Smooth Operater said:
I don't intend to apply for med school. I am just asking for a Canadian friend who is plannig to move to California and want to apply schools there.
She just got her US visa and will be living in California with her family, so she most likely will apply schools in Cali. But, I heard California schools are VERY tough to get in. What kind of stat do most successful applicant have in general? Thanks!
You heard right. This is why CA residents apply to great numbers of schools outside of CA. On average, applicants to schools in the UC system (5 of the 8 CA med schools) have a GPA of 3.7+, and an MCAT of 33. Outside of CA, the average GPA is 3.5-3.6, and an MCAT 28-30. These are of course averages, and these schools usually don't provide standard deviations, medians or ranges. However since these schools accept around 100 people, and they screen GPA's (cut off GPA 3.0-3.2, and MCAT of about 26), we can probably infer that most of the GPA's and MCAT's are on the higher end.
Of course GPA and MCAT aren't the only variable, and a lot of the UC applicants have amazing extracurriculars, personal statements, letters of recommendation and come from very diverse backgrounds. Some examples that I can recall were some people at UCSF and UCD. Over at UCSF, they had a former US Army Ranger, while another guy who flew fighter jets for some time, and then flew FedEx jets...only to end up wanting to go to med school. I believe one year they had an ex-Oakland Raider's football player too. As for UCD, they had a med student who took a year off to play soccer in Europe, while a med student who worked as a clown to pay for is daily needs. This is all of course in addition to their spectacular stats. From my graduating class at UCD, we had one guy who got into UCSF, and he had a 4.0 overall GPA, while another girl who was also going to attend UCSF set up some clinic in a 3rd world country. Something insane like that. I think those are extreme examples though.
As for the non-UC med schools, if your friend is not a Seventh Day Adventist, then I wouldn't apply to Loma Linda. Which leaves USC and Stanford who are competative, but may not be as selective as UCSF or UCLA, but compared to schools outside CA, still very selective. Plus, both are private schools and so are quite expensive.
Your friend will have an advantage as a CA resident (compared to non-residents), but that will merely put her in the same boat with the 10,000 other CA applicants. Anyway, the majority of pre-meds that I knew ended up going to some out of state school. Mostly Tulane (Tulane seems to like Aggies), and I knew a few that went to Albert Einstein over in NY.
