<p>From the forum it seems like Berkeley isn’t a very good premed school. Acceptance rates to med school for Berkeley isn’t better than acceptance rates at far less competitive schools. Why work insanely hard to get into med school when you can work less at another school and still get in to med school? If it wasn’t for this history of low acceptance rates at Berkeley or me wanting to be a doctor, I would have really wanted to go to to such a prestigious university.
Oh well, guess my top choice is now UCSD. UCSD is better in science anyways.</p>
<p>Berkeley’s pre-med acceptance rate (for its undergrads) is around 66% while UCSD’s is around 45-50%. The national average is about 50%. Sorry but pre-med is tough everywhere.</p>
<p>[Career</a> Center - Medical School Statistics](<a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm]Career”>http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/national.stm)</p>
<p>[Professional</a> & Graduate School: Pre-Medical Data](<a href=“http://career.ucsd.edu/sa/PMedHis.shtml]Professional”>http://career.ucsd.edu/sa/PMedHis.shtml)</p>
<p>UCSD is better for bioengineering and maybe biology. Berkeley is better for chemistry, mathematics, physics, engineering, computer science.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info!</p>
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<p>I think it should be pointed out that the Berkeley data is relatively ‘inflated’ in the sense that it only includes that of recent graduates (that is, those who graduated in the previous year), whereas the UCSD and nationwide data includes all graduates. You should also be able to deduce this information by seeing that, according to the data, UCSD apparently has about 3x the number of premed applicants that Berkeley does, despite the fact that UCSD actually has fewer students overall. That’s because, again, Berkeley doesn’t include all of those previous grads who apply to med school. There are plenty of people who apply to med school over and over again, year after year, and never get in. </p>
<p>While I don’t want to sound overly cynical, I find this to be a case of deceptive marketing on the part of Berkeley. If Berkeley wants to look at only the recent grads, that’s fine. But then Berkeley should be comparing them to the nationwide recent grads. Otherwise, Berkeley should be publishing the data regarding all of its grads. The structure of the comparison right now is comparing 2 entirely different things.</p>
<p>Hmm, that’s a good point. I didn’t notice that before. However, I don’t imagine the students who apply to med school over and over again would constitute a large portion of the applicants (by which I mean anything near 50%). They’re a small minority.</p>
<p>What seems more likely to me is that UCSD either has more students reporting, or Berkeley weeds out more pre-med applicants, or both. Whatever the cause, Berkeley’s numbers may be slightly inflated, but I still think it would be higher than UCSD’s when adjusted for that “inflation.”</p>
<p>Besides, other private schools are guilty of this as well. Don’t many of them screen their applicants?</p>
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<p>I’m afraid that’s incorrect, and provably so. In fact, they are the strong majority.</p>
<p>Want proof? Simple. Take your link above. That link indicates that 120 recent Berkeley grads applied to med school in 2006. That link maps perfectly to the following link, which describes the same 120 recent grad applicants in 2006.</p>
<p>[Career</a> Center - Medical School Statistics](<a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2006seniors.stm]Career”>http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2006seniors.stm)</p>
<p>However, Berkeley also publishes the applicant data of the 2006 ‘one-year-out’ grads - that is, those who had graduated in the prior year and had then applied to med school. Notice that this category includes 144 such people. Hence, the one-year-outs by themselves exceed the number of recent grads. </p>
<p>[Career</a> Center - Medical School Statistics](<a href=“http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2006oneyearout.stm]Career”>http://career.berkeley.edu/MedStats/2006oneyearout.stm)</p>
<p>That doesn’t even include the 2-year-outs, the 3-year-outs, and basically all the n-year-outs where n>1. But if even the 1-year-outs by themselves exceed the recent grads, then that indicates that a strong majority of applicants are not recent grads. </p>
<p>Now, to be fair, it is true that not all of these n-year-outs are people who just apply over and over again. Some of them are surely people who graduated a while ago and are tired of academics, so they take some time off to work before applying to med school (and perhaps getting in on their first shot). Others are people who graduated from Berkeley without having fulfilled their premed requirements, so they later complete a post-bac somewhere or otherwise fulfill those requirements and then apply to med school. Surely some others are people who enter some other grad program (i.e. a PhD program) and then discover later that they actually want to be physicians. </p>
<p>Nevertheless, I very strongly suspect that a substantial number of these n-year-outs are people who are just applying over and over again. After all, if you’ve already applied before, then that means that you’ve already completed all of the work necessary to apply, i.e. have done the prereqs, the MCAT, gotten all of the rec’s, already written the essays, etc. So the marginal effort in re-applying is relatively small. But the fact is, if you’ve applied before and didn’t get in, that probably means that something in your background is deficient such that you’re probably not going to get in the next time around.</p>
<p>did sakky use to be a policy debater?</p>
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<p>As further support for what I said, consider the official numbers from AMCAS. Now, first off, apparently AMCAS has removed the 2006 numbers from their website and replaced them with the 2007 numbers, darn it. So I can’t do a complete apples-to-apples comparison. But I think the 2007 numbers serve as a useful proxy.</p>
<p>[FACTS</a> Table 2-6. Undergraduate Institutions Supplying 35 or More Asian Applicants to U.S. Medical Schools](<a href=“http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/masian07.htm]FACTS”>http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2007/masian07.htm)</p>
<p>Looking in the 3rd column of the above table, notice how, in the 2007 application year cycle, a whopping 730 people who listed Berkeley as their undergraduate affiliation applied to med school. That’s 2nd most of any school, less than only UCLA. But of course that 730 includes Berkeley undergrads from the current AND previous years, meaning not just recent grads but also 1-year-outs, 2-year-outs, etc. </p>
<p>Now, it strikes me as unlikely to the extreme that 730 total people applied from Berkeley in the year 2007, but only 120 applied in 2006. That would be a greater than 6X increase in only 1 year. </p>
<p>The point is further reinforced when you compare UCSD figures. The UCSD link given above shows that, in the year 2006, 410 UCSD premeds applied to med school. The AMCAS link shows that, in 2007, 459 UCSD premeds applied to med school. The difference is therefore quite small, and certainly smaller than the 6X difference that the Berkeley numbers imply. </p>
<p>I think it’s safe to say that med school didn’t become that much more popular with Berkeley students to merit a greater than 6X increase in just one year. Rather, it strongly points to the alternative, which is that that 120 number for the year 2006 is simply far too small. The real figure is probably close to the 2007 figure of 730.</p>
<p>I think something is definitely suspicious with those stats. There has to be a drop-off in the number of people who are reapplying after one year versus graduating seniors. If you look at the graduating seniors 2006, and take that to be the complete stats, 49/120 were rejected. So even if all of them were to reapply the following year, the “one year out” people would only amount to 49 compared to roughly 120 for the graduating seniors of 2007. Then consider that out of those 49, many are looking at grad school, getting a job, taking time off, and it’s clear that only a small fraction of the 120 will apply next year (perhaps 20-30 out of 120). Of course, there will be some who were rejected and simply didn’t report the data, but unless they outnumber those who did report 4:1 or 5:1, they’re not going to outnumber the graduating seniors i.e. they’re making up less than 50% of the applicants.</p>
<p>Second point, I simply find it almost impossible to reconcile the second link that lists 730 people. Let’s make some rough assumptions. Let’s say 1 out of 2 people who are rejected decide to apply again the next year, and let’s say for every 1 of those, there are 2 people who are in the same boat, but didn’t report that they were rejected. Okay, so we have 25 + 50 = 75 students who were rejected one year and decide to apply again the next year. Now just for fun, let’s say that ALL those students fail to get in, and keep applying year after year. So for 2007, you have ~120 graduating seniors. To make up the other 600, you would need 75 students from 2006, 75 students from 2005, 75 students from 2004, 75 students from 2003. So to keep up that 730 figure, you would need all the rejects to keep applying and failing, for 5 years in a row. Come on, does that sound realistic at all?</p>
<p>What’s the logical explanation? A combination of the following:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>The 120 figure is severly underestimating the real figure because Berkeley’s data isn’t as complete (a lot of people probably don’t want to put their GPA as public data).</p></li>
<li><p>A lot of people who are applying for the first time after a number of years are included.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>What’s the conclusion? Those students who apply over and over constitute only a small portion of the 730, certainly under 50%. That’s the only thing that makes sense.</p>
<p>But all this aside, even if you are right and the “one year outs” are the strong majority, the data you provided shows that they get into med school at the same rate as graduating seniors, so it still doesn’t help your argument.</p>
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<p>First off, I am not so concerned about those people who apply over and over again into perpetuity. Obviously plenty of people who apply a few times (or even once) and get rejected are going to simply stop applying. Other people who haven’t even fulfilled all of the premed requirements upon graduation will do so later (i.e. within a postbac) and then apply and perhaps get rejected. </p>
<p>My REAL point is that Berkeley is not comparing apples-to-apples data. And the greater data that Berkeley does show that one-year-outs do indeed get in at a LOWER rate than the recent grads. NOT the same rate, but a LOWER rate. This data is further supported by other information which you can obtain from people on the premed section of CC that indicates that reapplicants in general tend to get in at lower rates than recent grads regardless of which school we’re talking about. </p>
<p>What that means is that the Berkeley data that you published in the post above (post #182) is probably misleadingly inflated. Berkeley’s true premed admission rate is almost certainly lower than what was stated in that link. The UCSD data, on the other hand, clearly attempts to capture all of its premed applicants regardless of year. Hence, comparing this data directly is problematic.</p>
<p>Berkeley certainly enjoys comparing itself to the caliber of elite private universities in terms of academics, and for other things such as graduation rate, it is compared to the nation’s average. Selective comparisons!</p>
<p>Hey guys. I’ve searched high and low on the math major, and I’ve found a lot of interesting information about difficulty etc. I wanted to ask a question in the context of what’s being discussed in this thread.</p>
<p>How are the math major students? I’ve had my tromps about the world, I’m married, and now I’m just hoping for a nice, respectful, academically intense, politically sterile environment.</p>
<p>Oh, and are there any particularly quiet libraries? Such as the math library perhaps? (;</p>
<p>Thanks much,
Joe</p>
<p>If you apply with your prospective major as undeclared, would it be more difficult to major in an impacted major (econ. specifically) than if you had written that major as your prospective major. I know its harder to get in if you put an impacted major on your application, but assuming you get in, does it make any difference?</p>
<p>for that major it doesnt matter. the reason is that econ is in the college of L&S and admissions admits you to that college blind of your major. and to get into the econ major you would have to apply after you have finished the lower division coursework required to declare that major. they wont give you extra points for deciding on econ before coming to cal as opposed to deciding after you come to cal. this probably differs in other colleges</p>
<p>@KGZoTU: Every math major I’ve interacted with has been exceedingly pleasant. You’ll definitely get the academically intense but respectful environment you want. Re: political sterility, it’s really up to you as to how politically active you want it to be; most math majors that I’ve spoken to are not particularly interested in politics, (especially when compared to math :)) The Math library is fairly quiet, the engineering library nearby is also worth using. The Main Stacks in Doe can be v. silent, particularly is you’re able to get a carrel of sorts.</p>
<p>speaking of impacted majors, son applied undeclared engineering because he really is, well, undecided about which discipline he wants to study (although he did get admitted to UCLA/UCSB in mechanical). Is undeclared engineering just a real longshot for applicants because it would be such a popular way to start out in the program? Thanks for your feedback…</p>
<p>Is it hard to get in Pre-business/ undecided at Berkeley???</p>
<p>since pre business/undecided are under the college of L&S, it will probably not be as hard compared to engineering. its comparative to other majors in the college of L&S cause that college admits students blind of their major. eg. if u applied pre biz and a person with the exact profile as you applied undeclared/psychology, they would have just as much chance as you in getting in.</p>
<p>Ironically enough, that’s how I applied (pre-biz). I got in. Go fig.</p>
<p>OP, thanks for the insight. I suppose I’ll just cross my fingers and hope to get in tomorrow evening.</p>