Re: #9
Actually, California seems to be about average in terms of pre-meds’ success/failure rate. 58.6% of California medical school applicants fail, compared to 59.0% overall, according to https://www.aamc.org/download/321466/data/factstablea5.pdf .
However, what is bad for California pre-meds is that those who do succeed in getting admitted are likely to face higher medical school cost and debt than those from many other states. Only 16.7% get into in-state medical schools versus 24.8% overall, and the in-state public medical schools are not as discounted in California as in some other states. Note that the need to apply widely out-of-state also increases application-related travel costs.