UNC or Notre Dame for a future med student?

shellzie2006
Tue, 25 Feb 2014 05:52:35 +0000

Just a note about ND’s med school acceptance rates and weed out classes:

Science classes in general “weed out” a good number of kids at any school. They are difficult and not everyone has the ability or drive to make it through. But there really is a lot of academic and peer support at ND and there aren’t really any classes intentionally designed to weed anyone out. That is actually something I would consider as a plus for ND. I don’t know anything about UNC’s program, but some of the bigger state schools or other graduate school-focused institutions do intentionally cull the science and engineering herd.

As a result, ND not only has a high acceptance rate to med school, but also has a high number of students who go to medical school each year (someone told me it’s somewhere around 20% of each graduating class, but I don’t have an actual source for that number). And since so many ND grads go on to medical school, Notre Dame does have a fantastic system in place to help with the application process, which is immensely helpful. And unlike at some schools, that office will help any ND student apply to med school if they want, even if their GPA or MCAT scores are not up to par. The pre-med office is so good that all the students applying to grad/pharmacy/vet/law/etc school are jealous. And I can tell you I wish I’d had something similar for my residency applications!