I hate that word “placement”. It’s not as if the univ is “placing” a student into med school. Acceptance rate isn’t a much better term due to the frequent manipulation. And whatever the stat is, it has nothing to do with any particular incoming freshman premed. And the UCs do have a very low acceptance rate into med school.
That said, simply the ridiculousness that exists in Calif (premeds vs med school seats), it’s just a bad idea for an OOS premed student to go to Calif…particularly one that couldn’t possibly provide adequate advising when it has 1000 students applying to med schools every year. They don’t do Committee Letters simply because they lack the resources.
NU has the advising, the CLs, etc. this is such a no-brainer.
@IWannaHelp
Between hard weeding in the intro science classes and NU’s use of a committee letter to control whom they’ll allow to apply to med, that “success rate” for NU students is highly manipulated.
Every undergrad manipulates its med school success rates to show their stats in the best light possible.
Nationally, ~65000 student took the MCAT last year, ~55,000 applied and ~21000 of them got a med school acceptance. So less than 1/3 of the pre meds who have persisted throng undergrad get a med school acceptance and only ~39% of those who apply to med school get an acceptance.
The rate of acceptance (% of all applicants with ≥ 1 SOM acceptance/all who applied) for all baccalaureate-degree holders across the nation for the current academic year 2018-19 was 41%.
Here’s a [url=http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/california-colleges/2134202-pomona-college-vs-ucla-vs-cal.html]link[/url] to a discussion some of us had revolving around Pomona College (“Pomona”), the University of California, Berkeley (“Cal”), and the University of California, Los Angeles (“UCLA”). The OP in that thread has intentions of attending medical school with the listed universities as his/her college options. To cut through the superfluity, posts #27 through #37 finally arrive at the matter at hand with respect to the OP and proceeds to the med-school admissions for all three.
A gentleman involved in the conversation apparently was able to access the matriculant numbers from the AAMC via his son who is a graduate of Pomona and attends or attended med school. Aamc.org has the applicant numbers from each university to m-school, but it doesn’t release specific matriculant numbers to the public, presumably because of misuse. He presented the acceptance figures for all three: Pomona, 76%; Cal, 46%; and UCLA, 49%. (I’m sure there are variable percentages depending on the year.) He was able to eventually match the applicant numbers to the aamc’s: 72, 662, and 1,014, as mom2collegekids states below.
Your second sentence is faulty by reason of the first. It may be true, but the applicants to med school in a particular year are not exclusive of a prior cycle of baccalaureate graduates, which you doubtlessly know. (I’ll leave the door open because I’d like you to respond.)
I don’t believe your first point is true within the bold. There is University-based counseling and secondary-based mentorships for those who are pre-health. There are student groups which have meetings and fairs. The idea that “[p]oor [pre-health professions] advising” is prevalent throughout the UCs, is something that apparently circulates throughout this board and it is taken as truth without any kind of corroborative evidence whether it is true.
In another part it states that there are doubtlessly Letters of Recommendations that are needed to apply to med schools, varying from three to five. A Committee Letter is not one of these. Those who attend universities that provide them should obtain them; those that don’t are obviously not beholden to them and would have to obtain all the rec-letters from others. (Edit: Remove end quote.)
Perhaps the UCs don’t present CLs, because they are worried about incurring liability.
Re, bold… no it doesn’t. The rate of acceptance for all who apply nationwide is 41%; for UCLA and Cal it’s closer to 50% and the total for all UCs I would guess would be > than the national average. One has to remember, these are unfiltered numbers, and SCU’s rate according to the pre-health advisor is ~ 40% (well it is in CA).
I would guess that there is a downward trend in acceptances around the country because apparently more are applying. So your idea that “UCLA has 1000 students apply each year to med school” is not accurate. I’m not sure when it surpassed that figure, but it’s only fairly recently that it has. Again, applications appear to be rising; we’ll just have to track the > 21,000 applications that have occurred in the current cyle to see if they increase.
With respect to the colleges with the best rates of acceptance, I would suspect that Harvard baccalaureates would have ~ 90% rate or greater, because there would be a lot of SOMs which would love to have a Harvard grad or two in its freshman class. Additionally, Harvard grads represent all 50 states (i.e., it will have a wider distribution among all of them) which implies that the University would not be bogged down by regionality. UC grads who apply to med school generally self-impose regionality with specificity to California. Most UC grads who do attend will be doing so outside of CA, but their desire typically is one of the UC SOMs firstly, the CA SOMs secondly, and then everywhere else thirdly, maybe with an added regionality to stay in the west mixed in.
And sorry if my post has numerous flaws, including probable disjointed addressing of references, but I’ve been trying to multitask.
Yep, I’ve noticed it every time, because the number of posts below OP’s sig would have updated past one if he/she had done so elsewhere.
But that’s okay, because some of us need(ed) to hash out some disagreements: e.g., are Committee Letters needed for med school; and is UC, or in this case and in any case, UCLA, a very bad place to be a pre-med?
Edit add: Committee Letters can also be “suicide” as mom2collegekids would state things if a bad letter is generated.
What some choose to ignore is the fact that the OP, as originally stated, is looking to keep his or her health in college by looking for a place that has, say, balmy weather.