Pre-med Colleges

WayOutWestMom
Mon, 10 Dec 2018 16:50:48 +0000

which colleges have the highest acceptance rates into US medical schools.

There is no public data on this. Specific colleges may list “acceptance” rates on their website, but as @Creekland points out there are dozens of ways of cooking the numbers so they appear favorable to school. There is not even any consensus about what “medical school” is for reporting purposes. (MD, DO, NP, Caribbean…some count any health care profession, and some even count naturopaths).

And any reported acceptance rate only considers those student who actually apply to medical school, and not those who consider themselves as pre-meds as freshmen. It’s estimated that between 67-75% of freshmen pre-meds never actually apply to med school.

(D2 tells this story about her undergrad–which is known for its pre-med program. The first week of school, you walk down the dorm hall and everyone is a pre-med. When you come back from winter break, and after gen chem 1 and bio 1 grades have come out, suddenly everyone is an Econ major. Then in the spring, after calc grades have come out, everyone is now a sociology major.)

My advice to find a school that is good fit for your daughters, one where they will be happy because if they’re miserable, they won’t be successful academically. Ideally, the college should be one where they will be in the top 25% of admitted students, maybe even in the top 15% so they will have the best chance to earn the high GPA needed for a strong medical school application. (Keep in mind that at most colleges, the strongest students academically tend to cluster in STEM majors.)

Additionally, the college should offer a range of majors and opportunities for your daughter in case they change their mind about pursuing medicine or are among the ~75% of freshmen pre-meds who end up not applying to med school.

Lastly, your Ds need to minimize undergrad debt. Medical school has become increasingly expensive with some schools’ COA exceeding $100k/year.

Med school admission has becoming increasingly competitive in the last 10 years, with the numbers of students applying increasing far faster than the number of available seats has increased. Last year there were over over 52,000 applicants for 20,000 seats.

Lots of data here–

https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/

and here–

https://www.aacom.org/docs/default-source/data-and-trends/2018-aacomas-applicant-pool-profile-summary-report.pdf?sfvrsn=2ced2197_4

BTW, the best thing you could do to improve your daughters chances for a med school admission is to relocate to someplace else than CA. CA has the worst med school admission rates of any state in the US. Too many qualified applicants, too few med school seats.

see: [Applicants to U.S. Medical Schools by In or Out-of-State Matriculation Status, 2018-2019](https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf)