<p>My reasoning for ODU is that they have an affiliate program with EVMS
I really liked the campus and the atmosphere and I know I will be in the top percentage if I go there.</p>
<p>How successful you are in applying to med school depends on what you do in college and not some magic the college has with regards to preparing students for med school. So if you want lists of “top 20” someone will supply it, but I doubt such rankings are that meaningful. There are hundreds of colleges that can give you the opportunity to be a strong med school candidate.</p>
<p>One thing to avoid is placing any importance into acceptance numbers. Some schools boast incredible rates, but it boils down to one of two things. Either they start with great students (think Stanford, etc) or the school weeds out students. Look out especially for the “committee letter” which small schools with average students coming in wield like an axe to prevent all but the strongest applicants from applying right out of college; to no surprise, they often boast 90% or better med school “acceptance” numbers for their undergrads.</p>
<p>There is an excellent online handbook at Amherst I recommend you read to get an understanding of the process and what really matters
</p>
<p>Pretty soon a regular poster will chime in to recomend Holy Cross, like he does with every post mentioning medicine.</p>
<p>You should know that Holy Cross will only write a favorable recommendation letter to medical schools for its top students. Applying without a strong letter is futile, so in effect Holy Cross controls who applies to med school. Consequently this lets them advertise a high med school acceptance rate. To the kids who paid $200K to attend Holy Cross and were then blocked from applying to med school, I guess them’s just the breaks…</p>
<p>This is not isolated to Holy Cross. This is quite common. For example, Georgetown does the same thing: [Pre-Health</a> Recommendation Committee - Pre-Health Studies](<a href=“http://premed.georgetown.edu/pmrc/]Pre-Health”>http://premed.georgetown.edu/pmrc/)
Here it is for Tufts: <a href=“https://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsprevetsociety/applying/health-professions-recommendation-committee-hprc/[/url]”>https://sites.tufts.edu/tuftsprevetsociety/applying/health-professions-recommendation-committee-hprc/</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In principle, it’s hard to argue with this advice.
In practice, I’m not sure the best way to accomplish it is necessarily to attend a less selective school.</p>
<p>More selective colleges tend to have smaller classes and better need-based aid. In some cases they also have higher average GPAs (for whatever reason). Example: in 2006, according to gradeinflation.com, the average GPA at Alabama was 2.9. At Georgetown it was 3.42; at Brown it was 3.59.</p>
<p>Almost 18% of classes at Alabama have 50 or more students. At Georgetown, less than 7% have 50 or more students. The difference may be more pronounced in pre-med classes.</p>
<p>*More selective colleges tend to have smaller classes *</p>
<p>Premed classes at nearly all schools (even the best privates) tend to be large. I don’t know about G’town specifically, but I’d bet that their Gen Chem and Bio lectures are large. </p>
<p>I don’t know what the relevance of “avg GPA” is for any one particular student. The avgs at publics will always be lower because they often have some students who probably shouldn’t even be in college…lol.</p>
<p>Not all publics do Committee Letters…Bama does.</p>
<p>
No</a>, its something that Holy Cross and others do to boast impressive acceptance rates.
Holy Cross is quite explicit that if they don’t like your chances, they will not support your application.
This</a> last sentence is quite purposeful. If they have decided they don’t want you to apply because it will drag down their numbers, they will make it crystal clear that you have no chance of acceptance so you don’t make the mistake of sending out apps anyway and hurting their numbers.</p>
<p>Georgetown’s class schedule is here:
<a href=“https://myaccess.georgetown.edu/pls/bninbp/bwckschd.p_disp_dyn_sched[/url]”>https://myaccess.georgetown.edu/pls/bninbp/bwckschd.p_disp_dyn_sched</a></p>
<p>It does not list class sizes, but the large number of general and organic chemistry lab sections indicates that the overall class sizes for those courses are probably not small.</p>
<p>The U of Richmond is on the OP’s list in the opening post. Richmond prides itself on having no classes with 50 or more students.</p>
<p>yes. The trend seems to be large lectures and small labs.</p>
<p>Richmond’s class schedule at [Class</a> Schedules - Registrar’s Office - University of Richmond](<a href=“http://registrar.richmond.edu/planning/schedule/current.html]Class”>http://registrar.richmond.edu/planning/schedule/current.html) indicates that they do break up the lectures (as well as the labs) of general and organic chemistry into non-huge sections (e.g. 2 lectures + 4 labs or 4 lectures + 5 labs, as opposed to 1 lecture + 5 labs).</p>
<p>A pre-med looking for smaller classes should not rely too much on average class sizes, since the typical pre-med courses are often among the larger courses on a given campus. The actual class schedules can be more informative in this respect. Many schools do not reveal class sizes, but counting the number of labs can let you estimate the number of students (typically 15 to 25 per lab) total, which you can then divide by the number of lectures to estimate the lecture class size. (Of course, class sessions listed as “lectures” may have varying amounts of lecture and discussion, depending on the topic and instructor.)</p>
<p>For past semesters, the Richmond archives show the number of students per class, and the highest number I saw for Organic Chemistry was 32, as the different class sections seemed to meet at different times, though maybe I missed something. Also, I didn’t see any Chemistry or Biology courses with more than 40, except for one course, Pollutants in the Environment, which looks like soft science, and had 64.</p>
<p>The class sizes don’t matter to me too much. I prefer the smaller classes so that I could build a more personal connection with the professors but don’t really mind a big class. What the school offers for majors and research opportunities along with their medical school acceptance percentages are what matter.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>And this is what people have been telling you should not matter as many schools “cook” their numbers by limiting who may apply.</p>
<p>Look at the stats here:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/</a></p>
<p>Click on Table 24 for a nice grid of applicants/acceptees</p>
<p>You’ll see that the odds for someone with a 30 - 32 MCAT, but at GPA of 3.2 - 3.4 is around 38% (roughly 1/3rd WILL get in). You will have NO chance if you select a school that requires a minimum 3.5 GPA to recommend you - and many schools do set up these types of rules (written or unwritten) to preserve their great acceptance rates.</p>
<p>It’s fine to go to one of those schools if you’re certain you’ll be among the top of the top, but most kids don’t end up there even if they were there at their high school.</p>
<p>There are likely many who would have been good doctors who get their hopes dashed because they went to a school with “high” med school acceptance rates falsely believing it would help their chances.</p>
<p>Or, look at it this way:</p>
<p>200 students enter Schools A and B planning on being pre-med.</p>
<p>In each school 100 drop out by finding something else they’d rather do.</p>
<p>In School A of the 100 left, 20 make the cut to get recommended for their application and 19 get accepted - a 95% acceptance rate, but 80 never had the opportunity to try.</p>
<p>In School B all 100 get to try. 35 get accepted (all 19 with similar stats to those in School A and an additional 16 who make it in due being in those 1/3 or similar odds). The school’s acceptance rate is 35%, but which school was “better” for the incoming pre-med student? 16 more are headed to med school than from School A.</p>
<p>Note, 19/20 with stellar stats made it in from either school.</p>
<p>IMO, drop acceptance rates as a criteria preferring instead to contemplate each school’s restrictions on applicants - and pick your best fit due to research, etc. Do well at the school you choose to attend and your, personal, odds will be the best.</p>
<p>Look at Pitt if you are interested in ability to get involved with research, get merit aid and have options for smaller class sizes in honors versions. I have 2 there now, both got very good merit aid, ds has been involved in research since spring freshman yr, dd took advantage of honors classes and took organic chem honors with only 30 students.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the suggestions! I will take a look at Pitt. I got into Bama so if I get a great scholarship I will be heading there!</p>
<p>OP, congrats on your acceptance to Bama!</p>
<p>I had typed out a really long reply to this but I lost it part way - I was going to suggest that I actually think W&M is a high match and Mary Washington a safety for you given your SAT & ACT scores, and to suggest James Madison and George Mason (because I thought you were a VA resident).</p>
<p>I was also going to make the point that “controlling” who applies to med school (as Holy Cross and other schools with recommendation committees - and there are many of them; my own Ivy League grad school has one, as I have written recommendations for students to the committee) isn’t “cooking the books”. Cooking would be using dishonest practices in artificially inflating med school admissions rates.</p>
<p>What Holy Cross is doing is actually what anyone writing a recommendation letter should do, which is being selective about who you recommend based upon your experiences with a person. For example, when students ask me for a recommendation and they didn’t do well in my class, or weren’t a good supervisee, I politely decline. Now, maybe they would be outstanding at whatever they are trying to do - maybe their performance in my class was a fluke. But in MY experience, they weren’t that great, so why would I recommend them? My reputation rests upon my recommendation. If I recommend bad students nobody will trust me and I lose social capital. That hurts the actually really good students who work with me and need a recommendation from me.</p>
<p>Similarly, Holy Cross’s recommendations to med school cease to mean anything if they recommend everyone who comes through their gates. The committee is made up of experienced faculty and four clinicians, so I’m assuming that they are keeping up to date on the premed requirements and are making recs based on statistics and their very successful track record. They don’t seem to have hard GPA cut-offs or requirements; their website states that they work individually with students to tailor their recommendation letter to the students’ background. So maybe an otherwise outstanding 3.4 or 3.3 can get a recommendation from HC. We simply don’t know.</p>
<p>And on a more human level, this allows them to gently redirect students who aren’t good fits for medical school. I would not write a recommendation letter for a student with a 3.1 and no medical volunteer experience who suddenly woke up one day junior year and decided he wanted to be a physician; but if he came to me for the required letter, then I would have the opportunity to talk with him and gently let him know that his prospects were not good, but that maybe he should try a postbaccalaureate program or a master’s degree if he was really serious about medical education. If he doesn’t have to consult with me first, though, then perhaps he wastes thousands of dollars on the very slim chance that he will be admitted anywhere.</p>