sakky, here is the thing, if it is a 35% chance with 3.0-3.2 GPA, of those applying with a GPA 3.0-3.2, who is getting in? I would think those who went to the more rigorous schools.</p>

<p>Not necessarily those from more rigorous schools. There is not much evidence that medical schools adjust their grade criteria depending on the school attended. People who go to schools that tout their low grades like to think this, but they cannot produce the data to support it.</p>

<p>For example, University of Chicago makes much of its tough grading, yet the average UC student accepted to medical school has almost exactly the same GPA as the national average.</p>

<p>The people accepted with lower grades include a variety of institutional priorities: those who did amazing research, preferably with a big shot professor; those with other leverage, like connections at the school; at state schools in-state students may have an edge in admissions; perhaps some URM's.</p>

<p>You can find an excellent discussion of the interaction of grades, MCAT and medical school acceptance rates at </p>

<p><a href="http://www.amherst.edu/%7Esageorge/guide1.html#chances%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.amherst.edu/~sageorge/guide1.html#chances&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>the data is specific for Amherst, but any other college you are considering should have comparable information. Most do not publish it on the web, but admissions offices should be able to get it or point you to the right people.</p>

<p>Be a little kinder to places that publish very high admissions rates. They are not necessarily manipulating the data by discouraging or obstructing applications from those with lower chances of success. They may be more honest with the students. If someone knows they have only a 20% chance of admission, should they apply? It is expensive and time consuming to do so. Come notification time, it can be devastating to end up with nothing but 20 rejection letters. Is it possible that the places with low admission rates are doing a disservice to their students by failing to make clear how poor their prospects are? Perhaps the places with high rates are giving the students with poor chances a more frank assessment of their prospects.</p>

<p>By the way, having a top medical school is not a criterion for selecting where to do premed. Most doctors did not go to college at places with top medical schools, students from some of the top LAC's have great med school acceptance rates, as does Princeton, which does not have a medical school at all, and being an undergrad at a place in no way means you are going to medical school there. Example Wash U has 120 students per class, and as cited above 9 of these slots are filled by Wash U grads. Harvard Medical School rejects the vast majority of Harvard undergrads who apply. The same is true everywhere.</p>

<p>what do u guys think of Michigan as a possible premed track?</p>

<p>
[quote]
Sakky, here is the thing, if it is a 35% chance with 3.0-3.2 GPA, of those applying with a GPA 3.0-3.2, who is getting in? I would think those who went to the more rigorous schools.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>You've misunderstood the data. The 35% chance for those with a 3.0-3.2 GPA is actually specific to WU premeds. Look at the link and you will see what I am talking about. It's not for ALL premeds with a 3.0-3.2. It's specific only to WU premeds who have a 3.0-3.2.</p>

<p>I think we can all agree that WU premeds should have a higher-than-usual premed admit rate simply because WU students are significantly better than the average student in the nation. Hence, WU students are probably going to tend to score higher on the MCAT, tend to write better essays, tend to do better in interviews, and so forth. Yes, we can all point to the few WU students who are bad, but for the most part, they are better than the national average. Hence, it doesn't surprise me that WU premeds have a higher premed admit rate than the national average. After all, they are SUPPOSED to have a higher admit rate than the average, because WU is a better-than-average school with better-than-average students. The real question is whether going to WU improves the admit rate above and beyond what it would have been anyway - in other words, the WU premed "value-add". I am not entirely convinced that WU has a premed value-add. </p>

<p>I also couldn't agree more with what afan has stated, particularly in his last quote. Choosing a school for premed because that school happens to have an elite medical school is one of the poorest reasons to choose that school. The fact is, plenty of premed programs that have no affiliated med-school do very very well. Princeton doesn't have a med-school and Princeton premeds do very well. The LAC's don't have a med-school, yet premeds at the elite LAC's do very well. On the other hand, those premeds from schools with highly regarded med-schools often times don't do very well. Premeds at the UC's that have med-schools (UCLA, UCSD, UCI, and UCDavis) do not do that well, relatively speaking to the national average. The medical school at the University of Washington (not WUStL, but UW) is widely acknowledged to be an elite med-school, yet UW premeds don't perform noticeably well. The same could be said for UPitt, UT-Southwestern, Wisconsin, UAB, Iowa, Baylor (yes, I am aware that the Baylor College of Medicine is not formally affiliated with Baylor University, but still, you get my point), and many other places. </p>

<p>As far as Michigan as a premed track, again, it's a tough game. Only 60-65% of Michigan premeds who apply to med-school will actually get in somewhere.</p>

<p>The reason why they have nine individuals from that undergraduate class is not based on any preferential biases by the WU med school admission committee. Look at the average stats for those from WU undergrad who got accepted</p>

<p>that was in response to afan----3.76 and 36 mcat----above the requirements for any other medical school in the country</p>

<p>Again, you fail to establish how that proves that WashU's premed program is great.</p>

<p>Rangerrick, I am confused by what you are saying. Are you saying that the data you presented shows that WU's premed program is great? If so, how exactly does it show that? </p>

<p>I think we are all well aware that WU's medical school's entering class has the highest numerical statistics. However, that by itself does not really show that that medical school is the most difficult to get into. Statistics do not tell the whole story. For example, which engineering graduate school has the highest average score on the quant GRE exam in the country? Is it MIT? Stanford? Berkeley? Caltech? Nope - it's Oklahoma State University. That's right - if you don't believe it, go look at the latest copy of USNews and you can see for yourself. Oklahoma State's average GRE score of 786 is the highest of any engineering graduate program in the nation. So does it then follow that Oklahoma State is the toughest engineering graduate program in the nation to get into? I think very few people would assert that. I think even those students in the Oklahoma State's graduate eng program would themselves concede that, overall, Oklahoma State is probably less selective than MIT is, or Stanford is. Numbers do not tell the whole story.</p>