FOREWORD
Why does it seem so hard to get into
medical school? Why do so many people seem to want to do it?
Who gets accepted, and why? Perhaps more to the point, why
are people not admitted? These and related questions are
what this book is all about.
Actually only a very small percentage of college students
and alumni apply to medical school each year. Currently,
about 950,000 people are awarded a bachelor's degree
annually, but only 45,000 apply to medical school, of whom
25% have been out of college a year or more. Thus, only
about 3% of college graduates apply yearly-not so many
people.
The difficulty, of course, is that there are only 16,000
freshman-class places available each year. When the
application season ends and medical school begins only half
of the applicants that year have been admitted.
What does it take to get in? Medical schools favor
applicants with high grade-point averages from college, high
scores on the Medical College Admission Test, As and Bs in
the few required premedical sciences, some knowledge of
current health-care delivery, good recommendations from
former professors, coherent reasons for wanting to become a
physician, and the ability to carry on an intelligent
conversation for at least 15 minutes. Successful applicants
need not have attended prestigious colleges or graduate
schools, or even necessarily earned the bachelor's degree!
They need not have any money, friends or relatives in
medicine, or definite career plans beyond medical school.
The common denominator of accepted applicants seems to be
high achievement, expressed in any way the applicant
chooses. These days medical schools routinely enroll people
in their thirties from other professions, such as dentists,
lawyers, nurses, ministers and athletes. Besides being high
achievers these successful applicants have shown high
ability in science education and are predictably successful
as medical students. What medical schools do not want are
students who they feel might fail out.
Why do people want to become physicians? I have asked this
question of more than a thousand medical school applicants
over the past 13 years.
The answer seems to be quite simple:
it's a great job. United States physicians in 1985 enjoy
autonomy and control in their workplace, relatively high
income, absolute job security, community prestige and
societal respect. They have continuous opportunities to
learn, multiple opportunities for career shifts without
"starting over," and can choose employment situations more
freely than others. Most important, they work directly with
and for people. Not because of any one of these but because
of their special combination do intelligent, ambitious and
compassionate people choose medicine as a career. I'm glad
they do, for we need them.
For many the path to medical school is smooth. For others it
is frustratingly slow and filled with obstacles; these are
the aspiring physicians who write to Dr. Sandy Brown, some
out of desperation. For the most part they have had little
encouragement or specific, helpful advice about how to reach
their goal. Their questions come in varying degrees of
sophistication and from different perspectives; no two are
exactly alike, just as no two applicants are exactly
alike.
Dr. Brown, the Ann Landers of the premedical world, goes
public in this book with his correspondents' deepest fears,
greatest wishes, sincerest expressions. Many different
aspects of premedical preparation are discussed (and
questions answered)-there is something in this book for
nearly every medical school applicant, successful or
unsuccessful. Dr. Brown does a great service to premedical
students and premedical advisors all over the country, for
his advice and answers are compassionate, helpful,
instructive and truly tell it like it is. We are fortunate
that he has, once again, directed his attention to the
premedical/medical interface, and entered our
world.
Thomas L. Pearce, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Assistant Dean Premedical and Health Professions Advisor
College of Arts and Sciences
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA