Direct Admit vs. Accelerated vs. Traditional

mcat2
Fri, 07 Dec 2012 23:15:43 +0000

I also personally met a grad at Yale who received a bio BS and MS had to go to 24 Med school interviews before a lower Ivy med school spot opened up.

I also personally know a grad from Yale (with BS, but not with MS also in 4 UG years) who, after everything said and done (that is, I do not know how many interview invites she got and how many interviews she went to), got into a SUNY med school and maybe another one (She attended the former in the end.) And I think she should be proud of her achievement as every med school in US is good.

Regarding the number of interviews one should go to in order to be safe to say he would likley get into at least one med school, I think the rule of thumb (which I learned from BDM at one time) is 10. I did hear in the past that some applicant had gone to over 24 (he must be rich as it would cost a fortune to do so), but I think it is rare. So I think Raycmr’s Yale grad example is an outlier – even though it could happen. Most Yale premeds without a major problem (maybe >80% of all premeds who actually apply from there?) would get into one with much fewer intervews.)

Re: accelerated/combined vs traditional routes, I have an observation about this after seeing so many academically high achieving high schoolers could not get into mid/high level combined one. Many high achieving high school students could not get into the combined one just because they do not have anyone to guide them how to “DO PREMED” at the high school level. At the college level, these high achieving students could more likely rely on themselves as they are older. Also, academic achievement alone is more a distiguisher for the traditional route. (College GPA and MCAT are an order of magnitude harder to do well than high school level AP course/test scores and SAT/ACT scores.) Of course, this is just my personal opinion. (I personally tend to disagree with the idea of going the accelerated/combined route (such a program, esp. at “more visible” colleges, is a dying species I think) for MOST, but not all, high school students though. Maybe it is because DS did not go that route…LOL.)