<p>A harvard alum showed up at college fair in houston. She was on the MD Anderson faculty and is opthamological cancer surgeon. It was hard for me to believe the eye surgeons could be so detailed in their specialization.</p>
<p>curm,
“Well, D is focusing on Dermatology now”
-This had been my D’s interest since HS. Back in HS she has shadowed derm MD and she was one of the best docs that D. has ever witnessed. However, D. knows that it is very competitive and without Step 1 score, she is more open to anything else, except nothing else has caught her interest as much both from academic prospective and patient interaction. It will all depend on this score from what we know. She has lined up Derm Research though for summer of 2013. Please, keep us posted on your D’s progress.</p>
<p>From a survey done by something called medscape. </p>
<p>
Gee. That does sound nice. (And the bolded part is exactly what she is looking for in a job. And has had her sights set on since before med school. The “do it all” career. ) </p>
<p>Now, I know a lot of this is just a reaction to what she learned (or at least “felt”) in her surgery rotation but, again, …that does sound nice.</p>
<p>^Sounds really appealing, thanks for sharing!</p>
<p>O.K… Time to get serious with the residency crap. I am expected to know something. I started this. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/careers-medicine/1427882-rating-residency-programs.html#post15153042[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/careers-medicine/1427882-rating-residency-programs.html#post15153042</a></p>
<p>Somebody hopefully knows something and if so, they are ahead of me.</p>
<p>I was talking to a third year recently. He said something interesting related to residency.</p>
<p>He knew the best programs for the area he is serious about but it is a catch 22. The best residencies have mentors that are high in regard that the resident wont be allowed to touch the patient. Essentially he would not be able to cut a patient when the patients wants the mentor to cut.</p>
<p>Are there any stats for premed major vs admissions and how well the majors fare?</p>
<p>I am looking for information specific to psychology as a major.</p>
<p>The AAMC data isn’t broken down that finely. There is some information about social science majors–which psychology falls under.</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/161692/data/table18.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/161692/data/table18.pdf</a></p>
<p>I personally think table 2 and table table 25 near the link WOWmom posted are the most interesting ones. (Both are actually links to another page with a small set of tables in pdf.)</p>
<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/</a></p>
<p>Table 2 (e.g., the one about the white ethnic group) tells you the number of applicants from your college (I believe the number includes alumni applicants.) Comparing the number here and your own estimated number in your premed class in freshman year, you could roughly estimate the attrition rate at your college.</p>
<p>Another interesting thing about this table is that, just as an example, if you look at the ratio of white applicants to all applicants, say, between two schools JHU and University of Missouri (just because these are kind of next to each other in the table), only slightly higher than one-third of applicants from the former college are white, but the ratio of the latter is quite different. Although one reason may be the geography (coast vs heartland), there may be other factors as well. You may think it is because JHU college is ranked higher, but this is not the only reason, if you compare the colleges like HYP and JHU. At most top research universities (e.g., H, Y, Duke, wustl, to name a few here), the ratio seems to be about one half.</p>
<p>Somehow, I feel that the environment at many med schools would be more like JHU college than HYP, as EC activities are not as common at a med school. (i.e., more need to curl up and study alone in the library.) </p>
<p>Table 25 is the GPA/MCAT grid that so many CCers here are fond of.</p>
<p>Thanks wowmom. I came across that and was wondering if anyone had better sources.</p>
<p>If there is no published source, does anyone have anecdotal information about how psychology majors are perceived by med schools? Is it considered a weighty enough major?</p>
<p>The data in table 18 seem to indicate that major just doesn’t matter at all. Any variance in acceptance rates, in the listed areas, is easily explained by the difference in the cohort’s MCAT score. A psych major with a high GPA + MCAT should have as good a chance as anyone else.</p>
<p>DS told us their school actually kicked out a student. He was actually an MD/PhD student and had almost finished. I heard the main issue is his extreme ego/personality, especially in his dealing with his superiors in the clinical setting. The academics is not his issue.</p>
<p>DS somehow comes up with a theory about why many residents or medical students think the environment is perceived as abusive. He said a part of the reason is that both the attending/residents and med school students have out-of-line strong ego. Of course, he is still an ms2 so he does not have firsthand exkperience yet. He could see some of his fellow students may be like this (e.g. one ms2 student even makes a comment that he will be better than most residents. Oh, boy. Another student may be indeed much better than most ms1/2 students in her clinical knowledge and experience due to her prior experience before med school.</p>
<p>mcat2 - is it recent?</p>
<p>I had a faculty member of a dental school tell me something similar. Someone wanted to be considered number 1 in the class and was undercutting everyone else and being detrimental to the patients. They threw the person out of dental school just before graduation.</p>
<p>From what DS described, it appears it was not very long time ago. The reason his school cited was actually the same as you cited: he could be detrimental to patients (not because of his academic skill.)</p>
<p>I heard he was so close to graduation, like he only needed to pass a couple of clinical exams and he 's done. He did not have ethical problems. He has interpersonal relationship problems including arguing with and offending his superiors in the hospital.a</p>
<p>I also heard DS’s class actually lost one student (personal issue) and then gained a student (the student himself requested to repeat it) . So the class size stays the same.</p>
<p>Many years ago, there was a CC thread started by BDM:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/183418-grade-inflation-isnt-only-thing.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/183418-grade-inflation-isnt-only-thing.html</a></p>
<p>I just bumped into a somewhat newer CC thread of the similar flavor, in which a “pro-Princetonian” CCer posted something somewhat similar to the above thread, except that he mostly compared P (his favorite one, apparently, IMO) against other comparable “non-techy” schools (so MIT, Cal tech and other engineering-bent schools are not referred to.)</p>
<p>Some of the numbers he posted (if you believe in these numbers) are interesting:</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/9601150-post9.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/9601150-post9.html</a></p>
<p>"Successful Medical School Applicants:</p>
<p>Average GPA—Average MCAT—School</p>
<p>3.53—36—Princeton
3.63—35—Stanford
3.64—37—Harvard
3.71—36—Yale"</p>
<p>These are self-reported numbers so they need to be interpreted with a grain of salt. But if the numbers truly reflect what these successful premeds at these schools believe, the average MCAT numbers (as perceived by the successful premeds there) are relatively high.</p>
<p>Also, it is somewhat strange that the average MCAT number at Stanford is slightly lower. You would guess their MCAT number would be slightly higher due to the over-representation of Asian American students at that school. Maybe a result of having too many science/engineering students at this school because MCAT is more a reading test than an achievement test?</p>
<p>"Among the Ivies, grade inflation is greatest at Brown and lowest at Princeton:
Ranking of Ivies from highest average GPAs to lowest:</p>
<p>Brown
Yale
Harvard
Columbia, Dartmouth
Cornell
Princeton"</p>
<p>This, if true, reminds me of what bluebayo once said that Brown (ranked first) and Yale (ranked second) may be the top two schools in terms of not putting too much pressure on their students to keep up with their premed-worthy GPA. (The description here is mine; I think bluebayou just said these two schools are top choices for doing premed.)</p>
<p>We are on pins and needles in my family as match day is one month from yesterday for my D. She applied to surgery residency programs but isn’t a tippy-top student so may not match into surgery. Very good chance at her “home” program, but no guarantees. 35 were interviewed for 4 spots. </p>
<p>This wait is worse than trying to get INTO med school, because this now determines the entire rest of her career path. If she doesn’t match, she will probably do family practice, but she really wants to be a surgeon. I’m trying to think that she will be the kind of dr. she is meant to be…</p>
<p>Thinking of her.</p>
<p>Thanks, curm. I’ve enjoyed following your D’s path for years. (Note we joined CC at almost the same time.)</p>
<p>The financial difference between being a surgeon and being a family practice dr. is scary. She has huge loans to pay off for all of her med school.</p>
<p>Is there a specialty that is not as hard as surgery (“hard” in the sense of both getting into its residency and getting through its long, grueling residency) but is somewhat better paid than the family practice?</p>
<p>DS is still in the preclinical years so both he and we are still ignorant about the choices of specialties.</p>
<p>^pretty much every specialty gets better paid than family practice</p>