Even if the school with a pre-med committee does not explicitly gatekeep by refusing to write committee letters for low probability pre-meds, the pre-med committee process involves a lot more required contact with pre-med advising, which will inform low probability pre-meds of their (lack of) chances. Some low probability pre-meds will then conclude that applying to medical school is a waste of time and money, even though they may not have come to that conclusion if they were at some other school without a pre-med committee and with less contact with pre-med advising.
While having some business knowledge can be helpful for a physician running a small practice, wouldnât many physicians be employees of large multispecialty practices?
But even in the context of a small practice, could the needed business knowledge can be picked up with a few courses, like introduction to economics, health care economics, management or organizational behavior or sociology of work, and introduction to accounting, without needing a full business major?
The process of attrition in pre-medical studies: A large-scale analysis across 102 schools - PMC is about pre-med attrition. It says that 16.5% of frosh pre-meds eventually do complete the pre-med courses. Of course, this is over a wide range of colleges (15,442 students at 102 colleges), so the chance of attrition may differ based on the individual studentâs academic strength and strength of interest in medicine. Also, of those who complete the pre-med courses, not all will apply if their grades and MCAT scores are seen as insufficient.
My wife has worked in her own practice and worked in a large multispecialty group. So she has seen both sides.
With your own practice, you are constantly making business decisions. Every single day.
But even in multispecialty groups, Docs still have to deal with business in many ways. Right now, my wifeâs group has been approached by a buyer. She is a shareholder. Should she sell? At what value? There are business people in the practice, but you have to tread cautiously. The business people have their own agendasâŠ
Her multispecialty group is constantly expanding. Docs might be asked to invest in a new radiology center, for example. How do you make that investment decision? The people who run the business of your group are the ones asking you to invest, so you canât really rely on them.
How about insurance? Some groups let docs pick their own insurers to work with. What about coding and billing? How do you make these decisions? Employee management?
Docs usually make some money in their careers and make investments. We have physician friends who have also made horrid investments. I warned one doc in particular that he was making a big mistake. He laughed at me and then lost his entire investment. He had no idea what he was doing.
So my wife thinks that a business degree would have been far more valuable than her biochem degree. In fact, she looks at this in the opposite way from the way you do. Donât major in biology because you will cover lots of the same stuff in med school. Just check off the required med school courses and you will have plenty of background to attack med school. She would also point out that bio majors have a lower acceptance rate to med school than humanities majors.
There is no right or wrong answer, but this is her thinking on what she would do differently if she were to start over. There is a logic there for sure.
2 Likes
The only numbers I have ever seen were self-reported and not necessarily using any sort of standardized methodology. So unfortunately I suspect no such thing exists.
1 Like
Thank you for this input! This is literally what my kid wants to do and we parents just were not sure if a minor would suffice. If it does, great!
1 Like
What would be helpful is if every college reported a grid like https://www.aamc.org/media/6091/download for MD medical school applicants and a similar one for DO medical school applicants.
1 Like
Thatâs true, but thereâs significant selection bias involved in the data.
(BTW, both my daughters majored in math and then went to med school. Math majors have an even higher acceptance rate for med school than humanities majors do. But then again there is very significant selection bias involved.)
+++
AACOMAS acceptance grid for DO medical schools
1 Like
Interesting⊠looks like DO schools do not like to admit âoverqualifiedâ (by MCAT score > 505, and by GPA > 3.6 to a lesser extent) applicants. So if a pre-med prefers DO over MD, they should try not to score too high on the MCAT?
DO schools engage in admission management.
Since DO admission offices know (from historical data) that applicants with higher scores are unlikely to enroll and are using their school as a fallback position ( a âsafety schoolâ), DO programs are less likely to interview higher stats candidates unless the applicants can persuade the school of a sincere desire to enroll. This is done through secondary essay questions that always include a âWhy DO?â and often a âWhat other schools are you applying to?â question.
DO programs frequently have the situation where they have students drop out at the last minute as they get off MD waitlists leaving them scrambling to fill empty seats. (Since DO program typically start earlier than MD programs, DO schools often lose students through the first 2-3 weeks of classes.)
And that table is aggregate data. Some DO programs have higher median GPA/MCATs than the national median for MD programs. CCOM does, for example.
There has been a large number of new DO schools opening and a half dozen or so of established DO schools have opened multiple news campuses in several states. Those new programs tend to depress the median stats for all DO programs because acceptance stats for new schools/campuses tend to be significantly lower than more established DO programs.
2 Likes
Keep in mind that some schools do not have a business major, while other schools have a competitive application process and acceptance to the major is not guaranteed. I assume that there are schools where choosing to major in business is an easier, more direct path.
ButâŠnone of that matters because your daughter is not interested in the major. Would she consider a minor, and would that be enough? I donât know the answer to the second part of my question, and I donât know how easy/difficult it is to choose a business minor. My daughterâs school had one, but I donât know if all schools do and what the process is.
I do think a plan B is importantâŠas notedâŠbut it doesnât have to be decided todayâŠimo.
In the meantime I will go back to my original advice and tell her to put premed to the side and choose a school she would be happy attending and where she would be an involved student.
7 Likes
Your daughter should study what she wants and not feel compelled to study business. The vast majority of practices are owned now so the business decisions are not discussed by the doctors at all. That is my DHâs practice. My group owns ours : we are partner shareholders. We have a hired practice manager. This is what most successful practices have. As long as you can understand a basic balance sheet(which we review at partner meetings), you can learn as you go. Decisions on buying new equipment or hiring are made easier by a practice manager who lays out all the estimates and costs over time. We have to make insurance renewal decisions all the time: a good practice manager preps all this , as well as advises on salary decisions based on current trends for new nurses, etc. in addition, most practices hire a good accountant, a nurse who has the skills to be in charge of the other nurses, an HR manager, a lawyer on retainer, etc. My view is you get to do college once: you should get to study what you like. For me it was science and more science. For other premeds it is English. The very basic business principles needed are not hard to learn and the most important is to hire someone with the skills, because as a physician you are expected (based on how insurance pays) to see 3-4 patients an hour and then you still have all the labs and follow up charting to do at night. Plus, as a side note, there were basic practice management mini-courses in med school and residency in the early 2000s and there are more now (at least at the schools I know). Learn as you go is the premise of all things medicine: see one/do one/teach one, lifelong learning, etc. medicine is constantly changing, it is part of the deal.
3 Likes
Can this be addressed! I have been told repeatedly that this data is not a reliable metric.
Hi Mama PforAJ,
This comes from the internet, so take it with a grain of salt, but I have seen something like this several times. Words seem to change here and there.
While medical school policies vary regarding prerequisites, experts say the following college courses are frequently mandatory:
- Biology (one yearlong sequence with labs)
- Chemistry (two full academic years of study, including four lab-based classes, three of which are general chemistry, organic chemistry and biochemistry)
- English or another writing-intensive academic discipline (one full year)
- Genetics (at least one course)
- Math (one full year, ideally including courses in calculus and statistics)
- Physics (one yearlong sequence with labs)
- Psychology (at least one course)
- Sociology (at least one course)
1 Like
FWIW Pitt does NOT have a committee to write med school admissions letters. You are on your own to get your recommendations.
A ton of Pitt undergrads go to amazing medical schools both MD, and MDPhD.
Good basic list, with a few minor quibblesâ
- Biology must be an general, intro level class with labs
- Chemistry must include a year long general chemistry sequence with labs.
A year long sequence of organic chemistry with labs. (A minority of schools will accept 1 semester of OChem followed by a semester of biochem with labs)
1 semester of biochem (no lab required if the student has completed 2 semesters of ochem lab) - Genetics is not required by most medical schools. (It is however, recommended by many.)
- Psychology and sociology should be at the intro level, not an upper level elective like abnormal psych.
However, specific pre-med requirements will vary by individual school.
For example, Carle Illinois Medical College requires calc 1, calc 2, calc 3 and linear algebra. Ohio State University requires human physiology. 25 or so med schools specifically require a semester of biostatistics (regular stats cannot be substituted). 10 medical schools strongly recommend or require a semester of computer science/computer programming. Emory requires 18 credits in humanities. Louisiana State-Shreveport, St. Louis U and Baylor require 12 credit of humanities. USC-Greenvillle specifically requires one semester each of English, social science and humanities.
The best and most up-to-date source of pre-req information is MSAR-- a database maintained by AMCAS. A one year subscription costs $28.
1 Like
Universities love to quote those stats as a recruitment tool for incoming freshmen. I can assume thereâs an element of B.S. in there, because thereâs no real meta studies that backup their claims. They do the same thing with âstarting salariesâ in Computer Science programs. If itâs an east/west coast school, OF COURSE the starting salaries are going to be higher.
âRegular statisticsâ means AP statistics like content, typically offered as a general education course for humanities majors, or statistics courses for statistics majors?
Donât forget the additional minefield of AP credit that overlaps with premed courses. Medical schools tend to dislike AP credit for premed courses, but also see repeating AP credit as grade grubbing.
Thank you!