by Joe Sisk
SDN Staff Author
Ahh, simple childhood games. Music playing. Walking around a circle of chairs. I’m eyeing the one closest to me.
*the music stops*
I scramble for a chair.
“I’m sorry, Joe. You can’t sit in a red chair. Those are for people with Outies. Your belly button is an Innie. You need to find a blue chair.”
“But the kindergarteners took most of the blue chairs for their game…”
“I’m sorry. Just see if you can find a left over one.”
I cry.
While this never actually happened, it is a recurring nightmare I have (and may explain my deep seated phobia of blue chairs). This game represents how health professional school admissions, particularly medical school admissions, work.
For medical schools, there are a good number of chairs that are spoken for before you’ve even submitted your AMCAS. How many depends on the types of alternate acceptance programs the school offers, but these programs contribute to the ultimate class size and subsequently are fewer seats available during the AMCAS application cycle.
As an informed applicant, what you can do is realize that you’re only going to be competing for the blue chair.
What alternate acceptance pathways are there?
BS or BA/MD Programs
These programs offer medical school acceptance to exceptional students either directly out of high school or early in their undergraduate careers. After completing their undergraduate and program requirements in anywhere from two to four years, students in these programs join the entering medical school class at the institution affiliated with the program.
Early Acceptance Programs
Similar to the above, some schools will offer early acceptances to students at linked universities or within their home state. This generally occurs sometime following the junior year. These students also matriculate with the entering class.
Special Masters Programs
Many medical schools offer Special Masters Programs. These programs allow students to take classes with M1 students in order to show they can excel at medical school coursework. While the degree of linkage between SMPs and Medical Schools varies from program to program (few, if any, offer a direct acceptance), many will at least interview every SMP student and SMP students will traditionally be accepted to their home institution with a higher rate than the general applicant pool. SMP students do apply through AMCAS, but they are deceptively competitive for the school in question.
Where else do the spots go?
Deferrals
Every year, there are students that are unable to matriculate the year they’ve applied. These students defer and subsequently join the next year’s class. This is a small number of students and this happens each year, so it may be negligible, but these students are already holding acceptances in the application year that the entering class is applying so they may be considered as drawing away from the total number of available seats.
The Innie/Outie Factor
State residency is a large issue at state funded schools. Unless the school is private and state residency is not a factor, there will be separate pools for in state and out of state students. This is a division of seats you’ll need to consider.
A Note on Gender
A false impression exists that schools hold a specific number of seats for males and a specific number of seats for females. While researching this article I was informed by an admissions committee member that the approximate 50/50 ratio of male to female students is not a function of intentional admissions selection, but rather a function of the proportion of male to female applicants.
Applying the Math
Those were some nice observations, but what does it all mean?
Let’s take a hypothetical state medical school trying to fill a class size of 200:
- This school had 5 deferrals from the previous year.
- It accepts 20 students per year from an Early Acceptance program from its Undergrad.
- It accepts 20 out of 30 students per year from its SMP program.
- The In State Acceptance Rate is 70%
- No BS/MD program.
Now let’s pretend you’re an In State applicant applying to the above school. How many seats are you actually applying for?
200 seats
x.7 In State student acceptance rate
140 Seats for In State Students
That doesn’t seem too bad, but wait, the linkage programs and SMP programs are predominantly for in-state students. Deferrals are able to attain IS residency in some states.
140 Seats
-5 Deferrals
-20 Early Acceptances
-20 SMP Acceptances
95
While there is a 70% acceptance rate for in state students, the applicant is only applying for 47.5% of the seats in the class. Out of State applicants are essentially unaffected by these programs.
Below is a table of the make up of that class mentioned above:
| n | Class Percentage | |
| Deferrals | 5 | 2.5 |
| Early Acceptance | 20 | 10 |
| SMP | 20 | 10 |
| In State Acceptance | 95 | 47.5 |
| Out of State Acceptance | 60 | 30 |
| Total | 200 | 100 |
Where can I find this information?
One source would be the school’s website. You can search for info regarding any alternate admissions programs or Special Masters Programs. Additionally, the AAMC publishes the Medical School Admission Requirements (MSAR) annually. This gives the best breakdown of admissions stats and class profiles. Check both of these and combine the results to give you the best understanding of what programs are operating and their scope.
What can I do about it?
When looking at a medical school, or any health professional school, it helps to know your odds. A lot of money can be wasted for spots that were filled years ago. A little research can help. Know how many spots a school has open for you. This will tell you if that long-shot application is worth the money.
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Thanks very much, very helpful.
This article was very interesting. Unfortunately, I sent my applications for AMCAS out 4 days ago. I would have loved access (or knowledge) about the MSAR. I was able to obtain most of the information through school sites or expensive books such as the Princeton Review. I recommend any student who has NOT sent out there applications to read this article, it might save you time and money to not apply schools schools that take virtually no out-of-state residents.
One other consideration that has been omitted from this article is the degree to which medical schools practice affirmative action in order to inject more “diversity” into their programs. This is something that I’d advise all current medical school applicants to take a good hard look at, although the racial quota policies of most schools are veiled in secrecy to some degree.
Hey Matt, you should be thankful that there is Affirmative action. Otherwise, most of the seats would go to Asians (Chineese) and other minorities. Don’t fall into the misconception that Non-affirmative action works toward the advantage of caucasians; you will be in for a surprise my son. Anyway, the native indians have been oppressed for all their life, and this country (USA) really belongs to them.
Sorry, didn’t want to turn this in to an AA debate. I just wanted to point out that there are other prominent factors that are considered in med school admissions that were not addressed in the article.
Nice article. But it wasn’t taken into account that people who were accepted can defer which opens up more seats for that particular year (albeit taking away seats from the following year, but it balances out).
I’d just like to comment that the asians would not dominate for two reasons, though I don’t mean this as a comment for or against AA. Frankly, AA doesn’t seem to effect them that much, considering a lot of schools have a far larger percentage of asians and indians than the population represents. But I degress. First of all, most of the asians are foreigners, and this puts them outside of the resident/nonresident categories. They also go to sub-par asian schools, most of which are terrible compared to ours. Our lab got 150 resumes from Asia/India when we opened a post-doc position. Only 10 made it to the table, because all of the others were underqualified.
Second: Assuming we’re just talking about american asians, there’s not enough of them to take all the spots for one. More importantly, caucasians and other races compete just as well as asians and indians. Even assuming that a disproportionate amount of asian and indian applicants score better on the MCAT and have GPA, they are also disproportionately weak in other areas. Many, for example, don’t have a lot of club and extracurricular activities, because they focus so much on scores and doing hospital community service. Probably more importantly, there are some stereotypical behaviors that weaken there applications once they make it to interviews. For one, many have less than perfect english, and if you don’t think not being able to communicate well isn’t a minus, you’re wrong. From the interviews that I’ve been to so far, a substantial number of the asians and indians were introverted, quiet, shy, and otherwise not making themselves known. Once again, being able to communicate and making the interviewer like you are important.
that’s quite a bit of generalizing…
I agree, like I said it was a stereotype, but the fact that asians totally blow other races away in terms of success is also a stereotype. Neither is completely true, but there is a grain of truth to each.
So Mike, you like attention?
I would like to add my input as an asian american. I think Michael is correct to a certain extent that there probably isn’t a profound difference in intellect between caucasians and asians. The reason there are so many of us in medicine is primarily cultural. Many of us grew up with HEAVY parental pressures to succeed. By succeed, I mean go to college and then a professional school and make lots of money. Doing an english degree and pursuing a career in writing would not be acceptable. For example, my college girlfriend, also an asian american, was pressured to be premed by her parents… it was the only way they would help her pay for tuition. So, she lied to them for 4 years and secretly got her English degree instead. My parents didn’t blackmail me like that, but when I expressed interest in genetics after a high school bio class my mother and I got in a heated argument and was again strongly urged to pursue medicine. Unbelievable, right? A PhD in genetics “not good enough”. I’ve heard from similar stories from asian(indian) americans. I’m sure it is a projection. My college girlfriend’s parents and mine both came from “third world” asian countries and probably only wanted us to have a better life than they had growing up. In my case, I was lucky as I eventually found I was indeed passionate about medicine. Others were not so fortunate and either “failed” in the eyes of their parents or are living a lie in a career they are more than capable of excelling in, but may not particularly like.
Speaking from personal experience, I suspect the large number of Asian Americans could relate to the observation that many Asian Americans are persuaded towards the career of a doctor. To speak in broad terms of success or GPA of various races can be difficult to defend, and even less likely to relate to the article in question.
With regards to the article, I believe it was very well written and certainly illuminating. However, would deferrals truly matter in this case? If five students deferred into the class, wouldn’t it be safe to assume that another five students would defer into next year’s class, thus creating the same amount of seats without calculating deferral numbers?
Wow, I wish we could all be the obnoxious white A&F wannabe frat boys that can rely on their rich parents for support, and thus, just party and drink all day.
Btw, does anyone ever consider that Asians(I will use the term to include any group from Asia, ie, Indians, Persians, etc) must focus more on grades and hospital work mostly because the medical school admission process forces them to since they will always have a harder time to gain acceptance to medical school, relatively to other ethnic groups, due to their overrepresentation in the medical community? Given equal stats across the board, an Asian will have a hardest time gaining acceptance, especially given how subjective the admission process is.
AA is racist
John, I see that you hold a lot of anger towards those “obnoxious white A&F wannabe frat boys.” But I completely agree with you and see where you are coming from. But I also feel obligated to point out that if you’re an immigrant of any sort, you will definitely have a harder time trying to achieve “success” in a foreign land. Just remember, this wasn’t our country to begin with and the ancestors of the “obnoxious white A&F wannabe frat boys” were here first to take the land from the natives. I also must point out that Asian Americans as a group tend to be very divided and exude very little political unity. Just admit that the “typical” Asian American dream is to become the 1)Doctor 2)Lawyer 3)Engineer, make your relatively high wage, marry someone from the same background, move out to the suburbs and repeat the cycle; oh and don’t forget to not give a rats a** about anything else that goes on. Oh and don’t forget to compete with your fellow Asian American neighbors to see who makes more money and whose kids graduate from the more “prestigious” school. And all because we were raised to believe that such decisions in life will ultimately lead to success and true happiness. So I do see where you’re coming from John, but then again, we can continue to b*tch all day long about it or we can actually focus on attempting to do something about it…
I think AA is “racist” in the pure sense of the word; i.e. it is institutional discrimination based on race/ethnicity. On the other hand, AA has the good intention in increasing the representation of under-served minorities in medicine.
I think it’s time to do away with AA as we know and instead focus on socioeconomic class (in place of or in addition to race) as a means for improving the representation of under-served minorities.
I know this is not an AA debate. . . sorry
Great article.
In reply to AA comments.
The fact is that Asians are over-represented in medical schools in proportion to their population. In a sense, they are already “dominating.” Just look at the facts at http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/start.htm
Asians account for around 5% of the general population, yet they are almost close to 20% in medicine.
I don’t see the importance of this article. First of all, you are assuming that all the schools are somehow going to give you the information abut how many people have deferred the current year and previous year, how many they accept from SMPs and from early decision programs. The most important aspect is the out of state ratio, which most pre-meds already know about. You are not going to choose to not apply to a school just because it accepts 10 more early decision students. You never know where you are going to get in and the most important factor is how much you like the school and think you satisfy what they need. So again, I don’t see the usefulness of these numbers.
And what is exactly wrong with rewarding hard work and results? Instead, we should just slap them in the face and replace them with a less deserving candidate?
Please don’t give me socioeconomic reasons when it’s the Asians that have only recently immigrated to this country through the open door policy. The benefactors of AA are from families that have resided in this country far longer than Asians and therefore more likely to have greater financial backing.
The only viable premise for AA would be for the security against legacy and donation applicants. Even then, it just seems downright stupid to turn down an applicant just because she or he doesn’t fit the applicable racial classification.
During the Cold War, Americans and Russians tried topping each other in every aspect of research and military might. Now, instead of competing with hard work and merit, everyone just seems to cry that Asians are gonna take over the world. Maybe if we Americans got off our lazy behinds and stop teaching our children that it’s okay to be lazy and mediocre then we wouldn’t be in this AA predicament.