Case Study: What GPAs from a Top 20 premed powerhouse college, get into the top medical schools?

[efle]

Back when I frequented the premedical side of SDN, one of the common debates was about whether the intense competition at highly ranked undergrads was accounted for by the admissions committees of highly ranked medical schools. Do you get any forgiveness for getting B grades? How many people end up enrolling at the top ranking MDs?

Lucky for us, there's now a huge dataset from the WashU prehealth office to look at as a case study.

The following is pulled from a total of n=1,226 WashU premeds who successfully matriculated to medical schools between 2014-2018. If N<5, they did not give data. If N<10, they gave only average values instead of Inter Quartile Ranges. MCAT values are percentiles (e.g. 96-100 equates to 518-524+).

Table:

Takeaways:

• Compared to the MSAR IQRs, there does not appear to be a substantial relaxing of GPA (or MCAT) expectations at highly ranked medical schools.
• About 10 people per year (<5%) land at the perennial Top 5.
• About 25% land in the Top 20.
• WashU kept as many people at home as it sent to the rest of the Top 10 combined (82 stayed home, between 82-90 went to all the rest)
• Largely due to the fraction saying home, there's a big regional bias. The four schools WashU, Northwestern, U Chicago and Michigan collectively got 50% of all the Top 20 matriculants.

Likely, many more worthy bullet points I'm missing right now!

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[Lawpy]

More @efle charts! Now i'm curious to know thoughts from @Lucca and others on this

Will add to the directory soon

 

[little_giant]

From my own experience at a top10 undergrad... doesn't help much in getting into a T20 med school. Those who are accepted into those schools are the stellar 3.85+ GPA, 520+ MCATs (there are quite a few of them) as it is with other undergrads. Maybe it helps for getting an A at mid-tier and lower med schools though based on our pretty high med school acceptance rate.

 

[BUSM24Student]

If all it took was a high GPA from a t10 undergrad and a high MCAT then I wouldn't be sitting on 0 As and ~18 Rs lolol
Starting to think I should work on my personality???? /s kinda?

 

[OfMiceAndWomen]

A handbook is given out to Harvard pre-meds every year that shows average GPA and MCAT of Harvard college grads that matriculate to each medical school. For most (if not all) medical schools, including all of the T10-20s, the average GPA of Harvard college grads were ~3.7, which is far below the overall average GPA of top med schools.

I don't have evidence for other Ivies/elite undergrad institutions, but I imagine there's something similar. Wasn't there data found that showed applicants from MIT with ~3.6 GPA still had 80-90% acceptance rate to med school?

 

[imbesrs]

A handbook is given out to Harvard pre-meds every year that shows average GPA and MCAT of Harvard college grads that matriculate to each medical school. For most (if not all) medical schools, including all of the T10-20s, the average GPA of Harvard college grads were ~3.7, which is far below the overall average GPA of top med schools.

I don't have evidence for other Ivies/elite undergrad institutions, but I imagine there's something similar. Wasn't there data found that showed applicants from MIT with ~3.6 GPA still had 80-90% acceptance rate to med school?

Reputation def matters to some degree. Here is WUSTL premed data

2014-2018AS_BCPMvsGPAGrid.pdf | Powered by Box

wustl.app.box.com

 

[little_giant]

A handbook is given out to Harvard pre-meds every year that shows average GPA and MCAT of Harvard college grads that matriculate to each medical school. For most (if not all) medical schools, including all of the T10-20s, the average GPA of Harvard college grads were ~3.7, which is far below the overall average GPA of top med schools.

I don't have evidence for other Ivies/elite undergrad institutions, but I imagine there's something similar. Wasn't there data found that showed applicants from MIT with ~3.6 GPA still had 80-90% acceptance rate to med school?

Yeah for my school as well the mean and median cumulative GPA is in the 3.6s and same for BCPM. But our MCAT median is also in the 95th percentile so thats probably why we have the 85+% acceptance rate.

EDIT: Our mean MCAT is actually 95%tile not 90 sorry

 

[grantdoc]

3.6 gpa from top universities and 90th % mcat definitely increases chances of med school acceptance to over 85%

 

[efle]

3.6 gpa from top universities and 90th % mcat definitely increases chances of med school acceptance to over 85%

I should hope so, seeing as the overall 3.6+/514+ nation wide admit rate is ~80-85%. Anything lower would mean your odds were reduced by having so many fellow premeds

 

[deleted733868]

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[efle]

The average accepted for my T5 undergrad is 3.5-3.6cGPA and 3.4-3.5sGPA. Average MCAT is 516.

Additionally, I would not consider WUSL a top undergrad...

But accepted to where? The WUSTL average admitted stats are the same as your school, but that forgiveness isnt present for top ranking med schools.

WashU has been ranked in the teens for decades and has had test scores equivalent to the Ivies. It'll never be a recognizable name on the coasts, similar to Vandy and Rice, but the caliber of student and academic rigor are the equal of any other university.

 

[MyOdyssey]

Back when I frequented the premedical side of SDN, one of the common debates was about whether the intense competition at highly ranked undergrads was accounted for by the admissions committees of highly ranked medical schools. Do you get any forgiveness for getting B grades? How many people end up enrolling at the top ranking MDs?

Lucky for us, there's now a huge dataset from the WashU prehealth office to look at as a case study.

The following is pulled from a total of n=1,226 WashU premeds who successfully matriculated to medical schools between 2014-2018. If N<5, they did not give data. If N<10, they gave only average values instead of Inter Quartile Ranges. MCAT values are percentiles (e.g. 96-100 equates to 518-524+).

Table:

View attachment 295284

Takeaways:

• Compared to the MSAR IQRs, there does not appear to be a substantial relaxing of GPA (or MCAT) expectations at highly ranked medical schools.
• About 10 people per year (<5%) land at the perennial Top 5.
• About 25% land in the Top 20.
• WashU kept as many people at home as it sent to the rest of the Top 10 combined (82 stayed home, between 82-90 went to all the rest)
• Largely due to the fraction saying home, there's a big regional bias. The four schools WashU, Northwestern, U Chicago and Michigan collectively got 50% of all the Top 20 matriculants.

Likely, many more worthy bullet points I'm missing right now!

Did WashU provide a year by year breakdown?

I'm curious to see whether standards have gotten more stringent as many on SDN seem to believe?

Did Wash U provide a breakdown for shadowing, clinical volunteering and nonclinical volunteering hours?

 

[proudofmykids]

Did WashU provide a year by year breakdown?

I'm curious to see whether standards have gotten more stringent as many on SDN seem to believe?

Did Wash U provide a breakdown for shadowing, clinical volunteering and nonclinical volunteering hours?

it would be interesting to show breakdown contrasting true traditional vs non traditional.

 

[efle]

No yearly breakdown or EC information, unfortunately. I can tell you there does appear to be other signs of increasing competitiveness in MD admissions though (including higher LizzyM trend and higher fraction with gap years)

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

I found one report from Vanderbilt but not as detailed as WUSTL.

https://www.vanderbilt.edu/hpao/documents/2017_Annual_Report.pdf

 

[efle]

I found one report from Vanderbilt but not as detailed as WUSTL.

https://www.vanderbilt.edu/hpao/documents/2017_Annual_Report.pdf

Interesting to note this line:

"Vanderbilt students with a GPA of 3.8 or above have a 98% Acceptance Rate "

Impressive!

 

[EdgeTrimmer]

Interesting to note this line:

"Vanderbilt students with a GPA of 3.8 or above have a 98% Acceptance Rate "

Impressive!

I believe Vanderbilt is a stats heavy admission school for UG, so probably those with 3.8 GPA also have high MCAT scores.

 

[efle]

I believe Vanderbilt is a stats heavy admission school for UG, so probably those with 3.8 GPA also have high MCAT scores.

Oh, absolutely. Same exact thing with WashU. Among people with a 3.8+, the median MCAT bucket is 97th-98th percentile, and the mode is 99th-100th.

When you take in 1000 premeds, all with top 1% SAT/ACT scores, and weed them down to 350, the consistently above-average survivors will eat the MCAT for breakfast.

 

[MyOdyssey]

No yearly breakdown or EC information, unfortunately. I can tell you there does appear to be other signs of increasing competitiveness in MD admissions though (including higher LizzyM trend and higher fraction with gap years)

Is this from the same Wash U dataset?

 

[efle]

Is this from the same Wash U dataset?

No, I mean those trends have been occurring nationally