Why are med school acceptance rates so low?

[understood]

For example, UCI has an acceptance rate of 1%. That's CRAZY. Out of 6,000, only like 120 got accepted. Does that mean that the 120 were all nearly exactly the same regarding GPA and MCAT, as well as EC's?

Does that also mean they denied people who are also exactly like the 120, but they just didn't have room for them?

How does anybody ever get in? It sounds like a matter of luck to me. I don't really have good luck no matter my efforts so I'm starting to get discouraged.

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[Kelevra]

Because in admissions, with the large applicant pool and high standards/competition, the motto becomes:

No, not everybody has the same academics/application. Yes, many with strong applications get overlooked and rejected. It's tough to thoroughly review that many applications, and whether or not you are interviewed depends on many factors that they are looking for, who's reading your app, the applicants before you, phase of the moon, etc. It's not a perfect process, but you'd be surprised how many of those 6,000 applicants actually have no business applying to medical school.

 

[justadream]

For example, UCI has an acceptance rate of 1%. That's CRAZY. Out of 6,000, only like 120 got accepted. Does that mean that the 120 were all nearly exactly the same regarding GPA and MCAT, as well as EC's?

Does that also mean they denied people who are also exactly like the 120, but they just didn't have room for them?

How does anybody ever get in? It sounds like a matter of luck to me. I don't really have good luck no matter my efforts so I'm starting to get discouraged.

Are you sure only 120 got accepted? Is 120 the class size? If so, it's likely that like 200+ people got accepted (with many people declining those spots).

Also, acceptance rate does not tell you everything. HMS's acceptance rate is definitely not the lowest but is harder to get in than most schools that have lower acceptances rates than it does because of differences in the quality of the applicants.

 

[V5RED]

The acceptance rate is just a function of the number of applicants compared to the number of seats available. Far more people apply than can matriculate, so the acceptance rate is low.

 

[mcloaf]

How does anybody ever get in? It sounds like a matter of luck to me. I don't really have good luck no matter my efforts so I'm starting to get discouraged.

With a positive attitude like this, how could you fail?

 

[Salt Salt]

For example, UCI has an acceptance rate of 1%. That's CRAZY. Out of 6,000, only like 120 got accepted.

Come on man. You had the numbers right in front of you and you literally couldn't be bothered to do the math? 120/6000 is exactly 2%, not 1%.

 

[Mad Jack]

Come on man. You had the numbers right in front of you and you literally couldn't be bothered to do the math? 120/6000 is exactly 2%, not 1%.

This is going to kill OP's MCAT.

 

[mmmcdowe]

Sounds like the matriculant not accepted number. Most schools with a few exceptions accept 3x the number of matriculant spots. Only a few are at the 2x mark or lower.

 

[Radric Davis MD]

As TLC brilliantly put it, "I don't want no scrubs." But seriously, just be the best in every measurable category and you'll be fine.

 

[Cyberdyne 101]

Are you sure only 120 got accepted? Is 120 the class size? If so, it's likely that like 200+ people got accepted (with many people declining those spots).

Also, acceptance rate does not tell you everything. HMS's acceptance rate is definitely not the lowest but is harder to get in than most schools that have lower acceptances rates than it does because of differences in the quality of the applicants.

And I'm pretty sure Wash U usually has a higher acceptance rate than most (if not all) top 20 schools, and it's insanely selective.

 

[Goro]

Georgetown has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard!

 

[Psai]

Georgetown has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard!

I've been trying to bring it back up post-Jalby

 

[justadream]

Georgetown has a lower acceptance rate than Harvard!

Gasp! What happened to HMS?

 

[NeuResurgens]

Because being a doctor is hard.

 

[justadream]

Applicants self-selecting not to aoply to HMS therefore increase in successful applicant rate.

Haha yes I know (see my post above).

Probably should have added a "/s" after my post.

 

[famoussquamous]

The reason the acceptance rates are so low is because of the huge interest based on the number of available spots. Same reason why Ivy undergrads have such low acceptance rates. As much as many of us sometimes downplay the importance of a medical school acceptance, they really are a huge deal.

Also they can afford to be extremely picky in the selection process. That said even though the acceptance rate for many medical schools is really low, the matriculation rate for medical school for all applicants is much better (I think ~40%)

 

[caffeinemia]

EVERYONE gets into Carribean schools.

Let the discussion commence.

 

[Dr.Jekyll75]

The competition is fierce, it Will only get harder. People realize the profession no matter what will always be needed so job security is there. Knowing this security, Students are flocking to it. This includes students qualified and unqualified to be doctors. The large number of applicants keeps increasing while seats do not increase At the same rate.

 

[tiedyeddog]

Yes, it is hard to get into medical school. Confirmed.

 

[ridethecliche]

It's the illuminati brah.

 

[caffeinemia]

It's the illuminati brah.

Thanks Obama. Obama is an illuminati.

 

[ridethecliche]

That explains everything.

 

[MrLogan13]

Thanks Obama. Obama is an illuminati.

 

[justadream]

Come on man. You had the numbers right in front of you and you literally couldn't be bothered to do the math? 120/6000 is exactly 2%, not 1%.

His math was off by a full 100%!

Not boding well for his MCAT...

 

[Jalby]

I've been trying to bring it back up post-Jalby

Why would you ever want to do that?

 

[Doug Underhill]

UCI's incoming class was 104 students in size.

https://www.meded.uci.edu/admissions/first_year_profile.asp

They had 5,773 applicants. That's a 1.8% matriculation rate. All med students send out more acceptances than they get matriculants. While this number is hard to estimate and school-dependent, there are probably at least 2x the number of acceptances for a 3.6% acceptance rate, which is still insanely low.

Goro claims that half the pool has no business applying to medical school anyway, so it's a 7.2% acceptance rate amongst Goro-approved candidates.

 

[Jalby]

UCI's incoming class was 104 students in size.

https://www.meded.uci.edu/admissions/first_year_profile.asp

They had 5,773 applicants. That's a 1.8% matriculation rate. All med students send out more acceptances than they get matriculants. While this number is hard to estimate and school-dependent, there are probably at least 2x the number of acceptances for a 3.6% acceptance rate, which is still insanely low.

I don't agree with your 3.6% acceptance rate at all. Anybody who applied to UCI also applied to USC, UCLA, and UCSD. I would be about 50% of the people who got into those schools also go into UCI but turned it down.

 

[Jalby]

That original data is likely correct. Campuses get several thousand applications for a 100 - 200 seats. Who gets in across campuses varies widely as there are so many well-qualified candidates and California is by far the most competitive state applicant pool. That is, just because an applicant gets into one campus is not very predictive for another campus. I get 2,3, even 4 time reapplicants with seemingly good GPA, MCAT, Application, etc, who simply do not get into a California school simply due to numbers

And where is this "Original data" that you speak of. The poster I quoted randomly just double the enrolled number and claimed that is the acceptance rate.

 

[mehc012]

And where is this "Original data" that you speak of. The poster I quoted randomly just double the enrolled number and claimed that is the acceptance rate.

They estimated at least double. You don't seem to be disagreeing with that, and in fact seem to think that more than 2x the number of matriculants were accepted (or at least, that's how I read your statement.)

Either way, USNWR has the relevant figures.
104 enrolled
251 accepted
5860 applied

That's a 4.3% acceptance rate, with 2.4x the number of matriculants being accepted.

 

[Iso4ane]

Another thing, it's not the same 100 students being accepted to all the medical schools, you need to look at the country as a whole, if your stats aren't great (and even if they are) don't have your heart set on ONE specific school, if the stats are good you'll get in somewhere.

 

[Womb Raider]

How does anybody ever get in? It sounds like a matter of luck to me. I don't really have good luck no matter my efforts so I'm starting to get discouraged.

Lol. If your luck is consistently bad, then it's not luck at all.

"The only sure thing about luck is that it will change."

 

[mehc012]

The USNWR seems to make the cultural fallacy that medical schools acceptances are analogous to undergraduate acceptances, where the former are under agreed upon and coordinated policy (ie traffic control rules and acceptance reports). What that crude data does not indicate or show in detail is how many acceptance where offered in initial round (ie before waitlist) and how many were offered after and how that cascade of waitlisting affects the rate.

And in the end, whatever pattern can be gleamed from that process would be mostly irrelevant to premedical students as it only matters that they male it from the overal all applicant pool to the overall matriculant pool across there chosen pool of school that they apply

I'm not trying to glean any patterns, nor do I care when in the cycle the acceptances were tendered.
There was some dispute over estimations of what those numbers were, I had access to the actual numbers, and that's the end of it.