CWRU’s pre-health advisors should answer this question…I would have your S contact them and directly ask what proportion of students don’t receive a committee letter and why. The reality is CWRU (and any other schools that use a committee letter) do this to help students…if they don’t give you a committee letter that means the student is highly unlikely to get accepted to med school. Of course that helps the school have a higher med school admission rate too. Note that some schools do have requirements beyond academics to receive a committee letter, for example, students may have to engage with the pre-health advisor team and programming.
I haven’t heard about grade deflation at CWRU, but believe there is a lack of grade inflation. Pre-med students work hard at any school, and to get top grades will be challenging and a grind everywhere.
This site on the percent of graduates who attend medical school may be of interest if reviewed for accuracy and plausibility and considered with respect to relevance:
Haverford, from your son’s choices, places 11th nationally in the first list in the site.
Being refused a committee letter or being advised that medical school applications are more likely to be futile than for the average applicant may be a good thing*, in that the student can switch to some other goal earlier instead of wasting a lot of time and money applying medical schools and getting shut out. But it probably does not feel like a good thing at the time.
Where there are committee letters, the pre-med admission rate to medical school does kind of indicate where the threshold is for giving committee letters and advising pre-meds to go ahead and apply. I.e. a higher medical school admission rate indicates that the committee encourages only the strongest pre-meds to apply, while a lower medical school admission rate indicates that the committee is more willing to encourage those with a lesser (but still somewhat realistic) chance of admission.
*Somewhat analogous to a high school counselor saying to the 3.1 GPA in mostly regular courses unhooked student with no high level EC achievements that “you have no realistic chance of admission to HYPSM; you should try applying to these other colleges…”.
What he needs to ask is how many freshmen are pre-med students are there (an approximation is fine) and how many apply for a committee letter.
This will tell much about how intense the competition is for good grades.
Asking how many students are denied a committee letter isn’t going to get a straight answer because the advisor is going to basically say no qualified student is being denied a letter.
As for all those denied a letter being unlikely to get a med school acceptances—that depends on what the committee views as the “minimums” for med school. Students with lower (but above 3.0) GPAs an MCAT ~500 usually aren’t going to be considered by MD programs–absent a strong narrative about their journey to medicine, but they are perfectly viable candidates for DO medical schools. (Especially some of the newer DO programs which are having difficulty filling their classes.)
I’m not sure about this. Many students opt of the pre-med pathway who are earning high grades in their classes. My D is a perfect example. Decided she didn’t have the passion to become a doctor/continue all the necessary schooling. Neuroscience major on dean’s list at a low acceptance rate LAC. There are many students who might have said they were pre-med as first year, but who opt out of that path for one reason or another.
Agreed. Overall pre-health advisor teams tend to not be very forthcoming with data, and we know many of them calculate med school acceptance rates in a non-transparent manner. Some even cook the books so to speak.
Agreed a committee can have whatever cut-offs they want. But it’s in their best interest to support students who have a chance at whatever types of professional health program they are applying to. Have you seen schools not support students who might have been competitive at DO programs (assuming the student wanted to apply to DO programs?) If so, that seems like an ethical breach. It certainly benefits the school if a student is accepted to a DO program.
That’s a tricky question to ask. We recently talked to a recent graduate from one of the schools on our list and the person was not able to provide the numbers on how many started on pre-med track and stayed and later applied to med schools.
We will ask, but I am sceptical that schools will have specific numbers.
They’ll have if a student was “registered” for advising.
Whether they’ll share - that’s a different issue. It’s likely a huge chunk of those who originally register vs. those who finish is just a small fraction and may not be a great look.
Yes, I have. This is because some HP advisors see osteopathic medicine as “not really med school” and aren’t really well informed about about DO schools and their admission process. And many HP advisors are not up to date about the current admission atmosphere (for both MD and DO schools.)
It’s been my experience that most HP advisors are only well informed about the med school(s) that their students typically apply to (their own med school, for example, or some of the in-state publics). But not med school outside their local area, save maybe for a few big name schools.
My daughter who attended a NY private undergrad that has a very strong reputation for it pre-med program (and which is very frequently mentioned here n CC for its excellent pre-med program) had advisors that literally couldn’t even name the med schools in the Rocky Mountain/Southwest area, much less know what their admission policies looked like or what were the required pre-reqs/ECs/LOrs typical GPA and MCAT scores were, etc. and basically told D she was on her own to figure out what they wanted.
Congratulations to your son on all of his great acceptances!
I bolded the word “most” here…if there are any schools that he didn’t like, eliminate them. Your son is the one going to college, he’ll be the one there day in and day out, and he is most likely to be academically successful if he is happy at the school he attends.
I’ve been sharing this post a lot this past week, because I think it’s a great methodology to help kids hone in on what’s important to them in a college and how to compare colleges on those qualities (which involves specifying the priorities, their relative importance, a kid’s score for each college for that priority, and creating a weighted total score): Parents of the HS Class of 2025 - #9032 by sbinaz. The link shows what was important to that particular student, and below are some additional potential categories that can spark some thinking:
Distance from home
Geography
Type of housing
Particular interests
Appearance of campus
Vibe of campus
Peer group
Size of classes
Range and depth of classes
Distribution requirements
Flexibility to change majors
Major requirements
Study abroad options
Climate
Prestige
Cost
Proximity to a favorite destination (multiple parents mentioned how the presence of a Chick-Fil-A or smoothie shop or Starbucks was of significant importance to their kid)
Right now your kid has great choices, and whatever matters to him is important here, even if we parents might roll our eyes (School colors?!? For some, yes!). In an initial look for colleges to apply to, the point is to brainstorm as many realistic options as possible. At this phase, it’s to narrow down the choice to one. Right now, all he has are great choices, so whatever decision ends up being made will be a great decision.
I also want to point out this portion of the post I linked:
This is definitely one option. But, if the score doesn’t end up where their gut/instinct said it would land, their gut/instinct is probably pointing out where their true preference lies.
Thanks for sharing, that type of behavior and lack of knowledge of pre-health advisors is sobering. And I maintain an ethical issue that schools should rectify. Not to mention short sighted as more MD/DO acceptances helps the school and their data.
If someone started pre med intention and decided not to follow through, that is not really the school’s fault.
So of 100 start and only 30 finish, yes it looks bad but it’s not the school’s fault.
I think (personally) you are getting to paralysis by analysis.
What are you truly willing to pay ? I’d personally zap the full pay because there’s no reason.
Of those remaining, which does he like best ?
All send to med school.
And if the ‘only’ reason you eliminated state schools was pedigree, I’d add them back into the equation in case 1) either he liked them better or 2) they ate even cheaper.
I don’t buy all the - CWRU deflates and no one goes to med school stuff bcuz kids from all these alleged deflation schools do go.
He needs to go to the best combo of budget and fit that there is - plain and simple.
If it’s meant to be (med school), it’s meant to be. If he changes his mind as most seem to or he’s not accepted anywhere, he’ll still be in a great place.
If going to med school is that important, why not see if any LECOM assured schools are still taking apps. That way, you have a worse case fallback option. You eliminate a lot of stress.
We see our son who is 2 1/2 hours away a few more times than tsbna44 suggests – haha --but it’s literally: “We drive there, take him to lunch, give him a $20, and drive back home.” So if you can handle that type of visit -then 1-2 hours is nice. Otherwise, they are quite busy – more so for a potential pre-med student.
So he gets - lunch not in the dining hall and $20. Sounds like a win for him
Interesting note on pedigree. A young man on another thread is choosing between UT (Austin) and Wesleyan. He says not a single person he’s talked to has heard of Wesleyan.
I think that’s a lot of schools - similar to how someone sees a Rice from being in NY.
I know the people that need to know - know - but I think a lot of times people overstate the “pedigree” in the general public. I’m guessing if you stood on a street corner and asked 100 people what state Haverford was in, 95 likely wouldn’t know.
I say that because - it really should go back to fit - and fit alone. All are fine for med school - or if med school doesn’t work out.
Yes - I’m trying to make ‘visits with parents’ associated with positive feelings. He teases me that we are using classical conditioning on him. Glad he is learning something in his psychology classes. Haha!
I agree that fit is most important. We see a lot of students start as pre-med (or pre-PT, DDS, etc) – and many of them end up in fields they had never thought heard of – like cardiac rehab or respiratory therapy.
Since you mentioned that many premed change majors…and I think all premeds need a Plan B, you might want to have your student look at this site. It has a lot of other careers related to health care.
This would be a red flag for my search. Yes, they have some experience, but it was proven multiple times that committee may be wrong. That’s one of the questions I would ask: who gets supporting letter? are their requirements to be met?
We visited one (state) college and someone asked Dean: “what is med school acceptance rate?”. He said “basically 100%, because we know right away who will get in and don’t write supporting letters to other students”. The school was crossed off the list right away.
Agree with you. Distance from home was not a deciding factor, but it was among the factors. Our student is also drivable distance. We see him more often that just for breaks which we both really appreciate.
