I need the above 2 users to move on please. This is not a debate society
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Congratulations!
Hey yâall. There are some GREAT posts in here. For those of you whose kids have done so many great things and worked so hard to even be in a position to apply to BS/MD/DO programs please take any rejections in stride as best as you can. The fact that your kids are this accomplished at such an early age means they will undoubtedly get into medical school 4 years from now (assuming they still want to become physiciansâŠand if they donât want to be doctors anymore because they fell in love with something else then these rejections will have saved them from an enormous amount of money, stress, and time to pursue a career that they would not have been happy in). Lastly, here is something that many people donât share: Unlike law school where going to a T5 or T20 is super important and stays with you for the rest of your life, the overwhelming majority of patients/colleagues/faculty donât care where you went to medical school. The most important thing in medicine is the LAST place your did your training. For example, if you go the University of Central Florida for undergrad and go to the University of Georgia Medical School and do your residency at the University of Alabama and then do your fellowship at the Mayo ClinicâŠyou will be forever known as a Mayo trained spinal/whatever surgeon and will be introduced as Dr. XYZ who trained at Mayo. People want to know where you did your fellowship and learned how to be a spinal surgeon, not where you learned how to take out appendices in your residency, where you learned the 12 cranial nerves in medical school and definitely not where you learned completely useless org chem in college. So the disappointment will sting right now and you will feel awful when you see your kids dejected because you know how hard they worked over the past 4 years BUT donât worry they WILL become physicians (if they still want to in 4 years) and many will get into even âbetterâ medical school training programs than the ones currently offering BS/MD/DO programs. Congratulations on raising the next generation of physicians to take care of us as we get old(er).
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How do you usually submit the shadowing hours with a doctor for BS/MD? Do you need confirmation from the doctor whom you shadowed? Do you need a log with dates to confirm the shadowing experience?
You are correct, patients who notice where you trained will notice the last training program name only. However getting into top residency is easier from top medical school and getting into top fellowship is easier than top residency programs. I also said most BSMD students can get into better medical schools than the schools that are currently offering BSMD and that upsets few parents and consultants.
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They go by the honor code. However, be sure that the student can talk a bit about their shadowing experience during an interview. Not to the degree of a med student, but to their own words and thoughts. They want to see the exposure and that the student is relatively sure to go down the medicine path.
Cost of becoming a doctor has become untenable if people have a reasonable income just because of college policies.
The costs can be exhorbitant whether you do BS/MD route or elite school route.
I advised someone who called me that their kid should go to Yale if they are not sure about MD since it would give them the most opportunities in 2019. They paid fullfare for two kids in expensive colleges because they are IT parents with reasonable income and received zero aid.
Now they are back to me saying their kid got into Harvard, Yale, Columbia, waitlisted at two other t10 schools and back to the same conundrum - spend 440k to send their kid to the next big school or may be go to their instate. When you get admitted to Harvard, how do you give it up? It will probably end up that the kid will say I am going to Harvard whether you pay or not and they will probably chip in some and let the kid borrow the rest.
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I always wonder what would be the right resource to check the medical school ranking. There is a quite bit of debate on USNews / World report medical school ranking methodology. As per Dr. Ryan Grey, US News medical school ranking is a popularity contest than the quality of education/training that school provide. I am genuinely looking for information that applicants can use for medical school rankings.
That wont be a problem in 4 years. 
All top schools want to be unranked so they are free to do whatever they want. The current ranking gives good bit of weight to GPA/MCAT of the admitted students (one reason NYU is 2 since they became free tuition and only interview candidates with 524 and almost 4.0) and the top schools are trying to not provide the stats and details related to student profile breakdowns because of the various lawsuits.
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I look more into ranking groups like T5,T10,T20,T50 and beyond. One ranking I rely is PD (residency program directors) since they are the ones that rank candidates for residency. However even thatâs questioned since only 10% of PDs participate in the survey.
You can also look at research funding rankings , associated hospitals rankings, speciality rankings and historical reputation of schools. Ultimately it comes down to what you are looking for in a school and whether you want an easier or challenging path. lot of people only care about a specialization from any program since salary will be same regardless of how prestigious the training is.
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This ranking take the average of the top ranking systems. I donât know if it make it any better 50 Best Medical Colleges 2022 | Rankings
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UCSF is ranked 16, so bad list 
itâs T5 school and some consider it as # 1
UCSF, Hopkins, UPenn, Harvard, Columbia are T5 for me
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@texaspg @srk2017 @junebug20 - Thank you for your feedback.
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I wondered the same. It is completely missing in the timeshighereducation rankings
how important is the Casper score for the final interview round? My son just got his Casper score online (4th Quartile), wondering how big of a role that plays relative to the actual interview?
Some schools disclose that Casper wonât play a role, but others donât say anything. Check the school website. Iâm wondering why make it a requirement for the application then!
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Did the schools he is interviewing at require Casper scores?
Interviews are not graded on Casper. It should be a component of evaluation by itself.
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@srk2017 Yes, I agree with you. I was going to put that in my post but it was already too long! A top medical school helps to get a top residency and a top residency helps to get a top fellowship everything else being equal.
For so many of these amazing BS/MD/DO kids, they and their families have to weigh the tradeoff of knowing at age 17 that you are going to be a physician and, perhaps, avoiding the huge stress of MCATs and med school applications versus knowing that if you continue to perform at the same or even slightly lower level you are highly likely to get into at T10 medical school. Tough call!
Folks thinking traditional vs BS/MD:
Please note in the current environment of diversity-first medical admissions, if you are an Asian-origin American student, what other factors will be against you?
I have not seen medical school suddenly admitting 35% of their class as Asian-origin American students, even though the applicant pool mirrors such a percentage.
Take Brown PLME - even though they have ~90 seats, less than 20% of students offered admissions are of Asian-origin Americans, while nearly 70% of the applicant pool is such students. Do you think they will suddenly change their percentage for the traditional route admits where the percentage of Asian-origin American applicants is more like 30-35%?
You are the best judge of which path is best for you.
Just be aware of what factors are in your favor/control vs what is stacked against you.
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Itâs a tough call and only your kid (and you) know the strengths and weaknesses and how one kid can handle the stress. My issue is some parents became zealots for BSMD and started attacking parents who donât advocate for it. Then we have consultants giving opinions even though itâs conflict of interest.
MCAT is not a monster like some parents think especially for kids who scored close to 800s in SAT II subjects. None of the kids I know with those stats underperformed in MCAT. You even hear stories from Boston dad that all the BSMD kids scored above 90th percentile with no prep even though that program requirement is low. same guy pushes hard for BSMD! I never understood that.
Anyway, everyone has to make their decisions but donât push one narrative