The metrics of the UCF BMS graduates entering medical schools this year is MCAT 517, GPA 3.95
According to UCF administrator, it is very much alive and kicking. There is a merit in very good students pushing each other.
That is very helpful SteyrFWB as we are visiting for scholars day tomorrow at UCF Barnett. My son is deciding between UCF Barnett Honors and University of Miami pre-med. We heard UCF pre-med students got into Johns Hopkins, Yale, Vanderbilt, UNC, Northwestern, Georgetown, Pitt (top research) and Cornell in the past five years. We know the Austin Burns (to JH) example is well publicized by UCF as a case example.
Too add some additional information. The average science GPA is 3.79 and average MCAT is 514 for accepted University of Florida medical students. UCF medical scholars undergraduate have the 517 MCAT average mark, with many above 520. We met a UCF Barnett School Medical Scholar senior that scored a 525 on MCAT, and has opportunities at all the major top medical schools.
@SteyrFWB – thank you for sharing this metric! Is it widely available, or do I have to know an “insider” like you to have access to it? Also, as impressive as it seems, I wonder if it’s not self-selecting (i.e., it’s a measure of the BMS graduates who survived the program and are going to med school). It doesn’t take into account the kids who were BMS four years ago and are not going to med school. Do you happen to know how many of them there are, and what the metrics would look like if they were included?
Of course, very good students pushing each other will produce results, and this is true everywhere. What I hated when I was doing the research last year was all of the schools that would only provide med school admission stats for the students they pre-selected as being “highly competitive.” Of course, these numbers were way more impressive than AAMC averages at every school that provided them, but they meant nothing, because they screened out many students they felt would be in the bottom 60% of the AAMC numbers, and then bragged about having a higher than average 60%, 70%, 80%, etc. acceptance rate.
Similarly, given that BMS requires a 3.75 GPA at graduation, saying the average of those above 3.75 is 3.95, without taking into account all of the kids who dropped out of the program, while impressive in the abstract, really says nothing beyond the obvious (i.e., that those kids who didn’t wilt from the struggle and change their minds along the way ultimately did well). I can pretty much guarantee that the top handful of pre-meds at every school in the country also have impressive stats, just like at UCF.
Also, the real value of the BMS guarantee was for the kids with the 512 MCAT and 3.75 GPA, not so much for the 517 3.95 kids, who most likely would have no problem getting into a school without the guarantee. Even this has been diluted as BMS has recently increased the requirements to track the ever increasing medians the med schools (particularly UCF) are reporting!
Metric number 3.95/517 came from Mr REL (Larkin) UCF med admission officer.
N= what ? I don’t know. My daughter said whenever there is BMS advisor meeting @ Lake Nona (30 minutes away from main UCF) each time there is a different composition of 10-15 students. So actual BMS number should be pretty large.
But I don’t know nothing about no nothing. Real N could be 1.
@SteyrFWB – 
I’m sure N>1; my point was simply that the metrics are skewed by the fact that they screen out everyone who did not make it through the gauntlet, and are therefore artificially high, since they only reflect the survivors, as opposed to all participants in the program. Assuming @sipco100’s information is good, his (or her) one student with a 525 will skew the results, since N is between 10 and 15. As impressive as it is, it tells us nothing if it doesn’t include metrics for those who don’t complete the program, since it has an inherent survivor bias.
I’m sure REL’s point is that his kids stack up well against anyone’s, based on their numbers, and that’s a legitimate point, as far as it goes, but again, it tells us nothing if we don’t know how many kids started out four years ago and are not included in his numbers. For example, we know 34 kids entered the program this year. If the metrics are the same in four years as now, but they only include 20 kids, what will they tell us about the 34 kids who entered in 2018? (Hint: nothing! It will tell us that the 20 who survived did well; it will tell us nothing about the other 14, except that they probably didn’t do as well, for whatever reason.)
Several passed up the UCF program and moved on to PA school or engineering that I know of. I don’t know what happened to all of the original 34, and individual scores. I have confirmed that the average is above 515. All I can offer is that if you attend the program, excel at Barnett, do research (which is promoted and plentiful), then any student attending can get into some of the top research medical schools across the country. I know a student that went to an Ivy League school with a very high SAT score, but applied to Ivy medical schools plus others (Duke, etc) and got shut out. She is now at the University of the West Indies despite straight A grades and a great MCAT score. There are no guarantees anymore. First thing we looked at was does the school allow and promote you to do research as early as your freshman undergraduate year. Do they prepare you for MCAT, leadership, and mock interviews early on. UCF Barnett and Miami both do. Our DS chose Barnett for those reasons. Miami has a great pre-med HPM program, but is simply too expensive even with merit aid.
Why final N is not starting N?
At the time of starting N, 100% of BMS parents want their kids to go to medical school.
Yet, probably only 50% of BMS students want to go to medical school at that starting point.
Self-selection comes very quickly once they are on their own.
@SteyrFWB – I totally understand and totally agree! Again, my only point was that REL’s stats contain a survivor bias that render the numbers useless to someone attempting to determine the value of the program without knowing the attrition rate. If the program has a 50% attrition rate, what is the value of the “guarantee” on the front end? It’s certainly greater than zero, but probably not quite as high as thought by the families of the kids who did not see it through.
Also, those stats seem like a great deal for REL, since those numbers are far higher than the UCF COM medians. Any idea how many of those kids are actually going to UCF, as opposed to other schools? Do you have any idea whether the higher stat kids are going to UCF in the same proportion as those who have lower stats? Regardless, it IS really impressive how far UCF COM has come in such a short period of time, without an affiliated hospital. One can only imagine how its reputation is going to explode once the hospital opens.
@sipco100 – what you describe is a common problem for high stat kids at prestigious schools. They take for granted that they are going to be among the 3% being accepted at the top schools, and end up getting shut out because they don’t realize that there are superstars at many schools other than the Ivies, that a straight A at Harvard really doesn’t mean anyone is a better student than a straight A at UCF, and there simply aren’t enough seats at the top med schools for everyone with straight As and high MCATs.
The experience you describe is less a testament to how hard it is for a straight A top MCAT student to get into med school as it is a testament to being judicious in deciding where to apply, and not taking a top med school admission for granted just because you are coming from an Ivy. Regardless, kids have to learn this lesson each year, because so many coming from those schools ARE successful, and nobody believes they will be in the minority that isn’t successful, until, of course, it happens to them.
How many kids have beautiful moles shaped like formosa on their buttock before college? Interesting, insightful question?
Frankly, I don’t really care.
What is the attrition rate? That is probably a more relevant question at other elite schools.
At UCF BMS, there are some attrition. But it is not of attrition as other high power, gung-ho places.
BMS attrition come from just not want to do this medicine stuff. As I said, 100% of BMS parents want this, but certainly not 100% of students want this. There lies your attrition. So just a clairvoyant shout out to parents.
It is not a hard program to stay in. You can major in whatever you want, like film editing, or what not.
If you REALLY got into academic trouble, just kindly ask to finish in five years. School will oblige you.
MCAT, just study hard for three solid months. You will get there.
It is really a program design for you to flourish. At your own desire and pace. They go out of their way to emphasize, “look around, you are welcome not to stay”.
How many people stayed? You can pay $20, get AAMC MSAR (medical school admission requirement) data for all medical school, look for BS/MD number on the admitted student section for each US medical school.
As a BMS parent, you have to worry about you child getting more interested in digging dinosaurs st Outer Mongolia than in career in medicine. As for BMS attrition data, that is just a beautiful mole on the buttock question.
@SteyrFWB – I do LOVE your analogies!!! The AAMC numbers don’t tell me anything without telling me how many started in the program in a given year as well as how many went to other medical schools, and what their respective stats are. All it tells me is how many seats are available to applicants not in the BMS program.
Also, of course they go out of their way to say “look around, you are welcome not to stay.” This is because they use the program as a recruiting tool to attract high stat high school students to UCF, but they really do not have COM seats for all of the students they admit into the program.
Not to be too argumentative (but I really can’t help myself! ), but if the program is really designed for the kids to flourish, why did they recently raise all of the criteria necessary to claim the “guaranteed” med school seat? I believe the answer can only be to continue to use the program as a recruiting tool for the undergraduate school while ensuring that they achieve the level of attrition necessary to keep the number of kids proceeding to the COM to a manageable number.
Assuming you are correct about the program not being hard to stay in (and you should know, since your kid just went through it), it looks like the recent changes were made to make it less easy to stay in going forward. This makes sense, if your daughter sees 10-15 kids in year 4 while 34 kids started last fall.
So back to the mole, it is about as relevant as the MCAT and GPA of the kids proceeding to medical school in the vacuum of not knowing how many kids are not going to medical school, either due to their newfound love of dinosaurs or because their grades or MCAT didn’t make the cut and they weren’t suitably committed to ask for an accommodation. I know it’s a really great program; I’m just questioning the selective reporting of the metrics of the survivors without also reporting the GPAs (and maybe MCATs, if they exist) of the paleontologists among the original group of BMS kids.
@SteyrFWB – by the way, I just checked the MSAR, and UCF reported “0” matriculants in its first year class for last fall coming from BS/MD, so I guess REL is not publicly reporting how many BMS kids actually enroll in UCF COM.
On an unrelated note, since despite my penchant for publicly debating you on minutia, I do consider you one of my very favorite CC premed/med gurus, do you have an opinion regarding taking biochem before orgo 2 in order to take the MCAT before junior year? Would taking the MCAT the summer after sophomore year be wise, and how necessary is taking orgo 2 to being able to do well in biochem?
Do not take the MCAT before junior year. You don’t get multiple shots at it like on the SAT. You want to take it once and get a high score, twice at worst.
@MYOS1634 – Thanks!! I was thinking it might be better to take it during the summer, when there are no distractions, rather than during the school year the way most people seem to do, but don’t want to do it if it isn’t reasonable to achieve a high score.
MSAR is published yearly, the “new year” data came out last month. The new data reflects the students who are in the first year of medical school now. For the past 5 years, each year UCF BS/MD listing has been between 5 to 10. So if it’s listed zero this year, maybe that’s an error. Or maybe no one come to UCF, they have gone elsewhere where pasture is greener, better. Or, they all decided to dig Dinosaur in outer Mongolia.
You CAN get away not taking orgo 2, replace it with biochemistry instead. Many med school will take that replacement.
If you are going to take MCAT after sophomore/ junior summer study, that might be a good replacement. Questions on MCAT between biochem and orgo 2 has a tremendous differential, superb tilted toward biochemistry. Orgo 2 is too old school, has no punch in MCAT.
Now timing for MCAT. If you bend on going to medical school straight after college, sophomore summer MCAT has its preferred status. In fact, if you go to Johns Hopkins undergrad, the premed adviser will recommend Hopkins students to prepare for MCAT the sophomore summer. In fact, most Johns Hopkins students DO follow this timing. Their premed committee actually tabulated their students’ MCAT scores with exam dates. Guess what ? (It is actually a no brainer) Score is highest for summer taker.
To prepare that MCAT during school year, with all school exams and activities, might not be the most productive. If you take it the summer after junior year, it might be tad late for application process. Ergo, summer after sophomore year is excellent choice as your first try, and might be your best shot. Got required courses done, fresh in your mind, on the proviso that you take most recommended stuff by then, i.e.
gen bio, chem, orgo 1, biochem, physics . The other stuff, psychology/ sociology you can self study by reading Khan Academy psych/ sociology 300 page PDF notes.
The reason UCF BMS raised 512 to 514 is simple. Over all MCAT and GPA of entire school is getting higher. On MSAR, it is 513, but if you look at the average break down it is 128/128/129/129. So it is actually 514. GPA 3.85
Now, those printed number are reflective of students 2 years ago who are finishing first year med. The actual competitive number this admission cycle and next, are bound to be higher. That is just the over all UCF trend, and national trend.
I am no pedantic guru. I am just a guy up to no good.
@SteyrFWB – Thank you VERY much for the information and wise counsel. Going back to last year, I have consistently found your posts to be well thought out and chock full of valuable information. As a result, while you may be up to no good, you are definitely my CC guru!!!
On that 10-15 students who comes to Lake Nona meeting, what she meant is that, every time she goes there, there are 10-15 DIFFERENT students whom she had not seen before, showing up from no where at the meeting. So how many students are in this BMS is very nebulous to her. There is never a group picture taken in those four years.
@SteyrFWB – I understand, but I also understand that the program has grown significantly over the years (hence the need to have more folks that start not end up at the COM, since the COM class size has NOT increased! ), so it’s not crazy to think they had around 15 kids 4 years ago if they have 34 kids this year.
On another unrelated note, do you have an opinion on whether MCAT review courses are a good idea, or a waste of time and money? (I can’t remember if I asked you this before!) I know the folks on reddit really hate them, but I would like the guru’s thoughts! Money is not really an issue (although not spending it is always better than the alternative!), but I don’t want to send my son to sit in a class for 130 hours if the time would be more productively spent studying on his own. Many thanks!!
Remember, you are on an advisor role, don’t micromanage your son. Otherwise, he would turn out to be a privileged fool, or worse.
No need to take a commercial course, or one-=on-one tutor. Those learning are PASSIVE.
Have him get the materials that work, and are time proven. And sink his teeth ACTIVELY into those materials.
Take appropriate required courses first, that make self studying easier.
Need good 3-4 months to get through this MCAT studying.
- Buy (sign up) UWorld MCAT for 6 months. That material is good. Tough passages, answers are even better. Actively go through that thing. Hopefully twice.
- Buy AAMC full package, including flashcards. Start with flashcards, Question pack (old style MCAT), Section Bank, then FL (full length exam)
- Supplement reading exam with Testing Solution (1-5) (buy from Amazon)
- Supplement Bio/Biochem section with Khan Academy Bio/Biochem
5)Get Khan Academy OCD 300 pages PDF notes on Psychology/Sociology. There is a 100 page version and a 300 pages version. Get 300 pages version, longer to read, but has more examples, so easier than the 100 page, which is dry as Sahara to navigate. Read this twice, commit to memory before exam. This will get you to 130+ on this section.
Time wise, U-World x 2 months, AAMC last 6 weeks, Khan 300 pages last 3 weeks.
That is it. Keep it solid and simple. Pace yourself.
Register for the exam early, get the date and place set, so you give yourself no procrastination space.
Just do it.
@SteyrFWB – Thank you very much!! You are very perceptive on the micromanaging! I am vicariously living through him!!!