It varies a little by year, but around 40% of applicants to allopathic schools and 35% to those who apply to osteopathic schools get in. A percentage of those accepted, perhaps 25% (or less), are repeat applicants. Most DO schools have much easier acceptance criteria than MD schools.
Looking at these statistics, its puzzling why undergrad institutions discourage and weed out their less than perfect pre med students. Every year we see social media posts of accepted students mentioning their premed advisor’s degrading predictions. Why is that so?
Likely for the reason you state. Only 30-40% will get accepted to med schools and those students are the top of the top. What do the other 60-70% do? Well, they must, absolutely must, have a Plan B long before they graduate. You can’t bank on getting into to med school and, if you are not a top student, your chances are even lower, perhaps bordering on nonexistent. I think it appropriate for advisors to be very upfront and blunt about this reality and, if they know a student isn’t cutting it, to emphasize to them that they need to find their Plan B, sooner rather than later.
Yes but so many get in after gap years, post baccalaureate, research, MCAT retake, work experience, masters and resume strengthening so no reason to discourage just because they want to flaunt college’s high acceptance rates. It should be student’s call.
I do not personally know the numbers on that, but going by what you state here, it sure doesn’t seem like “so many.” In fact, it seems like a pretty small minority.
It generally is. No one can stop a determined student from applying to med school. But it would be foolish for a weak student to put all their eggs in the med school basket when their chance at acceptance is incredibly low. An advisor strongly encouraging consideration of an alternative career path is the responsible thing to do. They would be quite remiss in their duty if they did not do this.
And it is the student call. Once a student has been out of undergrad for even a year or two, they can do whatever they want to do in terms of applying to MD or DO schools.
And to add to worriedmom’s fine post- most kids are WOEFULLY unaware of how deep the talent pool is outside of their own universe. We see this with the Val’s who can’t believe they didn’t get into Dartmouth (do you know how many Val’s Dartmouth rejects every year? It’s a big number). We see this with the kids who are the top tennis, golf, track athlete in their own town who discover that they barely crack the bottom of the “top athletes” regionally or nationally.
And we see it time and time again with med school applications. Kids who have shadowed a physician for a few weeks over the summer discover that their competition has worked as a hospice counselor for two years. (who has had more primary care contact?) Kids who got themselves attached to a lab fact-checking citations which they call “research” (very important, don’t get me wrong) competing with others who actually contributed to an important scientific discovery and have worked for the same PI for four years.
It would be a gross dereliction of duty for pre-med advisors to encourage kids with a low probability (not zero, but low) by NOT helping them identify Plan B.
All…ALL pre-med students should have a plan B. Good that advisors are encouraging this. Even the TOP applicants need a plan B because you just never know how things will go.
AMCAS says that 27% of applicants are repeat applicants and of those 27% only about 1/4 get an acceptance on their second or third round of applications----so there are diminishing returns on being a repeat applicant. Repeat applicants are held to higher standards than first time applicants.
Every med school secondary asks what a repeat applicant has done since their last application to improve their app. (i.e. fix any shortcomings). Med schools on their webpages strongly advise rejected applicants to have 1-2 YEARS between application cycles to strengthen their apps. So it’s not like those who get accepted after being initially rejected apply with the same application they did originally
Looking at these statistics, its puzzling why undergrad institutions discourage and weed out their less than perfect pre med students. Every year we see social media posts of accepted students mentioning their premed advisor’s degrading predictions. Why is that so?
Because their job is to prevent students who aren’t competitive for med school from applying. The reason is twofold: 1)to prevent those students from dragging down their school’s professional school admission record; and 2) to save those really uncompetitive students from the cost, stress and heart-break of being an unsuccessful. (And the cost can be substantial–$6000 for a round of applications is pretty typical. With in-person interviews the cost can be substantially higher.)
I think there is some confirmation bias going on too. You’re only seeing those few students posting who are successful–the ones who aren’t don’t post about it.
Are pre-med advisors sometimes wrong about a student’s ability to get accepted? Heck yeah! They’re only human beings after all.
Yes but so many get in after gap years, post baccalaureate, research, MCAT retake, work experience, masters and resume strengthening so no reason to discourage just because they want to flaunt college’s high acceptance rates. It should be student’s call.
Undergrad college health profession advisors do not advise or track what applicants do post-graduation. Most undergrads do not include alumni in the med school admission records.
It’s always the student’s choice to apply or not. Even current undergrads whose HP advisors do not support their application are free to apply if they want to. They’ll just apply without a HP committee letter.
This isn’t the case for all schools. With the rising average age of successful applicants, there are a number of schools that state they will always help alum w/ their apps…after a post Bacc, after a couple years of work, etc. I don’t know if it’s mostly smaller schools that do this, but I am certain a number of the NESCACs do.
Because most pre-meds have close to a 0% chance of admission to any US medical school. Although it feels insulting, an advisor who tells a no-hope pre-med early can encourage the student to change to some other path instead of continuing the futility of pre-med. Applying to medical school takes a lot of effort, time, and money, so why waste all of that when it can be spent on developing more realistic career paths?
I think that it is appropriate for universities to encourage students who think of themselves as premed to understand that most of them are going to end up needing to do something else. Midterm exams with class averages in the 40’s or 50’s might give a hint to some students how tough the path to medical school is. Premed advisors that are honest can provide another strong hint.
This is a challenging path. Academic strength is needed. A lot of work is needed. A high level of determination is needed.
I’m a speech language pathologist. In my profession, you have to have a masters degree. Students who are undergrad communication sciences majors who aren’t meeting the bar for probable masters studies are strongly advised to pursue something else. It’s not just medicine.
This was true at D2’s mid size research that is well known for its pre-med program (It’s one of its selling points to applicants and parents), but alumni applicants were given the lowest priority for things like application review and committee letters. She was told that IF the committee had the time after handling all current students applying for med, dental, vet, OT, PT, PA, etc programs, they would provide her with application support for med school, but her committee letter wouldn’t be ready until late August. Additionally, D was required to return to campus for an in-person interview as part of the process. (As in, no interview, no committee letter.) D2 found this requirement to be exceptionally inconvenient since she no longer lived near her undergrad, but 800 miles away and was working full time. Doing an interview meant taking time off from work and paying for a plane ticket…
The HP office did zero follow up with her to ask if she had been accepted and where. (Yes, and to multiple programs…) She has said if she had to do it all over again, she would have never bothered.
D2 has had several friends who either did career changer post-baccs or GPA enhancement post baccs. NONE of them used their undergrad advising office to handle their med school applications. They used the advising at their post-bacc programs. (It’s why one pays for a post bacc. It’s not for the coursework–you can get that anywhere even at a CC–it’s for the support and advisement these programs offer.)
Happens even once you reach grad school. If you are admitted and discovered to be academically unprepared, you can be asked to leave…This happened to a grad student in my department at Cal - she didn’t even make it to the MA. And there were several students who were asked to leave after receiving an MA, rather than continue on to the PhD, because they were found lacking in the necessary skills for that level of research.
So even once admitted, you still need to be pretty top notch or you can get dropped.
What I’m reading is that even after the “weeding out”, those fewer, remaining students are still rejected at a rate of 60% to 65%?
And according to the AAMC stats, those with MCAT scores around 500, and/or GPAs around 3.3, are rejected at rates of 80%.
It’s already bad enough for those 30,000 each year who had “stayed the course” just to never gain acceptance – now imagine how big those numbers were, if many had not been actively encouraged early-on to assess their outlooks, and possibly look for more attainable target professions?
It’s best to pivot to another career BEFORE being rejected, as some alternate programs/degrees are not interested in accepting students who really wanted to attend medical school. Being perceived as a backup will not go over well and may very well prevent you from being accepted (depends on the degree).
If you wait too long to switch paths it could take a few years…between the prerequisites, volunteering, etc. That’s ok…lots of students switch…but it is important to know.
Having a lower gpa will not cut it for other programs/degrees either, but of course this depends on the desired degree.
Lots of considerations, decisions, and stress for premeds.
And yes, there are definitely other fields that steer you out.
Exactly, those are admissions stats AFTER weeding, they would be far lower if weeding did not occur.
This rather famous study found that only about 16.5%, or one in six, of the people entering college with the serious intention of following a pre-med track actually ended up graduating with the necessary courses to apply to med school:
OK, so hypothetically, what if those other five in six actually did apply to med school? Those admissions rates would have to drop to one-sixth, so it would be something like 6% of applicants getting into any med school.
That would be a horrific waste.
The bottom line is every year, there are far, far more people starting college with the goal of attending med school than who can possibly attend med school in the future. So the vast majority of them are going to get weeded out either sooner or later. And in most cases it will not be doing them any favors by making it later.
If a pre-med adviser says you have no chance, but you got in, then you won’t hold a grunge long. Whereas if they say you will get in but you don’t then forever you will be angry.
Having said that, just keep in mind how many UG pre-med advisers actually went to Med School and keep that in perspective.
Jokes aside, most pre-med advisors are keenly aware of the stats and are openly honest with students who ask. But some people hear one in three and automatically thinks they are being told they are in the two who don’t get in.
Table 2 notes that the 16.5% of intended premeds who fulfilled the premed courses had 3.15 college grades, versus 2.88 for others. This likely means that many of the fulfillers have no realistic chance of admission to a US medical school, based on having GPA of 3.15 or lower, and probably realizes that it would be a waste of time and money to apply.
I.e. fewer than 16.5% of intended premeds will fulfill course requirements with high enough grades that grades will not auto-reject them from medical schools.