Why do top US universities weed out most pre-med kids & then we import foreign MDs?
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Anonymous
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Having gone through this process at a top med school:
1. GPA does really matter. I went to a weed out HPYS school and wasn’t premed. I ended up deciding on med school later and did a post bacc. I had to have a perfect 4.0 gpa and I worked for it. You can actually get away with a much lower GPA at some schools and majors but MCAT must be high. A 520 MCAT makes up for a lot. 2. MCAT is so important!! Way more than GPA. Again a 520 will make up for a lot 3. Med school admissions suck. Even if you have good scores, nothing is guaranteed. Also, it matters what state you are in! Some states have great state schools that protect their own. New Jersey comes to mind. They have 3 state schools for MD and 1 DO that have to be 70% jersey resident. So a NJ student will have a better shot 4. Foreign MDs fill unmet residnecy spots usually in areas and fields that American students don’t want- though this may change with DO and MDs combining residencies in 2022. |
Anonymous
I gather from your post you probably did very few courses that would qualify for the required pre-med classes and then jammed them into your post-bacc, in which you scored 4.0. The numbers back you up on the MCAT being more important than grades, up to a point of course. The MCAT scores and GPAs of med school applicants who are accepted by at least one med school are published: https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf What this shows is that only two thirds of applicants with a GPA of 3.8 or greater are accepted by at least one school. On the other hand, the MCAT percentages are: 518 or higher (97th percentile +)--84%; 514-517 (90th-95th percentile)--74%; and 510-513 (82nd-89th)--63%. Those with an MCAT score over 517 have a nearly 50% chance of being accepted even with a GPA between 3.0 and 3.2, about the same chance as an applicant with a GPA of 3.8 or greater who scores between 502 and 505 (57th to 67th percentile). If an applicant with that MCAT range had a GPA between 3.0 and 3.2, they would have a chance of an acceptance of just 22%. Only 42% of all applicants are accepted. Other data shows that of that 40%, 20% are accepted by just one school. Many apply to 25 to 30 schools. |
Anonymous
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About the # of foreigners in US med schools: my understanding is that US med schools generally won't accept pre-requisites completed at non-US colleges/universities (with very limited exceptions for Canadian and certain UK universities). So, the only way for a "foreigner" to go to med school in the US is to have also gone to undergrad in US or to have completed pre-reqs (such as in a post-bacc program) in the US.
Not the OP, but my DD is interested in the medical professions. She has a lot of other interests as well. Rather than select college specifically for pre-med, we are thinking that she should choose a college based on overall fit for all her interests. And potentially, just do a post-bacc if she ultimately decides that she wants to go to the med school route. If undergrad pre-med is so brutal, why do more students not do a post-bacc? (I'm sure cost is a reason, but we are thinking that a more inexpensive undergrad followed by a "prestigious" post-bacc could cost the same or less than pre-med at a "prestigious" undergrad). |
Anonymous
100% cost. I'm one of those "STEM aptitude, high IQ" American kids PPs have mentioned who got weeded out of pre-med by undergrad organic chemistry. There was no way I was going to take out school + COL loans for 2 years of post-bacc/MCAT prep AND med school. Hindsight being 20/20, I should have either gone to a smaller school with a stronger undergrad teaching faculty in the sciences, or done a biomedical engineering program (which would have ticked all the pre-req boxes). |
Anonymous
Thread is about importing foreign trained MDs after flushing out most of our domestic best and brightest during undergrad. We literally push millions of wicked smart American kids into pointless financial services and consulting because they couldn't ace organic chemistry?! It's insanity. |
Anonymous
| I grew up in pre-1997 Hong Kong, which may to a certain extent share the same educational system as the UK and possibly other systems that are similar. Let me tell you this, the US education system is by far much more generous in providing students the opportunity and chance to crack into the medical field. In where I grew up and at that time, your destiny of whether you can become a docter is largely based on one set of exams (the A levels (migh be different now)) that you take in the final year of secondary school (i.e., high school) and whether the university is willing to admit you into their medical program. Largely the same, but relatively more (and much more nowadays)leninent, for the legal prograssion. |
Anonymous
| It's antitrust violation. Deliberately limiting supply in a cartel protected by those with incentive. |
Anonymous
Let me repeat what’s already been explained here. People who went to foreign medical schools and foreign residency cannot just get a job here. They must get into a residency program in America (not an easy thing to do) and RE-train here, then pass the American board exams before they apply for and get a job here. Also keep in mind, many foreign countries track students early on in their schooling and it can be much more difficult to get into medical programs in their countries to begin with. So basically, another country has already done the weeding out and taken on the expense of training them. We then get already trained doctors in our residency programs that learn even more skills and also don’t need to learn from scratch or get any hand holding from the faculty doctors. They also tend to work harder and complain less because they know they need to make it in order to survive in this country. If your kid didn’t ace organic chem, well that’s an unfortunate problem. |
Anonymous
| Organic chemistry weeds out American pre-meds. They switch to business degrees or something easier, more intuitive. |
Anonymous
| Caribbean med schools make A LOT of sense if you want to work in Canada or the U.S. Less costly as well. |
Anonymous
No, no, no! The best of them are not that much cheaper than US med schools and they are often more than state med schools. Many will accept low GPA/MCAT students, take their money, and then weed them out. Even if you do very well, it can be very hard to obtain a residency in the specialty you want--you are treated like a foreign medical graduate, not a US medical graduate. Many do not find a residency at all. |
Anonymous
Deeply impressed. But, move along. Not interested in the slinging mud back and forth, esp. from a doctor who should know better. |
Anonymous
*shrug* you sarcastically said [our] state schools were awesome and that we’d go far. Just saying that you’re right! |
Anonymous
| The last few foreign trained doctors who saw my parents were so awful there’s no way they were brighter than American trained nurses we dealt with. Rude, obnoxious, unprofessional, and scammed my parents out of large sums of money with unnecessary office and hospital visits and prescriptions and tests. |
Anonymous
| AI will eliminate 60 percent of doctors over the next 20 years. Smarter, faster, cheaper, more thorough. |