If I read it closely, it is saying some darn prof in a state college is deciding that it is the most important course determining a student’s future and I simply dont agree with that.
There are schools that make it easy to do well and there are schools where they make it really bad because someone has it in their head that they get to decide a student’s future. So it comes down pure discrimination which is one reason you dont want to attend a big state school if you want to be premed.
University of Houston had a combined program with about 10 seats at UT Houston and UTMB that started and got scrapped after 5 or 6 years because many were never making it (3 out of 10, 4 out of 10 etc).
They had a requirement to do Honors classes for sciences and required GPA of 3.8. Turns out every department had an internal policy that no one not majoring in their department would ever get an A so it was automatic B for students in Biology, Chemistry etc if they were not a major but required to do honors. Guess why they were not making into the MD after being some of the best students entering college?
Unfortunately, medical schools only provide mean/median GPAs and MCATs and few in T20 show less than 3.8 and 520+.
This does not mean ORMs do not have a higher barrier as Novicedad states. I gave a case of two students from UT Austin with different majors and sexes who were probably at the top of their classes. One was an ORM who was extremely disappointed and was put in touch with me by a friend to discuss his chances of getting off the waitlist at Penn. Even though he had interviews at several Ivies (he had rejects from Harvard and Yale) and Mayo, his result was just waitlist at Penn and Mayo. For him, attending Baylor was turning into a disappointment after going through such big name school interviews. State school and ORM or plain ORM seems to be a disadvantage even with the best of the numbers.
Nice question. I will advice you just reach out to them by email and phone calls to demonstrate your continued interest in the BSMD except you have also decided that you will be enrolling in their UG regardless of the outcome of the BSMD outcome (if that’s the case then it doesn’t hurt to pay the acceptance deposit)
@texaspg@Vicky2019
Wonderful information and explanation. Thank you very much.
May my thinking be reasonable?
IF a kid with BSMD track is able to have a meaningful research publication during UG, and he/she is allowed to apply other medical schools by discontinuing bsmd contract with the school, will it increase an chance to shoot other top Medical schools and even MD/PHD?(high GPA and MCAT)
Does research publication matters for shooting top Medical schools with strong academic background like Harvard MS if kids’other factors are the similar to other applicants?
What are critical factors for kids graduating from ordinary medical schools to be able to match to top/desired residence programs?
Okay, but what should be the weed out course? Physical chemistry? Multivariable calculus? Medicine is fundamentally a scientific/investigative profession. You need a rigorous/challenging curriculum in order to make sure that your physician has at least baseline scientific aptitude and critical thinking ability. Would you trust your life to someone who could not do well in organic chemistry?
In the picture, the school is beautiful. In person, it is a nice and decent environment inside the campus. Dorm is right on campus so it take just a few mins to walk to class and dining hall(s). Inside campus is nice, don’t advise to walk alone outside campus after dark. And if you are ORM for BS/MD or BS/DO, you look way out of place wandering around outside the school. The biggest restaurant in town two years ago was AppleBee’s. The school is truly in the middle of no where. I told my D if I really don’t like you, I will send you there. However, everyone is different; this could be a sanctuary for some students. Buffalo Airport is the closest airport about 2 hours away.
The question really is why does an undergrad institution be making these decisions? There is no rigor defined by premed requirements that clearly states how hard a course must be graded or how many people must always fail the course vs how many get As.
It gives an unfair advantage to people who may have the money to attend a small private institution (this is what i tell people when they ask where they should go for premed) that assumes all their students are great and gives everyone an A or B across board. You go to Berkeley, UCLA or another large institution and the biology prof or chemistry prof is deciding whether you get to do medicine. May be no one should do premed at these institutions and everyone should walk out and do a post bac instead to game the system?
I had thought the gist of the Stanford Daily article was to the contrary, that people are dropping out of premed at Stanford left and right because they cannot handle chemistry. Did I miss-read?
@bot12345 - Friendly warning not to pay a deposit to a college in the hope that they will accept you into their BSMD out of the waitlist. There is no guarantee that a college will offer a BSMD seat to you out of the waitlist just because you are an enrolled student!
You should choose a college you truly like and you think is the best fit for you and pay a deposit by May 1. If this happens to be the college where you have been waitlisted - then that’s great!
Like @deejay19 mentioned, I would advise you to reach out to the bsmd college by email and phone calls to demonstrate your continued interest in the BSMD!
@gracejun lot of what you are asking is very highly conditional.
Outside of high GPA and high MCAT, the only other factor I have seen influence top med schools are big name awards - Someone with a Rhodes is almost automatically in, Fulbright somewhat, Marshalls a very good chance etc. Working in Americorps or Peacecorps adds reasonable value (in fact this works for most medical schools). They have gradings of paper based on where it was published, whether it is a presentation paper or a poster.
I dont know of many people outside of Rice Baylor program who moved up from Baylor which has always been in top 25. One was at the top of the class, graduated a year early, did a masters while applying out and after attending a T5, went into plastics. The other I have met went to UK and did Marshalls, automatically lost Baylor but got into Harvard. There was one who moved from VCU back home to Baylor after graduating a year early but Baylor is 85% texas instate. he is currently in Ortho in Texas at what is currently an unranked 100+ years old med school.
Residency has its own set of rules. @cheer2021 posted some links yesterday about which schools do well in DOPEN lottery. I think there can be reasonable variation year to year because UTSW had a lot more people in DOPEN this year than last year according to those charts where as some schools consistently are above average. Sometimes it is just not enough to attend the right schools but one has to be also lucky that they dont have a lot of people applying for tough to get into fields. Many get weeded out based on step scores, next comes publications that go with gap years in many cases. I don’t know anyone who attended a the top school but ventured into DOPEN residencies without taking a gap year because the schools advise them against it. I know people who went from Hopkins to Stanford last year for plastics and neuro and both had gap years. I met a psychiatry resident a couple of years ago who went to stanford and a resident there. He told me he spent 2 years doing research to brush up for neuro and suddenly decided he was no longer interested in it (he said he was told to do more research to get into Neuro).
OTOH, if you are a top student at your own medical school who makes AOA, has a step 2 score of 260+ some publications and dont care where you end up, there is no reason not to expect to make to DOPEN or whatever else people consider is hard to get. I was just checking UT Houston and they had almost 10% this year in DOPEN and they are unranked at the moment.
I know couple of Upenn students who went into DOPEN without gap years. You are right, you need to have strong research to get into these and if you have strong UG research experience you can probably build on that. Another thing is if you wait till late into 3rd year of medical school to decide about DOPEN you won’t have strong app.
@observer33 I made a comment about Stanford article and @cheer2021 posted another article about organic chem and why it weeds out which was what I was commenting on.
Unfortunately, Stanford article is discussing the stresses of doing premed as opposed to being specific to Chemistry. In fact, they never got to organic chemistry being an issue because they were talking about a biochemistry class.
The problem with stanford is not that they are weeding out but they expect the students to perform at a high level in any class they take. What was interesting was that they said 141 replaced something considered much harder and it sounds like people were still finding it hard. If the exam is graded on a curve, it probably wouldnt matter if they all scored lower 50 or below out of 100.
It was also a 2017 article and Stanford problems are unique to stanford and their students. The gist I got was that URM students were being disadvantaged by being weeded out at a higher proportion than others. The other problem they have is that most majors create problems with having too many requirements to allow students to be able to manage their courseload while including premed requirements on top of graduation and major requirements. This is truly a problem at not just Stanford but most other big name schools that force students to do a basic requirements, major requirements and students actually have to do 50+ or 80+ premed semester/quarter credits for graduation which needs only 120 or 180 credits. So for an engineering major, they end up doing 220+ credits at stanford to meet premed + engineering requirements which means they are always overloaded.
For about a month at end of year 3, D wanted to do Derm and wanted a gap year because she had never done work related to it. We were saying just apply broadly and wing it with the scores and not aim for big name residencies but she changed her mind so that hurdle was crossed!
I used to host students who came for residency interviews to Houston. Pretty much everyone except one were applying for hard to get residencies and not a single one was a straight 4 year student. They stopped coming in 2020 and 2021 since the interviews are all now on zoom.
just like premed, you need to go with a plan to medical school now a days otherwise gap years if you want to do DOPEN. DS is interested in one of those, so will see.
you don’t need to go for 
However, everyone is different; this could be a sanctuary for some students. Buffalo Airport is the closest airport about 2 hours away.