Given med school students come from anywhere, is there a reason a boost is needed. I think more come from certain schools because those school have more higher academic profiles but I don’t think a school name or guidance matters. There’s so much guidance on line and so many programs to apply to. I don’t think there’s a gold passport, is what I’m saying.
Here’s the Va Tech link again it works for me
If not, just google medical shadowing + Va Tech.
No, if they had a success rate with students coming right out of undergrad they would have said that. First attempt includes 30 year olds/mid career folks, one or more gap year, and all the post-Bac graduates….
But my guess is that medical school students who come from everywhere do not contrast with some schools may be better than others. Some students may have to work extra years just to catch up with others. These may not be reflected from the data.
If the extra help may speed up things, that would work in our interest.
Can you please explain this? Are you saying that students at “better” schools do not do glide years and students at “lesser” schools need extra years to catch up?
That is how I am interpreting what you wrote, but I may be wrong in my interpretation.
That’s because Skidmore uses a health professions committee letter to control which pre-meds are allowed to apply to med school. The HP committee provides LORs only to those students whom they believe have the very best chances to gain an admission. No HP letter = no med school application.
HP committees hold a huge amount of control over students. And one of the goals of HP committee is to keep the applicant success rate high.
And applying without a HP letter when your school offers one is huge red flag on your application. Students are asked to explain this omission on secondaries.
(Med schools have 2 step application process. One first sends out an application through AMCAS, AACOMAS or TMDSAS to those schools one is applying to. Then the individual med school will send out a more detailed, school-specific application, called a secondary application, to individual students.)
Additionally, different undergrads count med school admissions differently. Some only count a MD acceptance. Some count only MD and DO admissions. Some count any admission to a med school, including overseas med schools. (Most of which will admit anyone with a big enough checkbook.) Still others count an admission to any advanced health care profession program (MD, DO, PA, NP, OD, DMD/DDS, PsyD, DPT, MOT, DC, etc) as med school admission.
Also absent from the HP data is information about whether the student has completed a grade-enhancing or career-changer post-bacc program at another undergrad before applying to med school. Or completed a SMP (Special Master’s Program) program. Or how many years post-grad the student applied to med school. Given that most successful med applicants take a gap year or 3 before their FIRST round of applications, simply being a first time applicant tells you nothing about the strength of the undergrad advising at a college.
Glide/extra years aren’t needed “because some students need to catch up” - rather, because Med schools want students who are more mature than just-graduated college students, who have had more experiences and have lived many more things. Some may have participated in the Peace Corps or in TFA, some may have worked at a shelter or a clinic, etc.
There are no shortcuts. No ways to make the path faster.
However, a supportive atmosphere, with easy access to professors and tutors, would go a long way toward helping students who want to join Health professions.
I’m impressed with all the students who made it into Med school btw. It takes intelligence, fortitude, time management, care for others, many many qualities.
Ehhhh. Gpa. MCAT. Other stuff. I think you are buying into marketing hype - like kids do of all ranked schools. Many believe it. I don’t. But we all think differently. My College of Charleston (by choice) kid is in a civic minded job with a 12-15 percent acceptance rate. She told me after orientation most were Ivy or Michigan/UNC types. Not all but most (she said, I dunno if that’s correct ).
What did she do ? Took advantage of the opportunities. My son in engineering similar - I was concerned he turned down top ten engineering for barely on the map. Yet got hired with kids from the same school ajd other high ranked schools - he told me I was falling for marketing I now think he was right,
Skidmore will have a higher percentage of high stat and wealthy students than Salisbury, as an example. A higher % of Skidmore students likely have interest in med school than at Salisbury.
And yes, their figures are jacked up given the committee sort of has it figured out - who will and won’t get in.
All things equal, are their odds better than the kid from Salisbury ? I think not.
Vandy - arguably the top cancer hospital. Here you go - there’s many areas of medicine and most look like this.
LSU
FSU
UTK
UNC
UAB
Vandy
UGA
Indiana
Northwestern
Wisconsin
Emory
Go to later years - a similar mix of elite and non
Lipscomb
Florida A&M
Fordham
Northern Illinois
Luther
Murray State
U Puerto Rico
Auburn
Rutgers
Colorado
Utah
and lots of UNC, Princeton types too but less than half.
And they all come from different levels of med school too.
Not a medical school parent but I’m guessing, like law school, the secret sauce is your student. They need to drive their future - including opening the doors through persistence
There is no shortcut available. But yes there are programs to help those interested become more informed but I don’t think they create shortcuts per se.
You’ll also find healthcare living learning communities at some schools which might excite your student.
It doesn’t matter what the placement rate to medical schools is from some undergrad school. What matters is whether your kid gets accepted.
Medical schools honestly really don’t care where you attended undergrad school for the most part (it’s not a high priority item when they are considering admission). What matters are your grades, MCAT scores, volunteering with underprivileged groups, patient facing experience, LOR, and in some places research.
BUT many many doctors do their volunteering, patient facing experience, shadowing during summers or school vacations, or during glide year(s). And some actually take the required courses for medical school applicants after undergrad also (remember, not every doctor decides to apply to medical school during undergrad).
@WayOutWestMom noted the important things when looking for undergrad schools, I want to reemphasize finding a place where the student thinks they will be happy and do well for their undergrad years. Happy students perform better than unhappy ones.
CNA, MA, EMS are not volunteer. They are JOBS..you can call them internships if you want to…but they are JOBS related to medical care. And they are excellent ways to demonstrate to medical schools that the applicant has some understanding about what they might see if they enter the medical profession.
What sorts of internships do you think would be better than working as a CNA, MA or in EMS?
Volunteering at a hospital on a university campus is not as easy to get as you think. My daughter had to go through a lengthy interview process over a period of several weeks, and spots were limited. She also had to pass a test in the second language she speaks.
EMT, CNA etc are difficult jobs that should not be diminished.
Wofford, mentioned above, has a January term with physician shadowing. It has been going on for more than 30 years and the students shadow a variety of doctors including pediatrics, family medicine, surgery, interventional radiology etc. They shadow for 110 hours. Students must apply to take the course, but otherwise don’t have to cold call or use their own contacts. Wofford maintains the roster of doctors. Since there are doctors who did this program as students, it is very robust. This is also a very equitable program since it doesn’t rely on a student’s own contacts. Students do get credit.
My Son-in-law’s brother (yeah, close relationship) graduated from the U of Wyoming and I’m not sure he did any or much pre-med stuff while in school. His father is a doctor so he had a little inside help. I think he took 2-3 years before starting med school and I don’t know what he did besides taking the MCAT. One of the reasons he waited a bit was, I think, because he was waiting for the new med school in Idaho to open as that’s where he wanted to go, and because it was free for the first class.
Graduating from UWyo undergrad, Idaho for med school, doing internship in Montana hasn’t slowed his career at all He’s a brain surgeon.
The Wofford program sounds like what OP is seeking. I did a google search. None, including that one, came up. St Lawrence provides some good info and possible help too.
It might be a good idea to ask your own providers what their path was.
OP- There is a lot of enthusiasm for gap years on college confidential. If your student is interested in medicine now, stays interested and does well then they are likely to be well prepared without any additional time. UGA has this helpful guide for structuring the undergraduate years.
I am going to go against the majority posting here. It is not logical to avoid areas with lots of undergrads or areas with competitive undergrads just for the sake of it, nor is it logical to avoid the most competitive colleges for that reason alone.
My kids are/were at top 10s, now one is at an ivy for grad. They are not premed but have many premed friends who have gone or are going through the process, and there are even parent-weekend meetings that address the premed experience and advising. As a physician working with premeds in our clinic from a variety of undergrads, I have some thoughts to add.
having a large successful cohort of premed peers makes a great environment. AMCAS has data, though one has to do the math to figure out % of undergrad population. 2024 FACTS: Applicants and Matriculants Data | AAMC (Table A-2). Note many medium sized top schools (6000-8000 undergrads total or 1500-2000 per graduating class, counting only Arts/Sci & Engineering since UG business and nursing almost never have med applicants) have 280-350 students apply every year to US med schools, or about 20% of eligible undergrads. Notably high are Emory and Johns Hopkins with 391, 450 with a graduating class of 1450-1500 or 30%. That is a lot of fellow applicants going through the process, and since the highest-percent-premed schools also tend to have very high success rates, the students meet upperclassmen who have been-there-done that, the professors are used to writing recs, having premeds in basic science labs, etc. Unsurprisingly most of the top schools based on % of undergrads applying almost all have affiliated medical schools on or close to campus.
Most of the schools with the largest % of US-MD applicants each year are also highly selective T25s or top publics. Most if not all of these top schools no longer gate-keep with a committee, and that info is available on their websites plus I have gotten specific details from students in my clinic who are current or recent applicants, and have attended for fun the premed-parent sessions at parent weekend. They emphasize no gate keeping. They have a committee that advises students whether to take a gap year or two, what their resume is lacking, where their GPA and MCAT stack up compared to previous applicants from the school, and can suggest where to apply, but they do not prevent anyone from applying. This is true at the schools where my kids attend(ed) (Duke, Penn) as well as Hopkins, WashU and other peer schools, and it is also true for UVA: they do NOT gatekeep. These schools report 70- 90% getting into a US med school. The national average per amcas is 40% of US applicants get accepted to at least one US MD program.
Gap years are not as likely from the top schools: JHU, Penn, Duke as examples report 35-40% of their med school applicants get accepted to a US med school with zero gap years. The majority of the rest have one gap. The national average is about 20% go to US MD programs without a gap year (80% gap). Gaps are not a negative nor do they directly imply a problem: they can be for prestigious fellowships, desired 4+1 MPH or MS degree, many reasons. However in many cases a gap is often due to not being on track with courseload plus having time for the extras(research, clinical hours). At the schools with non-gate-keeping committees, they will strongly encourage planning to spread out the courses if the GPA is not on target after the first 2-3 semesters. It is not a coincidence that the most selective schools have the most who do it without a gap year, and these same schools tend to have the highest % of undergrads who apply to med schools each year and the highest % who get in. Whether it is something the school does to prepare vs the campus culture of the large group of premeds supporting/pushing each other, or the selection bias of the super achiever students who attend these places is too difficult to parse.
The most selective schools have lightened up a lot on the “curving” of classes: the median for most stem classes including the oft-maligned orgo is “curved” to a B/B+ these days (vs B-/C+ as the midpoint of most curves when I attended Duke). C grades are now less than 20% of freshman and sophomore stem at most of the elite schools. Upper level sciences are curved to a median of A- in many cases. Among premeds, average applicant GPA is 3.7+ at the schools that either have tables on their websites or my kids go thus they have access to premed data. Some list 90-95% success for US MD programs with GPA of 3.75+ (note that is approx top 35-50% of the graduating class these days, not rare at these places). The overall AMCAS GPA/MCAT table lists 60% acceptance rate to at least one US MD program for all applicants with gpa>3.79 (82% for >3.79 and >517). The caveat is the top schools have median MCATs of 516-518, so the 90-95% for 3.75+ is skewed by the presumptive high MCAT.
TLDR: for the right kid who has the chops to get into such a school, the elite schools–despite many being in popular undergrad locations –can be ideal places to be a successful premed. PLUS these schools typically give the best need-based financial aid.