<p>Well, I have heard from a lot of different people that the med school acceptance rate is 50%, but I also know a lot of people who are what I would call slackers and they don't try in school at all but when asked what they want to be when they are older they say "doctor" or "surgeon". So taking that into account (I'm sure there are many other factors too) what do you think are the chances of getting into med school for a student who has say above a 3.5 GPA and (because I know people will tell me GPA is not the only thing that matters) at least average ECs, volunteering, and MCAT scores.</p>
<p>*also this is hypothetical, I'm just wondering how skewed the acceptance rate is</p>
<p>You’re going to be disappointed…the acceptance rate is still around 50% for “serious students”…this is because undergrad institutions and MCATs do a pretty good job of weeding out the slackers…but for a student with average stats for those accepted to med school (3.65/31), your chances are about 70-75% of getting accepted (not taking into account EC’s, LOR’s etc). For a student with average stats of all those applying (3.55/28), your chances are about 35-40%.</p>
<p>What do you do if you don’t get accepted? Can you try again next year, or do you have to give up and find another career? What other career can you get straight out of college if you fail to be accepted?</p>
<p>It’s actually ~40% and the fact that the average applicant’s MCAT is well-above the nat’l avg (28 vs. 24 – a bit over 1/2 a std deviation) indicates that there really aren’t (m)any “slackers” applying. Sorry, just about everyone who is willing to throw out $2k+ on apps is “serious” as a heart attack.</p>
<p>You can reapply if rejected but most reapplicants won’t get in either unless they make some VERY significant changes in that yr off…</p>
<p>The rate is about 43% out of those who apply. Many many more started as pre-meds and fell out of thrack later. One has a very good chances with GPA about 3.8+ and MCAT about 34+ as long as he applies widely, not just to top 5 or so. Usually such an applicant has few acceptances. NO SLACKERS are applying, for sure, application process alone requires high level of academic stamina.</p>
I wonder whether undergrad institutions (GPAs, esp. sGPA) or MCATs do a better job of weeding out the premed students. (I think it may be not fair to say that all those who got weeded out in the process are slackers. Some try very hard but not successful.)</p>
<p>Sometimes I think it is good to go to a college that has a reasonable (but not too harsh) weeding process in place. Think about this, it is just not likely in general that 800 students out of the class size of 2000 will get into a medical school in the end. If this path is not for you, it is better to know this in sophomore rather than in senior, so that yoy can pursue something else that is a better fit for you.</p>
<p>
The keyword here is “apply widely.” DS knows a student with 3.9/40 who applied last year and got into a single school in the end. He had tons of interviews. He just wasted a lot of money on most of these interviews.</p>
<p>After the application cycle was over, this applicant said that most medical schools thought he would stay in California with that kind of stats and did not want to take a chance with him. Also, maybe his list of schools is top heavy, and his ECs are not good enough for most top medical schools.</p>
<p>I’d say if you have a 3.6+ GPA and a 30+ MCAT, you will have a very good shot at getting into medical school, as long as you have the right personality and have done decent stuff outside of the classroom. The med school application process is very harrowing, but if you have the baseline talent (you will know from your GPA/MCAT), a good attitude, and decent study skills, chances are things will work out for you. There are also a lot of ways a 40+/3.9+ applicant can get a bad cycle, but I wouldn’t worry about outliers too much.</p>
<p>31.5 % of applicants had a GPA of 3.39 or lower
39% of applicants had an MCAT of 29 or lower
65.5% of applicants had a GPA of 3.39 or lower and an MCAT of 29 or lower</p>
<p>To premed4: interesting numbers you throw out there. Have you analyzed what those numbers might mean? If you need some ideas I’m sure people on this board can/will chime in. If you get bored again, I’d suggest finding figures for matriculants as well. Applicant data can be misleading because the matriculants are the ones who actually get in. US News & World report has some good numbers. PM me for more info there.</p>
<p>Personally, I find the numbers to be abysmal and very discouraging. I believe I’m like the applicant lollybo is describing above (both of us are applying this cycle, FYI) and so far I have been very pleased with the interviews I’ve received (no acceptance yet though). I’m reasonably sure a contributing factor to my positive attitude has been a sheer disregard to the depressing statistics you’ve found. My advice to you, as a potential future applicant, is to use those numbers very sparingly and with proper context–perhaps occasionally early on to get a grasp on some odds–and then try to forget them. After all, you can only do what you can do–and hopefully for you, that eventually leads to an acceptance.</p>
<p>Hopefully, numbers like these are a wake up call but not a huge deterrent.</p>
lol. It’s early. I haven’t had my coffee and I’m a History major … and even I can see that the 65.5% is seriously wonky. (Hint: In the conjunctive - #3, the percentage can’t be higher than the lower of the first two percentages.)</p>
<p>@curmudgeon that was the number of students who had 1 or both of the traits so it would be higher but, since it was late and I was tired I would not take #3 too seriously because there is room for error but it would most likely still be in the same ball park.</p>
<p>Even if that number represents the % of applicants with one or both traits, I still find that number unbelievable since I would expect a lot of the 3.39 applicants to also be scoring below 29 on the MCAT.</p>
<p>premed4, keep in mind that the numbers you threw up had little to do with one another. A 29 on the MCAT is a HUGE accomplishment; a 3.4, not so much. A 29 on the MCAT places you right around the 80th percentile of a group that has already had its “fat” trimmed off on the left side of the curve (and not so much on the right). In other words, a 29 still places a person in, probably, the top 5-10% of their class at most universities. OTOH, a 3.4 is right around the 50th percentile at many universities.</p>
<p>Keep in mind as well that these numbers are for applicants and are, therefore, essentially irrelevant. What matters is who gets in. People with GPAs below a 3.4-3.6 have very little chance of getting in unless 1) there are significant extenuating circumstances (e.g., mom had was dx’d with cancer end of 1st semester and died 2nd semester and student ended up w/ a long string of Cs, Ds, and Fs freshmen yr but recovered and got all As sophomore yr on); 2) they are a non-trad w/ 5-10+ yrs between their first UG degree and a post-bacc; 3) the rest of the app (incl. the MCAT) are so extraordinary as to overcome the weak GPA (here were talking about someone who has a weak GPA from early on but later did medical research in Guatamala on a Fulbright; is on the Olympic nat’l team for 2012; has excellent clinical & volunteer experience; and has stellar LORs); or 4) the reputation of their school AND major is so hard that it buffers that 3.3 a bit, but this is quite uncommon. Most people w/ <3.2-3.4 aren’t going to be accepted anywhere and even 3.2-3.4 is certainly unfavorable. Sure, there are exceptions but most people aren’t the exception (by definition).</p>
<p>Of course, if one is URM, req’d MCAT & GPA each drop a few pts (10ths of pts for the GPA).</p>
<p>I would say <50% for MD schools. But for those who “are serious” and apply to both MD and DO schools, I think the percentageg is >80% acceptance. Especially since the average MD applicant is above the averages of DO acceptees, which implies that many of those students who aren’t capable of getting into a US MD are capable of getting into a DO program.</p>
<p>There aren’t any statistics that indicate how the 60% of those not accepted to allopathic medical school proceed (for all we know, most of them may end up in osteopathic medical schools) </p>
<p>So I don’t know how accurate it is to say that a majority of serious applicants DON’T get into medical school, if you are including all US medical schools of both allopathy and osteopathy.</p>
<p>^Sorry, doesn’t hold water. Stats show over the past few yrs a total of only ~4.5k students entered DO schools/yr. With only about 18.5k of 42.7k MD applicants being accepted (43%), there are still 24.2k left out each year. IF all DO applicants also applied to MD programs (which is CLEARLY NOT the case), we would still have 19.7k students unaccounted for (or roughly 50%). In reality MANY students apply DO only AND are accepted (many of these are non-trads and/or those who prefer the DO philosophy).</p>