<p>Anyone who feels qualified on this topic...would you mind putting together a list?</p>
<p>rather than state the obvious, I will take a different tack on your question. Since it is no great feat to get a brilliant student who scores well on standardized tests into medical school-I will not consider the ivies or top LAC's-as those schools are full of students who should have no problem getting into graduate schools of their choice-and, those students would get in, no matter what college they went to. The real question should be-what schools get the good, but not great or brilliant student, into medical schools? students who scored 1200-1300 on the SAT, but are diligent and work hard. The list might surprise you-Juniata College, Muhlenberg College, Franklin and Marshall College and several similar colleges that have been getting near 90% of their premeds into medical school, and doing it with students who did not get 1500+ on their SAT's and have 4.0 GPA's to get into college in the first place. Others will tell you-how great Harvard is, or the high admission rates from Williams, Swarthmore, Davidson and the like-but, hey, those kind of students should be getting in, and it has little to do with the school-they would have gotten in had they decided to go to the local community college-they would still have high GPA's and they would do well on the MCAT.</p>
<p>From one perspective: (since med schools care mostly about GPA)</p>
<p>Schools with the most grade inflation. :P
This means any Ivy (minus Cornell), and most of the well-known northeastern LAC's.</p>
<p>From another perspective (the schools where you'll get a top-notch bio education):</p>
<p>Many midwestern LAC's with top bio (Carleton, Ohio Wesleyan, Grinnell, Oberlin, for instance)
Top science universities: (MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell)
Underrated science uni's with Medical Scholar tracks (Case Western, University of Rochester for instance)
I can't comment on other UC's.</p>
<p>Note that if you choose the sciencey universities (MIT, Berkeley, Case, Cornell) you will have a lot of competition. A good GPA will be difficult, and you will need a lot of self-motivation. This is why the LAC's can be helpful. (Btw, the LAC's usually have better records in teaching bio).</p>
<p>Not a perfect measure, but it's a start...</p>
<p>Hope it helps!</p>
<p>Ever heard the story of the blind men and the elephant?</p>
<p>Read some of the posts on the med school forum for other hints and lists. The bottom line is the best school depend on you the student - your motivation and work ethic, your GPA (both now and your theoretical GPA in college), how much money you have (less money = much better off at state uni, and save the bucks), your comfort level in working the system at a large uni (you still have to get to know profs for recs, participate in the Med Student Society, etc, how much of a self-starter are you at that type of thing), and desire to do research vs clinical experience.</p>
<p>The thing so many students posting here just don't understand is that ultimately it is not the school that gets you into med school - it is YOU, the student, and no matter what type of college you go to, there will be some degree of weeding out process - and students are selected for smarts, perseverance, ability to jump through hoops/work the system, simple luck and compassion. Remember that virtually 99% of students admitted to med school eventually graduate with MDs and >95% pass their boards - it is not like law, with many different levels of quality of law school, and a bar exam serving as the filtering process - in medicine the filtering is done up front.</p>
<p>Perhaps the most important questions for you as a student looking for colleges should ask the college - is what resources are available to help me decide if medicine is the right choice for me? Are there internships or shadowing opportunities with docs? What volunteer opportunities are there? What if I find out I pass out at the sight of blood? What if I make a C in organic chem?</p>
<p>I have done a considerable amount of research on this question, not limiting it to top 10 but just trying to compile a list of colleges that are the best for getting kids into med school. I have no such list. The problem is that I have never been able to get my hands on any stats of kids who start out aspiring to be doctors as freshman who then are accepted to medical school. Many colleges have terrific stats on med school acceptances, but they use the number of kids applying and accepted. Too many times the applying numbers are gatekept to a point that they are irrelevant.</p>
<p>Hope, Kalamazoo, Juniata, Ursinus, Earlham, Knox would be a good start. Hope, in particular, has more undergraduate biological research published in peer-reviewed journals than any of the Ivies (actually, more than HYP combined.) At Earlham, biology is the largest major, with heavy support from the Lilly Endowment.</p>
<p>Being the top student at a mediocre state u. is also a very, very good strategy. You will have the best of research and mentoring opportunities, and faculty will go out on a limb to support their "rising star".</p>
<p>Duke has an 85% acceptance rate into medical school and Johns Hopkins's rate is around 90%</p>
<p>
[quote]
The problem is that I have never been able to get my hands on any stats of kids who start out aspiring to be doctors as freshman who then are accepted to medical school. Many colleges have terrific stats on med school acceptances, but they use the number of kids applying and accepted. Too many times the applying numbers are gatekept to a point that they are irrelevant.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And Jamimom has worked "in real life" with students applying to college!</p>
<p>Mini, is correct as well, in fact, that is the "strategy", if you call stumbling your way into med school a "strategy" that I used way back when.</p>
<p>Another good strategy is to find a LAC in a town with a med school (even if that med school has a general university attached to it) and inquire about the pre-med program at that school. These LACs often have developed a special relationship with the med school, send students for jobs and research and volunteer opportunities, and essentially "vet" the applicants, leading to a high rate of admission for the LAC's students.</p>
<p>If you are the iconoclastic type, who hates going to club meetings, or getting to know profs, or jumping through hoops in order to meet requirements - perhaps you should rethink clinical medicine as a career (I am only partially joking) - OR consider applying after a fifth year of research, work or a post-baccalaureate program. You have to have good recs, and, for your sake, you have to be sure that medicine is what you want, because you should go into it assuming that this will be a lifetime commitment (that's why I'm not real fond of the direct entry programs, there aren't many 17 year olds who really have a clue what they are getting into).</p>
<p>Acceptance rates are of students who directly applied from college and received recs from the college, and weren't weeded out in the process. I am told that the weeding out process for pre-meds at JHU is brutal, and, if taken into account, would make JHUs rate of expected future physicians based on pre-med status going in rather low. Put those same students (with high stats coming in) at a state u. or one of the above LACs and many of those would-be docs would actually have become one.</p>
<p>Acceptance data is not a good measure (acceptance rates from the top 200 colleges or so are virtually all 75% and above - med school admission is just not so difficult these days for smart, well-prepared students.)</p>
<p>Cangel:</p>
<p>Fantastic post! A message that needs to be given, not just for medicine, but for all fields.</p>
<p>The other thing the high-school age future doctors of America should consider is the reality of the medical field in the 21st century. The landscape has changed quite a bit since the "Leave it to Beaver" days of the local medical practice and is destined to change even more as the country grapples with the escalating cost of too much healthcare capacity. Duplicate private, public, and VA systems. Defensive medicine leading to an overuse of expensive treatments with negligible impact on expected outcomes, etc.</p>
<p>With no national political will for addressing these isses, market forces will continue to bring change to the system, just as the unwillingness to reign in tort laywers has brought change to the enconomics of private MD practice. I have a hunch that MDs will bear their share of the burden of this change over the next fifty years.</p>
<p>After reading CC, I wonder what we are going to do with these MDs!</p>
<p>My daughter and niece are two examples of excellent students who were not top science types and did not test well who wanted to be doctors. Their SAT1s were in the 1200's, they had nearly 4.0s in the most rigorous courses, but were hard workers, not brilliant kids who caught on quickly. I don't think they were good candidates for schools like Hopkins and Duke, and if they got in, they would be competing with kids who breezed through the AP sciences, whereas they struggled, worked hard, and had tutoring help. Having worked at Hopkins, I know that the gauntlet freshman premeds go through means that many drop out of that career path by the time they apply to med school. In fact unless the med school committee approves you, getting a school rec is problematic and without that committe rec, it is doubtful you will get considered. So doubtful that I would say it is a waste of time to even apply unless you are some sort of super star with a good reason to get turned down by the committee. For girls like mine, the schools that Mini suggested are much better bets for getting them a good education and a boost into getting into med school. I did not look into state unis that were not considered very good because my experience has shown many of those schools do not have intensive science programs, tend to have a lot of adjuncts, have a transient student body, and are often not very cohesive schools. I wanted the girls to have a good college experience as well as a strong premed program because they would need to be solidly grounded in the subjects covered by the MCAT and a prep course alone was not going to do it. They needed to really know their OChem, Bio , Physics, etc. So in our case, a smaller school with a solid faculty and good science program was what we sought. Smith and Oberlin were two schools seriously considered. In our case we had to deal with the low SAT scores, so it was not a big deal lowering our sights on schools, but I work with kids who do not have that issue, and they would not even consider some surer bets in a premed program as they were also very focused in a name school as well. And I have seen many wash out of premed at Cornell, Hopkins and a number of other schools with excellent science progams and high med school acceptance numbers. They never got to the apply stage.</p>
<p>It is a whole other story again for those kids who have excelled in rigorous subjects, gotten 5's on the science APs, high numbers on the SAT1s and did not have trouble with the difficult courses. Those kids may well do better at the top schools and the challenges they give them are just what these kids want. And the research is wonderful. Sometimes taking a path just get into med school may limit research schools. I knew that my girls were highly unlikely to get into any research med schools given their premed program and their propensity to lower test scores. But they increased their chances to become doctors. It is often a balancing act and you do have to take the student heavily into consideration.</p>
<p>Actually, from the little I've seen, I'd go even further. It is likely that, given the same student upon admission, the med school admit rates at Hope, Kalamazoo, Earlham, Ursinus, etc. are likely to be higher (and maybe even MUCH higher) than at JHU, etc. Some of it is simply because of the severe weed-out. Some of it will be because of the lack of recommendations from the med-school committee. Some of it is because the same average student at JHU might be a star at Kalamazoo. Some of it is because of better mentoring.</p>
<p>But where I'd go further is in research. Future pre-meds at JHU (etc. - I don't really want to single them out - this would hold true at some of the Ivies as well) have to compete with grad students - TOP graduate students - for research opportunities. The top undergrad students at JHU naturally will get some of them. But the average entering pre-med? Not on your life. The data show that for published research by undergrads, they'd be better off at Hope or Earlham.</p>
<p>You also do NOT have to have research experience per se to get into med school, unless you want to be a researcher. It certainly helps, but is not a make or break (well maybe for Harvard, but not most state med schools). You have to have experience of some aspect of medicine, so that you can articulate some understanding of what medicine as a profession is like, and why you are drawn to it.</p>
<p>I try to not mention the big name med school factories, but I honestly think for the average kid considering pre-med, they are possibly the worst place to go, for all the reasons Jamimom has articulated - for someone with a bent toward research, or very specific interests - yes, for someone who wants to be a doc and see patients, no.</p>
<p>Will we need more docs in the US? Yes, we will need more, but they will make less money, but work no longer and perhaps shorter hours than they do now. I predict <em>Dons wizard's hat</em> that women will dominate in medicine as of about 2020, and that per capita pay will be 20-30% less in 2005 dollars, and work hours will be about 10% less.</p>
<p>interesteddad:</p>
<p>I can pretty much assure you that the "21st century medical crisis" has not reached my area. The very highest-cost subdivisions all around me are practically dorms for the medical profession.</p>
<p>When some of these people "move on down" into MY subdivision, filled merely with well-paid working professionals, then I might possibly start envisioning some clouds on the horizon. But they aren't here now.</p>
<p>Twenty to thirty years from now, when all the boomers are in their last decline, I would think these people will be eating pretty well. And buying even bigger houses yet.</p>
<p>Monydad:</p>
<p>That's because, as a society, we have not yet had the political will to address the health care system. To date, we have just allowed the cost of health care to increase with no limits. The pressure is certainly building as the cost of insurance and publicly-funded health care continues to become an increasing burden on our economy.</p>
<p>BTW, let me give an example of "over-delivery" of health care: Cardiac by-pass surgery on octagenarians. While the survival rate of the actual surgery is high, the studies I've seen indicate that the huge cost of these procedures produces exactly zero gain in life expectancy. As long as systemic medical delivery decisions do not include a cost/benefit analysis, the health care system will become more and more burdensome from an economic standpoint.</p>
<p>raven001, what the hell is that? the question is about bio undegrad schools, not law!!! not to mention that you couldn't have picked a more disparate field. have you got the top feeder schools for MFA as well?</p>
<p>on the other hand, i do second trout's suggestions:</p>
<p>Many midwestern LAC's with top bio (Carleton, Ohio Wesleyan, Grinnell, Oberlin, for instance)
Top science universities: (MIT, CalTech, Stanford, Berkeley, Cornell)
Underrated science uni's with Medical Scholar tracks (Case Western, University of Rochester for instance)
I can't comment on other UC's.</p>
<p>JHU undergrads get into the best med schools?... Im guessing this is probably true because of the quality of the graduating premed there. That being said, if Hopkins "weeds out" then good for them. Only the best and brightest should become doctors if you ask me</p>
<p>If they were the best and brightest, you'd think they'd be publishing more research than Hope College, don't you think?</p>
<p>Anyhow, the topic was top 10 for pre-med. I assume (given the nature of this board) it is for future college students thinking about where they should go if they want to end up in med school. On that basis, JHU wouldn't even get close to cutting it.</p>
<p>"If they were the best and brightest, you'd think they'd be publishing more research than Hope College, don't you think?"... </p>
<p>hmmm, that makes no sense. </p>
<p>If they definitely want to make sure they end up in med school.. then by all means, yes! please, go to "mediocre state u." and be the star! -- otherwise, please challenge yourself, prepare yourself for a very challenging 4 years of medschool and be the best doctor you can be.</p>