Why do top US universities weed out most pre-med kids & then we import foreign MDs?
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Anonymous
You sound awful |
Anonymous
Disagree with this. There is a shortage of med school spaces. This is why foreign medical graduates are able to get residencies in the U.S.--there are more residencies opening up each year than there are US med school graduates to fill them. There is major weeding out among the premed students applying to med schools--only 40% get an acceptance. The article OP posted is about weeding out even before one gets to the applicant phase, that is, among pre-meds. If that weeding out did not take place among premeds we would see an even lower percentage of med school applicants being admitted. The bottle neck is at the med schools. |
Anonymous
Says the angry racist to the person pointing out the truth. |
Anonymous
That should be angry entitled racist. |
Anonymous
+1 a million times over |
Anonymous
+1. The ignorance and anti-immigrant sentiment is astounding on this thread. I wonder whether some people here are mistaking immigrant doctors for foreign medical grads. I know a ton of immigrant doctors (also married to one) who attended med school school here; many were raised in the US. My spouse moved here in middle school. I can only think of a couple who completed med school elsewhere—both of them were actually raised in the US. But of course, most of these folks have funny names, and some come from “places you have never heard of,” so perhaps there are some assumptions going on about the quality of their education and training. |
Anonymous
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I guess that on a website where people think anything less than ivy league is practically a death sentence...why would we expect them to be open minded about schools with names they can't pronounce.
They live according to guideposts others have planted, status markers that will validate who they are and what they have accomplished. These types of people are overly dependent on the opinions of pundits and rankings rather than basing their judgements on actual experiences or data. |
Anonymous
All of my dd's college friends speak perfect English, perfect grades in high school, perfect AP scores, and 98-99 percentile on their SAT – yet 50% of them are weeded out of pre-med just because? The foreign trained MDs I've had are awful, to put it mildly. No chance the average imported MD is as smart, accomplished and suited to be an MD as my daughter's classmates. And foreign colleges and med schools don't come close to a top American U. We have the best students, we have the best colleges, the best hospitals ... yet we weed out most of the kids who want to be doctors? It makes no sense! |
Anonymous
Second and Third world colleges and medical schools are as good as Northwestern, Penn and UVA? And ESL doctors are superior to King's English speaking American kids? Is that really what you're saying? |
Anonymous
Can you name the top colleges and medical schools in Iraq and India and Bangladesh? How do they stack up to the Ivies, the ACC and BigTen? |
Anonymous
You raise an interesting point. The schools that are listed as the top medical schools are all research schools. Getting into them typically requires a lot of research experience, including being listed as an author on a published paper (or more). Med schools below this tier put far more emphasis on a lot of clinical medical experience and community volunteering, activities that tend to help develop soft skills. The personality needed to be a top researcher is very different from what you need to be an outstanding clinical doctor. There, an ability to listen to a patient is a very important skill. As the saying goes, if you listen to a patient long enough, he will tell you what is wrong with him. The research inclined tend to be short in this skill set, and those were likely the type of students you were encountering in your top flight medical school. It likely would be different at a mid tier medical school; these often do not have the considerable resources needed to be an upper echelon research institution and, so, the focus is more clinical. Another interesting point is that the lowest subscore for most people taking the MCAT is not in the science sections, but the critical analysis and reasoning section (CARS). This section is the one in which students who are really good in liberal arts shine and STEM students struggle with. Canadian med schools put a huge emphasis on the CARS in deciding whom to admit because they believe it is indicative of a more well rounded student who likely has better social skills than a very STEM heavy applicant. US medical schools, while often setting a minimum subscore for each section, are very inclined to let high scores in the science sections make up for a lower score in the CARS. |
Anonymous
Bingo and curved against other best of the best, proven 98-99 percentile classmates. Earning a few Bs and Cs can shatter your pre-med dreams -- all because the top 20 college chooses to curve out half of the pre-meds. How is that good for the nation's health care? |
Anonymous
| My nephew was accepted to a couple of top 10 universities and to an Ivy that he heard had grade deflation- especially in premed classes. He declined those schools because he has always dreamed of being a doctor and knew med school was expensive. So instead he went to a state school that paid for his tuition, room and board, and had an honors program because he was a National Merit scholar. He got straight A's in pre-med classes there and now in med school in the US. Many of his really brilliant high school friends did not do well in pre-med classes at their top 10 universities and now can't go to med school in the US. He said many were much smarter than he was. |
Anonymous
Exactly! On DCUM only the top universities will do. But if your smart kid wants to be a doctor, he will have a much better chance of realizing his dreams if he goes goes to a lower rated school. And the bonus is that it is either a cheaper state school or a private school that gives considerable aid to really outstanding students so there is more to spend on med school. As for your DS's friends, if they really want to be doctors, they have the option of a post bac program to redo the premed classes. Depending on what their GPA otherwise is and their MCAT scores, they would have a good shot at a DO program at least, if that is not beneath consideration of a top 10 kid. (It is definitely not impossible for a DO graduate to land a prestigious residency.) |
Anonymous
Have you ever seen the differences between a A/A- student and a B/C+ student? They are not comparable. |