Dartmouth Pre-Med

T26E4
Sun, 06 Dec 2015 13:16:49 +0000

When colleges publish their med school attendance rates, that’s the number of SENIORs or recent alumni who apply and get into med schools. What’s lost is that many students drop out of the med school track b/c they discover they can’t cut the work while in undergrad.

I took Intro Chem as part of my engineering courses. There were billions of freshmen wannabe docs. After mid terms and first term finals, the cynical joke was “Chem 115, birthplace of more Psychology majors than anywhere else”

For instance, while there could be 500 entering freshmen who have “pre-med” on the brain, come senior year, this might be 50 students – and 90% of THEM get admitted to med schools. This rate doesn’t mention the 450 kids who dropped any illusions of med school along the way.

Med school acceptance rate is a measure of selectivity of the college (i.e. its ability to admit students who rise to the caliber of admissions worthy in the eyes of med schools) MUCH more than a measure of the college’s ability to ready students to apply to med school. For example, while Dartmouth might have a 90% accept rate, University of Tenn might have a 45% accept rate. All it says is that there are more delusional applicants at UTenn than at Dartmouth – but it says nothing about the quality of preparation between the schools per se.

The med school accept rate speaks of a population – and has very little relevance to you, as individuals who are applying to that college.