The Most Premedical Universities

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efle

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Hey everyone, no ruckus this evening just some fun data, available in an excel sheet here.

I've always been curious about how big the proportion of premeds was at different universities. So, I went to AAMC's Table 2 and found all the universities which produced either 100+ white medical applicants or 50+ Asian medical applicants, got the total number of medical applicants produced by each, and then looked up each school's total enrollment. Using 1/4th total enrollment to approximate the graduating class size I found the percentage of the graduating class that was applying to med schools (I realize that due to gap years we have to assume the % taking a gap remains similar between years for this to work).

The results are in! Top 10 schools by % of grad class that are med applicants:

1. Johns Hopkins University 25.0%
2. Duke University 23.3%
3. Rice University 19.8%
4. Emory University 19.7%
5. Washington University in St. Louis 19.3%
6. Harvard University 19.2%
7. Yale University 17.1%
8. Vanderbilt University 16.6%
9. University of Notre Dame 16.2%
10. Stanford University 16.0%

Here's a chart of the schools with 10.0+ %

Abr4dvD.png


And here is the full list:

V1e9Ivm.png



Let me know if you spot anything I screwed up. Sorry I didn't have the patience to do all schools listed for all races!

Edit: Updated to include the full 100+ white and 50+ Asian universities, not just 100+ white and 100+ Asian

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The results are in! Top 10 schools by % of grad class that are med applicants:

1. Johns Hopkins University 25.0%
2. Duke University 23.3%
3. Rice University 19.8%
4. Emory University 19.7%
5. Washington University in St. Louis 19.3%
6. Harvard University 19.2%
7. Yale University 17.1%
8. Vanderbilt University 16.6%
9. University of Notre Dame 16.2%
10. Stanford University 16.0%
@efle you should come up with a related hypothesis and write this up for some AAMC conference. How would you title it? Having just been on the interview trail, all I can think is: "This Explains A Lot: The Places Where Everybody is Pre-med."
 
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@efle you should come up with a related hypothesis and write this up for some AAMC conference. How would you title it? Having just been on the interview trail, all I can think is: "This Explains A Lot: The Places Where Everybody is Pre-med."
What's interesting is the schools not among places with 100+ white or Asian applicants, like Princeton or U Chicago. Do they turn down applicants stating on their college apps a strong interest in medicine? Or does their soul-crushing grading and rigor weed out far more people than other schools? And there's a few surprises - who knew Rice churned out premeds at a relative rate to rival Duke and Hopkins?
 
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What's interesting is the schools not among places with 100+ white or Asian applicants, like Princeton or U Chicago. Do they turn down applicants stating on their college apps a strong interest in medicine? Or does their soul-crushing grading and rigor weed out far more people than other schools? And there's a few surprises - who knew Rice churned out premeds at a relative rate to rival Duke and Hopkins?
I was thinking the same thing about Princeton. I asked the one Princeton guy I met at an interview this year why I didn't see his classmates around. He told me that everybody was going into finance instead. Maybe, but doesn't really explain the apparently huge dropoff compared to Harvard and Yale.
 
I was thinking the same thing about Princeton. I asked the one Princeton guy I met at an interview this year why I didn't see his classmates around. He told me that everybody was going into finance instead. Maybe, but doesn't really explain the apparently huge dropoff compared to Harvard and Yale.
I went ahead and went all the way down to 50+ Asian instead of just 100+ Asian.

No changes to the highest 10 but now Princeton, Columbia and U Chicago show up in the 10+ % range.

So apparently there's a good amount of premeds there after all!
 
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Those are all top universities, and the rest of the schools in the top 50 are generally significant state schools. Thus, these schools will have more serious pre-meds that actually make it to the application stage. A smaller, less-known state school (like mine) probably has more pre-meds by number or proportion, but very few tend to make it to the application stage.
 
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Those are all top universities, and the rest of the schools in the top 50 are generally significant state schools. Thus, these schools will have more serious pre-meds that actually make it to the application stage. A smaller, less-known state school (like mine) probably has more pre-meds by number or proportion, but very few tend to make it to the application stage.
It would be very interesting to look at survival rates from pre-med intent to actually applying across universities. Unfortunately I don't think there's any way to even guesstimate that
 
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Hey everyone, no ruckus this evening just some fun data.

I've always been curious about how big the proportion of premeds was at different universities. So, I went to AAMC's Table 2 and found all the universities which produced either 100+ white medical applicants or 50+ Asian medical applicants, got the total number of medical applicants produced by each, and then looked up each school's total enrollment. Using 1/4th total enrollment to approximate the graduating class size I found the percentage of the graduating class that was applying to med schools (I realize that due to gap years we have to assume the % taking a gap remains similar between years for this to work).

The results are in! Top 10 schools by % of grad class that are med applicants:

1. Johns Hopkins University 25.0%
2. Duke University 23.3%
3. Rice University 19.8%
4. Emory University 19.7%
5. Washington University in St. Louis 19.3%
6. Harvard University 19.2%
7. Yale University 17.1%
8. Vanderbilt University 16.6%
9. University of Notre Dame 16.2%
10. Stanford University 16.0%

Here's a chart of the schools with 10.0+ %

Abr4dvD.png


And here is the full list:

V1e9Ivm.png


Here is the excel file if anyone wants it.

Let me know if you spot anything I screwed up. Sorry I didn't have the patience to do all schools listed for all races!

Edit: Updated to include the full 100+ white and 50+ Asian universities, not just 100+ white and 100+ Asian


Where are you getting the data for the number of undergrads in each school? I know for the University of Rochester one, that figure more likely includes the Eastman School of Music, and the Nursing School. The undergraduate nursing program is only for those for those that already have a bachelor's degree (so those are non-traditional students) and the Eastman School is a specialty school in a different campus and are not necessarily traditional University of Rochester undergrads. The traditional undergraduate population (Arts, Sciences, & Engineering) is more around 4600-5000 students. This is the figure that the school uses when reporting admission rates, SAT/ACT scores and graduation rates to the education department, etc.

class size is 1200 and undergrad size is 5200 http://enrollment.rochester.edu/wp-content/media/2014/12/UR_FactSheet_2014151.pdf
 
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Wait, I just finished working out so I'm a little delirious... your list has a minimum number of applicants before you could include their percentage into your chart? I don't see any LACs.

...and if so, would you be able to include them. I'd like to test my "small school > big school" hypothesis.
 
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Where are you getting the data for the number of undergrads in each school? I know for the University of Rochester one, that figure more likely includes the Eastman School of Music, and the Nursing School. The undergraduate nursing program is only for those for those that already have a bachelor's degree (so those are non-traditional students) and the Eastman School is a specialty school in a different campus and are not necessarily traditional University of Rochester undergrads. The traditional undergraduate population (Arts, Sciences, & Engineering) is more around 4600-5000 students. This is the figure that the school uses when reporting admission rates, SAT/ACT scores and graduation rates to the education department, etc.

class size is 1200 and undergrad size is 5200 http://enrollment.rochester.edu/wp-content/media/2014/12/UR_FactSheet_2014151.pdf

I used US News enrollment values which matches with the "university wide undergraduate" in your link (I believe slight difference due to year used). It may include the music school, which should be ok since you can study music and still apply to med school, right? By definition if you already have a bachelor's it isn't undergraduate so I doubt nursing is included.

Also, I believe for universities with multiple campuses, both the AAMC and US News data are campus-specific.
 
It looks like the AAMC data would include everyone who applied and listed a given undergrad as their school of origin, not just graduating seniors. This would add people applying with gap years under their belt to the numerator when calculating pre-meds/100 students while the denominator only reflects one class of seniors. There's a good chance the numbers would balance out on the whole by people applying after gap years replacing people taking them, but it makes the analysis a little more complex.
 
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Wait, I just finished working out so I'm a little delirious... your list has a minimum number of applicants before you could include their percentage into your chart? I don't see any LACs.

...and if so, would you be able to include them. I'd like to test my "small school > big school" hypothesis.
Yes, the AAMC data I used only provides total premeds from schools with 100+ white or 50+ Asian applicants, which must prevent the tiny LACs from qualifying.
 
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It looks like the AAMC data would include everyone who applied and listed a given undergrad as their school of origin, not just graduating seniors. This would add people applying with gap years under their belt to the numerator when calculating pre-meds/100 students while the denominator only reflects one class of seniors. There's a good chance the numbers would balance out on the whole by people applying after gap years replacing people taking them, but it makes the analysis a little more complex.
I think I mentioned that in the post - you'd have to assume if 40% of a class gapped and added themselves to the next year's number, it would be balanced by 40% that year gapping and so on.
There's also the issue of some variation in class size between years, so you have to assume 1/4th total is a decent estimate.
 
Yes, the AAMC data I used only provides total premeds from schools with 100+ white or 50+ Asian applicants, which must prevent the tiny LACs from qualifying.

aww, booo. It'd be fascinating to see where the Grinnells, Kenyons, Swathmores, and even the random 2nd tier ones like Eckerd, Albion, Messiah, and Washington and Jefferson fall in there.
 
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aww, booo. It'd be fascinating to see where the Grinnells, Kenyons, Swathmores, and even the random 2nd tier ones like Eckerd, Albion, Messiah, and Washington and Jefferson fall in there.
Yeah me too, there's never enough data to scratch all my itches. But I bet the crowd there self-selects away from pre-med because there's less STEM, hospital/clinic connections, research, etc. Plus to live in the remote places many LACs are you'd have to hate people way too much to be a doctor :p
 
I think I mentioned that in the post - you'd have to assume if 40% of a class gapped and added themselves to the next year's number, it would be balanced by 40% that year gapping and so on.
There's also the issue of some variation in class size between years, so you have to assume 1/4th total is a decent estimate.
You're right, sorry. That's what I get for quickly skimming between projects at work.
 
My school is a large private one with 30,000+ students, so I guess I'm not surprised we're not in the top 10, but we have a high acceptance rate for our students, so go us:horns:
 
Yeah me too, there's never enough data to scratch all my itches. But I bet the crowd there self-selects away from pre-med because there's less STEM, hospital/clinic connections, research, etc. Plus to live in the remote places many LACs are you'd have to hate people way too much to be a doctor :p

honestly I'd assume the opposite. There's a good amount of STEM at LACs (minus the engineering, really), but not often the types that lead to careers straight out of undergrad*. For those students, med school is a good outlet.

*Chem degrees were the exception, quite a few worked in the industry out of undergrad, but for things like Bio or Geo, people tended to go to some form of grad school.
 
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Interesting. At UA-Tucson, for the last couple years, the single largest major declared by entering freshman has been Pre-Physiology.

Bigger than business, psych, comm, etc.

Now, how many of them aactually make it through the pre-reqs is another story.. but just interesting to note. Health care is huge right now.
 
Whoa. Damn, California is out of control.

The UC medical schools have a combined class size of 728 according to the MSAR, with private California schools adding 443 more seats annually for a total of 1171.

That means:

  • The 919 premeds from UCLA alone could fill every UC medical school seat with 20% left over
  • The combined number of med applicants from the eight UCs is 3625, which would fill every medical school seat in the state 3.1 times over. Include Stanford and Uni Southern California's premeds and now you can fill every seat 3.6 times over.

No wonder the Californians invade the rest of the country's medical schools in such large numbers

Edit: Plus there's all the Californians who leave for college but want to return for MD, and all the Cal State system and private schools...there's probably half a dozen CA premeds for every CA med spot
 
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  • The 919 premeds from UCLA alone could fill every UC medical school seat with 20% left over
  • The combined number of med applicants from the eight UCs is 3625, which would fill every medical school seat in the state 3.1 times over. Include Stanford and Uni Southern California's premeds and now you can fill every seat 3.6 times over.

No wonder the Californians invade the rest of the country's medical schools in such large numbers
And only 870 CA applicants matriculate into 1st year spots! Just two of the CA schools claim any preference for IS applicants.
 
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Whoa. Damn, California is out of control.

The UC medical schools have a combined class size of 728 according to the MSAR, with private California schools adding 443 more seats annually for a total of 1171.

That means:

  • The 919 premeds from UCLA alone could fill every UC medical school seat with 20% left over
  • The combined number of med applicants from the eight UCs is 3625, which would fill every medical school seat in the state 3.1 times over. Include Stanford and Uni Southern California's premeds and now you can fill every seat 3.6 times over.

No wonder the Californians invade the rest of the country's medical schools in such large numbers

Edit: Plus there's all the Californians who leave for college but want to return for MD, and all the Cal State system and private schools...there's probably half a dozen CA premeds for every CA med spot
CA had 5920 applicants last year. 1436 of them matriculated OOS. We are the largest exporter of pre-meds in the country.
 
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Yeah me too, there's never enough data to scratch all my itches. But I bet the crowd there self-selects away from pre-med because there's less STEM, hospital/clinic connections, research, etc. Plus to live in the remote places many LACs are you'd have to hate people way too much to be a doctor :p

As a LAC grad, I think the difference is that a lot of students choose to use their education in more social-justice focused ways instead of going into medicine/hard science. At my school, being a science major was sort of looked down upon as selling out.
 
As a LAC grad, I think the difference is that a lot of students choose to use their education in more social-justice focused ways instead of going into medicine/hard science. At my school, being a science major was sort of looked down upon as selling out.

Hard to paint all LACs with the same brush though. There's going to be a big difference between the focus student populations at Macalester and Wheaton (to use an extreme example). Same goes with the level of science focus.
 
Whoa. Damn, California is out of control.

The UC medical schools have a combined class size of 728 according to the MSAR, with private California schools adding 443 more seats annually for a total of 1171.

That means:

  • The 919 premeds from UCLA alone could fill every UC medical school seat with 20% left over
  • The combined number of med applicants from the eight UCs is 3625, which would fill every medical school seat in the state 3.1 times over. Include Stanford and Uni Southern California's premeds and now you can fill every seat 3.6 times over.

No wonder the Californians invade the rest of the country's medical schools in such large numbers

Edit: Plus there's all the Californians who leave for college but want to return for MD, and all the Cal State system and private schools...there's probably half a dozen CA premeds for every CA med spot

Not to mention that a ton of Californians go to surrounding state schools for undergrad (UNLV, ASU, UW, etc...).

Many of the top midwestern state schools (esp Michigan/Wisconsin) also take a significant number of CA residents as well, the so called coasties.
 
When you think about it, these numbers are the number of premeds who made it far enough to apply for med school. Imagine how many there were freshman year. I don't know how much I would like doing my undergrad at a school where everyone and their cousin is premed
 
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At least with the permadrought, they'll stop complaining about the weather when they come eastward.

If anything, the permadrought would make me hate East Coast weather even more (after all, every day is sunny with no rain!)
 
This list doesn't surprise me at all. Lol. Especially the top 10. All are top undergrad schools
 
Damn, Yale feels premeddy AF... crazy to imagine what some of those top few schools must be like
 
Damn, Yale feels premeddy AF... crazy to imagine what some of those top few schools must be like
Yeah assuming Hopkins has the standard 2/3 weedout rate the incoming class must be 75% premed...whoa...
 
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That's insane.

Also, is 2/3 really the standard weedout rate? Because it feels much much less at Yale. Most of the people who were premed on day 1 that I know are still premed (and have finished or are finishing orgo), like it honestly feels like only 1/4 or 1/3 have gotten weeded out, but we do have pretty rampant grade inflation so maybe that's why
 
That's insane.

Also, is 2/3 really the standard weedout rate? Because it feels much much less at Yale. Most of the people who were premed on day 1 that I know are still premed (and have finished or are finishing orgo), like it honestly feels like only 1/4 or 1/3 have gotten weeded out, but we do have pretty rampant grade inflation so maybe that's why
Yeah, it's nowhere near that at HYS I think. But at Wustl its almost exactly 2/3 and I think Hopkins follows a similar B or B- median in prereqs
 
Only 2.3% for my university! o___O There are so many students that want to do pre-med here (especially in the honors college) so this is a bit surprising and unnerving.
 
Only 2.3% for my university! o___O There are so many students that want to do pre-med here (especially in the honors college) so this is a bit surprising and unnerving.
2.3% of a class that big is still a lot! And probably the proportion is higher in the honors college
 
@efle Late to this, but wanted to thank you for the info.

It's interesting that Creighton Univ is often thought of as a "premed univ," but it doesn't make the list (unless I'm overlooking.)

The Calif numbers are unbelievable. I imagine it must be hard to get a glowing LOR out of profs who are writing them for hundreds of others.
 
Nothing to add but a free bump and a nice work. This is cool data.
 
@efle Late to this, but wanted to thank you for the info.

It's interesting that Creighton Univ is often thought of as a "premed univ," but it doesn't make the list (unless I'm overlooking.)

The Calif numbers are unbelievable. I imagine it must be hard to get a glowing LOR out of profs who are writing them for hundreds of others.
Creighton is small right, only about 4000 students? The only other schools that small that made the list (Rice and Case Western) have insane numbers of premeds per capita. Creighton probably has a solid amount like 8% or something but with a class size of 1000 that's not quite enough to qualify. All the liberal arts schools are similarly excluded

Nothing to add but a free bump and a nice work. This is cool data.
Thanks! Hope it helps people in choosing colleges, I know I'm sure glad to have gone somewhere chock full of fellow premeds to commiserate with
 
I can only say that it seems like half of MD classes in FL are filled with UF alumni.
 
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Thanks! Hope it helps people in choosing colleges, I know I'm sure glad to have gone somewhere chock full of fellow premeds to commiserate with

I loathed being around other pre-meds at my school. See my sig to know why.
 
That's insane.

Also, is 2/3 really the standard weedout rate? Because it feels much much less at Yale. Most of the people who were premed on day 1 that I know are still premed (and have finished or are finishing orgo), like it honestly feels like only 1/4 or 1/3 have gotten weeded out, but we do have pretty rampant grade inflation so maybe that's why
Yeah, it's nowhere near that at HYS I think. But at Wustl its almost exactly 2/3 and I think Hopkins follows a similar B or B- median in prereqs
At my far less rigorous undergrad, the weedout rate was probably closer to 5/6. Of the ~150 Bio majors: ~120 started as premed, I think only ~20 even applied. Our "acceptance rate" is fudged to look good because 13 of those 20 were accepted during junior year as early assurance to the University's med school (which traditionally has an 85-100% acceptance rate).
 
is this at the beginning or end of college. almost everyone and their moms want to go to med school in the beginning
 
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is this at the beginning or end of college. almost everyone and their moms want to go to med school in the beginning

I believe it is number of applicants from those schools, so end of college. Could be wrong, but those figures for UCLA look about right.
 
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