Add attributes to that self selecting med school applicant pool, folks from multiple graduating batches, those with masters degrees (and some Ph.Ds too like the current NIH head Francis Collins) and the non traditional folks with more than 2 years of gap with solid work and life experiences.
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Started as Freshman med scholar that is different than rest freshman cohert.
The other 7 schools are Case Western, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, WashU, Wake Forest, and UNC!
I got a half tuition scholarship from Loyola but didn’t apply for any others. Duke I would probably be paying the full price… I will keep everyone updated with any scholarships and acceptances I get in the future!
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I agree but we’re only talking about the med scholars in the calculations. The 80 med scholars are probably superior students but they’re still 18 year-olds with the same problems as the other cohorts. Including the med scholar weed outs in the calcs is fine but not fair to compare them to actual med school applicants who are 21 years old or older with degrees and work experience which make up the 42% of med school acceptance rate.
For an apples to apples comparison it would be better to use the half or 40 med scholars who make it through the program. These are the same type of students that are in the 42% number. What percentage that make it through the program are accepted to at least one med school?
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This is what another SLU student said:
I’m not completely sure how many freshmen were able to maintain their GPA at a 3.65, but think that the majority (maybe half or two-thirds? don’t quote me on this!) were able to. I apologize, we don’t have access to those stats, but I think that usually around half of the incoming medical scholars drop the program from the beginning of their freshman year either due to GPA or their decision to pursue another career path.
I think that my freshman year there were around 90-100 Medical scholars, and we currently have 50-60 students in the program. I would say that we’re pretty tight, but I think that we’re a little more spread out currently due to the pandemic. I think that we have a great culture of helping each other out here- I’ve never really felt like I’m competing against my peers. In fact, a lot of us will end up studying together for tests or helping each other find volunteering/service opportunities. Some of us end up being involved in similar organizations, such as AED (our pre-health club) or tutoring, but I think that everyone is involved in a few different things.
I personally am super excited to attend SLU Med (hopefully!) I love the mission at SLU Med and its integration of cura personalis and how they look at patient care through a holistic lens in treating all parts of a person. I also think that SLU Med has a lot of great faculty in all specialties and departments and that the hospitals (SSM and Cardinal Glennon) offer some great learning experiences.
My best experience has been interacting with the community here at SLU. From students to faculty and staff, everyone is incredible supportive and engaged in trying to help you succeed. I came from a high school where students were more competitive with each other and have really loved being able to collaborate rather than compete with my peers here at SLU. I also think that the faculty and staff, from professors to pre-health advisors here at SLU are super helpful and you have the opportunity to foster some great relationships with them. I think my worst experience has been learning how to deal with stress. I typically get easily stressed out, and there was a learning curve I had to go through when adjusting from high school to college-level classes. This caused me to get a little stressed, and I had to find healthy ways (such as running) in order to cope with it and use it to my advantage.
As a senior in high school, I was deciding between Medical Scholars, the University of Michigan, and UCLA. I chose to ultimately enroll in Medical Scholars due to the opportunity to interview early for SLU Med and get conditionally accepted to the program. I really liked the mission and SLU Med in general, and though that it would be a great opportunity to help me achieve my dreams. SLU also offered me a little more financial aid and is a little closer to home which also helped in this decision.
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Because it is a med scholar acceptance rate to medical school (not a med scholar program acceptance rate from a high school), people who were already admitted in med scholars program.
% comparison is valid with traditional, because no one is admitted as pre-med for traditional, so when you apply (unlike med scholar admitted), then and then it is included in acceptance rate calculation. Instead of using acceptance rate, I would use success rate of med scholar program as more meaningful.
I would say big opportunity to pass on UMich as UMich SOM is known to admit so many from its UG.
For that student decision makes sense.
That’s been my point…use the success rate of the med scholar program as the measuring stick. It looks like half make it through the program so 40/80. Of those 40, let’s say on average 27 go to SLU med school…that’s the 67% number. The rest appear to go to other med schools. So if you make it through the med scholars program (50/50?) you’re very likely to go to med school. Those are pretty good odds considering I’ve heard only 10-20% of undergrads who start pre-med actually go to med school
Yeah that sounds around being correct. 50% vs 15% per batch. If you divide the often quoted figure of 42% by a factor of about 3 to account for all the categories of people in a traditional pool as mentioned above (multiple graduating batches, advanced degrees, non traditional), it comes to 14% per batch. Even if very conservatively divide by 2 (which is not realistic), it comes to 20%
The only draw back, for the 50% who don’t make it, they may be left with a not so fancy undergrad degree or experience. But I think they should be able to figure that out and transfer to a better brand name in 2 years (which is probably more expensive too)
Btw, while I don’t know the exact numbers that matriculates to SLU as med scholars each year- SLU admissions confirmed in many ways that close to or over 90% of them who are left in the program by the time they interview in Sophomore, makes it to SOM. Last year was even better, it was quoted as 100% of them had acceptance
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Case Western would be a great college for premeds if you want something different from UWisc.
Emory and Wake Forest would also be different from UWisc without being as incredibly competitive as WashU and Vandy for premeds (a good balance between high challenge and doable). The differentiating factors being cost, weather, and private school amenities.
You should only choose SLU because you like the school and the tight community of scholars: the program itself doesn’t seem to help much get into med school. While having a cumulative 3.65+GPA is normal for a jr or sr applying to med school, requiring it every year including freshman year and when you take Orgo makes things very dicey - in college, it’s not an easy GPA to maintain AND that guarantees nothing for SLU Med.
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You can not be convinced of 27/80 as the real acceptance rate (a division by two numbers), no matter what. Do you have any skin in this ? So what is the point of arguing endlessly.
Please stop arguments on this. Move on.
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Yes, I agree. This argument isn’t really helping me so I would really appreciate it if we could move on!
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Can’t disagree to stay within scope of OP’s individual choices.
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@govever70 i believe LUC has an EAP. Honestly do not know much about it or it’s stats. I am curious to know about it and would appreciate if anyone in this forum can shed some light on it.
You have some really good options and UW should be on top of your list for various reasons. In State, Public School, has a good Med School etc. Just my 2 cents.
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Don’t know enough about UW and don’t intend to find out. But as long as the parents maintain residence in the state, shouldn’t matter where the undergrad is done while applying to that med school. It matters for private med schools if the undergrad was done from their university but don’t think counts as much for state schools (better ask around wrt UW med school)
Personally not a fan of large public univs for undergrad. The classes are always over crowded, barely any interaction with faculty, too much competition for what ever opportunities for ECs and research, not much of guidance in finding internships with industry etc. Again, don’t know enough about UW, who knows it may be good like for example Penn State plush with research funding.
The price difference between SLU and UW seems to be around 6k/year. But comes with added benefit of a 50% chance of med school acceptance without any gap years and the flexibility to opt out and even go to UW med school as an instate student.
Can’t comment on the 3.65 gpa requirement every semester though. What happens if it slips in one semester and student can recover the following semester?
Personally from the experience of C who attends a BA/MD program, neither Organic nor Bio Chemistry (took graduate level course) had never been an issue. Infact did great on all of them. But of course that may be due to the rigor of their program from get go. In fact many students found the freshman year general chemistry harder even as most of them had 5s on AP Chem in high school and 800s on SAT chemistry subject tests.
I will be chatting with a campus tour guide from UW-Madison tomorrow (I requested someone on the pre-med track, so hopefully the person I got is). Are there any specific questions I should be asking?
Ask the usual questions like class sizes, do professors actually teach classes, are they accessible, can I start researching or do clinical work freshman year, are there any mentoring or shadowing opportunities, is there MCAT prep help, etc. If they have stats on GPA’s and med school placement that would be good too.
I always ask the kids we see on tours where else did you apply and why did you choose XYZ? Most of the time it’s obvious like “it’s close to home” or “it was cheap” but occasionally you’ll get great answers like "I got into an Ivy but I chose XYZ because…they’re doing cutting edge research on ABC or they have a program for ABC. It might be something you’re interested in pursuing.
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Get better understanding of weed out classes and what kind of EC activities are available on campus and get sense how she/he is relatively doing so far w/o asking too much personal.
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