How do you pick your schools?

[Pip413]

How are people picking the Medical schools to apply to? I have zero money to spend to visit any place unless it's for an interview (in which case, I'll just have to scratch up the money from somewhere). What are some of the specific things other people looking for besides location, cost, and reputation?

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[none]

Priority one: can you get in? Priority two: will you enjoy being there? If you can't visit, then you need to do some heavy web searching. Make sure to apply to a VERY wide range of schools. Don't forget schools like Albany, GWU, and Finch.

 

[Pip413]

Can you tell me why Albany, Finch and GWU are so good?

 

[italianlove]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Pip413:
•Can you tell me why Albany, Finch and GWU are so good?•••••I can...because they are "safety" schools. Hope this helps. Ciao.

 

[BlackPuma]

•••quote:•••Originally posted by Pip413:
•How are people picking the Medical schools to apply to? I have zero money to spend to visit any place unless it's for an interview (in which case, I'll just have to scratch up the money from somewhere). What are some of the specific things other people looking for besides location, cost, and reputation?•••••more important, once you do get to apply...the more important question becomes, how do they pick us?!

 

[SMW]

The MSAR (Medical School Admission Requirements), available from AAMC, is required reading for picking schools. It describes curriculums, admissions requirements, average stats of the student body, numbers of applicants and how many are interviewed and matriculate, broken down by in-state and out-of-state. Together with the USNews rankings, it is an invaluable tool for choosing the schools. Albany, Finch, and Gw are unranked and so considered "safety" schools by some.

 

[sandflea]

well, considering there are ~120 allopathic schools in the country and the USNews rankings only list the top 50, that would make the majority of US med schools 'unranked'. surely 70 medical schools in this country aren't 'bad' schools. i personally think that the USNews rankings are a poor way to choose a place to go to, and that the focus should be on getting into *any* med school, period (consdering the majority of applicants don't). simply put, there is no med school here that is easy to get into, so calling anything a 'safety' school is misleading. take finch, for example. finch gets 10000 applications a year, way more than most other schools. its published stats of accepted students is misleading as well; i've described it elsewhere on SDN--i don't feel like typing it again so do a search.

use the MSAR to get an idea of how competitive a school's student body is and what your chances might be. also look at geographical location--are there certain areas of the country where you really wouldn't want to live for four years? then choose a range of dream schools and possibly-realistic choices (although you can never totally know for sure what is realistic and what is just dreaming). the weaker your application, the more schools you apply to.

 

[Detroit Mick]

I'd recommend always applying to your state school(s) or those schools having ties to your home state. Outside of your state, find schools that have the curriculum you like, are located in an area you'd enjoy spending the next 4 years in and have similar acceptance stats as yourself.

:wink:

Hope this helps. Good Luck!

 

[sorrento]

Another note on out-of-state public schools: in addition to their acceptance rates for non-residents, take a good hard look at the tuition discrepancy between in-state and out-of-state, and find out if you would qualify for state residency after one year of living there as a student (some states allow it, others don't). For example, I was all set to apply to Univ. of Colorado (I'm a CA resident) until I found out the out-of-state tuition is something like $60,000! Also be aware that a lot of state schools will waitlist out-of-staters initially. Unless you are really enthusiastic about going to one of them, it might be a waste of money in many cases since you'll likely get into other, private schools first. (there are some state schools, however, who end up taking lots of non-residents, like UVM.)

But definitely apply to your own state schools!!!