Hi, I was wondering if anyone knew how many students drop out or fail out of medical school. I have to imagine there are people that get in and can't handle it, can anyone get me a percentage of students that graduate? Is this information available for individual schools?
Thanks!
At most US Allopathic schools, the number is VERY low. Once you're into a school, administrators try hard not to lose you (it looks bad for the school to take great applicants and not be able to graduate them, and they lose the tuition since they can't accept another student mid-year).
You can remediate classes, or if things are really bad, repeat a year. I think the rule at my school is 3 years to finish the first two years of med school. From the class before me, only 2 out of ~160 remediated first year: one was due to health problems, the other told me he just didn't study at ALL first time around (he said he didn't know what the trigeminal nerve was by the end of anatomy.... REALLY bad sign), and both passed the second time around.
At least at my school, they try not to let students get to that point. There is so much help/tutoring/counseling available that it shouldn't be a problem. Professors actively look for problems. If you fail either of the first 2 anatomy tests, they put you in a special group that gets assigned a really knowledgeable TA who helps groups of 1-3 several times a week (basically runs through all the anatomy in the lab for them).
So far in my class (in second year now), we've only had one student drop out (and it was originally because he wanted to do an extra year of research and come back the following year... but he decided to stay out) and, I believe, one student repeat first year.