This is the sort of thing I worry about for @HKimPOSSIBLE . Someone upthread asked if the Chicago scholarship was guaranteed and HKim replied it was renewable. Very different. To me, if the scholarship is not guaranteed that’s a gamechanger.
I’m afraid the US is a bastion of inequality on many fronts. The more affluent, whether colleges/universities or people, will weather this storm very very differently. A proportion of the not-affluent will go under.
You see this in the way Bowdoin has already “upped” it’s aid, lowering the amount you need to cover via work study. Should things get worse, they will catch you as you fall. Doubtful a much poorer institution will be able to.
I have to say, I love the fact that a thread that started out as “Reject Train Going Full Speed” has turned into a debate about which of multiple amazing offers @HKimPOSSIBLE should accept.
Illinois MAP grants have had some serious problems in previous years - in 2015/16 50% of eligible students didn’t receive their grants, and many of them ended up having to drop out of school. If you absolutely need this money to attend, this has to be a consideration, especially with Illinois on extremely shaky ground financially. You need to have a plan B if the public money dries up.
"What is Bowdoin’s med school acceptance rate?”, “It doesn’t matter what Bowdoin’s acceptance. rate is because it’ s not your acceptance rate”
Agree but why do they promote the 91% and 87% acceptance rates?
“We simply don’t know what numbers are in that data: Students who only applied directly out of undergrad?”
Well it says a survey of the class of 2017 taken in 2018 so the 7 students at med schools went directly from undergrad or one after so entering fall 2017 or fall 2018. Yes we don’t know how many of the 7 went directly out in 2107 vs one year out.
“could also shown by graduate program (law, medicine, PhD, etc)”
Well you can eliminate the ones that don’t have med schools (MIT, Berkeley, BC, Northeastern I think) and go from there. It’s still a great list of schools but I would confirm with the pre-med advising office what the med schools are, as others have suggested.
Probably because people ask for it. If you don’t disclose it people accuse you of hiding something.
Part of the issue with acceptance rate stats is that there are many factors they can’t capture. How many students who thought they wanted to go to med school were weeded out? How many kids decided to go to med school later in their college career? Does the school support all applications? Only those that meet a GPA standard? Only those that the committee thinks will result in success?
How many applicants who are rejected one year are successful the next? IOW, a school could have an effective success rate of 100% if 20% of applicants were rejected each year but that 20% was consistently accepted after applying a second time. Or the school could have an effective success rate of 80% if that 20% was consistency rejected on further attempts. I think you really have to dig through a school’s materials and be critical of what you find. If I were looking at this situation I’d want to contact the schools’ med school/health care advisors and ask a lot of direct questions. At this point, since @HKimPOSSIBLE has already been accepted it’s the schools’ job to sell themselves to him, so he shouldn’t worry about being perceived as pushy.
And most of the times LAC are skewing numbers to their advantage as they use different methods to drive it up, hence not even comparable among them. It is an unfortunate nuisance, very few LACs are open up their statistics to full extent.
@Sue22 its same reasons you sited in post #1185 and other posters have mentioned in last few pages. First of all, most of schools don’t publish pre-med outcome details to begin with. Even with what they publish it is up to the school, how numbers are derived. Few examples, some schools use committee letters to keep less qualified students at bay, hence on paper it seems higher acceptance rate, most schools don’t differentiate between direct admitted to med school from UG (0 gap years), vs one with 1 or more gap years. Hence the real acceptance is skewed to higher.
My sense is that it’s a matter of having a bird in hand vs. taking a leap of faith. I can see why a combined BS/MD program might be tempting.
@PPofEngrDr, There’s a different between not being able to give perfect stats and manipulating them.
Bowdoin is up front about what percentage of students apply directly out of college-approx. 15%, as is about the average for successful admits nationwide. Most medical schools prefer applicants who have a year or two of post-UG experience.
But those are the kinds of questions the OP can ask the med school advisors at the schools- Does the committee write a letter for all students who want them? How many students apply once then give up if they don’t get in? What’s the failure rate for OChem? What supports and advising can students expect along the way? Are some students counseled out of a pre-med application?
@Sue22 First of all statements were made in light of UGs general experience, not necessarily applicable to Bowdoin. Providing a flash light to industry practice that is not best and doesn’t portrait true picture. Whenever a UG stats 90+% acceptance rate to med-schools, be skeptical, as that number is derived from what UG counts as input. Skewed is not same as manipulate. Also when you compare med school acceptance rate among UGs, one should expect same method to derive that rate, quite often it is not hence comparing apple and oranges.
Very few UGs provides reports like Vandy does https://www.vanderbilt.edu/hpao/documents/2017_Annual_Report.pdf
I feel a bit as though someone has an axe to grind against LACs here.
@theloniusmonk , maybe the better question is why don’t all colleges publish their med school acceptance rate? Is it possible that if you have something good, you want to brag about it? Any college with an 87% acceptance rate to med school would be foolish NOT to publish that info.
If a school keeps less qualified students at bay from applying to med school, I say good. Sorry, but I want to see the best qualified person when I visit the doctor. Yes, I look at the diplomas and certifications on the wall when I’m at a doctor’s office.
I once saw a podiatrist. Nothing at all against podiatrists, but he told me he became a podiatrist because he wasn’t smart enough to be any other kind of doctor. I almost walked out of the office right then, but I didn’t want to be rude. I never went back. Needless to say, that doctor didn’t inspire confidence.
Honestly though, if HKim isn’t cut out for med school, I’ll eat my hat. At the same time, if by some miracle, HKim is indeed not cut out for med school, then I sense he might be the first to admit it. And at least at one of the LACs, he would be in a great position to pursue another career should medicine not be in his future.
@Lindagaf its not, Its not an acceptance rate either, just pointing the outcome at end of typical UG batch. It is not silly if one misunderstands and misinterprets.
^ Have to agree with @PPofEngrDr. If in general 400-450 are graduating every year. and 7-10 are matriculating to med school in an application cycle, that pretty much means that something like 1.5-2.5% of any class can expect to matriculate to med school. If indeed, 15% of any class is actually applying to med school (did I miss that stat somewhere?) then no more than 13% of those applications will matriculate (.02/.15). Are there stats somewhere to show that this is incorrect reasoning?
Bottom line:
University of Illinois has struggled financially for many years. Now it’s much worse. It’s a public system, and professors and administrators on campus cannot make any promises because the school’s budget is dependent on the state’s budget.
Another Bowdoin stats, https://www.bowdoin.edu/health-professions/about/facts-and-statistics/index.html, 15% choose to matriculate into med school directly after UG, that is well below national average ~33%. In other words, for Bowdoin, 85% of students took at least 1 gap year before matriculate into med school . Correct me if I am reading them wrong here!
@PPofEngrDr, that’s the number of students who have gone directly to medical school. As Bowdoin states on their website, only about 15% of students do this. The vast majority do research or other work before attending med. school.
One of my kids has a number of good friends who will be applying to med school after attending a Bowdoin-like school. They graduated with her last year and are spending this year with great jobs. IME the vast majority of kids who take a year or more before attending med school do it by choice.
Of course, that may or may not be the path the OP chooses to take.
