Application volume this cycle

[gardensoflife]

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Hi all, just out of curiosity is there any way to tell what the application load is like this cycle? Following last cycle's massive increase in applicants I am wondering what this year will look like. Are there any admissions podcasts/blogs/information sources that discuss the state of the current cycle?

 

[gyngyn]

I am surprised-- I would think that med schools would open up more seats after the pandemic...

Strong clinical training sites (and faculty) are hard to come by.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

I am surprised-- I would think that med schools would open up more seats after the pandemic...

i think that there is more likely to be supply side excesses in the coming years with the growth of automation and mid level autonomy. These forces will outweigh demand in urban and suburban areas. Rural areas will still have trouble finding enough physicians but admitting more students won’t solve this issue unless they are forced to stay in the area

 

[LizzyM]

Hmmm, I see. Well, I have an interest in teaching so hopefully in the future, I can joining the medical community as a professor.

Be prepared to be paid less than if you merely practiced medicine.

The other limitation is clinical sites meaning patients under care. Students need to learn to examine patients, stand next to the physician in the OR and delivery room and so forth and too many students and not enough patients/arrangements with clinical sites where patients are cared for would get a school placed on probation. Sadly, there are off-shore schools paying for the privilege of having their students take clinical slots in hospitals in the US. That means fewer slots for US students.... while those off-shore students are less likely to be placed in residencies and get medical licenses. It is a screwed up system.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

Why do medical professors make less than they would in industry? wouldn’t one expect it to be similar to business school professors? I know that at my school some of the finance profs were paid higher than everybody besides the president and endowment managers.

Be prepared to be paid less than if you merely practiced medicine.

The other limitation is clinical sites meaning patients under care. Students need to learn to examine patients, stand next to the physician in the OR and delivery room and so forth and too many students and not enough patients/arrangements with clinical sites where patients are cared for would get a school placed on probation. Sadly, there are off-shore schools paying for the privilege of having their students take clinical slots in hospitals in the US. That means fewer slots for US students.... while those off-shore students are less likely to be placed in residencies and get medical licenses. It is a screwed up system.

 

[HuskyMD Emeritus]

Why do medical professors make less than they would in industry? wouldn’t one expect it to be similar to business school professors? I know that at my school some of the finance profs were paid higher than everybody besides the president and endowment managers.

Clinical faculty often are volunteer faculty. We are not given extra time to attend on the patients followed by students and housestaff, but still need to see our own patients. Preparing and giving talks are done on our own time. Those who do this do it because we enjoy our work and want to be positive role models to the next generation of doctors. I have to admit I often learn more in teaching.

 

[Goro]

I am surprised-- I would think that med schools would open up more seats after the pandemic...

Opening up more seats is not a trivial thing to do. For starters, schools have to justify it to LCME or COCA and it's a complex and lengthy process.

 

[KnightDoc]

Opening up more seats is not a trivial thing to do. For starters, schools have to justify it to LCME or COCA and it's a complex and lengthy process.

Also, isn't there pressure within the profession, anxious premeds aside, to actually keep a lid on the number of slots in order to keep compensation high? It's not as though there wasn't a lesson to be learned from the easy money law schools made by opening new schools and increasing class sizes!

 

[gyngyn]

Why do medical professors make less than they would in industry? wouldn’t one expect it to be similar to business school professors? I know that at my school some of the finance profs were paid higher than everybody besides the president and endowment managers.

The more I teach, the less I make.
The more I care for those without means, the less the institution can pay me. The patients most likely to allow students to actively participate in care are often the ones with the least means. They are generous in the most important way.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

So I’m guessing that any intellectual property/therapies developed through research as a faculty member is also owned by the university in full? Who is getting the surplus value extracted from faculty labor?

 

[Goro]

So I’m guessing that any intellectual property/therapies developed through research as a faculty member is also owned by the university in full? Who is getting the surplus value extracted from faculty labor?

You would be wrong in your notion.

 

[LizzyM]

Ah, but isn't it true that many medical professors go into academic teaching because they are passionate about it and want to impart their knowledge to the new generation of physicians? If the same physicians work in the industry they would make much more. Consequently, I am not sure if necessarily the teaching salary really applies here, as the physicians go into teaching knowing that their salary would be much lower in the academic setting as compared to the clinical setting.


@gyngyn
Does it have anything to do with the number of available residency slots? As LizzyM said, there are only so many clinical sites, hospitals, and patients. Also isn't it true that residents' salaries are mostly funded by the government's funds to hospitals (for residents to work there) as compared to the hospitals themselves? So wouldn't the issue instead be with the lack of funding by the government as compared to the hospitals/clinical sites themselves?

Residency slots, which are funded by payments by the government for patient care provided by hospitals that have residency programs, are different from clerkship slots for medical students. The medical school sets up the opportunity for its students to be supervised by physician faculty members for rotations in specific units. So if a school has 100 students and hospital A will take 8 students to rotate in Surgery for 6 weeks (8 blocks of 8 each for a total of 64 students) the school needs to line up additional hospitals to provide for the other 36 students who need to rotate through a surgical service during M3 year. Rinse and repeat for medicine, pediatrics, neurology, psychiatry, radiology, pathology, etc, etc. Likewise, there are elective rotations for M4 students that have to be arranged with various hospitals. It is not as easy as saying let's take an additional 12 students in the coming year.

There have always been more residency slots than there are US graduates in a given year. The extra seats go to foreign medical grads which includes the top doctors from abroad who want to practice in the US but need a US residency in order to be licensed as well as graduates of off-shore schools. If the US med schools expanded, those folks would get squeezed.

 

[LizzyM]

Clinical faculty often are volunteer faculty. We are not given extra time to attend on the patients followed by students and housestaff, but still need to see our own patients. Preparing and giving talks are done on our own time. Those who do this do it because we enjoy our work and want to be positive role models to the next generation of doctors. I have to admit I often learn more in teaching.

Adding on...
Sometime the privilege of practicing at a specific hospital carries with it a faculty appointment at the medical school which carries, perhaps, some prestige and may attract patients to the practice but requires being "on service" for a few months per year during which one supervises students, residents, and, in some cases, fellows. It goes with the territory.

 

[proudofmykids]

From what I am gathering there is about a 7% increase over the 18% increase last cycle. Typically those who are early or just deciding on premed take 3-5 years to get to application. Therefore, we would expect an increase in applications over the next several cycles compared to the pre-pandemic typical increase of 2,5%. Between 2002 and 2020, there has been a nearly 60% increase the number of applicants while the The number of spots available at U.S. medical schools hasn't kept pace, as first year medical schools seats have increased 35% over the same time frame

Are these increases occuring at all quality levels of students or more prevalent for students throwing their hat into the ring with less strong applications, therefore having less impact on more qualified students?

 

[Goro]

Are these increases occuring at all quality levels of students or more prevalent for students throwing their hat into the ring with less strong applications, therefore having less impact on more qualified students?

At my school last year, the increase in applicants led to more qualified people being interviewed. About 1/10 had MCAT scores in the 90th %ile or better. And for the first time ever, I was interviewing people from the Ivies.

I expect that it will be the same crunch this year.

 

[KnightDoc]

At my school last year, the increase in applicants led to more qualified people being interviewed. About 1/10 had MCAT scores in the 90th %ile or better. And for the first time ever, I was interviewing people from the Ivies.

I expect that it will be the same crunch this year.

Now that it's over, how many of them did you actually enroll? Having them apply and be interviewed is a measure of their increased anxiety. Being able to enroll them in numbers greater than in the past would be an indication that pool actually became more competitive, not just larger and more nervous.

 

[Goro]

Now that it's over, how many of them did you actually enroll? Having them apply and be interviewed is a measure of their increased anxiety. Being able to enroll them in numbers greater than in the past would be an indication that pool actually became more competitive, not just larger and more nervous.

I don't have access to that data.

 

[KnightDoc]

I don't have access to that data.

It would be great to know. Without it, I still have a strong feeling you are correct and the pool is more competitive.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I really thought a lot of the last minute applicants wouldn't be competitive, but you and the other adcoms told me I was dreaming. Anecdotally, posts on the WL support thread last spring indicated that an unusually large number of seemingly very strong candidates had no acceptances.

This leads me to believe that @gonnif and you are correct, that the surge in candidates has been proportionally distributed throughout the pool, and that things are consequently more competitive for otherwise viable candidates.

 

[proudofmykids]

It would be great to know. Without it, I still have a strong feeling you are correct and the pool is more competitive.

At the beginning of the pandemic, I really thought a lot of the last minute applicants wouldn't be competitive, but you and the other adcoms told me I was dreaming. Anecdotally, posts on the WL support thread last spring indicated that an unusually large number of seemingly very strong candidates had no acceptances.

This leads me to believe that @gonnif and you are correct, that the surge in candidates has been proportionally distributed throughout the pool, and that things are consequently more competitive for otherwise viable candidates.

did it seem like those strong WL candidates may have moved up their app cycle and therefore lacked in some of the ECs despite having strong stats?

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

There was recently a decline in overall college enrollment. This may decrease competitiveness in future cycles but there will be significant lag time

 

[KnightDoc]

did it seem like those strong WL candidates may have moved up their app cycle and therefore lacked in some of the ECs despite having strong stats?

Impossible to tell, since I don't know them personally! 🙂 Their distinguishing feature seemed to be more IIs than typical, with higher stats than typical. My takeaway was that they would have had As in prior cycles, but, who really knows?

It's all anecdotal, but it does line up with what the insiders are reporting, which is that the increase is distributed proportionally throughout the pool. By definition, that makes things more competitive for those at the top, and raises the cutoff for where people find themselves shut out, both in terms of ECs and stats.

 

[KnightDoc]

There was recently a decline in overall college enrollment. This may decrease competitiveness in future cycles but there will be significant lag time

Not at all, as the trend to more and more gap years continues! This would only matter, 4 years from when it began, if people predominantly entered med school directly from UG. It just so happens that more people are taking more gap years before applying. That will dilute the impact of this to imperceptible over the intermediate term.

 

[LizzyM]

I am hearing from many applicants with MCAT >519 that they had more time to prep for the MCAT because other activities were curtailed in summer 2020. That's making for a very competitive pool this year in terms of candidates who started preparing academically in 2018 or earlier (current seniors, current gap year applicants).

 

[Zuggelder]

@LizzyM, what has been your personal experience over the past 2020-2021 app. cycle? Have the applicants your school interviewed and given acceptances to been significantly more competitive / impressive than the 2019-2020 cycle? Or was it mildly more competitive such that the bottom 10% of the 2020 cohort wouldn't have made it into the 2021 cohort?

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

There was MCAT inflation before the pandemic particularly for right tailed scores. In 2018/19, I hardly saw anybody with 523+. Now I see a handful in each school specific thread

 

[LizzyM]

@LizzyM, what has been your personal experience over the past 2020-2021 app. cycle? Have the applicants your school interviewed and given acceptances to been significantly more competitive / impressive than the 2019-2020 cycle? Or was it mildly more competitive such that the bottom 10% of the 2020 cohort wouldn't have made it into the 2021 cohort?

I really don't have enough of a picture of the bottom 10% who matriculate to make any informed comments.

 

[KnightDoc]

I really don't have enough of a picture of the bottom 10% who matriculate to make any informed comments.

Fair enough! You referenced >519 applicants before. Are you seeing more of them than in the past? If so, it's reasonable to assume they are crowding out people with lower scores, correct?

 

[LizzyM]

Fair enough! You referenced >519 applicants before. Are you seeing more of them than in the past? If so, it's reasonable to assume they are crowding out people with lower scores, correct?

Hard to say... are the people who would have been 517s in a prior year are now 524s? Hard to say. The bottom 10% tend to be people who bring something unusual and special to the table. They won't be crowded out.

 

[Moko]

Both the rate of increase and the absolute numbers of applicants are far outpacing the available MS1 seats. With premed studies taking 3-5 years on average prior to application, and the continuing increase in gap years, this higher level of applicants will be with us for at least the next several cycles.