Medical School
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Anonymous
| Ivy applicants to med school get a small gpa bump, but not as much as you’d think. It’s a shame because the best Ivy students are the ones who take really hard classes. There is nothing wrong with B’s in Princeton premed classes, but a 3.0 science gpa will be an uphill admissions battle. |
Anonymous
Oops! Right! Plus the MCAT. I think it’s hard to apply while you’re still in college - to start right away. I know one student who did that and just didn’t have the time to study as much as he needed to for the MCAT and wound up at a DO a school. I don’t know why he didn’t opt to retake it. |
Anonymous
Then he was not smart enough to get in, or at best was borderline.The smart students do not need much study time. Just as top high schoolers can get 1530+ with minimum prep the first time they take the SAT. The top students can easily do it all and get the high MCAT on the first try spring or at the end of junior year. The goal is to not retake it, as all scores are considered not the best. If you are at a school with excellent rigorous stem, the MCAT is not hard and requires 4-8 weeks of studying while taking classes. We know many in the current cycle and previous two cycles who did this and got into Stanford, Penn, Harvard, UCSF, Chicago and a bunch of lower ranked ones they did not pick. The top undergrad programs commonly send the highest % of students to med school without gaps, and to top places(with or without a gap) for the top third of their premeds. Yes, gap year, more than half the time, is due to MCAT issues or GPA issues. That is why 1 or more gap years are much more common the less selective the undergrad school: there are fewer students truly capable of getting all teh courses and research done in 3 years and acing the test. Whether or not these schools fail to teach at the level of intensity that prepares for the MCAT is difficult to decipher. Professors who have taught stem at ivy+ versus T30 vs T100 will tell you there is a wide difference in how rigorous they can be, for exams, labs, everything. They cannot have half the class not grasp the concepts so they water down the concepts and leave the challenge out of it. How else can you explain the many many students who have 3.8, 3.9 GPA who took all the premed courses and cannot get over a 500? 3.8-3.9 implies a level of mastery that is not there. 3.8ish correlates to 516-518 at top premed schools(Ivies, Duke, washU). Every school has these tables; medical admissions have this info from various undergraduate institutions, even when med schools do not directly provide it, med admissions collects it. AMCAS publishes the overall applicant tables, but the data exists by undergrad and the med schools have it. |
Anonymous
Wherever they have the best chance to succeed at the level needed based on the level of school. They need to be able to be top 5% if it is below a T75, top 25% if it is in the T20-40 range, and top half or just under if they are at an Ivy+ or T3 LAC. LAC v medium or large is a preference that relates less to success than their estimated relative position in the class. |
Anonymous
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Highest med school placements
1. Harvard 2. Johns Hopkins 3. Duke 4. UPenn 5. Stanford 6. WashU 7. Rice 8. Northwestern 9. Brown 10. UNC Chapel Hill |
Anonymous
I'd think T10 LAC are all really good. Wellesley, Bowdoin, Carleton, all really really good. |
Anonymous
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In viewing the top-15 LACs from the site posted earlier, a few admission bargains appear:
1. Amherst 2. Haverford 3. Pomona 4. Swarthmore 5. Wellesley 6. Williams 7. Barnard 8. Wofford 9. Grinnell 10. Bowdoin 11. Davidson 12. Hamilton 13. Wesleyan 14. Austin 15. Union |
Anonymous
So many of these schools weed out all but 10% of the "pre meds." It'd not like you matriculate there and go to medical school 4 yrs later. |
Anonymous
I assume all the state schools and all ivies weed out, but how does one know if a liberal arts school weeds out or not? |
Anonymous
Not Hopkins due to grade deflation |
Anonymous
They all weed out. Amherst graduates about 500 kids a year and sends about 50 Amherst grads to medical school each year and number includes anyone who applies to medical school after Amherst (so for 2026, the ~50 will include grads from 26, 25, 24, and on down--generally it's about a 5 yr spread) AND reapplicants. And then 75% of this 50 will get in. UNC will weed out even more kids. They'll have 2000 who start college bio each year. They'll run a curve where less than 50% get an A (so essentially 50% are eliminated from medical school then and there) and in in then end they have 500 apply to medical school (again, this number includes reapplicants) and of those 500, 55% are successful. |
Anonymous
That is not at all true at my kid’s Ivy on that list. The classes are very in depth and challenging, but not weed out as they can nearly all handle it. It is true at UNC per friends, perhaps more of an issue at large publics and necessary in many ways for classes. |
Anonymous
| One thing frequently parroted is wherever you can get the highest gpa and costs the least. Solid advice. However, everyone seems to ignore that fact that while gpa is very important, there is a huge disparity between average MCAT at an Ivy/elite and other schools. So, the 4.0 or 3.9 may also coincide with a 522 and a 502. |
Anonymous
College transitions uses LinkedIn data. I think that approach might undercount for Doctors. It have 4% of JHU graduates becoming Doctors when a reported 33% pursue a premed path. 4% seems low for a school like JHU. |
Anonymous
A far higher percentage of undergraduates are premed at some schools (I think JHU, Duke, and WashU) fall into this category. Someone wrote that schools with large medical schools and hospitals will offer more opportunity, but I doubt the schools above have better placement odds than a school like Princeton, which doesn't have a medical school. |