ADMISSION TO MED SCHOOL. Hopkins, Goucher, Bryn Mawr or Scripps will all get you into med school. According to the Hopkins post-bacc Facebook page, 100% of Hopkins students who applied last year got into med school, and, according to the official Hopkins site, over the history of the program virtually all who have applied have gotten in. Goucher states that 99.7% of its students who applied have gotten in over the last 10 years. BM says that consistently over 98% of its applicants are accepted. Scripps states that in the last 4 years 100% of its students have gotten into med school, and that over the long term, well over 90% have been accepted. I believe in each case these percentages are limited to students who actually apply, and thus exclude students who dropped out of the program or chose not to apply to med school (more on this below).
Bottom Line: If you finish the program and apply to med school, Hopkins, Goucher, Bryn Mawr, or Scripps will almost certainly get you into a med school.
ADMISSION TO HIGHLY-RANKED MED SCHOOLS. Hopkins and Goucher offer their students the best shot at getting into a highly ranked med schools. For this analysis, I used the USNWR rankings for research med schools, and treated top 25 schools as highly ranked. Obviously, using 25 as the cut-off is arbitrary, and, equally obviously, there are serious questions about the value of the rankings in USNWR (or any rankings, for that matter). Still, the rankings probably bear at least some relation to reputation and seem to have a pretty strong relationship to selectivity, as measured by average MCAT score, so I don't think they are worthless.
The tables below show the average percentage of students in a post-bacc class who received offers from the specified med school, generally limiting the presentation to top 25 schools that made offers to at least 5% of the students in a program. Again, I understand there are limits to what this can reliably show; i.e., students more interested in going to a top 25 may be drawn to Hopkins or Goucher instead of BM or Scripps; students from Hopkins and Goucher may feel more of a need to 'stack' offers than do students from BM or Scripps; BM students, being more numerous, may spread out their applications more, etc. Still, consider: If you knew nothing about two programs except for the percentage of students at each program who got offers from top 25 programs, which program would you go to if your main objective was to go to a top 25 program?
I derived this percentage by dividing (i) the number of offers made by a particular med school to students of a particular post-bacc, by (ii) the average number of students who matriculated into the post-bacc program as reported on the program's website (not the number who applied to med school from the post-bacc program). Hopkins and BM present 5 years of acceptance data on their web sites. Goucher presents only 1 year of acceptance data on its website, so I used the Wayback Machine to pull up Goucher data from 2007-2009, giving me 4 years of data. Scripps' data is problematic because when a med school has accepted more than 1 Scripps' student, it is impossible to tell how many students (if any) were accepted within the last 5 years. UCSF and UCSD are the only top 25s to have made more than 1 offer to Scripps' students, having made offers to 3 and 6 students, respectively. In addition, Scripps offers part-time enrollment and pre-vet/pre-dental, so not all students will apply each year to med school. I fudged these problems by assuming half of the acceptances from UCSF and UCSD came in the last 5 years (which seems reasonable since, for offers the date of which can be ascertained, only 22 of 50 came in the last 5 years), and by assuming 12 students per year, which is at the low end of the 12-15 range mentioned on the Scripps web site.
Here is the percentage of students entering a specified post-bacc program who received an offer from a specified med school, with parenthetical information about linkage:
Hopkins:
Top 25, Northeast:
JHU 17%; Penn 12% (has link); Cornell 10% (has link); Harvard 7%; Mt Sinai 7% (has new link)
Top 25, Other:
UMich 13% (has new link); Pitt 7%; Emory 7%; Duke 6%; NW 7%; WUSL 5%; UChi 5%
Other noteworthy:
GWU: 9%; Brown 9% (has link not requiring MCAT, non-trads preferred); Rochester 7% (has link not requiring MCAT)
Goucher:
Top 25, Northeast:
JHU 12%; Cornell 10%; Harvard 6%; Mt Sinai 6%; Penn: 5%
Top 25: Other
UChi 19% (has link); Pitt 13% (0 in 2010); UMich 6% (has new link)
Other Noteworthy:
UMd 28% (65%, in 2010 new link); GWU 10%; Brown 6% (has link not requiring MCAT, non-trads preferred)
BM:
Top 25, Northeast:
Penn 10% (has link)
Other Noteworthy:
Rochester 14% (has link not requiring MCAT); Thos Jefferson 12% (has link); Brown 7% (has link not requiring MCAT, non-trads preferred); Dartmouth 5% (has link not requiring MCAT)
Scripps:
Top 25:
UCSD: 5%
Other Noteworthy:
UCSF: 2.5%
GWU: 8%
As an alternative, consider the total number of offers made by top 25s per student at each post-bacc. Here is the data, which, to account for limitations in data, considers offers only from med schools that made at least 3 offers to students from Goucher, Hopkins and BM (even though BM is much larger), or 1 offer for Scripps (which is smallest).
Hopkins:
.67 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.58 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
Goucher:
.48 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.69 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
BM:
.25 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.25 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
Scripps:
.05 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.14 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
Bottom Line: When it comes to getting accepted into a top 25, Hopkins and Goucher have the best results, and those results are very similar. As a bonus, Hopkins has links to three top 25 Northeast schools, while Goucher has an extremely strong relationship with UMd, a top 40 school, which offered 65% of Goucher students enrollment in 2010. BM's link with Penn is a plus. Scripps has decent ties to the UCs. BM, Hopkins and Goucher all have no-MCAT-required links (3,2 and 1 links, respectively).
ATTRITION.
As suggested above, the acceptance percentages don't tell the whole story since they do not address the number of students who drop out before applying or complete the program but decide not to apply. Attrition is a factor to consider, but you will find it hard to get decent information on this, especially since these programs are small and the actions of a few individuals can make big percentage differences.
Consider that, on the one hand, a poster recently said Goucher had 4 students drop out last year, and a larger than usual number decided to take 2 year glides, so only 22 students, out of 31+ original students, actually applied to med school (though the way linkages are report also influenced this). In a PM, a recent Hopkins student believed that in a recent year 6 out of roughly 28 students either dropped or decided not to apply, while in the current year there has been little or no attrition. Scripps 'gainful employment' disclosure indicates only 8 students finished the program last year, and only 7 did so on time; this, for a program with a typical entering class of 12-15. On the other hand, based on SD posts, PMs and direct communications with programs, it appears attrition at Hopkins, Goucher, BM and Scripps is usually much lower than the above figures would suggest.
Complicating matters even more is the absence of public information on the characteristics of those who drop and their reasons for dropping. There is some indication that non-trad students are more likely to drop than are students direct from undergrad, though that might not be true all the time. A high drop rate would suggest serious problems with the program, but in fact might shed little light on the program, depending on the (typically unknown) motivation of the dropper: It is not worrisome if students drop because of personal reasons--a spouse's job requires relocation, a parent falls ill and needs attention--but it is definitely worrisome if students drop because they hate the program.
Bottom Line: There is no good public data on attrition, including average drop out rates, typical 'two-year glide' rates, the reasons for drops, and the characteristics of which students drop.
DISCLOSURE: One-third of Henge (who actually is a composite of 3 individuals) will enroll in the Hopkins post-bacc next summer.
Bottom Line: If you finish the program and apply to med school, Hopkins, Goucher, Bryn Mawr, or Scripps will almost certainly get you into a med school.
ADMISSION TO HIGHLY-RANKED MED SCHOOLS. Hopkins and Goucher offer their students the best shot at getting into a highly ranked med schools. For this analysis, I used the USNWR rankings for research med schools, and treated top 25 schools as highly ranked. Obviously, using 25 as the cut-off is arbitrary, and, equally obviously, there are serious questions about the value of the rankings in USNWR (or any rankings, for that matter). Still, the rankings probably bear at least some relation to reputation and seem to have a pretty strong relationship to selectivity, as measured by average MCAT score, so I don't think they are worthless.
The tables below show the average percentage of students in a post-bacc class who received offers from the specified med school, generally limiting the presentation to top 25 schools that made offers to at least 5% of the students in a program. Again, I understand there are limits to what this can reliably show; i.e., students more interested in going to a top 25 may be drawn to Hopkins or Goucher instead of BM or Scripps; students from Hopkins and Goucher may feel more of a need to 'stack' offers than do students from BM or Scripps; BM students, being more numerous, may spread out their applications more, etc. Still, consider: If you knew nothing about two programs except for the percentage of students at each program who got offers from top 25 programs, which program would you go to if your main objective was to go to a top 25 program?
I derived this percentage by dividing (i) the number of offers made by a particular med school to students of a particular post-bacc, by (ii) the average number of students who matriculated into the post-bacc program as reported on the program's website (not the number who applied to med school from the post-bacc program). Hopkins and BM present 5 years of acceptance data on their web sites. Goucher presents only 1 year of acceptance data on its website, so I used the Wayback Machine to pull up Goucher data from 2007-2009, giving me 4 years of data. Scripps' data is problematic because when a med school has accepted more than 1 Scripps' student, it is impossible to tell how many students (if any) were accepted within the last 5 years. UCSF and UCSD are the only top 25s to have made more than 1 offer to Scripps' students, having made offers to 3 and 6 students, respectively. In addition, Scripps offers part-time enrollment and pre-vet/pre-dental, so not all students will apply each year to med school. I fudged these problems by assuming half of the acceptances from UCSF and UCSD came in the last 5 years (which seems reasonable since, for offers the date of which can be ascertained, only 22 of 50 came in the last 5 years), and by assuming 12 students per year, which is at the low end of the 12-15 range mentioned on the Scripps web site.
Here is the percentage of students entering a specified post-bacc program who received an offer from a specified med school, with parenthetical information about linkage:
Hopkins:
Top 25, Northeast:
JHU 17%; Penn 12% (has link); Cornell 10% (has link); Harvard 7%; Mt Sinai 7% (has new link)
Top 25, Other:
UMich 13% (has new link); Pitt 7%; Emory 7%; Duke 6%; NW 7%; WUSL 5%; UChi 5%
Other noteworthy:
GWU: 9%; Brown 9% (has link not requiring MCAT, non-trads preferred); Rochester 7% (has link not requiring MCAT)
Goucher:
Top 25, Northeast:
JHU 12%; Cornell 10%; Harvard 6%; Mt Sinai 6%; Penn: 5%
Top 25: Other
UChi 19% (has link); Pitt 13% (0 in 2010); UMich 6% (has new link)
Other Noteworthy:
UMd 28% (65%, in 2010 new link); GWU 10%; Brown 6% (has link not requiring MCAT, non-trads preferred)
BM:
Top 25, Northeast:
Penn 10% (has link)
Other Noteworthy:
Rochester 14% (has link not requiring MCAT); Thos Jefferson 12% (has link); Brown 7% (has link not requiring MCAT, non-trads preferred); Dartmouth 5% (has link not requiring MCAT)
Scripps:
Top 25:
UCSD: 5%
Other Noteworthy:
UCSF: 2.5%
GWU: 8%
As an alternative, consider the total number of offers made by top 25s per student at each post-bacc. Here is the data, which, to account for limitations in data, considers offers only from med schools that made at least 3 offers to students from Goucher, Hopkins and BM (even though BM is much larger), or 1 offer for Scripps (which is smallest).
Hopkins:
.67 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.58 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
Goucher:
.48 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.69 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
BM:
.25 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.25 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
Scripps:
.05 offers/student from top 25s in the Northeast
.14 offers/student from top 25s not in the Northeast
Bottom Line: When it comes to getting accepted into a top 25, Hopkins and Goucher have the best results, and those results are very similar. As a bonus, Hopkins has links to three top 25 Northeast schools, while Goucher has an extremely strong relationship with UMd, a top 40 school, which offered 65% of Goucher students enrollment in 2010. BM's link with Penn is a plus. Scripps has decent ties to the UCs. BM, Hopkins and Goucher all have no-MCAT-required links (3,2 and 1 links, respectively).
ATTRITION.
As suggested above, the acceptance percentages don't tell the whole story since they do not address the number of students who drop out before applying or complete the program but decide not to apply. Attrition is a factor to consider, but you will find it hard to get decent information on this, especially since these programs are small and the actions of a few individuals can make big percentage differences.
Consider that, on the one hand, a poster recently said Goucher had 4 students drop out last year, and a larger than usual number decided to take 2 year glides, so only 22 students, out of 31+ original students, actually applied to med school (though the way linkages are report also influenced this). In a PM, a recent Hopkins student believed that in a recent year 6 out of roughly 28 students either dropped or decided not to apply, while in the current year there has been little or no attrition. Scripps 'gainful employment' disclosure indicates only 8 students finished the program last year, and only 7 did so on time; this, for a program with a typical entering class of 12-15. On the other hand, based on SD posts, PMs and direct communications with programs, it appears attrition at Hopkins, Goucher, BM and Scripps is usually much lower than the above figures would suggest.
Complicating matters even more is the absence of public information on the characteristics of those who drop and their reasons for dropping. There is some indication that non-trad students are more likely to drop than are students direct from undergrad, though that might not be true all the time. A high drop rate would suggest serious problems with the program, but in fact might shed little light on the program, depending on the (typically unknown) motivation of the dropper: It is not worrisome if students drop because of personal reasons--a spouse's job requires relocation, a parent falls ill and needs attention--but it is definitely worrisome if students drop because they hate the program.
Bottom Line: There is no good public data on attrition, including average drop out rates, typical 'two-year glide' rates, the reasons for drops, and the characteristics of which students drop.
DISCLOSURE: One-third of Henge (who actually is a composite of 3 individuals) will enroll in the Hopkins post-bacc next summer.
