<p>Thanks, Berurah and Andi. I do think my husband is smart and motivated–very much like most of the kids I’ve heard about on CC. The other thing that strikes me about his experience is that we can’t always predict where we’ll want to go or what it will take to get there. For example, he could have picked a college primarily for its political science department and contacts–and ended up regretting it or sticking with that as his major. (He almost certainly wouldn’t have met the girlfriend–the child of two physicians, now a doctor as well–who first turned his attention to medicine.) </p>
<p>Achat–I’m afraid I don’t really know about med school admissions today, but my husband applied in the mid-1970s, just as the demand for places was skyrocketing (at least from these parts; unlike Audiophile’s experience, plenty of Yalies with GPAs above 3.6 ended up giving up or going to med school in Mexico). The first hurdle was being invited for an interview. As I recall, he got a letter from Georgetown telling him he could come for an interview at a particular time and place–which could not be rescheduled under any circumstances; they were offering something like 800 interviews for 30 places. (Is that possible? It seems really extreme, but I know that the odds were just absurd.) Seriously discouraging–but again, not the end of the story.</p>