<p>I am a junior at Vanderbilt University and am trying to find a good list of med schools to apply to.</p>
<p>Major: Neuroscience
GPA: 3.66
MCAT: 35</p>
<p>My extracurriculars are very generic with nothing too special</p>
<p>I will obviously apply to all Ohio schools because I am a resident. I will also apply to Vanderbilt. </p>
<p>But the rest, I really have no idea. Is it worth applying to top 20 medical schools with my stats? I really do not know where to apply. I may want to apply to UCLA, even as an OOS student. The rest, I'm lost. If anyone has some recommendations of a few places to look at I would really appreciate it. Money is most likely not a huge issue if that makes a difference.</p>
<p>To tell you the truth, UCLA has little reason to accept you. Your GPA is just ok, and you don’t have great ECs. Your MCAT is very good, the they have enough instate students with that or better. They’d have no reason to even interview you.</p>
<p>Apply to all the midtier privates and a few higher tier privates in addition to your instate publics.</p>
<p>There have been a couple of recent threads about this. (HINT: search function works just fine.)</p>
<p>UCLA will be a very long reach. If you look at its OOS acceptance rate, it’s below 2.8% </p>
<p>Generally, do not apply to OOS public schools unless: </p>
<p>1) you have a significant tie to the state (graduated from HS there; parents live there)
2) the school takes a significant portion of its entering classes from OOS and the acceptance rate for OOS applicants is reasonable
3) you have a very, very good reason why that particular school </p>
<p>You also don’t say what kind of medical practice you’re interested in. Unless you want to go into academic medicine and/or research, attending a Top 20 school really isn’t necessary to be successful. Your successful entry into a specialty depends much more on USMLE scores than the name of the school of your diploma.</p>
<p>I would strongly suggest that you invest $50 in resources to help you form a list. USNew ($30 for online access to its grad school compass) and MSAR ($20 for 1 year online access). Also talk with health professions advising at your undergrad. They will know where students with a similar profile have been successful in gaining acceptances in the past.</p>
<p>Once you have a list of schools where your stats are equal to or slightly above the average matriculated (not accepted) student, then start tweaking it according to your personal preferences.</p>
<p>Preferences might include the location (you’re going to have to live there for the next 4 years); curriculum; grading (P/F vs. graded); teaching approach (lectures vs small group learning); early clinical exposure; whatever is important to you.</p>
<p>If you have the time and money, you can add some reach-y schools to your list as wild cards.</p>
<p>BTW, this is the same advice I gave D2 who’s also applying this cycle.</p>
<p>I pretty much agree with all above. Apply to your in state schools and your selection of privates. Vanderbilt may be just as much of a reach as UCLA due to the large number of your class mates who will be in the applicant pool. Currently you are not a strong candidate for any of the top 20 medical schools. A 4.0 this semester and next semester would bring your GPA up in the 3.75 range and with a strong upward trend and a good undergraduate school you become more competitive. Ohio state by the way is a pretty good medical school and probably less expensive than any of your private options. UCLA does not take state residency into account for admission but your numbers are not compelling. I should note that most of the top medical schools, especially the private ones like significant research experience. Attending a top medical school only matters for the minority who will be trying for a highly competitive specialty or highly competitive residency.</p>
<p>To be fair though, that’s the all program all specialty average. For example PM&R scores that metric as a 2.9/5 while plastics has it as a 3.7/5. It would be real interesting if you could see program by program. I bet the importance of school name is different at MGH than it is at middle of nowhere community hospital.</p>
<p>The fact that this and the analogous one for medical schools doesn’t have standard deviations bothers me so much.</p>
<p>I do not want to stray too far from the OP’s original post but in competing for a spot in a competitive residency many things are important. It is a complicated issue because different specialties tend to look for different things in their applicants and this even varies somewhat between programs in the same specialty. This has also changed through the years because it is more difficult now to evaluate students on paper because medical schools now vary so much as to how they evaluate students. When medical students were graded and ranked the USLME was not a factor in residency applications. As a general rule I would say the following items are important in evaluating applicants for competitive residencies. In no particular order: Interview, Grades or evaluation in the clinical rotation of your chosen specialty, LOR’s in your chosen specialty, Grades or evaluations in your required core 3rd year rotations, USLME 1, research and AOA status. What medical school you attended probably comes after all of the above but your school influences your LOR’s and research. The best research medical schools tend to have strong departments in almost everything. Lower ranked schools may not even have a residency in your chosen field. On the other hand some "average " medical schools may have some outstanding departments.
What it comes down to is that all allopathic medical schools are considered pretty good and that one can come from any school to any residency. Having said that, you need to be better at a “lower” ranked school to be competitive than someone from a “top” ranked school. While there is a heavy selection bias one tends to see the same people from the same “name” schools on the interview trail at the top programs.</p>