<p>I’m not a huge fan of medical school acceptance rates in general because they are easily manipulated. Cornell uses a pretty strict definition of medical school, only allopathic med schools, which would tend to depress their acceptance rates. Many other colleges include admissions to DO schools, Caribbean schools, Polish med schools, etc. in order to boost their med school acceptance rates. </p>
<p>Cornell also doesn’t include URM’s in its statistics. URMs in general have the same acceptance rate to med school as normal applicants although they have lower stats (this is due to affirmative action). So, including URM’s in the stats probably wouldn’t change the overall acceptance rate but would rather boost Cornell’s acceptance rate for applicants with 3.4+ GPA’s. </p>
<p>Lastly, there are no alumni’s being included in the stats. It’s hard to tell how that would change the data since people take time off for all sorts of reasons. For example, I took a year off despite having good stats. </p>
<p>In general, if you have a 35+ GPA and a 30+ MCAT from any school, you’re good to go. In deciding whether a school is a good premed school, look at the opportunities afforded by the school (the shadowing, volunteering, research opportunities), the quality of health careers advising, the rigor of the academic environment in preparing you for med school, etc. These are qualitative assessments, not quantitative. I’ve already commented on the advising. In general, I found opportunities at Cornell to be plentiful. There are a lot of clubs to get involved in. A ton of volunteering opportunities (both at Cayuga Medical Center and in the community). At least 2 programs that set you up with local doctors to shadow (I did them both). And of course, Cornell is a top tier research universities. I had no problems getting summer internships or the NIH fellowship I ended up doing during my year off. Everyone at the NIH was extremely impressed with the fact I graduated from Cornell. Lastly, the rigor of Cornell doesn’t come close to the rigor of med school but that’s okay. I don’t think any college rigor comes close. Cornell does the best it can to prepare you for med school but it’s hard to imagine the hell it will be until you actually start med school.</p>