Vanderbilt Pre-med

  1. VU students with >3.3 GPA and >30 MCAT have an 83% acceptance rate. Note the average GPA at VU is 3.4 and average MCAT score of VU students is 31.
  2. Med schools receive thousands of applicants with high GPA's from noncompetitive U's. Their high GPA's means little without a high MCAT score to back it up.
  3. At VU you will be pushed by your brilliant peers which will help come time for the MCAT and med school as you are required to develop good study skills. Many bright students at noncompetitive U's learn they don't have to work to be successful which is "the worst thing a student could learn" from attending college.
  4. At VU you have excellent research and job opportunities at VU's med center which is on campus. These opportunities help on your med school application.
  5. BUT you do need a plan to get through the weed out classes. The first chem, bio, physics, cals, and org. Don't overload yourself freshman fall semester. Use summer school to knock out 2 weedouts.

@bud123

Not that I don’t trust you, but do you have a source for that 83% statistic? I just find it hard to believe considering that the average GPA for medical school matriculates was a 3.6 in 2014. I’ve also heard from various sources that anything below a 3.4 is killer for any MD school application.

http://as.vanderbilt.edu/hpao/documents/2014_Annual_Report.pdf

Thanks for the source.

I have to say that I was surprised by a lot of these stats. It really seems strange to me that only 189 Vandy students apply to med schools. I thought the number would have been closer to 400 lol. I also wonder how much weight that 83% statistic holds for students who have GPAs extremely close to 3.3. I think it’s likely that the 17% of those students who don’t get in are mainly those students who have GPAs just slightly above 3.3. It would’ve been nice if the HPAO showed probabilities for students who had EXACTLY a 3.3 and a 30 MCAT.

It also seems odd to me that only 4 out of 20 applicants were accepted into DO schools, especially considering that the stats of the rejected students were above the national average for DO schools.

Great info though, very enlightening.

So the rigor at Vandy is indeed taken into consideration for Med schools? That’s good to know. Especially since I’m considering applying to Vandy ED

@Lift35 : It is well known that med. schools are at least aware of the difference in rigor at schools, but note that top med. schools will not let up on their standards as they are indeed getting the applicants from the top privates and publics that do have 3.8-4.0 (many are even feeding their own students into their med school). But yeah, there is a lot of literature about use of the grading curve at competitive/very selective schools such as this: http://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/ij-sotl/vol2/iss2/5/?utm_source=digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu%2Fij-sotl%2Fvol2%2Fiss2%2F5&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages

The results from this simulation mirror what @derp125 experienced. I can in fact vouch for this as I attended Emory and currently TA for organic chemistry over at GSU and the level of exams is completely different (I hate to be mean, but I don’t know if many of them would even hit the mean on a medium level instructor’s exam whose means are usually 70-80, and definitely not a challenging instructor). To challenge students at places like Vanderbilt, instructors make the tests much harder than they would at a state school (as in not the “top” ones. A challenging exam in science is indeed usually considered “75”, so the 78 derp mentions is probably correct for a harder class (and note that at these schools if a class is “easy” or of “medium” rigor with means in the 80s already, there won’t be any sort of curve). However, it takes a much harder exam to get an exam average to 75 at Vanderbilt than say GSU, or UTKnox…Depending on the instructor it can be even more intense. Some science instructors write exams that yield 50-60 something averages pretty consistently by simply writing a portion of the exam that was somewhat doable if you studied what you needed and then writing a part that required much higher ability (or they are a poor instructor and are not intending to challenge, but the material is overwhelming given the quality of instruction). Those averages would then just be recentered to achieve a C+/B (depends on instructor/school) mean. Even places like Harvard practice this for pre-med. They write very difficult (mean much less than 75) and recenter to a B.

Top privates get a bad rap for grade inflation, but also get a very bad rap for the intensity of either the content or grading in the sciences which causes an unexpectedly high attrition rate for a well-prepped student body. This is something to be aware of but don’t really let the B- average of science courses scare you. The reality is that students don’t generally perform exactly the same in every course. You can be weaker in one course but be very strong in others. The average does not have to be you, and usually won’t be. Often a key to navigating challenging science exams (average 75 and lower) is to get decent at the problems that differentiate grades (yes, this means you may have to do additional problems that were not assigned or recommended). If you look at that study, it suggests that the types of exams given at such schools may be unfair as they do not necessarily reflect amount of preparation. I do not think it is the case, but I think the preparation for that level of of class has to be different. Often following the rules and just doing all that the instructor assigns may not be enough (like it would on an AP or a high school exam). Again, they usually achieve such averages by creating a couple of problems (maybe multi part) worth about 20-30 that intentionally throw off students who didn’t to far above regular preparation (doing as they were told). However, it is rare that the entirety the exam is a struggle fest unless you did not study. But in general you just need to be more independent and motivated to make a B+ or higher at such schools.

Overall though, I think for a top school, Vandy’s pre-med core is relatively tame, except biology…But the chemistry, physics, and ochem is either similar or not as bad as many similar places. It seems like a trick is (I have a friend there who I help sometimes, but they’re good so don’t really need it) to honestly use what I said to your advantage. He recently took ochem and benefited greatly from taking ochem 1 with someone with lower exam averages (some in the high 60s-note that the exams weren’t particularly hard but the guy was a ‘not son great’ instructor) because he was already working hard and there was much more room for error (like having high 70s or low 80s will result in an A grade! He rode the heck out of the curve). He was much more stressed when he ended up in ochem 2 with an instructor whose lowest exam mean was 70 something throughout the semester. When the means are consistently in the high 70s and 80s in a science course, you have to pretty much nail every exam to ensure B+ or higher and have to be almost perfect to get an A. The latter is not an easy feat. However, this is only a good option if their exams are not truly difficult. It is risky if the exams are much harder than a normal instructor’s (which can happen with their biology sequence. Like I’ve heard of that Singleton guy…yikes!!)

From the info given there, you can calculate that 8 out of 14 (57%) of those between 3.3 and 3.4 get accepted.

Also, re-applicants with <3.4 GPA had a 49% acceptance rate.