number of applicants for this year

[Vila Rancho]

does anyone know if the applicants for this year are increasing or decreasing compare to previous years?

for the past 5 years, med applicants have been decreasing due to economy booming and many lucrative job opportunities. what about this year? has the bad economy brought more students to med school this year?

oh god, this just reminds me that i still have a few hundreds of stocks sitting at e-trade. the good thing is that the price has been pretty consistent...since dropping from $25 dollars per share, it has been staying at a consistent 25 cents per share for the past year. (just try to cheer myself up here)

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[rxfudd]

There is no way to know this, people are still applying! However, the number of medical school applicants has steadily been decreasing over the past years - don't get too excited, their scores have also been going up for the past few years.

 

[sandflea]

well, i don't think anyone can say anything for sure about this year yet, as not everyone who plans on applying has initiated an application through AMCAS (there's always people who apply at the last minute). but, as you note, the trend for the past year or two is downward, so one would expect that applications would decrease this year too. i think the decrease last year was something like 3%.

 

[Retro]

Despite the fact that economy is going downhill, that is still recent news and it takes some time for it to be reflected in an increase of medical school application. Since the freshman at college usually decides their major with the economic trend, and since economy is not so good, more freshman in Fall 2001 will do premed than computer science or engineering, and the upward trend won't be seen until Fall 2004 application. So this year, a decrease should be more dramatic since AMCAS is screwing things up and it may discourage some non-traditional applicants (i.e. non-Jr/Sr) from applying. The I think it is still good.

 

[Vila Rancho]

it's true from the reasons that you mentioned. my concern was based on the recent increasing trend in applicants who applied to mba and grad schools. based on interviews with the adcom of haas (uc berkeley mba school) and stanford mba school, the applicant pool for this year has increased dramatically compare to previous years of applicants...even my cousin who is doing a PhD program in Ohio State has mentioned the uprising of applicant to his school. i'm just wondering if it's gonna be the same with med school.

 

[Retro]

I wouldn't worry about MBA schools and Law schools... Actually, people with MBA are having a hard time finding jobs due to the slow economy... But remember what I said, three years ago, economy was at its Zenith... Consequently, those freshman at 1998 were deciding upon pre-Haas (I was from Berkeley so I knew), and now their degree has matured after three years and hence MBA school applications are increasing, despite a slowing economy. The situation with law school is a lot simplier... Any liberal arts major with some poly sci courses can attempt Law School; but not all poly sci/liberal arts major can attempt med school. The reasons that those people who entered liberal arts probably couldn't hack premed requirements in the first place. Now the economy is slowing down, people surely turned toward law... but med school are not so flexible for them... So I wouldn't worry about it... As with grad schools, the biotech industries are booming, and the trend will continue for the next ten years, many people are applying to M.S. programs to earn a quick buck at the biotech companies, since there are more positions available than there are qualified individuals to fill them in biotech (mostly M.S. track positions, Ph.D. track is a different story.) So I wouldn't worry about those...

 

[12R34Y]

Gower always seemed to have insight into the numbers intitiated so far.

later