moosebuns

Is there a resource online that will list from which undergrad schools the accepted med school students are from? My daughter is about to apply to colleges and I am wondering if we can see lists from Med schools that state which colleges their students came from. This would help narrow her application process down. She has a 4.13 gpa in high school and a 2110 SAT score. We live in California and can only afford a public school so we are wondering if its best to go to undergrad at UCLA or UC Davis because they have med schools also.

bookiemom

Your D doesn't need to choose her undergrad based on whether the med school is there or not. She needs to go where she will be happiest and where she can get good grades and have a positive college experience. Either one is OK because she will be applying to all the public med schools in CA and lots of other places too.

Med schools do take a number of students from their undergrads, but not all that many. It might help her if she could work as an undergrad in research at the med school (so she might know a professor or two to write letters of recommendation) but you can't count on that experience.

i_wanna_be_Brown

any school in the top 50-100 of US News will be fine. The higher the rank the better but you have to balance things like finances and whether or not your daughter actually likes the school

Mistrbackgammon

There is not a good online resource for what schools produced the most successful applicants but there are good data on total applicants by race at:
https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/appl...42/table2.html

From these tables you can see also what schools contributed the largest number of applicants and as you can see UC-Berkeley and UCLA were two of the top three schools nationwide. The AAMC recommends going to an undergraduate school which regularly (not rarely) sends people to medical school. All of the UC schools probably would qualify on this basis (and are excellent schools) but Berkeley and UCLA are certainly the best known and most highly regarded nationally, probably followed by San Diego.

State of residence matters a great deal in medical school admissions, sometimes almost as much as race/ethnicity. California is not currently a good state to be from due to a relatively small number of medical school spots and very odd and unpredictable admissions criteria at several of the state schools. For this reason the national reputation of the college may matter a little more because there are many Californians in scattered medical schools (e.g., there are at least two UCLA graduates in my son's medical school class in North Carolina).

calicityboy

My ugrad was MechE at UCLA...I attend a UC medical school...

Attend the school that you can excel at the most. Med school is a very competitive process esp in the state of Cali, we have 7 med schools (Loma Linda is religiously affiliated and most people don't apply there)..that's 5 public med schools and 2 privates that are equally if not harder to get into..stanford and usc. Given this, in my experience, med school cares about numbers and uniqueness. Numbers get your application looked at, uniqueness gets you in. Since your daughter is just starting out, I'll focus on numbers...

do not trade a better school for a lower GPA but go to the best school that she can excel at. for example 3.9 at UCI/UCD vs 3.5 at UCLA/UCB - go to UCI. 3.9 at any of those schools? go to UCLA/UCB. you don't want your app screened out because your numbers are low compared to others. The same concept applies to majors - don't choose a harder major (ex: engineering) thinking med school will cut you slack on your GPA if it is lower than other majors. If they do cut you slack, it's very minute - at most 0.1...a 3.5 in Engineering does not equal a 3.9 in other majors, it doesn't work that way. You choose your major, you're suppose to choose one you have passion for and that you like, so you better do well in it is their logic I feel.

I'm currently a 3rd year in medical school and looking back going through HS, from ugrad to med school, and now on rotations and trying to choose a field and apply to residency. There is one overall theme in all of these applications, and I think it's the best advice you can give your daughter. If she wants to go to med school, she needs to work hard of course - but she also has to work smart to produce what admission committees want to see. It's a balance between self enrichment and real-world practicalities. We all know you can go from any HS to any college, and it's true that you can go from any college to any med school. I'm at a top 20 med school, my class has people ranging from Harvard to Cal-States. It's true that some places are better springboards meaning some HS (stellar ones) put more people into harvard or UCLA/UCB similarly some colleges put more people into med school - but I know plenty of people who if they were in different majors or went to a different college would not have done well and vise versa people who by virtue of their school and their major blew their chances at a US medical school let alone a california one. Many people from my HS went to UCLA/UCB thinking medicine, and after getting straights Bs for a year, they decided it was not feasible. I have equally intelligent friends or maybe even less hard working friends who went to UCD/UCI and are in great med schools b/c the level of competition was just right for them to be challenged and to excel and shine. I find it hard to shine in medical school because I'm with a bunch of people just like me and I know this won't serve me well when it comes to residency applications but I shined in HS and I shined in undergrad. The best place to go (the best springboard) for you is one where you can fully utilize that springboard and jump higher than the rest of the people on that springboard. Good luck with everything!