Is it harder to become a physician today?

[WaterFlow]

Hi everyone,

I would love to hear some of your thoughts on if you think it is harder to be admitted into medical school today than it was let's say, 15 or more years ago.

For those that applied decades ago, what was your process like?
Did you need to have several hundred hours of volunteering and leadership activities in addition to great scores and grades?
What do you think of the current process?

If you think the process has gotten more difficult, why do you think this happened, especially since there is a shortage of physicians?

(not sure if this is in the correct forum so feel free to move if appropriate)

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[Socrates25]

No way, it's a lot easier now.

There are 100+ new med schools that didn't exist in the 1990s. I believe the aggregate acceptance rate is something like 55-60%, that's higher than it's ever been in the last 50 years.

For comparison in the 1970s MD programs were much more difficult to get into -- even average MD programs had an acceptance rate in the 10-20% range. Now there's a bunch of third tier trash programs (both MD and DO) that routinely have to send out acceptances to 75% of their applicants just to fill their class.

 

[Postictal Raiden]

No way, it's a lot easier now.

There are 100+ new med schools that didn't exist in the 1990s. I believe the aggregate acceptance rate is something like 55-60%, that's higher than it's ever been in the last 50 years.

For comparison in the 1970s MD programs were much more difficult to get into -- even average MD programs had an acceptance rate in the 10-20% range. Now there's a bunch of third tier trash programs (both MD and DO) that routinely have to send out acceptances to 75% of their applicants just to fill their class.

Inaccurate.

In 1970, ~25k applied and 11500 got accepted = 46% acceptance rate
In 2018, ~52k applied and 22k got accepted = 42% acceptance rate

sources:

https://www.aamc.org/download/492954/data/factstablea7_2.pdf

MEDICAL SCHOOL ADMISSIONS - Medical Education and Societal Needs: A Planning Report for the Health Professions - NCBI Bookshelf

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

 

[almondflower]

Also acceptance rates are just not a good way of determining how difficult it is. Colorado College has a lower acceptance rate than UCLA but one is definitely more difficult to get into than the other

But I'm still not sure if it's easier or harder today. I would say that the new MCAT is harder than the old one because there's more material being tested but at the same time, it's probably way easier to study for it today than it was before. You can find premade anki decks, read other people's notes that they post online, and if you don't understand a question you could always just post about it on sdn or reddit. New chemistry/physics/biology/math/psychology videos get uploaded all the time. So even if the material is harder, it's easier to learn. If you take that same idea and apply it to other parts of being premed, it's probably impossible to figure out which one is harder.