Berkeley's placement into top medical schools

[sakky]

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Berkeley’s med school admit rate was around 70% last time I checked.

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<p>Uh, you may want to check again. It’s more like in the 60’s * for graduating seniors *. But as explained above, the figures for those applicants who are not graduating seniors (hence, who are alumni) tends to be lower. </p>

<p><a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm[/url]”>http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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That’s pretty good considering Berkeley does not have a pre-med committee and considering Berkeley is composed of 90% California residents. Being a California resident pre-med is a disadvantage because California’s public medical schools (UCSF, UCLA, UCSD, UCD, UCI) are all ultra-competitive. So while most of the pre-meds at say, Northwestern, have the advantage of applying to private med schools as well as to less selective home state med schools as backup, most Berkeley pre-meds don’t have this luxury as their state med schools are HARDER to get into than the vast majority of private med schools!

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<p>I agree with that analysis, but to follow that logic to its conclusion, that’s actually a reason not to go to Berkeley, but rather to instead choose an out-of-state school. If, for no other reason, you would at least be able to establish state residency in a less competitive state. In other words, you have actually given prospective students a reason to prefer Northwestern over Berkeley. </p>

<p>Look, it’s not fair that California doesn’t have any ‘less competitive’ med schools to take in all of the state residents who aren’t good enough to get into the UC med schools and that residents of other states have an advantage in this regard. But if you’re a premed, you have to do what is necessary to get yourself into med school, and if that means going to a school that allows you to establish residency in a less competitive state in order to take advantage of that ‘unfairness’, then so be it. </p>

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Perhaps this explains why Stanford’s 75% pre-med acceptance rate is lower than you’d expect from a school of Stanford’s reputation.

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<p>This is a rumor that I have heard before, but I have never seen any hard data to back it up. Do you have a link that shows that Stanford’s placement rate really is 75%?</p>