Number of people Med schools accept

[Entirecropslost]

Does anybody know if schools accept more students than they have seats for in the initial round of acceptances. Or do they accept more in anticipation of some students not matriculating. I would think if they had 100 seats they would only accept 100 and if 60 go somewhere else, the school would keep drawing from the waitlist until all the seats are filled. B/c wouldn't it be a big deal if for example they accept 130 and only 20 go somewhere else? Thanks for any help!

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[Lorienne7]

Does anybody know if schools accept more students than they have seats for in the initial round of acceptances. Or do they accept more in anticipation of some students not matriculating. I would think if they had 100 seats they would only accept 100 and if 60 go somewhere else, the school would keep drawing from the waitlist until all the seats are filled. B/c wouldn't it be a big deal if for example they accept 130 and only 20 go somewhere else? Thanks for any help!

The vast majority of schools (except schools with really high yield like Harvard and probably Mayo) accept about 2-3x their class size initially and then pull people off the waitlist as people withdraw. After years of doing this, adcoms have a good sense of how many people will eventually matriculate, so they rarely overshoot their class size goals.

 

[NonTradMed]

Ditto on the above. Our state school will do this: they "automatically" accept those with high stats as long as they have nothing bad in the background. The school will accept 'good candidates' if they come along, but with rolling enrollment, you have to have higher stats to be considered a 'good' candidate if you applied late.

They the school will put on waitlist or place on post-interview hold students that are borderline. As students start rejecting the school's offer, the students that were on post-interview hold may see acceptances. The waitlist may see movement. In the end, the school will accept more students than they have seats for plus people on the waitlist.

I think something like a 1/3rd - 1/2 of our class got acceptances the second semester of school, including one person who got off of the waitlist a couple of weeks before school started. However, the reason for this is that our school accepts really qualified candidates first, many of whom choose to go elsewhere, hence the people that do end up coming to our school had to wait it out until those lucky initial candidates decide to go elsewhere.

 

[CCLCMer]

Does anybody know if schools accept more students than they have seats for in the initial round of acceptances. Or do they accept more in anticipation of some students not matriculating. I would think if they had 100 seats they would only accept 100 and if 60 go somewhere else, the school would keep drawing from the waitlist until all the seats are filled. B/c wouldn't it be a big deal if for example they accept 130 and only 20 go somewhere else? Thanks for any help!

It depends on the school. I think that most of them overaccept like the other people said. The schools know based on previous admissions cycles about how many people they have to accept to fill their class, so that's why they can accept 130 for a class of 100 and not have it be a problem. But my school is one that does not overaccept because our class is really small, even smaller than Mayo's. (There are only 32 of us.) So they don't accept more people until after some of the previous ones have dropped and some spots open up. On the bright side, it means that when someone drops, there is an actual spot opened up here.

 

[Entirecropslost]

Interesting, I didn't think med schools did that, but I guess they could to an extent. However, they'd have to be very conservative about it because if they have for example 110 students take their offer of acceptance and the school only usually has 100 seats, that would be a big problem. And if you the number of students who matriculate at a particular school it's always about the same. I'm just really nervous because I'm on the waitlist at my absolute top choice school. And I think it is like the school NonTradMed goes to b/c I think a lot of there accepted students go elsewhere.

 

[Darksmurf]

Interesting, I didn't think med schools did that, but I guess they could to an extent. However, they'd have to be very conservative about it because if they have for example 110 students take their offer of acceptance and the school only usually has 100 seats, that would be a big problem. And if you the number of students who matriculate at a particular school it's always about the same. I'm just really nervous because I'm on the waitlist at my absolute top choice school. And I think it is like the school NonTradMed goes to b/c I think a lot of there accepted students go elsewhere.

There should be myriad threads about this. Many schools do not have an ironclad number of students in the entering class, but shoot for a ballpark. If you are looking for 150 and you pick up 153, it's probably not a big deal. Some schools, however, like Yale, do try to stay at exactly a number. These schools have been doing this for many years and have a sense of how many they can accept to get in their range. That said, I think Cornell had a problem last year or recently in having too many people accept their offers; I believe they asked some people to defer and gave them a first-year tuition-free pass.

Point: a quick look at the US News stats will tell you how many people a school accepted, and it always considerably more than they matriculated.

 

[p9142]

Northwestern accepts around 300 for a class of 180.

 

[dasacohen]

only 1 in 4 people accepted to Drexel actually matriculate, so that's about 400-500 something people accepted

 

[Entirecropslost]

Yea I know the how the whole acceptated vs matriculated thing goes. But I was kinda psyched that the school I wanted to go to accepted 300 for it's class of 100, b/c I thought that meant they had a lot of waitlist movement (which I am on), but if they for example accept right off the bat 275 and then only take 25 off the waitlist, then the chances of getting off the waitlist are much more dismal.