A friend of mine said that the johns hopkins SMP has arrangements with certain medical schools (including cornell, mt sinai, rochester, and other very good schools) where those schools will give applicants from the program special consideration. My friend told me that that "special consideration" is almost a guaranteed acceptance. That's impossible, right? Do the SMP students have any advantage besides being able to submit in january after their first semester grades are out?
SMP Linkage - does it make a difference?
- Thread starter Mako555
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guaranteed?? elite medical schools???
Now I see pigs flying.
Now I see pigs flying.
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The program you're thinking of is the post-bacc pre-med program. This is not an SMP, it is for career changers and those who have not taken ANY pre reqs for medical school. The students accepted by this program are high achieving students with degrees in something other than science. There are linkages to other medical schools to those who perform very well. Again, this is NOT a remedial program so the applicants are very strong academically.
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There's a great deal that goes into the linkage process, i.e. student can usually only commit to a single school, must maintain a certain GPA, achieve a minimum MCAT score (nothing to joke about-these are difficult scores to achieve). Also MCAT studying often overlaps heavily with spring postbacc coursework and activities, which as you can imagine at schools like Hopkins is nothing to scoff at! It's a lot of work from what I understand. Not to mention students admitted to programs like Hopkins have a proven track record as far as standardized testing goes (SAT or GRE in some cases) and previous academic coursework.
