Lots of good advice here regarding the realities of med school admissions. From what I’ve seen, @WayOutWestMom is really on the right track. If you scroll down the post she cited, USF only had 10 successful premeds out of those 39 apps.
10 out of 39 success rate is below the overall medical school application success rate, which is odd if the school has a pre-med committee that can advise pre-meds of their chances before applying (so that no-hope pre-meds will know that applying is pointless for them and then not apply).
Apparently USF’s health profession committee isn’t selective and awards letters to most students who request one. The university’s median MCAT is barely above the 50th percentile and its median GPA for student’s receiving health committee endorsement is also well below the average for successful med school applicants.
The health profession committee provides letters for any and all health professions, including medicine, dental, optometry, podiatry, nursing and overseas schools.
The 60% success rate referenced in the first post includes all those options per a student who contacted the HP committee office and asked.
Even if a college’s pre-med committee does not refuse to write a committee letter to pre-meds with poor chance of admission, wouldn’t it give all pre-meds an honest assessment of their chances, which would lead to some of those with the worst chances to decide not to waste time and money applying?
Perhaps, but people are eternally optimistic that they will be the one exception because they have something “special” about their application. Or they worked too hard for 4 years not to apply. Or they parents insist they apply. Or any number of reasons.
@WayOutWestMom
How many got in out if 578 to UCSD
Trying to see how percentage of admitted is calculated
@twnz19 That info isn’t available through AMCAS. You might try checking UCSD’s health profession advising website. If the info isn’t there, try emailing the health profession advising office to ask.
UCSD’s acceptance data relies on student self-reporting of outcomes and so isn’t particularly reliable.
Surprisingly, several of the UCs are very transparent regarding their premed stats and UCSD is one of them. What they show (https://career.ucsd.edu/plan/explore/pre-health-med/medicine/admissions-data.html) lines up with what I’ve seen from AAMC for MDs and AACOM for DOs. I expect when they update the page it will show that 221 of the 578 (or about 38%) were admitted during the last cycle for MD schools.
Not meaning to be contrary…but so what? This statistic does nothing to improve YOUR chances of medical school acceptances. PLUS this information is based on a previous cycle of admitted students. It’s no secret that medical school admissions become increasingly more competitive each year.
Won’t disagree! Only posted because someone asked the question and to confirm that UCSD’s info is accurate.
While UCSD deserves credit for actually publishing numbers, it’s important to focus on the definition:
“those who received a bachelor’s or graduate degree from UCSD” although it’s not entirely clear if the same definition is applied to DO applicants.
So it appears they’ve limited their survey to students who actually graduated from UCSD. But OP is trying to select an undergraduate school, so the numbers don’t reflect the students who start as pre-meds but never apply to MD/DO for the multiple obvious reasons.
Keep in mind that a 4.0 student at USF may be equivalent to a 3.6 or 3.5 student at UCSD. Competition in the life or physical sciences is much more intense at UCSD or any upper tier UC than USF (San Francisco). In either case, do well on the MCAT.