Yes, CalTech is in the same boat as Princeton. Hence, she did not apply to either.
Full criteria we used:
-
Tier 1 Research (all 20), as the premed program must be considered rigorous enough
List of research universities in the United States - Wikipedia
(A chunk are out-of-state public schools which are out due to cost after limited scholarships) -
Affiliated (top 50 preferred) Med School, as these can take some of their own. UM is on the high side of taking 40-50 per year of their own undergrads:
https://med.miami.edu/medical-education/admissions/class-profile
Note Baylor med is not affiliated with Baylor college so she didn’t apply. -
Offer Algebra-based, vs. calc based, physics (Many most and very highly competitive colleges do not)
-
Where her stats place her in the top 10% of entering freshman class (based upon the school’s Common Data Set) as she’ll need to achieve an overall 3.9+ college GPA. (slight to no GPA break if attending very competitive colleges)
-
That there are more students accepted to med school than National Merit Finalists in the college’s undergraduate class year. As almost all premed course grades are curved everywhere, the 3.9+ GPA will be tough when competing with super-brains. E.g. half of every Ivy League entering class will graduate in the bottom half.
-
Premed office which does NOT rate (prescreen) students in committee letter (several schools including UM fail this criteria but luckily UM does not mandate a committee letter in its Committee packet) See pg 18:
https://prehealth.miami.edu/_assets/pdf/pre-health-guide-revised-fall-2023.pdf
Many students are heartbroken when they learn their pre-health office won’t let them join due to their non-stellar grades (at least 1 ivy league school does this) or rate them in the bottom grid in the committee letter.
Due to heavy state financial support, most med schools (both public and public including UM) have limited out-of-state resident enrollment despite high out-of-state applicant pools. AAMC data shows out-of-state public med schools enroll 0 - 2% of their out-of-state resident applicant pool. Many private medical school out-of-state rates are similar at 1 - 2%. So, she knows she’ll most likely end up at an in-state medical school despite where she attends college.
Why so tough? There are 32,000 U.S. high schools but only 20,000 freshman M.D. slots/yr in the U.S.
Many private med schools are small with class sizes of 100 (e.g. Stanford, Johns Hopkins med). That averages to 2 students per state. Thus, the discouraging weed-out funnel. Here’s Yale undergrad’s med placement stats (actual numbers, reason colleges only disclose percentages):
So her choices were limited to under 50 colleges in the U.S. of which only a few met most of the above criteria. The 4th best in-state (and full-ride) school which has an affiliated top 100 med school ranking, where about 50 of 2,000 starting pre-med get in to a med school. Going there worked for her oldest siblings (who all ended up at top 50 med schools without taking gap years) but she wants to attend a more competitive college. Her 20 includes 5 which don’t have affiliated med schools due to full/full ride scholarship/potential.