<p>*In general, the UCs have really abysmal rates of getting their students into medical school – very close to the national average. I suspect this is because large public schools just don’t have the resources to invest in things like advising, along with some other things. *</p>
<p>I agree that advising may be rather “cookie cutter” like described in an earlier post. But, I wonder if the acceptance rate is close to the nat’l avg because maybe the UCs don’t aggressively weed kids out and maybe they don’t discourage anyone from applying to med schools.</p>
<p>I don’t know how it all works, but it sounds like privates do some heavier weeding and also refuse to recommend certain students.</p>
<p>Also…UCs are not privates…they admit largely by GPA…so they do have kids with rather lower SAT/ACT scores attending their schools.</p>
<p>Very very few privates actually do any official weeding. Hopkins is the only one I know of. And I assume that unofficial weeding is much higher in publics than elsewhere. (Why would you bother letting yourself get unofficially weeded if your odds are 80%? Much more plausible if your odds are 45%.)</p>
<p>I just don’t think you can compare privates to publics. </p>
<p>And, since all UCs aren’t the same, I think they may need to be looked at individually. The admit rate at UCR isn’t probably the same as the admit rate at UCLA or even UCI.</p>
<p>What is the admittance rate for each UC?</p>
<p>What is the nat’l avg for med school admittance?</p>
<p>National average is in the mid-40s recently, if memory serves. UCB is only somewhat above that, although its reporting is so poor that there’s really no realistic way to know how representative that is. If anything I think it’s optimistic.</p>
<p>Hm. I’ve heard that some med students advocate the idea that succeeding in a “no-name” college will be sufficient enough to get you into a med school. Is this true? If this is so, wouldn’t I fare better in a school like UC Irvine or Davis rather than a competitive school like UCLA?</p>
<p>It’s true that the top students from UC Irvine would fare better than bad students from UCLA. I strongly doubt that UCLA is so much more competitive that the same student would be mediocre there but excellent at Irvine or Davis. (For example – why on earth would going to Davis increase his MCAT score?)</p>
<p>bdm is correct. In addition to the easier A’s at Irvine (Cal and UCLA are stocked full of gunners, which makes the curves brutal), a UC med applicant also needs a strong mcat. If not a sports fan and a one earns a Regent’s from Davis or Irvine, the supposed prestige of the big two ain’t worth it.</p>
<p>*In addition to the easier A’s at Irvine (Cal and UCLA are stocked full of gunners, which makes the curves brutal), a UC med applicant also needs a strong mcat. If not a sports fan and a one earns a Regent’s from Davis or Irvine, the supposed prestige of the big two ain’t worth it. *</p>
<p>I am going to show this to my nephew…he’s a high school senior picking colleges right now. Top choice is UCLA as a pre-med student. Second choice is Bama with $90k in scholarship money (much cheaper than UCLA and no brutal curve)</p>
<p>I would also like to find out the med school acceptance rate is for UCLA. If it’s around 50% then it’s lower than Bama’s.</p>
<p>While it may be easier to get A’s at UCI, I wouldn’t say it’s a given. UCI is packed with some high stats kids as well…very concentrated in engineering and science majors. Since UCI has a good med school, many pre-meds choose to go there.</p>
Asian kids? I heard there is a higher concentartion of Asian kids at UCI, maybe because it is near LA, and more Asian kids tend to major in engineering or sciences.</p>
<p>
Isn’t it so for any other college with an affiliated med school?! wustl, emory, yale, harvard, jhu, usc, case, etc.</p>
<p>I have DDs who majored in Bio at both Cal & UCI, sorry guys, the curve at UCI was not any easier, the classes were not any easier and without it being a racial thing, just a fact, of the, as I recall 500-700 kids who walked in her ceremony, there were about 25 names that were not some form of Asian. UCI gets a huge local population of kids from Asian families, with a stereotypical cultural focus on education. The interesting thing is that so many are CA residents, but are also ESL, it was more difficult to connect and make friends when so many fellow students spoke foreign languages to each other.</p>
<p>I would absolutely not say that UCI would even be an easy A, think more of the kids who are just as high in the GPA & SAT as the CAL/UCLA student, but did not have the same amazing ECs…or maybe are required by their family to live at home and attend the local UC.</p>
<p>In any UC, it is up to you to make your best experience, but don’t ever assume that a school that is ranked say 45 instead of 25 or even 15 is going to mean an easy A!!</p>
<p>Oh yes…I was just making the point that if picking amongst UCs, then going to UCI is not going to give a student an escape from a very tough grading curve. Even now, with UCR getting a med school (is that still going to happen?), then UCR is going to become a more popular UC for pre-med students. </p>
<p>And, yes, there are many high achieving Asian students at UCI…in sciences and engineering.</p>
<p>*In any UC, it is up to you to make your best experience, but don’t ever assume that a school that is ranked say 45 instead of 25 or even 15 is going to mean an easy A!! *</p>
<p>This is very true.</p>
<p>People forget that mid-tier schools do not have an equal distribution of “high stats” kids amongst all their majors. At mid-tiers, high stats kids are seriously more concentrated within about 6 majors…Engineering, math, bio, chem, physics, etc. Therefore, your classmates are not going to represent the 2 middle quartile range of the school. They’re going to be in the upper 2 quartiles.</p>
<p>therefore, the curve may be better than at - say - UCLA, but it’s not going to be an easy A there either.</p>
<p>Of course, but it is all relative to the competition (since the course is curved). Think about taking Calc 1 at Cal, UCI and UCR. Then think about the other students in the class, as per SAT-M score (75th%), fighting for those A’s:</p>
<p>Cal - 760
UCI - 670
UCR- 600</p>
<p>Add in the fact that a lot MORE kids in the Calc 1 class at Cal have already completed AP Calc BC, with a 5. But they are retaking the course for the ‘easy’ A to boost their sGPA. Ditto Frosh Chem.</p>
<p>Are many kids retaking Cal 1 after getting a 5 in AP Cal BC? That seems like a very boring thing to do…I can see maybe retaking Cal II, but Cal I? </p>
<p>I would still like to see some stats as to what the med school acceptance rates for the various UC schools are. I know that my SIL is assuming that the acceptance rates are really high (like 85%) and from what I’m reading here, they aren’t nearly that high. She thinks that pre-med at a UC is like a free tix to med school as long as you’re not an idiot.</p>
<p>Absolutely, and highly recommended for a premed since the the goal is an A. Students are also retaking Chem 1 after AP Chem and Bio 1 after AP Bio, and Physics (for Life Science Students) after acing AP Physics B. The point is that the curve for A’s will be dominated by those with really strong backgrounds in the curriculum, whether AP/IB courses or top honors programs. Those with a weak backgrounds in the curriculum will have to work that much harder to catch up and compete.</p>
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<p>With the gunners cranking up the curve it ain’t as easy as most would prefer. But it also allows more free time for socializing and Saturday afternoon football. Or it enables one to explore more electives.</p>
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<p>Nearly all acceptance rates are worthless. The real question – for which there is no answer – is how many premed Frosh make it to med school? Does it really matter if a college has a 90% acceptance rate of the 100 senior med applicants (out of a Frosh class of 5,000)? Since a typical matriculating Frosh class is 20-30% premed, what happened to the other 900 students?</p>
<h1>36 is a great link, but I also want to remind readers that Berkeley in particular does a terrible job with its reporting. I strongly suspect that its numbers are even worse than the already-terrible numbers they report.</h1>
<p>It’s not the reporting per se, but the data capture. As a big public without a centralized “Committee”, there is no need for any student to involve Career Services in the process nor to report back admission results – either positive or negative. Thus, as the links note, the numbers are incomplete and self-reported.</p>
<p>I have no doubt that many more UC students apply to grad/professional schools that Career Services has no knowledge of…I’m guessing that other big publics work similarly.</p>