What percent of American applicants are at top 25's?

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TheBiologist

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And do they generally have higher matriculation rates?


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Top 25's are private schools primarily. Private schools will have higher admit rates than publics because of better advising to navigate the hurdles, particularly EC's and research, and better curves at private schools. This is independent of student quality (as measured by MCAT), which would also likely be higher for higher ranked schools on average.

Here are the AAMC application numbers by school: https://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/86042/factstablea2.html
 
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Georgetown has a lower matriculation rate than Harvard. But so does Stanford. It all depends upon the school. Generally, all med schools seat ~1-3% of their applicants. Double that number because about 50% of them have no business ever setting foot on any med school campus, much less Harvard's or Stanford's!

You can find out the info you're asking about in MSAR.


And do they generally have higher matriculation rates?


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To clarify, are you asking what percent of MD applicants went to Top 25 colleges, and do they get in more often?
 
I went and pulled numbers from my "most premeds per capita" sheet, which is from last year's AAMC Fact Table.

No data for MIT, caltech, dartmouth, or carnegie mellon, but the other 21 of the top 25 schools contributed a total of ~7300 applicants.

Out of a total of ~49,500 applicants last year, that brings us to at least 15% of US MD applicants last year came from Top 25 undergrads.
 
I went and pulled numbers from my "most premeds per capita" sheet, which is from last year's AAMC Fact Table.

No data for MIT, caltech, dartmouth, or carnegie mellon, but the other 21 of the top 25 schools contributed a total of ~7300 applicants.

Out of a total of ~49,500 applicants last year, that brings us to at least 15% of US MD applicants last year came from Top 25 undergrads.
What percentage of matriculants came from Top 25?

For MD/PhD 43% of MD/PhD seats are historically taken by students from the top 30 undergrads. 34% from Top 20....22% from Top 10.
 
And do they generally have higher matriculation rates?


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To get into a top 25, one usually needs exemplary HS academic record and test scores plus something more. To get into medical school, one usually needs exemplary college academic record and MCAT scores plus something more. Doesn't it seem logical that the successful applicants to the top 25 would have what it takes to rise to the top of the med school applicant pool? Furthermore, some med schools take pride in drawing from a wide variety of schools but also give a little extra boost to grads of the top schools. So, I would venture to guess that grads of the top 25 may have higher matriculation rates than grads of the lowest tier of schools. (Those colleges that admit 80+% of applicants and require a bare minimum GPA and test scores for admission.)
 
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I know my college (selective top 5 liberal arts college) had close to an 80% matriculation rate for premed students, so I assume it must be at least this high for the Ivies.
 
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There's actually a good bit of variety among the big premed feeders like Ivies, likely due to things like state residency of students there, attached med school (or lack), level of deflation/competition, different approaches from prehealth committees, etc. Some publicly available ones:

Rice - 89% !! (Dang it must be nice to be Texan)
Brown - 85% (range 80-91 in the last few years)
Princeton - 82-90%
Columbia - 82%
MIT - 75% (87% for "users of prehealth services" and 56% for nonusers)
Duke - 75%
WashU - 72%
Hopkins - 70% per year, and 80% within 5 years
Cornell - 67%
Vandy - 66%
UCLA - 51-59%
Berkeley - 51-56%

Of course, what none of these schools will tell high schoolers is that there is massive attrition!
 
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Doesn't it seem logical that the successful applicants to the top 25 would have what it takes to rise to the top of the med school applicant pool?

Have what it takes? Yes. Have what it takes while attending a top school if the school curves heavily? Not as much.

My UG curved the median to 2.6-2.8 in many premed prereqs and required doing 2 standard deviations above the mean to guarantee a 4.0 or be in the 95th-100th percentiles in the event that 2 standard deviations was unobtainable. Throw in a bunch of top-performing students into an exam and somebody still have to get the best and worst score. Plus 50% of those people are guaranteed to get scores which med schools would deem lethal.
 
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Have what it takes? Yes. Have what it takes while attending a top school if the school curves heavily? Not as much.

My UG curved the median to 2.6-2.8 in many premed prereqs and required doing 2 standard deviations above the mean to guarantee a 4.0 or be in the 95th-100th percentile in the event that 2 standard deviations was unobtainable. Throw in a bunch of top-performing students into an exam and somebody still have to get the best and worst score. Plus 50% of those people are guaranteed to get scores which med schools would deem lethal.

What can I say, it sucks to be a student or alumnus of your UG if your plans include medical school.

On the other hand, compared with the pool of applicants from no-name LAC or no-name state collge, as a group, students from top 25s are likely to have a higher MCAT and a stronger aptitude for medical school.
 
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What can I say, it sucks to be a student or alumnus of your UG if your plans include medical school.

On the other hand, compared with the pool of applicants from no-name LAC or no-name state collge, as a group, students from top 25s are likely to have a higher MCAT and a stronger aptitude for medical school.
Right, but that puts students from institutions like this in the "Low GPA High MCAT = must be a good test taker but not a hard worker" bin. Idk, maybe I'm just bitter at my UG. I mean it creates a really unbalanced app.
 
Right, but that puts students from institutions like this in the "Low GPA High MCAT = must be a good test taker but not a hard worker" bin. Idk, maybe I'm just bitter at my UG. I mean it creates a really unbalanced app.

Your only salvation is if the school is very well known for this phenomenon. Princeton and Reed are two I know of and there may be others that are known to their feeders.
 
Your only salvation is if the school is very well known for this phenomenon. Princeton and Reed are two I know of and there may be others that are known to their feeders.

Unfortunately I do not believe this is the case with mine. I probably should have gone to a different in state UG. Oh well though. At least I have URM, good EC's, and good life story. Hopefully an adcom can figure it out. :laugh:
 
There's actually a good bit of variety among the big premed feeders like Ivies, likely due to things like state residency of students there, attached med school (or lack), level of deflation/competition, different approaches from prehealth committees, etc. Some publicly available ones:

Rice - 89% !! (Dang it must be nice to be Texan)
Brown - 85% (range 80-91 in the last few years)
Princeton - 82-90%
Columbia - 82%
MIT - 75% (87% for "users of prehealth services" and 56% for nonusers)
Duke - 75%
WashU - 72%
Hopkins - 70% per year, and 80% within 5 years
Cornell - 67%
Vandy - 66%
UCLA - 51-59%
Berkeley - 51-56%

Of course, what none of these schools will tell high schoolers is that there is massive attrition!

Tufts is outside of the top 25 and has a higher acceptance rate than most of those

75-90% rising to over 90% if you only look at applicants with GPAs over 3.5

http://admissions.tufts.edu/academics/pre-health-information/
 
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