What we found very useful in assessing undergrad programs was to speak with the pre-med advisor and find out stats for accepted students. For example at one school: 80% of students with 3.6 and 510 MCAT were accepted to MD programs. To be honest, this did not differ much from school to school, whether that was a high prestige or lower prestige institution. This leads me to believe that getting into med school is about the student’s effort, not the UG.
However, we did find some schools had more supportive advisers than others and that made a big difference to us.
BU’s program doesn’t need any volunteering, community service, research from the students in their program. But they won’t stop the students if they are really into it on their own :-).
95% of the kids in the program end up matriculating to the med school, even as some of them may end up with Cs in courses like physics and orgo.
@rk2017 Honestly, at the moment I’m a bit confused about Union’s requirements. The contract says 3.5 GPA is the only requirement, but some students have told my daughter that there is some service expected. Honestly, thats not an issue, since D would be doing it anyway, but I should get it clarified.
@Cytox00 My personal take: Will go with OU or Tulsa than UMKC. Because of the flexibility and $$$$$$$$$ saved.
Both OU/Tulsa will give lot of need/merit based aid and if you are so particular can do the UG in 3 years.
Tulsa smaller private school and OU big public school. Though Tulsa-OU MD is Community based MD program, Tulsa BS/MD program can apply to OU-OKC and hence it is not going to restrict.
Are u current cycle student / parent or getting ready for next cycle?
@PPofEngrDr
With respect to points 1 and 4, the schools also won’t mention (hide rather) what percentage of their pre med population were deemed “weaker candidates” and hence discouraged from applying.
Also not to mention point 0 (the one above point 1 :-).) A number of students with premed intentions drop their plans after freshman or sophomore year, heavily demoralized by the grades they received (especially in the places like the one I quoted above with a supposedly 96% success rate).
So at least 2 layers of filtration at play. Students who get demoralized and drop the plans on their own. Then students who still continue with some hopes but are demoralized by these committees from applying.
@rk2017 There are schools that are very straightforward about this. They either state that they will give every candidate support or are very clear about their requirements. We appreciated that openness.
@sunitacarmen Thanks for the info. The way I group various programs are in to 3 buckets.
Programs with narrow target. Currently UMKC, may be Howard. NEOMED used to be in this bucket.
Any BS/MD Guaranteed program. Actually I would like to call 'Conditionally Guaranteed Programs'.
Quasi-guaranteed or whatever we want to call. To me the programs where 'Interview' takes place during the college years. Temple, SLU, UCF or whatever colleges.
For bucket 2, there are so many flavors, like minimum GPA, MCAT, major/minor, EC, research whatever. All are mostly doable and within the control of the student. 1 or 2 students on their own or forced out and that is normal.
For bucket 3, so far only for Temple, seen good results and feedback from the parent who is studying at Temple now. The interview is not in student’s control alone. It is a risk. If the UG school/program is top notch, at least that gives comfort.
Specifically SLU is not giving a good feel. Most of the programs in bucket 2 are really programs with specific narrow target of 5 to 50 students. SLU says 120 students. It is neither Bucket 1 (which normally will have high number because their MD seats are filled with the HS transition program not via regular route - majority). But only 50 matriculated out of 120. Also the course structure is so rigid. So if a student wants to change the path, it is not giving that flexibility.
I accept I don’t have a solid evidence based reasoning and may be unconsciously biased on SLU.
So anyone considering SLU, do your research and decide.
Here are my take on other 2 items discussed in the last few posts.
Stat data published by pre-med office. Simply forget it. That is a most useless data. Since there is no common base across all US schools and cooked and manipulated data.
At the end, students prepare themselves for MD admission or MCAT preparation. Not the school. Agree look in to grade inflation / deflation to some extent. Specifically the Orgo and Bio classes Profs review. Other than, any school you will get basic science education. These courses are not going to prepare MCAT. Student prepares.
Doing EC or not. We are mixing up. If you are already in a BS/MD program, though ECs are all mentioned still it is not critically followed. That is what raised by @rk2017 for BU. He is not referring the regular students who come to BU or any other school for MD admission.
There you better prepare with extensive Clinical and Non-Clinical voluneer hours for 200+ for each category, and shadow etc. Otherwise no one will touch your app. See one of the old post. GPA and MCAT alone will not cut your MD seat. They are 2 among the 10+ criteria for MD admission.
Another thing they cleverly hide, the caliber of the med schools their successful candidates made to. Most of the Ivy students end up NOT making it to their own medical schools, but the ones they never imagined when they first started their schooling at the Ivies. Why does one have to attend say Cornell to find himself at say UCF 4 years (or more) later? He could have very well achieved the same result having attended any low cost decent school for undergrad (and saving a quarter million in that process).
You should perhaps share the school names here that are straight forward. For the benefit of others. I am aware of only Emory among the often mentioned top names, as being not indulging in these tricks.
@gallentjill As @bsmdalien noted Hofstra requires MCAT to be cleared in the first sitting with a minimum of 80 percentile. Primarily because only 10% of their traditional Med School acceptances have a MCAT score of 80 percentile or less and want to ensure that their BSMDs fare better than that.
Their take is that while they accept 120 medscholars at least half of them really were never serious about medicine and were at best exploratory. So it’s not surprising that these 60 or so don’t even take the interview and pursue other interests. Of the 60 who are serious, they take about 45 on an average. The fact that 15 don’t make it is not account if their academic stats but rather that they aren’t able to make a strong case for why they want to become a Doctor? Ie they lack research volunteering shadowing etc. The question for us is if we should take the 75% acceptance stat and run with it while ensuring that the student pursues volunteering etc. 45 is a good solid number and keep in mind the competition is less given that their UG college isn’t the strongest. We are leaning toward SLU at the moment…
@diaash Search my posts in this thread. In Jan or so I made a post. Or may be first check in BS/MD experience thread. That is small one and may be I posted there.
Its an unconscious bias, SLU is not disclosing distribution of 50% attrition (~60 students) between interest part and GPA part. I tend to believe more on GPA part, due to history of students experience across the board, not just SLU. In fact we know a current student, same batch as my DS, had a B in one of Chem class and he is being advised to drop med scholar.
@rk2017 Quinnipiac was the most straight forward school we visited. Drew and Hofstra were also very forthcoming. I rarely mention these schools on this board because most here wouldn’t consider them. Personally, I felt that Quinnipiac had one of the best pre-med advisers we encountered anywhere.