<p>
[quote]
There are many, many students who don't get in through the traditional route who could have gotten into a program
[/quote]
NCG agrees with this statement, but I don't. These kids are so carefully screened during the BS/MD admissions process -- not just for numbers but for the extras that they'll need -- that I highly doubt the program is allowing "many, many" kids to sneak in.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I am very volatile in many regards
[/quote]
</p>
<p>ha. that's for sure.
joke. joke.</p>
<p>^ That was a joke just to reiterate to CP before they flip out.</p>
<p>I agree with BDM that students that make it the traditional way would have a hard time getting into a program. The small number of students getting accepted to these programs is a big part of what makes them very competitive.</p>
<p>For me, the guarantee that I don't have to worry about getting into medical school helps the most and getting to bypass med. school applications is a big plus.</p>
<p>
[quote]
NCG agrees with this statement, but I don't. These kids are so carefully screened during the BS/MD admissions process -- not just for numbers but for the extras that they'll need -- that I highly doubt the program is allowing "many, many" kids to sneak in.
[/quote]
BDM, you are right. That was an exaggeration on my part. "Many, many" is definitely not the right choice of words, but rather "some." Therefore, I think that everyone who has decent stats should try for a program because they don't want to be that some. I'm not saying they should go to the program, but they should keep that option open.</p>
<p>IP, I can take a joke, don't worry. =)</p>
<p>It is certainly true that the screening processes for BS/MD kids is not perfect, and that some of them would not normally make it into medical school.</p>
<p>However, the relevant statistics advertised are usually the national average of 50% -- which is not what's applicable to these kids. I'd wager it's more in the 90%+ range.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>I agree with BDM that most of these kids who get into BS/MD programs have the academic credentials to make it through the traditional route. These kids are Ivy League/Stanford/Duke quality. While 2.6 GPA's are common at state schools, GPA's below 3.0 are NOT common at elite private schools. A 3.0/3.1 would probably put you 1 std. dev below the mean at these schools (meaning you'd have to be in approx. the bottom 16%). Considering the avg. GPA/MCAT at DO schools is only around 3.4/27 and even lower at Carib schools, if you truly truly truly want to be a doctor, you will be a doctor.</p></li>
<li><p>However, the reason I say that most of these kids will probably not make it to med school via the traditional route is that they'll realize that medicine is not for everyone. In this day and age of declining salaries, increasing work hours, increasing malpractice premiums, and decreasing physician autonomy, medicine is hardly a glamarous profession. Many people realize this, but only after they enter college. There's a reason 75% of college students change majors...it's very very hard to decide your entire professional career as a high schooler. You will change your mind. College affords you the flexibility. BS/MD programs do not.</p></li>
<li><p>From reading the posts on these forums, it's pretty clear most of these kids know very little about medical school or the medical profession. Half of them didn't even know you're supposed to wear suits to med school interviews. One kid didn't know what euthanasia was. Did any of you know the difference b/w a PBL-based and a traditional curriculum? Or what "early clinical experience" means? Or whether you like research enough to go to a research-oriented med school? Do you know the grading systems of Brown or Northwestern Feinberg or WashU Med? As a high schooler, it's hard to know what you'll want in a med school when you don't even know if you'll even like your college. You are ready to become a doctor at any costs, even if it means entering into a profession whose future is uncertain, attending a college you don't like, and matriculating at a med school you know nothing about.</p></li>
<li><p>Even though I couldn't even get into UCSD this year as a college applicant, looking back, I feel very fortunate that I didn't apply to the UCSD BS/MD program after I was invited. I didn't know that UCSD students are reputed to be some of the most competitive and least happy med students. I didn't know I would hate the PBL session at Northwestern so much. I didn't know that St. Louis is a *****hole and that walking around at night even in Central West End would be somewhat of an adventure (some guy followed me for a block to WashU med school). As a high schooler, you just don't pay attention to those things because you are so preoccupied with getting in. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>I really really hope that med schools allow BS/MD acceptees to attend Second Look Weekend. I wouldn't apply to any BS/MD program that doesn't offer the applicant a chance to experience med school beyond what is introduced during the interview day.</p>
<p>so the national average is actually kind of misleading? out of curiosity why is the average so low? is it not due to the extreme competitiveness of medical school admission?</p>
<p>i mean ive heard about people with good MCAT scores and gpa who still dont make it...that makes it seem like i could try my hardest and still not get in. wouldnt it be worth it to go to a program then? </p>
<p>i mean i personally feel like i woudl be a good applicant and could handle med school but what if thats not enough?</p>
<p>The national average is perfectly fine for average students. It is NOT fine for the sorts of students who can get into BS/MD programs. These kids should really be talking about odds more like 90+%.</p>
<p>Good MCAT scores and GPAs are only part of the equation -- the rest depends on essays, interviews, EC's, etc. But BS/MD programs have already accounted for all this in their screening process.</p>
<p>As an anecdote of neuroticism,</p>
<p>I know a family (immigrant parents) who moved both of their kids (born here) to their country of origin at age four, so that they could pursue medicine as a career. Their rationale was that they were unsure that their kids could get into medical school based on the statistics, so they wanted them to grow up in this foreign country, so they could learn the language/culture where their parents had connections to get them in. Now, obviously, most of you are thinking...how the heck would they know if their kids could make it at age 4 or what their kids, themselves, would want to do? This scenario is obviously not typical.</p>
<p>I think it is also because the med school selection process is so arbitrary and random. For instance, just look at the recent "rejections" on the Nortwestern HPME thread. Students with excellent scores and ECs are being rejected even from an interview! </p>
<h1>Therefore if you are serious about med school, I think the guarantee of getting into med school after undergrad is pretty sweet and worth looking at.</h1>
<p>HPME thread:</p>
<p>Rejection here too.... : (((</p>
<p>ACT: 36
SAT: 800M/710CR
GPA:4.596 W and 3.97 UW </p>
<p>Today, 01:43 AM #2019<br>
DankStarbursts
Junior Member</p>
<p>Join Date: Apr 2007
Threads: 3
Posts: 68 "Rejection here too.... : (((</p>
<p>ACT: 36
SAT: 800M/710CR
GPA:4.596 W and 3.97 UW"</p>
<p>wow... </p>
<p>Today, 02:14 PM #2024<br>
obiobi
New Member</p>
<p>sat 800 800 790
sat ii 800 800 800
uw 4.0
excellent recs
lots of research</p>
<p>
[quote]
I think it is also because the med school selection process is so arbitrary and random. For instance, just look at the recent "rejections" on the Nortwestern HPME thread.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>1.) ... applying to HPME to circumvent normal admissions because HPME is arbitrary doesn't make any sense</p>
<p>2.) Medical school admissions is somewhat arbitrary, but you get around this problem by applying sensibly and broadly. There's no reason why anybody should be surprised not to get in anywhere. The process overall is very predictable, even if individual schools are not.</p>
<p>BlueDevil
1) There is no circumventing anything, it is just a matter of availing every opportunity to get into med school for someone who is set on that goal.
2)Just as you say "apply sensibly and broadly" one should also apply whenever there is the opportunity to do so.</p>
<p>Hence I definitely recommend the "combined med" opportunity.</p>
<p>My point is -- you advocate HPME because ... HPME is random.</p>
<p>Second, my point is that the process is NOT random the second time around, and so there's no need to compromise your undergraduate experience for it -- which accelerated programs (can) do.</p>
<p>Like I've always said: if that's your top choice anyway, hey -- take the program. But picking an undergraduate school has to come first.</p>
<p>this is popular because B.S./M.D. programs are considered a money-saver. More practical if one is really bent on med school. Plus, I think I'll have wayy more freedom to enjoy myself if I didn't have the threat of "taking as many science courses as possible and maintaining a 4.0" hanging over my head.</p>
<p>... a money saver? How?</p>
<p>And also:
[quote]
"taking as many science courses as possible and maintaining a 4.0"
[/quote]
This is not how most premeds have to work. The national average among successful premeds is a 3.6 -- and about half the kids in the country below that. Beyond that, many -- like me -- only take the premed requirements, plus maybe one or two more science classes. Hardly "as many as possible."</p>
<p>BDM, out of curiosity, what specifically do you think you got out of your education/life at Duke that could have been scarified had you gone elsewhere?</p>
<p>I personally feel that undergraduate education can be such BS for some people. A lot of people have a good experience with it, but others...it's just crap (I'm talking purely about the education...not the life).</p>
<p>A lot of them were specific to what I needed at the time -- and so I'm not going around telling everybody that they all need to go to Duke, only that they need to pick a school which fits well.</p>
<p>I'll post a more comprehensive list of reasons later, but for now, we'll leave it at this:</p>
<p>Senior year of high school was a very brutal time in my life. My best friend -- a young lady who meant the world to me -- and I had a falling out that we would take years to recover from. I was emotionally exhausted from the frustrations and guilt.</p>
<p>When all the acceptances and waitlists had shaken out, I ended up choosing between Duke and the University of Chicago, both excellent schools. At the time, they were separated by only one sport in the US News rankings, and to tell you the truth, I hadn't even thought about Duke. I had been waitlisted, and they told me that if I were interested, I should let them know. I wasn't, and I didn't, and I ended up with an admissions packet anyway.</p>
<p>My college counselors, teachers, and friends were all of one opinion, which I shared: Chicago was the better fit. It just made more sense. I belonged there, and that campus culture was much more to my liking. And as I sat down to talk about it with my friend -- The Girl -- she looked at me and told me the same thing. "You just don't fit in at Duke. You're a Chicago boy."</p>
<p>And as I thought back over the past few months, I realized that I wasn't the sort of boy who might belong at a place like Duke -- and that I wanted to be.</p>
<p>Duke is of course an academically excellent school (as is Chicago). It has one of the premier biomedical research faculties in the world, outstanding students, and importantly, faculty who really truly pay attention to undergrads. But most importantly, Duke is a great place to grow up. I had -- by my own choice -- an exceedingly bumpy first year, away from the... ivory-tower intellectual atmosphere I'd buried myself in during my high school years. I got to know my classmates, and the housekeeping staff, and my professors. I learned how to speak to other people without putting them at arm's distance. Even as I was growing in analysis and intellect -- things which most elite schools will help you with -- I was also growing in understanding and responding to the people around me in ways that I never could have before. Duke helped me find the kind of balance I had always been missing in Berkeley.</p>
<p>Would the same thing have happened at Chicago, or Harvard, or Penn, or MIT? At Stanford, my ED choice? Or at Northwestern, Brown, or Case Western? No. Not a chance. Not because those are worse schools, but because that's not what I needed at the time. I needed to be at Duke; many other students will need to be at other schools. That's all okay. We grow up in different places and need different college experiences.</p>
<p>But my point is this: Duke helped take a frustrated, exhausted boy and helped grow him into somebody better able to serve the people around him. Compromising that would have been the biggest mistake of my life.</p>
<p>Thank you for responding to my q.</p>
<p>I do think that people can find an experience like you had, but for many of us, college is just school, it cannot and will not be more than that, therefore, it doesn't really matter where we go if the end result (med school) is the same.</p>
<p>Wait... to be honest, I don't understand why a person accepted to a BA/MD program would be of a caliber that makes them almost sure to be able to end up in the med school the traditional way.</p>
<p>Let's suppose a BA/MD accepted student has the following reasonable stats:</p>
<p>2250 SAT, 5-6 APs (4 or 5's), 4.0 UW, 4.7 W.</p>
<p>Those statistics would be of ivy caliber, but let's face it: many ivy premeds would be weeded out in the "traditional way" because of academic reasons anyway. Norcalguy, who went to cornell, professed that out of the 1000 original premeds, 150 ended in med school. I'm sure many of those premeds could have gotten into a BA/MD, and their lives would have been much easier.</p>
<p>NCG's point -- which I strongly affirm -- is that most of those 1000 switch for reasons of preference rather than reasons of ability. Beyond that, however, most questions of ability at that level will revolve around interviews, essays, the rest of the admissions "Game" -- which these students have already proven proficiency at. Top Cornell students don't struggle with the MCAT -- at least, not to the point where they're trying to break 29.</p>