Graduate School Enrollment Booming but Med School Enrollment Down???

[tryingagain]

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I have heard that because of our shakey economy the graduate schools are booming as people are staying in school because they can't find a job. However, the same report said that medical school enrollments are down. Is this right??? Anyone have any insight on this???

 

[Diogenes]

Med school has very specific prereqs, so it lags behind the economy in an inverse relationship. When the economy is good fewer people want to be doctors; when the ecomony is bad, more people want to be doctors. I bet in 3 years there will be more med school applicants than the past few years.

 

[Trek]

Plus enrollment is one thing- most med school classes are set at a fixed number and have been for years. Competition to get in is the problem. --Trek

 

[Diogenes]

Originally posted by Trek
Plus enrollment is one thing- most med school classes are set at a fixed number and have been for years. Competition to get in is the problem. --Trek

I meant to address this in my first response to the OP. Med school enrollment is unchanged. Look in the MSAR. The number of matriculants is constant over time. Only the number of APPLICANTS changes.

 

[tryingagain]

Well that's what I meant. I guess I should have been more specific.

"The number of applicants for medical school is low right now." Is that a true or false statement???

 

[DW]

Originally posted by tryingagain
Well that's what I meant. I guess I should have been more specific.

"The number of applicants for medical school is low right now." Is that a true or false statement???

apps hit a high of 46K apps in 96, and somewhere I read they're expecting 33K-34 this year. But, if you look at GPA and MCATs, they are rising, so its not getting any "easier" really.aamc data

 

[lola]

nobody can really say for sure, because we are not even close to the application deadline. the number of people who have opened amcas accounts could be used as an indicator, but we won't know the total number who turned in their app before the deadline until that deadline comes.

 

[Tweetie_bird]

does anybody know if there is a half-way mark for the stats? for eg: how many open accounts by HALF way through the cycle?

 

[Trek]

Originally posted by Tweetie_bird
does anybody know if there is a half-way mark for the stats? for eg: how many open accounts by HALF way through the cycle?

Varies, no one will know for sure until the time comes. --Trek

 

[lola]

It should be added that even though people are opening accounts, it doesn't necessarily mean they're going to apply. I know I opened one last year just to see what the application looked like. Someone on this board posted some stas from AAMC about this a while ago, didn't they? Can't remember what they were, but I don't recall thinking they were expecting a huge drop in applications.

 

[tryingagain]

Someone posted in another topic that UNMC, Florida and Arizona all DID NOT fill their entering classes this year. Interesting!!!

 

[Diogenes]

Originally posted by tryingagain
Someone posted in another topic that UNMC, Florida and Arizona all DID NOT fill their entering classes this year. Interesting!!!

As far as I know, they will fill their classes, they just initially did not put enough people on the waitlists.

That still has absolutely nothing to do with the total number of applicants.

 

[tryingagain]

I totally disagree. If there are a lower number of applicants then there COULD be a direct correlation to the quality that a medical school is willing to accept. For instance, a middle tier applicant is a able to get into an upper tier school (which might not have happened if their were more applicants), a lower tier applicant gets into a middle tier school. This leaves some schools with the option of either picking a sub-par applicant (if one is available) or choosing to let the spot(s) go unfilled for the year.

If the number of applicants has gone down (which I suspect it has, thus the reason for this post) but the MCAT and GPA numbers continue to go up on average, that would seem to me that there are not as many "good" picks for the schools. i.e. when the cream of the crop pick their "Harvards and Hopkins" the remaining applicants become very appealing to the rest of the schools.

Also, perhaps because of this discrepency many who were on the waitlist picked a better school than they otherwise would have chosen.

Just a thought.

 

[Diogenes]

Do you have an MSAR? If you do, look at the tables and graphs that show application statistics. The total number of matriculants is UNCHANGED over time. Med schools don't generally change their class sizes based on the quality of the applicants.