<p>I’m not familiar with Hopkins’ program specifically, but several colleges & universities use the method to increase their accepted percentage. From what I’ve seen, most schools have a cut-off GPA; at some, there is also a cut-off MCAT. So over 90%, while still a very impressive statistic, is not completely accurate, because it’s likely there were more students with lower grades and lower test scores, and that group most likely did not have a 90+% acceptance rate.
It can be misleading, so you just want to find out what each specific school you are considering does. Amherst has a great policy! If you search around a little, you can probably find the stats on the website-if not, or if it’s not clear-ask!! For example, in 2003, 73% of all applicants with a bachelor’s degree from my school (Case Western) were accepted to medical school. They also calculated the number of applicants with a math & science (BCPM) GPA of 3.4 & above…that number was 86% accepted!</p>
<p>Also–Case Western has a pre-professional program for medicine (and law & dentistry, too). You apply when you apply for admissions for the school.</p>
<p>I called Northwestern and found that they don’t “precertify/prescreen” either. It’s rate has been “high 70-low 80%”, according to the health profession advisor I talked to. Northwestern does have grade inflation.</p>
<p>My speculation is that JHU practices precertification. Why? Because I heard how people from JHU say there’s not much grade inflation there. If you don’t have grade inflation, that means the GPA’s average is around 3.0/3.1 or so. You need significantly higher GPA than that for med schools admission. When most of the bio/phy/chem classes are filled with premeds, it’s just not statistically possible that most premeds get sigificantly better than the mean. So I don’t see how a school without grade inflation can get a rate better than/equal to Princeton’s (90%). Not to mention Princeton’s students are supposed to be of higher caliber. Berkeley/MIT have low/no grade inflation and their med admit rates are 60%/77% respectively.</p>
<p>However, Northwestern’s grade inflation doesn’t apply to orgo and, from what I heard while there, bio. A friend got a C (ranked 6 out of 400+ in high school) at NU for the first sequence and then got an A (to get credit for the second sequence) in a college near her home over the summer! My another good friend got 2 consecutive “B+” for his first 2 orgo sequences while getting A/A- in all other classes. He’s HPME but took MCAT “for fun” and got 36 on it!</p>
<p>seems like it’s a give/take situation. you risk not getting the approval from your school, but if you do, you’re in good hands…former dean of hopkins medicine…wow.</p>
<p>While it seems that JHU won’t formally prevent a subpar candidate from applying, the quote that “A 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…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” seems extremely ominous. So in an informal sense, they are basically prescreening their applicants, because if your recommendation is poor, then that’s going to hurt your application. </p>
<p>At first, I thought that this problem could simply be solved by having the rec process be optional - as a JHU premed, you can choose to get a rec from these guys or not. But then of course, med-schools would learn quickly that if no rec is included in the application, then it must be because the student knew that he/she would not get a good rec, so no rec is basically the same as a bad rec. </p>
<p>So at the end of the day, it is defacto prescreening. That explains JHU’s high placement rate.</p>