How many premeds?

[9909]

Pointless post.

Each year, how many US college freshman do you think stick with the premed track for at least a year?

I know its about 50K applicants to 20K accepted students per year. Is there any estimate for how many more get weeded out along the way?

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[SnakeDoc9497]

I'd say 0.001% stick it out the whole way

 

[Hospitalized]

There are very, very few people that educate themselves on the process, get the grades, MCAT, LORs, ECs, etc. and truly are serious about the field. "I want to be a doctor" is one of the most meaningless phrases in undergraduate schools.

 

[Hitmann]

At my school, half gave up after the first gen chem test.

 

[Terry Toma]

There are very, very few people that educate themselves on the process, get the grades, MCAT, LORs, ECs, etc. and truly are serious about the field. "I want to be a doctor" is one of the most meaningless phrases in undergraduate schools.

In most cases, an undergrad saying "I want to be a doctor" is approximately equivalent to a kindergartener saying "I want to be a fireman."

 

[piii]

At my school, half gave up after the first gen chem test.

Oh god the flash backs. I went to a fairly large private school. We had 300 kids my gen chem class and our professor was purposefully the worse in order to weed everyone out. Premed probably went from 500 -> 150

 

[VagabondKing]

At least a year? Probably a fair chunk, my undergrad is very premed heavy/friendly but people gradually fall off along various steps - starting from that first gen chem exam, to orgo to mcats and then finally some people just don't have the stats/application to get accepted somewhere. I personally think about 10% get through from beginning gen chem to ultimately submitting an application and then fewer being accepted.

 

[ugagrad1116]

I went to a decently large state school, and if I remember this right, it broke down like this for our school:

~2000 premeds in gen chem
~1000 premeds in organic
~750 premeds in biochem
~500 premeds take MCAT and apply

I don't remember if the premed office said anything about how many actually get in (maybe it was around 250-300?), but this is what they said about the journey.

 

[SOMBound13]

Pointless post.

Each year, how many US college freshman do you think stick with the premed track for at least a year?

I know its about 50K applicants to 20K accepted students per year. Is there any estimate for how many more get weeded out along the way?

I don't know if there are any reliable stats out there, but I always heard that only about 20% of freshman premeds ever apply to med school, and the first year is often the biggest weeding year. Adding to what someone already said, after the first chem test many premeds suddenly become business majors.

I remember one guy describing what he noticed at his undergrad. His story went something like this: There were about 500 premeds at the beginning of freshman year. After the first year, about 250 remained. After orgo sophomore year, maybe 150 remained. After MCAT scores, only about 100 applied to med school.

My undergrad was too big for me to get a real feel for any numbers, but I would say that this trend was probably typical.

 

[raiderette]

At my small LAC we had a freshman survey. 180 were prehealth. We niw have less than 20 applying to med, dental and optometry school and 3 going for PA. A few may not be counted because they didn't apply this year, but 20 or so is pretty consistent eith acceptance each year.

 

[Lucca]

Our office gave us this shpeal freshman year: 50% drop after first year. 50% take the MCAT, 50% will get in. So I guess 12.5% generic premeds (not controlling for predictors of success like income, SAT, hGPA, school ranking, class size, etc) will make it from the first day of class to the first day of medical school. "Make it" might be a bit extreme though. It assumes that getting into medical school is an ultimate-type goal. Most people who drop probably make a reasoned, active choice to no longer be pre-med and have other options available to them. It's the half that don't get into medical school after taking the MCAT that really don't "make" it.