OP, I suspect you are from Idaho. If that is correct, you should maintain your Idaho residence and apply from there. When considering the impact that state of residence has on an applicant's chances of admission, the key data point is the average MCAT score for matriculants from various states. The lower, the better. In the fall 2019 MD class the average MCAT score among Idaho matriculants was 510.1 while the national average was 511.5. Your parents must be brilliant strategists.
Matriculation rate i.e. (matriculants from a specific state/applicants from the same state) is a poor metric of the probability of acceptance for any individual from that state because it does not account for self exclusion. Every year loads of people make market based decisions to throw in the towel and do something other than applying to an MD school if admission from their state is unlikely. For example, the average MCAT score among
applicants from California is higher than the average MCAT score for
matriculants from six different states. See these tables.
I see numerous SDN threads started by people who think that changing their state of residence will improve their likelihood of getting admitted. This is not as simple as it may appear. First, people need to stare at the tables above. Second, they need to take a hard look at the state law that applies to medical school admissions in the states that have lower MCAT averages. Finally, and this is the hard part, they need to look at the unwritten policies of state medical schools admissions offices regarding applicants who suddenly wander in claiming that their new home state is paradise. Consider the case of Buchwald v. New Mexico. In this case an applicant moved into New Mexico, a low average MCAT state, and applied to the UNM medical school after she met all of the legal criteria for admission as a state resident. The UNM admissions office rejected her on the grounds that she wouldn't stay in New Mexico even though she was now a state resident under the law. She sued in federal court on the grounds that the admissions office violated the equal protection clause, her right to travel etc. etc. The applicant ultimately lost because the court found that the medical school had a compelling interest in assuring that New Mexico would have enough physicians.
Read Buchwald v. Univ. of New Mexico Sch. of Med, 159 F.3d 487, see flags on bad law, and search Casetext’s comprehensive legal database
casetext.com
If I were to move to a new state to improve my chance at admission, two states I'd look at would be Ohio and Michigan. Those states do not have above average MCAT scores among matriculants, they have loads of MD seats, and, they have huge DO schools as a back up that are fairly priced for in state students.
