<p>from what ive heard, the acceptance rate into medical school for stanford undergrad students is about 70-75%...why is this percentage so low? especially in comparison to HYPM..which have acceptance rates upwards of 90%?</p>
<p>A few possible reasons. (Btw, MIT is actually in the 70%'s, too.) Not comprehensive suggestions:</p>
<p>1.) Stanford doesn’t write committee letters. That’s indicative of poor advising in general, too.
2.) Stanford premeds might apply disproportionately to California medical schools, which are notoriously difficult to get into.</p>
<p>Apply to Princeton University School of Medicine. Word on the street is that they love Stanford undergrads.</p>
<p>75% is not that bad when you consider that well under 50% of medical school applicants are accepted anywhere.</p>
<p>I agree with BDM’s assessment and would add that perhaps in addition to mostly applying to UCs, the other med schools they apply to are elites. </p>
<p>If they’re not being properly advised, then they aren’t getting told to apply to some schools where their chances would be better. </p>
<p>I am surprised that Stanford doesn’t do committee letters. You’d think for its elite status and cost, it would. That also suggests that the school has no influence over who applies to med school…which means that those with lowish stats are not discouraged.</p>
<p>That said, 75% is not LOW.</p>
<p>One other alternative is that some/many of Stanford’s engineers also apply to med school? And, as MITs number indicate, it’s engineers don’t fare too well. Perhaps they are mostly applying to MD/PhD programs, but regardless, if Stanford’s engineers meet a similar fate…</p>
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<p>While I can definitely see the value in the Com Letter – great for strong applicants, I am troubled by the result: discourages low-stat kids from applying. Yes, it obviously saves them money and heartache? but at the same time, you ‘miss every shot that you don’t take.’ (Gretzky)</p>
<p>As noted above, someway, somehow, some really low stat applicants are accepted. Sure, the admission rate maybe similar (or worse?) than winning a state lottery, but it is still higher than zero, which is what a Committee discouragement effectively becomes. In essence, the undergrad advisors become the de facto med school admission committee, and something just seems wrong about that, at least to me.</p>
<p>btw: anyone have a link to Stanford’s numbers? I searched and could not find 75% anywhere.</p>
<p>Well, the very presence of a committee letter doesn’t HAVE to include discouraging marginal applicants. Most of the schools I know don’t implement a screening process, even if it does include a little bit of a stern talking to.</p>
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<p>They seem to be something like one half of one percent. That’s much, much better than winning a state lottery. :)</p>
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<p>Stanford doesn’t give them out (maybe for obvious reasons). They give such information to admitted undergrads upon request, and they’ve been shared on this board in the past.</p>
<p>bdm: but isn’t the lack of a letter the kiss-of-death for an applicant? Sure they can still apply with two faculty recs, but the med school will know that such undergrad also produces Committee Letters, and if said applicant does not have a Comm Letter…goodbye.</p>
<p>Re: 75%…one other thought I had was state residency. ~40% of Stanford students are California residents. Unlike HYP and many other top private schools, the large proportion of S med applicants don’t have an state school as a “safety”. For example, there a plenty of New York and Texas and [fill-in-the-blank] students attending HYP, and their state med schools are less competitive instate than California med schools are instate (due to sheer numbers).</p>
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<p>Yes, but some (most) schools give letters to all would-be-applicants.</p>
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Wow, is it really that high percentage?! If this is true, it is not good for the students there. There is always the bottom 50% no matter how good the pool of the students are.</p>
<p>I heard (but not sure) between 40% and 50% of top UC kids (e.g., Berkeley) are Asian Americans. This is likely not good for students from these top public schools as they are too homogeneous and tend to lack diversities on their activities. Also, likely too many may fall into the trap of overly emphasizing the importance of academics/research at the expense of other activities. I know many instances of students there who major in “tough” majors (or even double-majors) like engineering/business(HASS has an undergraduate part?) and they thought being in a tough, more-marketable-after-college major does not help them for medical school application. I also notice that at the high stats range, the AAMC link posted by kristi shows that, for very high GPA/MCAT scorers, quite high percentages are these (like 370 3.8+/39+ a year for Asian and around 800-900 with the same stats for white. I can not remember the details here. This indicates they likely devote more of their energy on the “number” game.)</p>
<p>The number of students I quoted above is not quite right. The number likely is for 3 years. The sources and the exact numbers from AAMC are:</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/157958/data/table25-w-mcatgpa-grid-white-0810.pdf.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/157958/data/table25-w-mcatgpa-grid-white-0810.pdf.pdf</a></p>
<p>White: 728 with 3.8+/39+, 2008 to 2010 (aggregated)</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/157598/data/table25-a-mcatgpa-grid-asian-0810.pdf.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/157598/data/table25-a-mcatgpa-grid-asian-0810.pdf.pdf</a></p>
<p>Asian: 379 with 3.8+/39+, 2008 to 2010 (aggregated)</p>
<p>So, each year, there are 243 whites and 126 Asians with 3.8+/39+.</p>
<p>As noted above, someway, somehow, some really low stat applicants are accepted.</p>
<p>Right…but don’t we all sense that there’s a “story” behind some of these odd admits? I don’t think they are just random people who happened to get admitted despite their low stats. I would think that these Committee people can recognize that the overwhelming majority of low stats applicants don’t have such a “story”. </p>
<p>I just don’t believe that some run-of-the-mill college student with those ridiculously low stats is going to get admitted without some unbelievable hook or back-story.</p>
<p>“So, each year, there are 243 whites and 126 Asians with 3.8+/39+.”</p>
<p>This is really astounding when you consider that Asian Americans make up at most 5% of the population of the United States. </p>
<p>Despite their outstanding statistics, Asians do not appear to be that desireable to most medical schools though. If you look at the charts and match students by GPA and MCAT scores, White applicants have a higher acceptance rate to medical schools than Asian Americans and while there is not much overlap, African Americans have much higher acceptance rates than Asian Americans with the same statistics.</p>
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<p>Huh? </p>
<p>Is it better to be in bottom half of the class at Harvard, Yale, Princeton (or MIT), just bcos they have a lower % of Californians?</p>
<p>lemaitre, it’s not really that astounding to me when you consider the predilection of the ethnic groups towards medicine. Medicine appears to be a lot more popular among Asian-Americans than Caucasian -Americans at a similar level of scholastic accomplishment.</p>
<p>^ What you said is likely true. Many scholascally strong Caucasian -American college students more likely choose other career path. DS knows one kid back in high school who was admitted to Harvard but decided it was not worth the money for him to go there (his family is NOT poor.) as he is into academic science and he thinks the flagship state university works equally well for him in the long run. DS also knows several classmates in college who major in science and have not any interests outside of pure science (One is in Chemistry and another in Physics. Both of them are very competitive even though they are not premeds. — One of them DS describes as “almost never sleeps.”) All of them are not Asian Americans. (This is anecdotal only of course, as there are only 3 data points.)</p>
<p>blubayou, Anybody from California is likely to be screwed by the system (Let’s blame the greedy medical doctor association in that state in the past several decades which controls the supply side with an iron wrist?!), no matter which college (OOS or IS) he/she chooses to go. Fair or not, it is an uphill battle for these kids.</p>