how do you decide where to apply?

Applying to so many schools is ridiculous.

The first place to ask where you should apply is your premedical advisor who, with a few years or more of experience, should have a fairly good idea of where you should, should not, or maybe apply. Two students could have identical numbers, but one might have something else going for him/her while the other does not.

The next place to get an idea where it might be reasonable to apply is the Medical School Admission Requirements, published by the AAMC. Each school gives statistics and other information to base a decision whether to apply or not. But here, the other variables that make a difference are usually so general that caution must be exercised. For one thing, they rarely will say that where you go to college makes a difference. If it didn't, why do so many premeds climb the walls to attend "prestigious" colleges? And then to attend "prestigious" medical schools?
Another solution is to print the names of all the medical schools on stiff cardboard, mount the cardboard on a wall, and throw darts.

 

Yes that would be very ridiculous. I knew a guy in college (a post-bacc) who applied to 80+ schools and was rejected by all (after nearly $10,000 in application fees).

I dunno where he is nowadays.


Tim of New York City.

 

One thing that really helped me figure out/narrow down where I wanted to apply was interviewfeedback.com. Even though you are not at interview stage yet, it is one of the few sites I know of where you can get some very honest and candid impressions of the different schools -- ie, location, cost, curriculum, clinical training, faculty, students. You don't want to apply to 80 schools -- not only does it get ridiculously expensive, but it would be a nightmare to do that many secondaries. I think around 20 is a pretty good number (I think I ended up applying to 15). Talking to your premed advisor, if there is one at your school, is probably a really good idea. Also, start thinking of some criteria that matter to you when picking a place you are going to live/study for the next 4 years. Location/cost of living were really big issues for me -- I hate cold weather, I'm not a huge city person, and since I already live somewhere ridiculously expensive, I wanted to go somewhere with a cheaper cost of living if possible (tuition also factored into this). That eliminated at least 10-15 of the original 40 schools I considered. Even though you say you don't really care where you go to school, I'm sure there are some factors that are more important to you than others -- concentrate on those to hone down your final list. Good luck.

 

If you want to narrow down your list of schools from 81 down to, say, 25, a good way to do it is to make yourself a set criteria for these med schools.

You can first ask yourself, "which schools can I NOT apply to?" I don't know if you've done this yet, but see if there are residency requirements for some of these schools, or if they have a "preference" for in-state applicants. A reference book to look at is Princeton Review's Complete Book of Medical Schools 2001 edition. They list every allopathic med school, and for the majority of them provide the number of out-of-state applicants for each school, what percentage were interviewed, and what percentage of those interviewed were ultimately accepted.

Second, look at class size. I almost applied to Dartmouth until I saw that they only admitted 70 students per year. Mayo only takes 34. BU takes 136, but after the early admissions people and the early acceptance people, they only take 99 students per year from the rest of the year's applicant pool. When you consider that over 5,000 send in secondaries to BU, it can be extremely competitive. Now, I don't want to discourage you from applying to these schools, as they are all excellent (especially Mayo) medical schools. You have superior numbers to mine and I'm sure you would be competitive. But that helped to narrow down my choices, and maybe it can help to narrow down yours.

You can then look at all of the other factors about the school; pass-fail vs. A-F grading system, tuition costs, location of the med school, reputation, etc, etc.

81 schools are a bit extreme and VERY costly. Remember, it'll cost you in the four figures just for the AMCAS application. Most private schools charge between $80 to $95 for their secondaries.

 

Also, keep in mind that the AMCAS application package sent to each school you applied to will include the list of schools that you are applying to. I would imagine that you'd look silly when asked by your interviewer why the hell you applied to 80 schools and what you like about THIS school that is drastically different from the other 79 you applied to. I think that if you answered "I applied to more schools to get a better chance of acceptance" would not be well received.

 

I agree with puffy1. You can definitely use some criteria to narrow down your choices. Use this upcoming year to do some research and figure out which school you would really want to go to. I started with a relatively long list, but in the end I narrowed it down to 4. You may not be comfortable with a number that low, but you shouldn't be comfortable with a number as high as 80 either.


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Hercules

But there is also a time for sleeping.
-Odysseus in the Odyssey 11.330-331