<p>Wow guys that was really helpful… thanks a lot bluedevilmike and sakky.</p>
<p>Earlier on this thread, there was a link to UCB’s numbers.</p>
<p>Through no fault of UCB’s, the numbers are utterly useless. The numbers UCB is using are some absurdly small percentage of their premeds. For comparison, Duke last year had 276 premeds applying and an incoming freshman class of 1,728 (16%).</p>
<p>Berkeley’s sample of 138 self-selected premeds from an incoming class of 4189 (3.2%) defies comprehension, especially if you know anything about Berkeley. Their sample is probably something like 20% self-selected premeds from their overall pool, not a useful number in any way, shape, or form.</p>
<p>Again, no fault of UCB for giving us whatever numbers they could - but the numbers aren’t useful.</p>
<p>Thanks sakky and bluedevilmike…very informative!</p>
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<p>I agree that the numbers are somewhat self-selected. That’s why you have to ask whether you think the numbers are skewed, and if so, in what way? For example, do you honestly think that the Berkeley premeds who don’t report in are any more or less successful than the ones that do, and if so, are they are more skewed than, say, the Duke numbers. Let’s keep in mind that every school’s premed numbers are incomplete in the sense that no student at any school is obligated to report on their results. </p>
<p>My personal feeling is that if the Berkeley numbers are skewed, they are actually skewed in FAVOR of making Berkeley look good. After all, if you’ve been rejected by all medical schools, I would think that you aren’t exactly champing at the bit to report that fact to Berkeley. So if anything, the reported data for Berkeley is actually optimistic.</p>
<p>I’d agree with your assessment of Berkeley’s numbers as well.</p>
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<p>My understanding is that any applicant at a school with a premedical advisor is required by medical schools to work through that office. For that reason, I suspect Duke’s numbers - along with the numbers for most public schools - are actually pretty complete.</p>
<p>Oh, I don’t know about that. I agree that any school with a premed advisor is required to work through that office. But the results are completely private. They are between the medical school adcom and that student. If the student wishes to share that information with the office (i.e. I got into med-school X, but not into med-school Y), they are free to do so. But nobody can force them to reveal that information. </p>
<p>So the point is, the office can know where a person applied, but not necessarily where that person got in.</p>
<p>You make sense, as (in my admittedly limited experience) you always seem to.</p>
<p>Still, at a school that knows how many students apply, any inaccuracy is going to make it seem worse, not better (since it can only ever underreport its acceptances, not its applications). This is in contrast to Berkeley, where you and I both felt like the ratio it reported is probably (dramatically) too high.</p>
<p>Also, I should correct an error in my last post - “public” should say “private” in that last sentence. Sorry, my fault.</p>
<p>Also I’m not even entirely sure that the committee would even know exactly which schools you applied to, never mind getting the information about which schools you got admitted to. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that those committee letters generally don’t go to the med-schools themselves. Instead, they usually go to AMCAS, which serves as a central clearing house for almost all US med-schools. It is through AMCAS that you actually designate which med-schools you actually want to send your materials to, and AMCAS then dutifully forwards copies of your transcript and your biographical information to those schools. This is the ‘round 1’ or the Primary App. Only those med-schools who like what they see in round 1 will actually invite you to submit the secondary application, which is the ‘true’ application, at which you then submit your essay answers, your individual faculty rec’s, possibly get invited to an interview, etc. </p>
<p>The point is, if you get rejected in round 1 by a given med-school, I don’t see how the committee would have any way of knowing that fact unless you told them about it. So let’s say you have AMCAS send your round 1 information to Harvard Medical School, and from that information, HMS dings you. The committee doesn’t know about that. In fact, the committee has no way of knowing that you even had AMCAS send your stuff to HMS in the first place.</p>
<p>Sakky, in post 24, you think that the numbers are skewed in to make Berkeley look better because of the student’s self-selection. Maybe this is case, but I am skeptical. Each college I was accepted to and rejected from sent me a questionaire asking various questions- you know the deal. Was I more likely to do one instead of another? Did my status effect my filling out the forms? No, not really, I remember being generally lazy and doing very few of them. Perhaps if some psychological study supported your conclusion, I’d give your theory more credit. Right now, I’m not convinced.</p>
<p>Drab, I agree, which is why I personally don’t know if there is skew in the sample.</p>
<p>However, my point is, if there is such skew, I would suspect that the skew would actually make the data look optimistic, rather than pessimistic.</p>
<p>Maybe I’ll buy that. I should also read up on statistics. I’d take it but I’m not that interested in it, so much so that I would sacrifice a semester’s class time and 3 or 4 units that could be spent on something so much more interesting.</p>
<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>Sakky and I are in agreement that schools generally aren’t in a position to know exactly which med schools you’ve applied to and certainly not which med schools you’re admitted to unless they have exceptional communication with their undergrads. Letters are not dealt with by AMCAS at any stage - advisors send those directly to medical schools.</p>
<p>Private schools, however, or schools with advising teams, will underreport their admissions statistics. They will know whether you are an applicant to medical school - not which ones and not whether you get in, but whether you’re an applicant. So when Duke tells you 85% of its premeds get in somewhere, that number is either accurate or too low.</p>
<p>In contrast, any school without an advising department isn’t in a position to know anything one way or another. It might be that Berkeley’s claim of 67% is right on the money. It might be too high (my suspicion). It might be too low. The point is that it’s only discussing about 1/5 of its applicants, so there’s just no way to know how the other 80% of premeds are doing.</p>
<p>What about pre-meds who are weeded out of the process? To say that “x percent of pre-meds get into med school” is misleading. Schools should mention that many choose to do other things, get very low grades and choose not to apply, or other things. “X percent of med school applicants get into at least one med school” would be more accurate in general.</p>
<p>Your point is well taken.</p>
<p>I will mention that, at least, in my experience, weeding out doesn’t occur in any kind of official capacity. Some students discover they aren’t suited for medical school, yes, but that’s a function of schools preparing students for med school, not schools trying to discourage kids from applying.</p>
<p>With that said, my experience is limited to just my school, so I can’t speak to others.</p>
<p>wow, this is a very informative post. So which schools would you say have good advising as compared to the UC’s? You guys have stated duke and johns hopkins, any others?</p>
<p>is the premed situation at stanford similar to duke?</p>
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<p>I would actually say that Hopkins has bad advising. In my opinion, it is completely inappropriate for the advisors to attempt to actively block your admission by giving you a bad rec, but it seems that that is exactly what is happening. </p>
<p>" student with a much lower GPA can still insist on having their application sent to the committee, yet Fishbein stressed this will most likely reflect badly in their recommendation, and there really isn’t any harm in waiting to apply, beefing up outside credentials and allowing senior-year grades to push up the student’s GPA. </p>
<p>Savage added to this that, “when students decide to take the plunge forward despite our advice, they are showing [to the medical school] that they are not using their best judgment.”"</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.jhunewsletter.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/21/3e7a3fbeb5814?in_archive=1[/url]”>http://www.jhunewsletter.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2003/03/21/3e7a3fbeb5814?in_archive=1</a></p>
<p>In my opinion, it is perfectly appropriate for the advisors to tell the students privately that they don’t think the student is ready to apply, but if the student decides to apply anyway, then deliberately tagging that student with a bad rec is really beyond the pale. That is completely inappropriate. If the committee in its honest opinion cannot recommend a student, then fine, don’t give them a rec at all. You don’t go around sabotaging student’s applications by giving them bad rec’s. It is the med-school adcoms job to figure out who should get admitted or not, not the premed advisory committee.</p>
<p>While I agree with the overall gist of your post, sakky, I do disagree with your notion that JHU should simply not give the student a rec at all.</p>
<p>That isn’t possible. Most med schools demand recommendations from your premed advisor, period. The only exception is if your school doesn’t write letters for ANYBODY.</p>
<p>If JHU didn’t give letters for some students, it actually would be BANNING that student from applying. That’s even less fair than a bad rec.</p>
<p>I thought about that, but I doubt that this is a serious objection. For example, as I’m sure you know, plenty of schools, especially the big public schools, basically offer a ‘form letter’ to all premeds who request one. That form letter serves as a generic endorsement of the school itself, as well as a nonspecific endorsement general skills of the student body itself. </p>
<p>So, fine, if the Hopkins premed committee doesn’t want to endorse a specific student, then they should just create a form letter for those students. Nobody on the committee has to sign their name to it. This would substitute for a specific and customized rec. A generic form letter, you must agree, is a LOT better than a bad rec.</p>
<p>Yes, that makes sense to me. I just didn’t think it would be a good idea to DENY a rec entirely.</p>