Applying Out of State for Public Schools, what's the acceptable rate?

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I'm going to be applying to some out of state medical schools that are public institutions. What do you guys consider is an acceptable rate of OOS to Total Class for this consideration? 15% 25% or 50%?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by jgalt42

I'm going to be applying to some out of state medical schools that are public institutions. What do you guys consider is an acceptable rate of OOS to Total Class for this consideration? 15% 25% or 50%?

Thanks!

You can easily research this yourself. The number varies by institution

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No, I have all the stats. What I mean is, at what proportion of the class size being out of state students would you make the cutoff to say that you would even start to consider apply to that school?

An extreme example would be like 4 out 200. In which case you wouldn't consider applying here.

I think I've read 20%, but I guess lower would be ok if you were regional and/or had some ties to the area.

If there's a school you're extremely interested in, even if the acceptance rate for OOS is very low, it's worth giving it a shot. I'll be attending a med school that accepted ~3% OOS last year. You should probably only have 1-2 schools like that on your list though.

That's a question you really should be asking yourself. What one person considers is reasonable can be very different. It's highly subjective.

Just balance the percentage totals together so that you reach your target Overall Acceptance rate, while keeping the costs within your target budget allocation.

Originally Posted by pkwraith

That's a question you really should be asking yourself. What one person considers is reasonable can be very different. It's highly subjective.

Just balance the percentage totals together so that you reach your target Overall Acceptance rate, while keeping the costs within your target budget allocation.

Yeah I agree. It has to do with your competitiveness relative to the OOS applicant pool for the particular medical school as well as your tolerance for risk.


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I would think that it depends on how strong your application is and how much you want to attend the schools you are applying to.

I don't think there is any magic threshold.

OOS percentages are only part of the story.

In West Virginia, for example, there's a high OOS percentage (like 30%), but that 30% is drawn solely from the surrounding Appalachian states.

U of Washington serves as the med school for 5 states (27% of the US landmass, 3% of the US population), so the OOS percentage combines a very high percentage for the region and a very low percentage for outside the region. The state govt's of AK, ID, MT & WY each "buy" a number of seats at UWash. Generally, states without med schools have regional buddies, and that contorts the OOS numbers.

You also have to look at how many apps a school gets. U of Vermont is famous, for example, for having more total seats than total instate applicants (2009: 115 seats, 85 VT apps, 27 VT matrics). Wide open field for OOS at that school. But this is well known, so there's a completely disproportionate number of OOS apps - like 6000 - so Vermont has no motivation to look at less-than-compelling apps from OOS students.

Similarly, OOS percentages are not high fidelity. It's not clear that a student who is a Texas resident, but went to college in Massachusetts, and has a current mailing address in MA, is counted as TX, when the school reports its numbers to AAMC. The person who gathers up the numbers may be more interested in making the school look worldly than in reporting numbers that help you make decisions.

You can assume that public schools are interested in seeding their student body with high-stats OOS diversity. You can assume that public schools are not motivated to collect another state's average or below-average applicants. You can assume that the economy has forced public schools to be more interested in OOS applicants from whom much higher tuition can be collected - any revenue source in a storm - but that such practices piss off the state's taxpayers ("you took 4 kids from California, instead of my hard-working 3.4/28 Suzie, after all the years I paid property taxes?!?!").

In general, if you have average-or-better stats (3.6+/31+), or you have a wicked compelling story and reasonable stats, it's worth your time to look at applying to public schools out of your state. With an average-or-worse application, other states are less interested in you than your own state.

Best of luck to you.