@WayOutWestMom - Thanks for these valuable inputs. I was not aware of this earlier. Do many med schools have their rotation in the teaching hospitals associated with them or do they send the students outside? How difficult do you think it is to find a dermatology residency outside? Can you suggest any pointers where I can learn about the medical school process about fellowship or residency for chosen fields?
If Drexel BSMD is not the best option, would you suggest anything else from our list? Thanks in advance.
She does not necessarily need to get into a specific major for med school admission. She could apply to med school from a less impacted major. However, she would need access to all the courses she would need for med school admission and I do not personally know whether there are barriers to registration for the UW courses she would need (for example if certain classes are restricted to certain majors).
During my son’s two visits, he heard a lot of students at UW complaining about grading in the entry-level and lower-level undergraduate weed out courses. UW also has an unusual grading system (students receive a numeric grade on a 4.0 scale, but in 0.1 increments) and I have heard that this can also affect GPA but I don’t know all the details. For a premed student where GPA is important, I would look into those things.
UW has a tool called DawgPath with very detailed information about course grading and GPAs. It is not public access, but I seem to remember that my son was able to access it with his UW account after he was admitted (he did not commit to this school, so I think it should only require an admitted student account).
DawgPath is a data-driven planning tool offered by UW-IT that students can use to search for courses and majors offered at all three UW campuses. The tool allows users to view the range of final grades for courses, courses commonly taken for each major, the distribution of GPAs for students accepted into capacity-constrained majors, and concurrent courses (i.e. what students in the past have taken in conjunction with a specific course), among other features. It also provides a glimpse into Career Outcome data, which ties back to our “next destination survey”.
AFAIK a 513 MCAT score is no joke (though in line with med school expectations, it’s not “just a checkmark on the list”). The 3.6 GPA is less demanding than usual med school admission.
My choice would be Case: great flexibility if she wants to pivot, excellent location and resources. And since the cost is similar to UW it’d eliminate “pre-science” at UW.
Would she be willing to revisit UCR and Pitzer, focusing on sciences&research in particular? Has she been able to visit non CA universities?
Pitzer turned out to be way more expensive with no scholarships. So we decided not to go with it. We did visit UCR sometime back and she is not inclined to pursue undergrad there. She has a couple of senior friends from there and probably based on their inputs too.
Thanks for the inputs on Case. I’ll keep it in mind. For Drexel, the students get 3 attempts to get 513 from what I heard. Again, I am not saying that will make it any easy but just checking if that will help. Anything about UMD?
We have not visited any non CA universities. We visited all UCs and a couple of CSUs. These 4 non CA choices are what we plan to visit in the upcoming weeks.
Most MD-granting schools have a nearby associated teaching hospital where their students rotate for the clinical portion of their training MS3-4. The teaching hospital hosts medical residencies in a variety of specialties. The proximity of the nearby hospital allows med student early clinical exposure, easier access to clinical research, and the opportunity to find mentors in the specialty they wish to pursue.
A fewer of the newer, smaller med schools don’t have an associated academic teaching hospitals and send they students to a small number of associated hospitals for clinical rotations. Osteopathic med schools typically also don’t have home academic hospitals,
Since Hahnemann’s closure, Drexel has scrambled to find clinical rotation sites for all
its med students. The sites tend to be community hospitals (non-academic hospitals) and clinics that host only a limited variety of residencies–mostly primary care, general surgery and anesthesia. Community hospital preceptors have less experience in teaching med students than academic hospitals faculty do. They may also have less time for teaching. (Teaching clinical skills is very time intensive and physicians lose money when teaching students since they see fewer patients.) Community hospitals also offer a less broad exposure to a wide variety and complexity of patients.
How difficult do you think it is to find a dermatology residency outside?
With competitive specialties, a student that doesn’t have home residency program is at a disadvantage because often medical schools will keep their own students for residency. It’s still possible to match into Derm, just harder. The student will have to hustle to find research opportunities and specialty mentors.
Derm is a highly competitive residency with only 78% of those applying to dermatology receiving a Match. Successful derm applicants have high USMLE score, have honors in all their clinical rotations, have derm-related research and strong letters of recommendation from their dermatology preceptors (clinical attending physicians who they have rotated under).
Can you suggest any pointers where I can learn about the medical school process about fellowship or residency for chosen fields?
AMCAS is the best place to start for information about the medical school admission process. NRMP is the best place for data about the residency Matching process.
For the most part these are smaller, regional community hospitals not a major academic hospital center.
For each hospital you should check to see what residencies, if any, they host.
Some the residencies at one or two of the hospitals were either closed or placed on probation within the last 2 years because they didn’t offer sufficient patient volume, diversity or complexity.
The affiliated hospitals are absolutely NOT in Philadelphia. Tower Health is Drexel’s biggest partner, It’s in Reading, PA which is more than hour outside of Philadelphia in a less than vibrant and somewhat economically depressed area. St Luke’s is in Delaware. Mostly these are smaller suburban hospitals not major teaching hospitals.
(FWIW, I grew up outside of Philadelphia and am familiar the area.)
And a 513 is higher than the mean MCAT score of Drexel College of Medicine matriculating students for 2023. The average 2023 entering Drexel med student had a MCAT of 511 and 3.66 GPA.
One can do research anywhere - you’re talking about med school loans. I guess, if you have UCs on the cheap and there’s others available on the cheap, I’m not sure why you’d spend heavy now.
You need to save for medical school - if it’s that assured - or risk becoming that doctor who is saddled with debt for life.
The classes can be taken anywhere - and research happens at most every school - including large flagships.
Of these, I’m risk averse - so I’d look at Drexel - if the student truly believes they will go to med school - but if you can go somewhere for half the price, I would personally do that.
Debt is not your friend and you’re adding onto it by making such an expensive choice undergrad seems unnecessary. There are the UMDs and UWs of the world out there (as solid as their reputation is - they are large flagships and that’s all they are) and there are others at much less a price - and still taking applications that will get you a similar experience and outcome. And if you’re in-state to CA, you’ve already got acceptances to others.
Would this suggest that if the student can achieve the stats required by the BSMD guarantee, they would be just about as likely to gain admission to Drexel med school without the BSMD guarantee (but with the same stats)?
