Why is there such a huge disparity in acceptance rates?

Pre-Med & Medical School
1

<p>Why do law schools have far higher acceptance rates than medical schools? Maybe I'm just not looking at the right sources? But these are the two that I looked at.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.statisticbrain.com/medical-school-acceptance-rate-statistics/"&gt;http://www.statisticbrain.com/medical-school-acceptance-rate-statistics/&lt;/a>
<a href="http://law-school.findthebest.com/"&gt;http://law-school.findthebest.com/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Also, UT Southwestern has ~4000 applicants but only accepts around 230. So that's around a 5% acceptance rate as well... And that's just a rank 22 med school.... </p>

<p>I'm not sure what these numbers mean. </p>

2

<p>Acceptance rates at individual medical schools are low (ranging from 2% to around 30%). The overall acceptance rates for all med school applicants nationally is around 35-45% depending on the year. The number of medical school applicants has waxed and waned historically, and the recent years have seen an steady overall increase in the number of applicants.</p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/”>https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A medical school applicant will need to apply to multiple schools (15-25 is typical, more if there are any defects in their application portfolio) to best maximize their chances. Even then there are still no guarantees. Many applicants will get shut out everywhere in a single application cycle; many will get shut out over multiple application cycles.</p>

<p>For the current application cycle, there were approx 48,000 applicants for approx 20,000 available seats. This s 6% increase in the number of applicants over last year. </p>

<p><a href=“https://www.aamc.org/newsroom/newsreleases/358410/20131024.html”>https://www.aamc.org/newsroom/newsreleases/358410/20131024.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>(NOTE: this does not include applicants to osteopathic medical schools. DO program have a separate application process from allopathic medical schools. In 2012-13, there were approx 22,000 applicants for 6000 available seats at osteopathic medical schools…)</p>

<p>One thing to consider, however, is that the quality of medical schools nationally is rather flat, despite what USNews says. There is quite different from law school where the rank is important. All US medical schools teach a standardized curriculum and all med students take the same national standardized exams (USMLE) for licensing. Graduates of every medical school have a more or less equal opportunity to enter any specialty or residency program. </p>

3

<p>In addition to what WOWMom says, I think also law school acceptances are much easier to predict (greater, GPA/LSAT weight, no interview) and so you get a smaller, more enriched pool of applicants applying to each law school compared to each medical school.</p>

4

<p>“Also, UT Southwestern has ~4000 applicants but only accepts around 230. So that’s around a 5% acceptance rate as well… And that’s just a rank 22 med school…”</p>

<p>And your point is? UTSW is a top tier med school …any of the top 25 schools should not be taken for granted…doing well at UTSW will get you ANY residency you want ANYWHERE…with Parkland as a primary training ground its students get to see and do so much more than at many places making them very well prepared for residencies and highly sought after…and it’s ridiculously inexpensive.</p>

5

<p>I didn’t really have a point. I was just saying that even a rank 22 med school has such a low acceptance rate; think how low they are for higher ranked med schools. I know UTSW is really great lol. </p>

6

<p>Harvard’s is around 4%
JHU is around 4%</p>

<p>In other words not really any lower.</p>