<p>What U Miami’s stats are showing is that if you are a resident of FLA, you have no competition from students out of state for your in-state medical school, so admission rates tend to look high. That’s the luck of being a FLA resident. The UC system would show lousy rates of admission to medical school, comparatively speaking because they have a great many highly competitive students who are pre-med, serious weeder classes, and very few seats in-state relative to the number of pre-meds. </p>
<p>In short, statistics that show a school sends a lot of kids to medical school doesn’t mean what you think it means. </p>
<p>Re your question, find a school where you are among the top 25% of the admitted student body academically - GPA and test scores (and especially test scores since that’s a better objective indicator of how you will compare academically to other incoming students.) You want to be among the top 25% of the class. If you are admitted to a reach in which you are in the bottom 25% of the class the test scores, you are setting yourself up, not for failure, but for a change of professional goals early on. If that’s a ‘lesser college’ in your eyes, well then, yes, that’s a good idea if you are serious about being pre-med.</p>