Ouch...Thank You!

This week, I received rejections from two of the more "prestigious" medical schools on my AMCAS list. (Although, at this level of education, I'm not sure what "more prestigious" means besides "more expensive"...if anything. I've heard over and over that getting into any medical school in America is a huge accomplishment and, after having went through the entire application process, I'm now quite inclined to believe that's true. Anyway.) Even though I have been accepted to another school, these rejections still stung. So, just in case you currently find yourself holding a rejection from one or more of these schools, (or in case you will sometime in the future) here are some statistics that I hope will make you (and me) feel much better:

According to the current US News and World Report, this year's top 10 United States medical schools are the following:

1. Harvard University
2. Johns Hopkins University
3. Washington University in St. Louis
4. Duke University
5. University of Pennsylvania
6. University of California San Francisco
7. Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
8. Stanford University
9. University of Michigan Ann Arbor
10. Yale University

So, there's the top 10. Now, according to the 2007-2008 MSAR (Medical School Admissions Requirements, basically the Bible of medical school application statistics), if you add up all of the applications each of these schools received last year, the total application pool consisted of 52,342 hopeful applicants--each, I'm sure, quite talented and qualified in his or her own way (I know, I know...obviously some of these are duplicate applicants--that is, the same applicant applying to more than one of these schools--but there's no way for me to distinguish between them, so I've just added up all of their applications for conversation's sake). Now, if you sum up the number of students who actually matriculated at these schools last year, the number is 1,317. This means that about 2.5% of the applicants to these schools actually made it. 97.5% were rejected. Remove from the 2.5% of successful applicants all those who were "aided" in the application process by some alumni family member or an otherwise non-academic hook-up that those of us lacking such connections cannot possibly make up for, and that number dwindles even further. I know. Wow.

Now, I am not in anyway trying to discourage anyone from applying to these medical schools. I believe you should learn what you can about each school and, if it fits, go for it. Absolutely. Don't hesitate because you only live once. I'm just trying to make those of us who were rejected by all of these "dream" schools feel better with the facts. So, here are some more:

If you happen to have acceptances to one of the 115 U.S. medical schools not on the list above, congratulations! That is an incredible feat. Just because an acceptance isn't from one of these top 10 schools does not mean that it wasn't very, very difficult to receive. So, here are some statistics on just how hard it was for you to get that acceptance letter, no matter from where (in America):

According to the AAMC's National Applicant Data, last year there were 39,108 complete, individual applications submitted to AMCAS. Further, there were 17,370 students who got in. That means that everyone (assuming for a moment that qualifications were equal) had only about a 44% chance of acceptance. I know that next to that 2.5% above, these chances seem great. However, when you consider all of the pain, effort, uncertainty, and expense of undergraduate study, research, the MCAT (shudder), volunteering, shadowing, and applying (etc.)...a less than 50% success rate is still quite small and means that those of us who knew the risk but still went for it are either very brave or very... Ha ha. Let's stop at brave.

So, to those of you currently in my position: I feel better, don't you? Let's enjoy the acceptances we've earned and shrug off the rejections, wherever they may be from. Perhaps we should even be thankful because we're only going to have about 1/2 the debt that those who do go to these top 10 schools will incur...