<p>Matriculating to top 20 Medical Schools</p>
<p>I was unable to find this information on the board. Can people help me out?</p>
<p>I don't think such statistics exist. I know that 10%-15% of Medical school-bound students from the University of Michigan matriculate into the Michigan medical school, which is one of the top 10 in the nation. But where the remaining 85% matriculate isn't published. Maybe Cal releases information on their medical school matriculants.</p>
<p>Its a faulty percentage in the first place. BRM can explain...</p>
<p>1) it's irrelevant. There are only 125 medical schools in the US, and they all will provide the education and training necessary for a student to practice medicine. This is evidenced by the 93% first try pass rate for USMLE Step 1 by US second year students and the nearly 94% placement rate for US fourth years in the Match for residency. The general consensus is that prestige of medical school is only important if you wish to go into academic medicine, and even that, I think is not as important as people make it (unless you are going to be particular about where you're on faculty). If a student is just hoping to go into a regular private practice someday, where they went to medical school isn't really all that important.</p>
<p>2) Even if such data was available, it probably wouldn't tell you a whole lot about the quality of the school's pre-med program. With so few spots and such strong competition (only 45% of applicants in a given year matriculate), most students only get one acceptance, making where one applies a lot more important in the overall scheme of actually getting in (ie, you could be a phenomenal candidate, but if you apply to the "wrong" programs, you won't ever get accepted). From my experience, peer pressure seems to play a pretty big role on where people apply. Kids who go to the WashUSTL's and Hopkins', and Harvard's of the country are going to apply to more "elite" schools and be overrepresented. Plenty of kids who go to state schools or lesser known small school and are excellent, competitive applicants may never apply to those big name schools. </p>
<p>3) State of legal residence plays such a huge role in med school admissions for most students that it's far, far easier to get into your home state school than anywhere else (with the notable exception of CA, which is still ridiculously competitive), so that further skews any sort of meaningful results. Further, the in-state costs are often enough to bring in-state students "home" over much more expensive private schools. Plus consider how highly regarded schools like Iowa, Washington (UDub, not STL), and Minnesota (hell even Nebraska) are, most of their applicants are going to come from the state publics in those states.</p>
<p>Thanks BRM;
But there are flaws in all three points. Let me take a shot at thoses.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I think it is very relevant as if the end goal is to get a MD degree then it becomes very important to know how good a pre-med program is. Otherwise it will be better to get into a direct MD program to begin with.
Also it might not matter to some who has HMO as insurance and so stuck with whatever doctor provided by the carrier but if you have a choice then I'm pretty sure you will choose a Harvard Doctor over a lesser known Med school any day. </p></li>
<li><p>I'm sure any data is very relevant for analysis. Look at the data from the undergrad college addmissions that there are only 3% students that attend a private High School but are enrolled at the rate of 35% at the top colleges. Also from the data available from top high school about how many graduates matriculate to top colleges you can easily make a conclusion that if you can afford then where do you want to go for your High School Education. So it should be true for other pre-med program too. I'll give you two example that I'm able to find.
Both Caltech and UCB say that most of their pre-med students matriculate to Med Schools. I'm trying to get an exact number.
I certainly would like my child to attend a pre-med program to what ever university if the matriculation from that program to any Med School is > 80%.</p></li>
<li><p>Where applicants go is not what the concern here is? The point is whether the program is good enough to motivate the students to actually apply and matriculate to Med School or 80% student actually take their BS degrees and go into different careers.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>
[quote]
Otherwise it will be better to get into a direct MD program to begin with.
[/quote]
Yes - If the focus is SOLELY on getting into medical school, then it is usually a very good choice to attend a direct MD program over most elite schools, including all the Ivy league schools. You have to consider that a number of people at elite schools get rejected from every medical school they apply.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Both Caltech and UCB say that most of their pre-med students matriculate to Med Schools. I'm trying to get an exact number.
I certainly would like my child to attend a pre-med program to what ever university if the matriculation from that program to any Med School is > 80%.
[/quote]
UCB stats: <a href="http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/MedStats.stm%5B/url%5D">http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/MedStats.stm</a>
MIT: <a href="http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html%5B/url%5D">http://web.mit.edu/career/www/infostats/preprof.html</a>
Since caltech is such a small school, stats, even if they exist, would be pretty irrelevant. </p>
<p>You can see that a large number of students get rejected from every medical school they apply to. Berkeley's rate was about 55% for one year, so that means almost half their seniors couldn't get into a medical school. If you look at the MIT stats, you'll see that Columbia and Penn's med schools only accepted 4% and 5% of their applicants. Being MIT's neighbor, Harvard accepted 8% of their applicants. So med school is pretty difficult and that's why the direct MD program is so valuable. </p>
<p>I also agree with the statement of how there is a general consensus that the name of the med school "doesn't matter." However, I'm not sure about how that holds up in reality because I haven't graduated from two med schools yet (actually I'm not planning on doing anything medicine-related) ;)</p>
<p>I don't think placement rate on its own is very telling. Different universities have different policies and cultures regarding medical school applicants. At most state universities. I think one should look at placement rates of qualfied applicants (3.3+ GPAs with 27+ MCAT scores). Some schools, like Cal, probably have a huge chunk of students applying to Medical school with sub 3.0 GPAs and sub 25 MCATs.</p>
<p>Also consider that some colleges only let certain students apply to med school. If they don't think you're competitive, they won't support your application. Other schools let anyone apply. Obviously, the first group has a much higher acceptance rate.</p>
<p>At our school the statistic is 40% come in pre-med, but only 4-8% graduate pre-med. The graduating pre-med I think was closer to 4%.</p>
<p>If you are looking only at acceptance rates to any medical school (which are more readily available) there are a number of issues with those. First there are many schools, namely smaller ones, but not always, in which potential medical school applicants are screened by a pre-med committee before being allowed to apply. They end up choosing only the most supremely competitive applicants, the ones who are virtual locks for admission, to continue the process, and then write a glowing "committee letter". Applicants that don't pass this portion may either be allowed to apply without the committee letter (which raises eyebrows), or even more egregiously the committee may prohibit the student from applying at all. This may be overt rejection or more de facto sorts of methods. At many smaller schools, professors are so indoctrinated by the committee idea that they simply won't write letters on behalf of medical school applicants because the committee always takes care of that. Or there are rules that they can't write letters for unapproved applicants.</p>
<p>Now you may believe that this is beneficial for students who receive the committee's blessing, but what about the students who are competitive candidates but no sure thing? Or what about the students who maybe don't have quite the strongest resume, but if they applied, they might stand a chance? Considering how forcefully some of these schools advertise their 100% medical school acceptance rates, such a situation may give rise to some very sketchy conflicts of interest between the goals of the committee and the goals of the students.</p>
<p>Further, it's an inaccurate way to compare colleges. Because there are schools that limit who can apply, schools that have no such pre-screening, are inherently punished. One of my very good friends went to our major state public as a pre-med student and graduated with a degree in human genetics. However her gpa was a 3.0 and her MCAT a 23. She knew she was not going to get into medical school, but applied to our state medical school, with the hopes of just getting an interview. That was the closure she needed, and would have made her successful in her mind. She was actively looking for jobs within her field, and yet by this one metric, her school would be "punished" because she applied with no intention of actually ever going to medical school, and they didn't prevent her from doing so.</p>
<p>In regards to your "choosing a Harvard Med graduate anyday" idea...who doesn't have health insurance with limited number of providers? When was the last time you asked your doctors where they did their education and training? Would you change physicians if you found out they went somewhere you didn't think was very good? How do you reconcile the fact that the overwhelming % of physicians end up practicing within 100 miles of where they completed residency, not medical school? If 93% of students are passing on the first try the first step of their licensing exam it would seem to me that ALL the schools are doing good work in educating future physicians. Finally, what about research on both malpractice rates and patient satisfaction showing time and time again that it's not physician skill or knowledge that leads to NOT getting sued or happy patients, it's listening, explaining, empathizing and all those bedside manner sorts of things that matter? I don't think any school has a claim to being able to say they teach those items any better than any other school.</p>
<p>In regards to your second point...of course schools like the Ivies, Hopkins, Duke, Stanford, and WUSTL, or any other fairly selective school are going to be overrepresented in the "top" medical schools. That's not because of the actual school, it's because the things that get one accepted to those schools for undergrad, are the same things that are going to translate well into medical school admissions.</p>
<p>For your third point, I don't think you are grasping the implications of having only a 45% total acceptance rate across the country. It's not a matter of a program "inspiring" students to apply - there's plenty of people "inspired" to apply. The attrition rate for pre-meds is absolutely astronomical. For example (I know this is not an ideal representation, but I think it's a close enough approximation) In 2004, there were nearly 62,000 administrations of the MCAT, and for the 2005 application cycle there were about 37,000 applicants. Even accounting for retesters, and assuming that from year to year the number people either taking the MCAT early or waiting a year until they apply is relatively steady, that's nearly a 1/3 of MCAT takers who changed their plans AFTER they'd spent the time, money and effort to be a pre-med, prepare for the MCAT and actually take it. There are many tens of thousands more who start pre-med as freshmen because they don't have any better ideas and quickly realize that all that science isn't for them. More than anything, becoming a physician is about perseverance. If they don't have the will power, the best pre-med school in the world isn't going to help them.</p>
<p>Now, through all of this, it's not say that there aren't good and bad pre-med schools. I'm arguing that using acceptance rate to any school, worrying about going to top medical schools, and acceptance rates to those top schools, are poor ways to go about choosing an undergraduate institution. The things that make a good pre-med school are probably impossible to quantify in any meaningful way - things like quality of pre-med advising, number of opportunities for research, chances for campus and community involvement, the ease of finding physicians to shadow or hospitals to volunteer in, the type of pre-interview preparation available, or accessibility to campus leadership positions...those sorts of things can make a school great for pre-meds. And they're definitely not tied to any sort of prestige rankings and damn near impossible to quantify from the outside looking in.</p>
<p>And my final point is this: what's good for one student isn't necessarily good for another student. Because personal achievement is the single biggest component to getting into medical school, students need to go where they will find the most success possible. This means academically, socially, emotionally and physically, with a great balance between these areas. Choosing a school for pre-med based on how it might be perceived to help them in med school admissions is a recipe for disaster. This is especially true if they end up going some place that's less than a perfect fit, then decide medicine isn't for them and either they are stuck a school they don't like, or are forced to go through the difficulty of transferring. Even if there was some data out there that convincingly proved University X was the penultimate pre-med school, that wouldn't mean everyone would be successful there.</p>