Admissions
In general, admission into a US medical school is considered highly competitive, and typically requires completion of a four-year bachelor's degree or at least 90 credit hours from an accredited college or university. Many applicants obtain further education before medical school in the form of Master's degrees, or other non science related degrees. Admissions criteria may include overall performance in the undergraduate years and performance in a group of courses specifically required by U.S. medical schools (pre-health sciences), the score on the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT), application essays, letters of recommendation (most schools require either one letter from the undergraduate institution's premedical advising committee or a combination of letters from at least one science faculty and one non-science faculty), and interviews.
Beyond objective admissions criteria, many programs look for candidates who have had unique experiences in community service, volunteer-work, international studies, research, or other advanced degrees. Experiences can include activities such as shadowing a physician, an activity that involves inactively participating in the daily functions of a physician. This includes, but is not limited to, being present for patient examinations and watching surgical procedures. Physician shadowing allows medical school applicants the ability to become familiar with professional medical etiquette, to broaden the candidate's clinical exposure, and to display the applicant's enthusiasm for medicine.
The application essay is the primary opportunity for the candidate to describe his/her reasons for entering a medical career. The essay requirements are usually open-ended to allow creativity and flexibility for the candidate to draw upon his/her personal experiences/challenges to make him/her stand out amongst other applicants. If granted, an interview serves as an additional way to express these subjective strengths that a candidate may possess.
Since 2005, the Association of Medical Colleges has recommended that all medical schools conduct background checks on applicants in order to prevent individuals with convictions for serious crimes from being matriculated.
Most commonly, the bachelor degree is in one of the biological sciences, but not always; in 2005, nearly 40% of medical school matriculates had received bachelor's degrees in fields other than biology or specialized health sciences. All medical school applicants must, however, complete year-length undergraduate courses with labs in biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics; some medical schools have additional requirements such as biochemistry, calculus, genetics, psychology and English. Many of these courses have prerequisites, so there are other "hidden" course requirements (basic science courses) that are often taken first.
A student with a bachelor's degree who has not taken the pre-medical coursework may complete a postbaccalaureate (postbacc) program. Such programs allow rapid fulfillment of prerequisite course work as well as grade point average improvement. Some postbacc programs are specifically linked to individual medical schools to allow matriculation without a gap year, while most require 1–2 years to complete.
Several universities across the U.S. admit college students to their medical schools during college; students attend a single six-year to eight-year integrated program consisting of two to four years of an undergraduate curriculum and four years of medical school curriculum, culminating in both a bachelor's and M.D. degree or a bachelor's and D.O. degree. Some of these programs admit high school students to college and medical school.
While not necessary for admission, several private organizations have capitalized on this complex and involved process by offering services ranging from single-component preparation (MCAT, essay, etc.) to entire application review/consultation.
In 2011, the average MCAT and GPA for students entering U.S.-based M.D. programs were 31.1 and 3.67, respectively, and 26.51 and 3.50 for D.O. matriculants, although the gap has been getting smaller every year. In 2012, 45,266 people applied to medical schools in the United States through the American Medical College Application Service. Of these 45,266 students, 19,517 of them matriculated into a medical school for a success rate of 43%. This figure does not account for the attrition rate of pre-med students in various stages of the pre-application process (those who ultimately do not decide to apply due to weeding out by low GPA, low MCAT, lack of clinical and research experience, and numerous other factors).
Read more about this topic: Medical School In The United States