UCLA vs Texas for Pre-med?

We3AreGenius
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 06:18:14 +0000

UCLA Band Mom:

The people with the highest gpa’s and MCATs will get more offers to Med School.

This is a fallacy, all too often believed by pre-meds and apparently by some parents. Med-school ADCOMs look at the body of work from an applicant i.e., everything from GPA, MCAT, ECs, LORs, LOIs, personal essays, etc. An applicant that’s only uber competitive in GPA and/or MCAT won’t be offered an interview compared to an applicant who is well-balanced in all “categories”. For example, an applicant having 3.4 GPA, “average” MCAT score with plenty of ECs, well written essays/LOIs, and great LORs will be head and shoulders above someone who has a 4.0 GPA, 40 MCAT and nothing else. Anecdotally, I personally know plenty of residents and friends who went in thinkng, “All I need is a great GPA and MCAT to get into med-school”. They had to apply a second and even 3rd time prior to getting accepted because they were initially lacking in several “categories” that ADCOMs carefully scrutinize.



ohhowiwish:

but threads like these are still better than those really really bitter reject threads where they come in boasting of their self-entitlement and cant come to terms about how they just werent good enough so they lash out at anything else they can grab at including lies to boost their egos that are already way above reality

It’s because the majority of them, as you alluded to, didn’t do their research about what it takes to get accepted prior to applying.