@DrakoDrake
It doesn’t matter whether it’s connections or PSU or Hofstra or whatever. You can substitute your college name there. Reflected this change in my past posting.
Very hard to get clinical opportunities without connections and getting good research opportunities is also not easy without connections. Most patents love to claim that their kids didn’t use any connections 
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I thought purpose of these programs is to attract strong students who otherwise wouldn’t apply to them.
I agree that it’s tough to gain those medically related opportunties without connections. Even volunteering at MD Anderson Cancer Center got to have connections in one form or another. My D was fortunate enough to stumble (in our exhausting search at the end of her junior year, when we found out about BS-MD programs) into a small hospital in downtown after her junior volunteer applications were rejected at the larger, more well known hospitals. A couple of years later, even that small hospital was competitive to get in as a junior volunteer. As with personal physicians, with HIPAA, regulations get more tightened as the years go by. My older one could observe surgeries with her brother’s ophthalmologist, but when it came his turn, the company no longer allowed that. Accepting students for shadowing is also an physician’s perogative. My D could shadow my OB-GYN, but my S could not (due to the perception that female patients not being comfortable with a a male observing clinical exams).
I like it when virtual opportunities popped up during COVID. Everyone was able to sign up for virtual shadowing with physicians all over the country. Realtime events were held and recorded for those who could not catch them in realtime. After the events, if a participant wants credit for it, they would have to take a quiz. Granted, for those students who are fortunate to have had in-person opportunities, the virtual ops may seem boring to them, but they do allow those who have never had much contact with people in the medical fields to gain an understanding of the various disciplines.
We didn’t have any contacts few years back and every hospital we approached gave us a form to fill out but the personnel there would hint it won’t work since the slots all get filled up on the first day they open the flood gates.
After trying 2 or 3 hospitals in vain finally managed to get shadowing opportunity at a gastroenterologist private practice who was kind enough to accommodate. We cross checked with few others and they all confirmed the same, nothing will happen without the darned connections. But surprisingly most of the kids in C’s BA/MD batch were of parents not from healthcare backgrounds like ourselves.
One of the acquaintances, parent of a TJ student recalled the same, they wouldn’t get any opportunities at NIH and similar facilities though they are in their backyards. So their child unfortunately was deemed not competent enough for these programs, but doing very well at undergrad now with perfect gpa, double majoring and 3 significant research publications already, one of them in nature (scientific journal).
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Yes, with more regulations and lawsuits no one wants to take a chance. I heard NIH research opportunities (especially for HS students) also go to those who have connections.
Lot of physicians now work for big corporations or hospital systems and they have restrictions. My S couldn’t do volunteering because he was under 16 thru middle of 11th. He got research opportunity at a UC only after winning a state gold in SciOly in 11th grade and that research opportunity lead to his success in UG and medical school scholarships. So at the time of BSMD cycle he had limited medical activities but secured two acceptances but decided to go traditional
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Quite true, it is the passion that matters irrespective of what path taken. Not the connections, though they may take them to some distance but not beyond. No wonder many genuine BS/MD kids are doing so well in their respective programs and beyond.
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@srk2017
Every program defines their own set of purpose or reqs around their vision/mission. For Example GW said their …“seven-year BA/MD program is a small, competitive program designed for high school seniors who exhibit academic excellence, competitive (90%) SAT/ACT scores, leadership in activities, community service, health care experiences, and have a strong desire to become a physician.”
For their BAMD program, UMKC said “Admission decisions are based on an individualized and holistic review of applications.”, they further definied what’s the holistic review… Every program has their own set of glasses to see the strongness in the applicants/students, and most of these programs were time tested, i.e they are in the place for decades. A big chunk of “strong” HS students gets attracted to the prestigious colleges in the traditional path, unfortunately nearly 83% of them fell off from premed threadmil after freshmen year, for whatever reasons.Stanford Daily published an article on this topic by the way. I am not planning to open that discussion here. There is decicated CC to discuss traditional path vs BSMD.
https://med.umkc.edu/bamd/admission-requirements-eligibility/
The pre-med drop out.
A decade ago, 3 siblings - 2 twins and one other all graduating same year from high school, with 2 physician parents went to GW program at the same time. You can read whatever you like into that!
@texaspg
…and we are comparing this against what? Total BS/MD seats are about less than 5% of all MD seats available including all the medical schools. Cherry-picking comparison can be done in the BSMD and in the traditional path too to expose the flaws/weaknesses/strongness in the student selections/acceptances.
One known physician said in-person conversation, he came across 3 generations of physicians who successfully graduated from the UMKC BAMD program - when I asked about the authenticity of that particular program. If these HS kids were qualified and met the program admission reqs then why UMKC or GW deny their admission?
By the way, not all physicians’ children get into acceptances like this - the way you mentioned. Two personally known physicians to me - their 3 children on a different path. One went to Abroad for medicine, one went to DO, other went to a medical school that is struggling with Full Accreditation.
How does an exclusive small program accept 3 siblings in the same year no matter how good they are?
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@texaspg
This could happen to any program if they have no policy on siblings. It’s a question for the Program Director, obviously.
This could happen for a variety of reasons, at least two of which I can think of:
Both the physician parents were alumni of the university and/or med school and had made significant financial and other contributions to their alma mater over the years.
Both the twins were geniuses (have heard of cases like that) and they made a buy two get one free offer 
But seriously, heard of discrepancies like that with this particular program in the past. One of C’s current class mates applied there as a top student from TJ with all nine yards covered. He was turned down in preference to another student from the same school with lower everything. Reason, that student happened to be child of a faculty or associate faculty in their med school.
83% doesn’t seem right and even if it’s correct number itself doesn’t mean anything since there is no one reason for it. Again I am not trying to start the debate between BSMD and traditional path. I created that thread couple of years back 
To me, there is no justification to have these programs since there is strong demand for medical admissions and colleges don’t need to offer incentives to HS students (unless to encourage certain demographics get into medicine). Having said that since these programs exist there is nothing wrong with going for them if they meet student’s needs.
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Right, I got that. But why would the Connections program specifically require ALL of one’s test scores to be sent, such as ALL SAT sittings, if they cannot verify whether you are entering/sending in ALL of your exam scores because they cannot just ask College Board to verify whether an applicant only took 2 SAT tests rather than 3 but just did not want to submit the third. I do not think you fully understood what I was talking about.
The test score report could say what kind of test report order you had placed. I tried to look for a sample of test score report to colleges but failed to find one.
@DrakoDrake
If the Connections program specifically requires ALL of one’s test scores to be sent, such as ALL SAT sittings, then you need to submit “ALL test scores”, and “period”, I don’t think there is a choice. If someone doesn’t want to submit 3rd then I assume they are trying to test how the Connections program verifies this info. Colleges normally do not have access to your test history unless you submitted all your test scores to that particular college.
If it’s college policy asking you to send all SAT sittings, then by not sending what they ask for, IMO, you are in violation of their policy/requirement. By the way, Colleges can revoke an admitted student’s acceptance at any time.
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They may not know how many times you took the test but won’t college board show them the option you chose while sending scores? Something like All scores sent or some scores sent, based on your input while ordering the scores?
Anyway unless you are resident of OH, it may not make sense to fixate over this. In good old days this program was known to take 1 or 2 students only from OOS so we didn’t bother applying. Not sure if anything changed recently such as increase in intake or the distribution.
All of this is random justification.
Very rarely do combined programs take 3 students from one public high school.
Yes, it should be rare for any BS/MD program to take three from school.
When my D applied, Northwestern HPME took two from her high school - her and one more student.