Yes, I never met Uncle G when I was studying at Oxford as it was before his time I understand. Cheers!
Cheerio old mate.
If you wouldn’t mind saying, which combined program did you select?
I don’t really agree with your statistical characterizations. Of course NMF will tend to be above average college students, but NMF is based almost entirely on a test of speed and accuracy on mostly middle school level material, taken before a lot of kids have even drilled for SAT type tests. It has none of the depth of the physics, chemistry and biochem requirements for medical science, especially the PSAT of recent decades that’s had any higher level questions removed. As Steyr said, the cream rises to the top, and there’s a lot of cream that didn’t have their best day early in 11th grade on the one-shot PSAT. NMF had better bust their guts and learn to work hard if they hope to maintain that lead thru college and beyond. (I was an NMF long ago too.)
If NMF can get you a break on later selections in life, and Steyr notes that more of those lie ahead on the way to a medical career, as well as the free ride in college, I’d say that’s an amazingly great return on one 3 hour spurt of work in October of 11th grade. It’s crazy really. But if the kid has already taken some higher level science (dual enrollment) and knows he can handle it, then maybe betting on himself makes sense.
oldandwise you are over-interpreting your quote. You say "Let’s look at the data. This is from Princeton Review: “The average MCAT score for students admitted to an MD program in the United States in 2016–2017 is between 508 and 509, with an average GPA of 3.65-3.75 (Source: AAMC).” "
That gives the probability that a given student admitted has those scores and grades. It does NOT give the probability that a student with those scores and grades will be admitted. P(A | B) is not the same as P(B | A), and maybe a Bayesian analysis to relate the two is called for here.
Maybe some third, fourth and fifth criteria are just about as important as scores and grades (like, Amherst will be looked on more favorably than USF, and schools that write committee letters for their med school applicants will place better than those that don’t.). Those UF kids with those stats may still be mostly rejected from all US med schools (and with an overall acceptance rate under 50%, this may well be the case), but the UCF kids in BMS are mostly getting in to UCF Med.
@oniongrass, for some NMFs, accepting admission to UCF undergrad along with a contingent admission to UCF’s medical school may be wiser than going to UF undergrad without any commitment from a medical school. But, for the NMFs whose GPA, SAT, ECs, and other “criteria” place them at the top nationally for all college applicants and, yet, whose desire to save money for medical school has them considering a free education at either UCF or UF, UF is the better choice. Its undergrad degree has far more “market value” than one from UCF, and, given that many pre-med students change their minds about medicine, the contingent admission to medical school may end up having no value.
I have to assume that Burnett Medical Scholars have a track record that puts them near the top of all students, in which case the decision comes down to one’s self confidence or risk aversion. If one’s priority is just to get into medical school, UCF may be the right choice despite sacrificing the prestige associated with one’s undergrad degree and potentially one’s medical school degree.
On the other hand, if one’s admission to some of the very top national colleges for undergrad – in addition to UF and UCF Burnett – gives one the confidence to compete after graduation for admission to a medical school of UCF’s rank or higher, pick UF undergrad. UF and UCF are not peer universities.
I’ve read that the matriculation rate for the 800+ medical-school applicants from UF is less than 50%. However, we lack the information of how many of them are NMFs or could have been accepted into Burnett Medical Honors. (We know that fewer than 25% of them could be NMFs; if all NMFs at UF applied to medical school, it would only account for 200 - 250 of the applicants since that is all the NMFs that enroll each year at UF.) Nevertheless, I am confident that the students who were NMFs or who could have been accepted into Burnett Medical Honors have a much higher acceptance rate, as I am confident that UF graduates who had also been accepted to undergrad at MIT, Vanderbilt, Duke, Chicago, etc. will have a higher acceptance rate to medical school than the average for UF.
My son did not apply to UCF’s Burnett Medical Honors or USF’s 7-year program. He has dreams of attending one of the top medical schools nationally, so neither program appealed to him. Even going to UF instead of higher-ranked undergrad programs took some negotiating. While his decision to go to UF was right for him, going to UCF for Burnett Medical Honors may be right for someone else.
@oldandwise I sort of agree, because having some top 10 admits is a favorable signal for how competitive you’ll be for med school admission. But it’s a noisy signal, and a kid should be honest with himself. Did he have great community service, some other hook, or legacy getting him in?
None of those will help you master organic chemistry as well or better than other smart highly motivated kids who didn’t do quite as well on PSAT verbal, and remember the PSAT selection index has always been 2V+M. NMF (for that matter NMSF) proves you’re pretty smart. It doesn’t prove that there aren’t a lot of other kids, who didn’t get it but who may be much smarter than you in the relevant science.
I read that Princeton knocks out half its would-be premeds. A large percentage of those kids were way over the bar for NMF qualification. One just doesn’t have a lot to do with the other, in my opinion.
There seems to be a bit of misconception of what UCF BMS is, and is not.
It is not designed to channel students into UCF Med.
UCF Med has more than enough outstanding applicants to fill its class. It does not need BMS to feed its class. https://med.ucf.edu/meet-the-class-of-2020/ In fact, I think many BMS students would be mickey mouses compared to many of the UCF Med class students.
BMS is not a binding program. In fact, they want you feel free to apply elsewhere. They have very stringent benchmarks. If you met them, they are sure you will fit in at many other places. This year, there are 6 students who will stay at UCF, others will go elsewhere.
My daughter just got her letter of acceptance this week. After that, she is applying to only one other school, UMiami. We are hoping she can come back, so we can have dinners together more frequently.
Now a day, the crux of getting into medical schools is MCAT. The benchmark for UCF BMS will be 514 starting next year. GPA was really not an issue. Average accepted student overall across the nation is in ballpark of 3.8.
But that MCAT is an issue for many applicants. Many people from great school and great GPA just could not score high enough on that MCAT.
It has been almost four years since she started on this premed path. Orgo, biochem, etc were not easy, but not a real issue. MCAT was a big issue/ big hurdle. She had to take it twice, finally got a 514.
She had two other close classmates from high school. All three had very similar capability and scholarship. One went to UF Honors; my daughter was going to room with her had my daughter gone to UF. She score 507 on MCAT, is realistically looking at FSU Med. The other girl went to Stanford, studied in Europe, had no issues with GPA. She score 511. She is going through the hairy experience of applying to thirty medical schools.
The notion that NMF = medical school acceptance is simply not true.
We proud parents think/ hope it is, but it is simply not true. We second guess ideally, but there is not much to proffer or bolster that.
It does not hurt to be a NMF, but it certainly does not get you a leg up in the final tabulation, either.
Last year UF had some eight hundred students applying to medical schools. A combination of first timers, and many, many second, third, timers in that group. Of this group of outstanding, hard charging students, about 30-35 will go to UF; 10-15 to UCF; 15 to UM; 10 to FSU; 15 to USF; 5-10 to FAU. Probably a horde of 20 will go to new Nova Med.
A few of the top end UF students will go to outstanding ,out of state, medical schools; while many are simply scrambling/hoping for a match at lesser out of state schools. Many will end up in Ross, St. Georges in the Caribbean. If I am not mistaken, Ross and St. Georges each has 150 UF students.
Many gone boys, many gone girls, at the end of this application cycle, again.
Albeit at the end of day (years), they will all turn out to be fine doctors. Recently, a friend had brain aneurysm. He ask me if I know the neuroradiologist. He was wondering who will be performing his brain vascular stent placement is any good. I looked that guy up. He graduated from Ross. By all nursing accounts, he is very patient and very good with his hands.
I told my friend. It is a go.
@SteyrFWB – I am simply amazed that this thread is still going so many months after OP made a decision and moved on!! 
That said, I really appreciate the unique insight and specific, deep knowledge you have shared with all of us. To bring the discussion full circle, given how impressed some here are with UF as the Florida flagship, and how adamant some were that choosing BMS over UF was nothing more than a foolish product of risk aversion and lack of confidence in one’s abilities, I wonder if there is any way to guesstimate how many of the 300 or so UF premeds who ended up in the Caribbean were NMF, how many of the gone boys and girls were NMF, (they surely had to include SOME, no?) and whether, having gone through the 3+ years and making it this far, if they could do it again, they would give up a contingent seat at UCF COM (which has to be a great stress reliever for your daughter and the other participants during the application process, regardless of whether or not they end up at UCF COM) in order to bask in the increased so-called prestige of UF during their undergraduate years???
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@steyrfwd thanks for the update and the insight. Congrats to your daughter!
Thank you!
But this is like just registrating for Boston Marathon.
It is a small distinction. Still waiting for nationwide registrants to gather at the starting line.
A band of brothers and sisters, all know race is within.
Finishing line is still, far, far away.
@xxyyzz00 : any update?
I wasn’t very impressed by the big yellow UCF Honors brochure we got last week! They showed a smiling young woman with a lab coat and stethoscope, a former honors graduate whose interesting experiences after UCF included going to school in the Caribbean! (They didn’t say Caribbean med school, but they didn’t list a US med school either.)
But then she got a residency at Duke apparently. Since the latter could not have had much to do with UCF’s undergrad program, but only her remarkable success in coming back from a Caribbean med school, I wondered if they didn’t have a better example to show from their undergrad honors program.
Just got the app in to UF. Not sure if med is in the future or desired.
Questions for SteyrFWB:
Does a neuroradiologist insert stents? Wouldn’t that be some sort of surgeon like a neurosurgeon?
Also, if MCAT is so important, wouldn’t NMF correlate pretty well with that? Timed multiple choice tests, both.
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Neuro-stent could be put in by either radiologist who knows neurovascular anatomy well, or it could also be done by neurosurgeon who does nothing but stent and angiogram. Neurosurgeons who specialize in doing angiogram and brain stent placement usually do just that. They are usually not the ones who would go into the coconut once neuro hemorrage occurs. The ones who do craniotomy are the ones who just do that, and not do the angiogram/ stent placement, vice versa.
The only ones whom you can predict from high school, who MIGHT do well on MCAT, are the ones who have taken 10 AP’s and score 5 on all of them. Taking MCAT is like taking 8 finals of chem/ orgo/ physics/ biology/ biochemistry/ psycholog/ sociology PLUS a LSAT reading logics test, all in one 8 hours setting, final after final after final. The ones who do well in MCAT, are the ones who put in hard, uninterrupted effective 4-5 months of studying. And that has nothing to do with whether you are a NMF or not.
So doing well could literally be anyone who put that hard 4-5 months of hard labor. And no, NMF does not correlate with doing well on MCAT. At least not that I know of, in my years in the medical education business. I am sure over the years, people have tried to put some correlation on who does well on MCAT. Nothing is forthcoming.
Just like people have tried to correlate who does well on USMLE Step 1 & 2, is it college you go to? Is it college GPA? Is it SAT score? Is it MCAT score? Nothing really correlate. Nothing. Except your first two year med school grades might have a slight correlation.
So it all boils down to who can put in those hard, uninterrupted 4-5 months of studying. That literally could be ANYONE.
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That Duke girl did “medical commission works” in Caribbean, not “medical school” in Caribbean.
@SteyrFWB – do you happen to know if there is an easy (or even not so easy!) way to learn what the specific medical school admissions outcomes are for these specific undergraduate schools (i.e., what the admit rate is for UF undergrads at specific medical schools, like UCF, perhaps broken down by MCAT/GPA metrics like AAMC does)?
Also, does UCF publish statistics for all of its undergrads? I realize the BMS sample size is so small that any stats would be pretty worthless, but the school as a whole has 300 applicants, so that’s a decent sample size. I also realize the UF outcomes track national averages, but I wonder if its results at specific schools (i.e., Top 20) are better, worse or the same as national averages. I realize they are probably the same for UF. I wonder if that’s the case for UCF, or if kids are really disadvantaged, whether or not they are BMS (other than maybe BMS to U of Miami), because they go to UCF and not a higher ranked school?
All of those questions lead to what is really my actual question, and my assumed answer – I wonder if all undergrads at UF that meet the BMS GPA and MCAT metrics who apply to UCF med school are accepted? I bet the answer is “no,” and therein lies the value of the BMS guarantee, assuming a kid still wants to go to med school 3 years after entering college.
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That is a very loaded question. Perhaps I should pause for awhile. Let the question answer itself.
But …, What do you want to get out of your medical education?
Paul Allen had SAT 1600, he went to Washington State, then drop out. Bill Gates had 1580, went to Harvard. Paul Allen convinced Gates to drop out after one year.
What does your son and daughter want out of his/ her education? Who is their Paul Allen?
Now, come back to your very, very last question. The answer is an absolute, no. If you have higher than 3.8 and 514, plough through AAMC data, your chance is 80% acceptance nationwide. Very, very good chance. Odds on your side.
We chose UCF after putting our boots on the ground and visited all medical schools in Florida. There is something I see that is full of potential in UCF Med. Even if my daughter had gone elsewhere for college, there is something I really like about UCF Med. It is futuristically “modern”.
Why UCF and not other higher rank school? May be you could ask Paul Allen why Washington State and not higher ranked school.
It is no longer a SAT game.
@SteyrFWB – thank you for the, as always, thoughtful response. The point of my last question was to point out that if UF tracks the national average, and if 20% of the kids who make it through the 3-year gauntlet and actually make it to the point of having a 3.8 and 514 apply and are rejected by UCF COM, that, in and of itself, proves the value of the BMS guarantee, since there is no guarantee that an given kid will be in the 80% and not the 20%.
Asking Paul Allen and Bill Gates why they made the choices they made would be of no value to my child. They are the very, very, very rare particularly gifted and lucky lottery winners among us who were, at least in 20/20 hindsight, destined for greatness, and would have achieved great things without or without a diploma, prestigious or otherwise. They are the outliers, and have zero predictive value for most of us. The odds of my kid, or the vast majority of kids, dropping out of college and having the imagination and talent to start of company that will create multiple new categories of consumer goods, are absolute zero. Things do not work out nearly so well for the overwhelming majority of college dropouts.
On a somewhat related note, do you have an opinion one way or the other as to whether going to a higher ranked medical school than UCF COM, all else being equal, would result in a greater likelihood of getting matched to a more competitive residency at a more prestigious institution? Again, Bill and Paul clearly didn’t need to go to Harvard or Mayo to have a leg up in being successful in their chosen profession. My kid probably won’t be so lucky, although I realize it is not the be all and end all, and ultimately it might not matter where he goes to medical school, if he even goes to medical school. On the other hand, however, if it were me, I’d rather have a prestigious name brand diploma and not need it than need one and not have it. If that were not the case for most people, why would the name brand schools be name brand, if this reality did not perpetuate itself?
One 4th year FIU medical student I worked with this year asked me if he has a chance at Boston Children’s. He is the best student, pound for pound, I had ever worked with. Excellent ability, very affable, always punctual and available. But first thing that came across my mind, and I told him bluntly. “When I was there, half of them are Harvard grads, so your chance is not good.” But I quickly changed my tone, “You will be a great pediatric cardiologist”. I have no doubt, at all.
With enough encouragement, he is quite sanguine about matching to a great place, Mr. Miyagi is quite happy for him.
But if he carries a Harvard pennant and wave it in front of everyone, I think he deserves a front seat in the student section of psychiatric ward.
Harvard or not, it IS all in your head.
@SteyrFWB – Thank you very much, Mr. Miyagi!