<p>Re: “they are all relatively small percentages. (even Dartmouth’s med school.)”</p>
<p>OP, Several points.
Accepting 24 (?) applicants from its own college is already pretty “generous” (I know that the number of applicants is 169 so the percentage is not as high as you would like to see.)</p>
<p>Re: “all relatively small percentage”:</p>
<p>It is understandable that you do not understand how the med school admission “game” is played, because you have not had experience yet. I did not know any of this when DS was your age.</p>
<p>When a high schooler applies to college, he may apply to, say, 8 or 9 colleges at most (at least this was the case when DS applied to college.) This was because the incoming class at a college is, say, 1400 -1600 even for many private college and the student does not need to apply to too many colleges and still has a decent chance to get in a few of the colleges.</p>
<p>To apply to med school, many applicants apply to, say, 25 or even 30 med schools, hoping to get into one or just a smaller number of med schools. This is because the incoming class of a med school may be only 150 matriculants. If the applicant applies to n med schools and the acceptance rate is 0.05 (or the rejection rate to each school is 0.95), the odds for such a student to be accepted to zero school is 0.95 ^ n, or 0.95 to the power of n. So the probability that he is accepted to at least one med school is 1 - (0.95 ^ n). By increasing n to a reasonably large number, his rate of acceptance to at least one med school could be increased to a relatively “comfortable” percentage. The main reason here is the size of incoming class is just 150 or so (only exception is that the incoming class of almost all Texas med schools is “Texas size”, over 230 (?).)</p>
<p>I heard that many med school graduates gunning for competitive specialty residency programs could apply to, say, even 100 residency programs because each program may admit a “low single digit” number of residents each year. So, the applicants can not afford to apply to too few residency programs. Do you see how tough the road to those competitive specialties may be?! </p>
<p>Few other points: Relatively few Texans will attend elite OOS schools like Dartmouth College – even fewer of them from Texas will be on the premed track.</p>
<p>When DS applied to med school, he once commented that almost nobody in his circle of premeds at his college would bother to apply to any med school in Texas (not even including BCM which is an AMCAS school; it is not a TMDSAS school.) I would guess there were less than 5 premeds (maybe only 3 or 4 in his class year) from his college who are Texas residents and applied to Texas med schools. So if you want a lot of peer premeds who apply to Texas med schools a few years later, stay at any good college in Texas.</p>
<p>Also, as a Texas resident applying to OOS med schools in other states, you will, generally speaking, be disadvantaged. This is because there are, relatively speaking, too many “cheap” med schools in Texas so those OOS med schools, with the exception of the tippy top ones, do not believe you will attend if they admit you. You have an extra burden to prove to them that you are willing to attend an OOS med school if accepted.</p>
<p>By going to an OOS college, you may still be slightly disadvantaged by applying to a med school close to or affiliated with your college, just because you are from Texas – however, at least you have earned some “credit” by demonstrating that you are willing to get out of “the Republic of Texas” for college. You will NOT be disadvantaged when applying to Texas med schools because you are still considered as a Texas resident.</p>