Well, it’s not now, as you are well aware. In not deleting the thread from the outset, I was attempting to give the benefit of the doubt that some interesting discussion might result regardless. That said, let’s move on from debating the value of the site. Users can state their position, defend once if needed, but then need to move on from beating the dead horse.
This source used different methodology, but arrived at an overlapping set of schools:
Amherst
Brown
Columbia
Cornell
Dartmouth
Duke
Harvard
Johns Hopkins
MIT
Pomona
Princeton
Rice
Stanford
UC–Berkeley
UChicago
Penn
Swarthmore
WUStL
Williams
Yale
“Top Medical School Producers | College Transitions.”
Google this out .
wsj feel the force gut instinct not data is the force
“Using student-level data supplied by LinkedIn”…hardly a reliable source. Unless I’m mistaken, all of the information on LinedIn is self-reported, and none of it is independently verified. Clearly an unreliable source for the stated purpose.
And yes, another website offering “services”; it’s nothing more than an advertisement for those “services”.
That highly selective colleges have more (potentially) successful pre-meds is no surprise due to selection effects (i.e. they have selected stronger students in the first place).
But that does not necessarily mean that they have favorable treatment effects for pre-meds compared to less selective colleges. I.e. if a student who was admitted to Swarthmore and Wayne State (assuming similar net price to take that out of the equation), is it necessarily true that choosing one or the other will increase the chance of success getting into medical school (and, if so, which one)?
You cannot convince me that it’s easier or more fruitful to get into med school from Amherst or Yale, no matter how “carefully” anyone claims to have surveyed. You must do the academic work, become adept at working with the learning, apply it in the real world and score high on the MCAT. And have the personal traits.
Yes, highly selective colleges tend to have that sort of kid, in the first place. But most colleges weed to get down to a much smaller number who actually apply.
Merci, it’s not about, “the highest percentage of graduates to a top-ranked medical program.” They can brutally whittle down to what they see as a reasonable number they will support. Yes, that includes Yale. And the more commonly used phrase is, “who got into one of their top 3 choices.” Not about prestige, except as the kids define that, for themselves. Graduates of their state MD program are doctors, too.
And yes, many smaller LACs are working hard to properly point their kids toward med school opps, in effect, grooming them. Eg, some of the HBCUs.
And don’t forget, going to a tippy top, maybe getting the FA you need, does not mean all kids can afford some prestige med school.
@merc81
I’d also like to point out that the whole notion of “top-ranked med school” is pretty debatable. The US News methodology for determining rankings is seriously flawed.
Most of the determination is made using criteria that has zero to do with the quality of a school’s undergraduate medical education. For example, 40% of a school’s rank depends upon the amount research funding they receive. Research funding does not affect the quality of medical instruction. Researchers don’t teach the med students and the vast majority of med students do not have the time or inclination to get involved in wet lab research. Perceived quality (30%-40% of a school’s rank) was determined by survey responses–of which only 63% (less than 2/3rd) were returned. (NOTE that there is no quality control to determine who actually filled out the surveys. It could have been done by anyone who works in the admission office or a residency PD’s secretary.)
US News publishes rankings because it sells subscriptions and generates hits to its website, not because they are providing any kind of useful data.
There are other med schools rankings available that use a more defensible methodology.
I will also point out the that the perceived prestige of a medical school has very little to do with how its grads match into residency. (See: [Results of the 2018 NRMP Program Director Survey](https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/NRMP-2018-Program-Director-Survey-for-WWW.pdf))
Top 15 schools put the most kids per capita into med school year in and year out.
So the best way to max your odds of getting into med school?
Be the kind of kid who can get ADMITTED to a top 15 school. Actually attending a top 15 school (or any other school frankly) really doesn’t have that much effect.
In a similar vein, I always point to the data Harvard Law School puts out every year. HLS enrolls 560 kids a year; this year they came from 185 different colleges. There’s a heavy over-representation in the HLS class of kids who went to top 15 schools. Why?
Because HLS generally enrolls smart, ambitious, good test taking kids. And those same qualities are the ones that typically will get you admitted to top 15 schools too.
Those kind of kids attend plenty of schools outside the top 15 – this year’s HLS college list includes Arkansas State, Montana State and Idaho State!
Had not seen this before:
“Top 15 schools put the most kids per capita into med school year in and year out.”
Is this in the MSAR? And whose list of top 15?
To my knowledge MSAR only publishes data about applications, which is pretty useless.
The best data I saw on this came from an in-person presentation my kid and I saw while during an admitted student visit to ND’s science college. Not sure where it came from, but the data was just what you’d expect. HYP, Williams and some other LACs, Hopkins, Penn, ND etc. were the top producers of med school admits on a per capita basis. As I recall, ND’s production numbers were surprisingly strong – like top 5.
But basically exactly what you see from the HLS data. Kids that are able to get into competitive colleges are very similar to the kids that get into competitive professional schools. But plenty of kids also get into competitive professional schools from other types of colleges – just not as many. It is surely more correlation than causation.
It’ s a mistake to compare medical school applications to law school applications, at Harvard or any other school. The processes are significantly different and really aren’t comparable For example, there are no committee letters for law school.
And it appears that whoever made that presentation was taking a good deal of license regarding statistics. I’d be glad to be shown the information that supports this statement:
“Top 15 schools put the most kids per capita into med school year in and year out.”
Since you cited ND, I checked their website and can’t find that information.
But ND’s website did have this “Regardless of major, 84% of Notre Dame pre-med graduates are admitted to medical school—that’s twice the national average.” It’s interesting to note that ND doesn’t disclose how many started as pre-meds.
It’s next to impossible to get facts on how many get weeded.
But old JHU info suggests 75-80%. It’s old, but with more competition for top colleges, it is a thinking point.
Anyone really think JHU is a great bet for a top med school, just because their very best are successful?
“It’ s a mistake to compare medical school applications to law school applications, at Harvard or any other school.”
The HLS data I’m talking about is for enrollments, not applications. While the top undergrad schools are over-represented in the HLS class, kids from almost 200 different colleges enroll at HLS each year.
AAMC only publishes data about applications, which is not very useful data. Med school admit rates also not useful, since the denominator can be anything.
The ND info I cited was given in an in-person presentation (given by a priest fyi so I’m assuming not BS). But what I recall was that ND was top 5 in enrolling kids in med school. They publicly claim that 1% of all med school admits are ND grads.
Yet this blog says ND is over-rated and not among the top 25 pre-med schools.
YMMV.
So maybe the priest was including DO schools, but for MDs ND is not even in the top 15 for enrollments over the past year or so (as you might kinda guess from the applicant data: https://www.aamc.org/system/files/reports/1/factstablea2.pdf), and definitely not in the top 5 per capita - maybe top 15 (FWIW, it really bounces from year to year, but recently it looks like JHU was by far the highest with Duke, Harvard, Pomona, Princeton, Rice, and WashU basically in the next clump). I’m not really sure how useful this info really is though, since some schools just seem to have a higher proportion of students interested in med school than others… despite having those evil committee letters.
There is nothing inherently evil about committee letters (which are basically required as part of med school applications).
The issue is that some schools pre-health advising departments will prepare a committee letter for ALL students who want to apply to med school, while some schools will only write the committee letter for students they believe are the strongest med school applicants…thereby acting as gatekeepers and another weed-out point. For some students, how an undergrad school handles committee letters is an important determining factor in their matriculation decision.
Nobody here said that ND was “overrated”; in fact, I personally know a bunch of ND graduates who are now MDs.
But the numbers given to you during that presentation have no basis in reality, and there’s not a single bit of independent evidence which supports the claim that 1% of all medical school admits are ND graduates. And there’s nothing to support the “per capita” claims either.
The world of medical school admissions is anything but transparent, as the medical schools keep a lot of information to themselves, and many undergraduate schools make pretty wild claims regarding medical school admissions. Because of this, lists such as those posted by merc81 are more or less baloney; they don’t tell you how many started as pre-meds at school X and how many finished. They also don’t indicate how much support is given to pre-meds; some schools offer application enhancing programs to only some pre-meds(e.g. summer internships/research activities, etc). And that’s not even addressing the committee letters. Let’s say a student doesn’t get a committee letter, but somehow gets admitted to medical school. I’d guess that UG would still take credit for that admission.
It seems pretty consistent that UGs offer percentages but not hard numbers regarding medical school, and never tell anyone who started freshman year and who actually applied in hard numbers.
The advice given here is that prospective pre-meds consider cost, and attend a school at which they are most comfortable, if possible. And it’s made clear that the process is then up to them, to get the GPA/MCAT and necessary activities for a successful application. It seems, frankly, that many UGs use hyperbole in describing that school’s success in placing medical school aspirants, so it’s better to rely on oneself than on unreliable statistics.
Actually those ND numbers do seem to check out.
Per AAMC, 276 ND applicants latest cycle. ND claims 75-85% of applicants get in. That’s 221 kids at 80%.
First year med school enrollment in USA is 21,000. 1% would be 210. QED. Seems like a pretty good production rate for a mid-sized private school. Duke would be up there too – they claim 85% so they’d have like 280 med school admits a year. I’m sure the usual suspects (HYPS, Penn Hopkins) are also in the 1% club. Since those are all smaller private schools, you’d think they’d be the per capita leaders.
Come one, the priests wouldn’t be lying to us, would they? : )
P.S. My pre-med considered but did not choose to attend ND. So I have no dog in that hunt. But the thing I actually appreciated about ND’s data presentation was that they talked about it straight up – this is exactly how many kids get in. So you didn’t have to filter through all of the BS about who gets put into the denominator and who gets weeded out. 200 admits a year is 200 admits a year.
Moving on.
Not sure how “QED” applies here when ND doesn’t supply any actual numbers. And again, the key number for HS seniors isn’t how many apply-it’s how many started as pre-meds at a given school-like ND-and how many actually got into medical school. It’s interesting to note that ND doesn’t supply those numbers-but neither do most UGs.
Lots of smoke and mirrors when it comes to the world of pre-meds.
The applicant numbers come from AAMC. Go look it up.
ND (like Duke) claims 80-ish % of applicants get admitted. So QED.
I’m sure that 50% of frosh at those schools (maybe more) say they are future doctors. So of course there’s a massive drop off from that to those who ultimately apply. That is everywhere.
But any mid-sized school that is getting 200-300 kids admitted to med school per year is, by definition, a top pre-med school.
But a lot of that is correlation. Kids that can get admitted to Duke, ND, HYP are the kind of kids that are great candidates for med school admission. The only other X factor is how good the advising is.
If Duke and ND are hitting 80% admit rates, their advisors are pretty good at sorting the players from the pretenders.
PS — I’ve supplied lots of data in my posts. I don’t see any in yours. : )
We’re in dead horse territory. This is the second (and final) time I’ll ask users to move along from debating. Further posts which violate ToS will be deleted without public comment.