TX Med Schools

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
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Gabe, are you by chance a URM? If you are a gringo like me, then you also are out of luck on this front, but it is something to consider.

I sincerely hope this isn’t the beginning of a negative vibe on OPM. It’s pretty rare to see folks here making excuses for not being successful in dealing with the “system” of admissions.

I agree. These kinds of anti-URM comments are unhelpful, unkind, and worst of all, inaccurate. One or two people’s anecdotes don’t make a general pattern; there are just as many people who have the opposite experience. (I’m a gringa who did get accepted to Baylor. And I’m not even a TX resident. Go figure.)
The single biggest nonacademic advantage you can possibly have going for you at ANY of the TX schools, including Baylor, isn’t having URM status. It’s being a TX state resident. The UTs each take 90%+ Texans, while Baylor takes 75% Texans. These numbers are mandated by TX state law. Would anyone really care to argue that the percentages of seats taken by URMs are anywhere near that high at any of the TX schools??? Because that’s sure not what the MSAR says.
Edit: sorry, Gabe, for contributing to the thread hijacking.

I just wanted to bring this thread over, as it’s a subject that is VERY interesting to me. My wife is from San Antonio, and I am applying to every med school in TX this summer, but am not currently a TX resident (although my wife is). UTSA would be my preferred school because of two reasons:
1. As we all know, it’s not just the med student, but the med student’s family that really are doing this for us with families, and being in SA would mean a much easier situation for my wife, and a good work situation for her helping her mom’s business.
2. I like the idea of 3rd and 4th year clinical possibilities in southern TX, with no residents, only docs, a LOT. What a great opportunity to get out of med school with nearly as much experience as after a year or even two, of residenccy.
I do intend to learn reasonably fluent Spanish by the time I attend med school probably - or as much as I can. For me, this is not difficult as I have a degree in linguistics, have a real knack for languages and speak fluent German (also used to work as a German tranlator/interpreter long ago).
Two items were quoted in this thread though - one that there’s an almost “unwritten law” that that a person needs to speak Spanish to be accepted at UTSA (I know it’s not actually named this, but it should be ), and two that Baylor takes 75% TX residents. From Baylor’s admission stats, it looks more like about 55% were TX residents last year. Are you sure about this 75% statistic? It is after all a private school, isn’t it? I know the 90% rule applies to all the other (state) med schools in TX, which really sucks for me.
I’m a little curious about any more info concerning Spanish as a language they like to see. I know they do appear to have somewhat of a mission to accept med students that they think will practice in the poorer, rural areas south of SA, and Spanish is a must for that. I’m hoping that the mention of my plan to be fairly fluent in Spanish by the time I start med school, will help me a little. My wife is half Mexican, although she doesn’t speak Spanish much better than I, since she wasn’t allowed to use it growing up.
Ah well, this is kind of a rambling post, but anyone who has something they want to add to this topic, I thought, should be doing it in a separate thread anyway… so fire away if you have something to say.
Sam

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Baylor is private, but they receive significant state funding, and therefore they heavily prefer Texans.
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OK, here is the info from the current MSAR:
Matriculant Residency Demographics from the 2004-2005 class at Baylor:
168 students total
133 TX residents
33 OOS residents
2 international students
I actually over-estimated; this comes out to 35/168 non-residents, or just under 21%.
BY RACE/ETHNICITY:
Nonhispanics: 153
Hispanics: 15, not necessarily all URM
This gives 15/168 Hispanics, or just under 9%.
Blacks: 18, for a total of 18/168 or just under 11%.
Whites: 94, for a total of 94/168 = 56%
Asians: 57, for a total of 34%
American Indians/Native Hawaiians/other races: 9, or 5%.

From my Baylor interview packet (I interviewed there in fall 2005):
Stats on the 2004 entering class
45% women
78% Texans

From the BCM Website: http://www.bcm.edu/about/fastfacts.cfm
Medical School
168 students enrolled
93 were men
75 were women
98 graduated from Texas schools
70 graduated from other U.S. colleges and universities
40 total underrepresented in medicine
Average undergraduate GPA: 3.77
Average MCAT score: 11.32
They don’t give residency info, but it’s likely that all or nearly all students from TX schools are also TX residents, and probably many of the others are TX residents who went OOS for college.
The website also states: “Among the students enrolled in the entering class of 2004, 78 percent were Texas residents and 45 percent were women. All entering students had completed work for the baccalaureate degree, and 4 percent had obtained graduate degrees.” This is from their main webpage: http://www.bcm.edu/admissions/

P.S. Speaking Spanish is an asset at Baylor, regardless of your ethnicity. I was a Spanish major in college and studied abroad. Yes, the interviewer did test me. So don’t exaggerate your fluency.

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Ah thanks, I didn’t see that other page/statement you quote in your post. My bad, I was looking at the TX school graduates. Man, that sucks. I thought they would be completely free of that restriction being private, and would at least be one school in the Republic of Texas, that acknowledged a universe outside the borders of TX.

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What do you think about listing your level of proficiency of a language in general? I’ve had significant exposure to Polish and Spanish and I consider myself to have at least an elementary knowledge of both, which helps me in my current job, and could as a physician as well.
I would never say I was fluent when I’m not, but I would like my future interviewers to know this about me (I think it would be a plus).

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There are a lot of private schools that receive state funding and therefore give significant state residency preference. But in general, your odds are still better at OOS private schools than they are at OOS state schools. I did not even try to apply to UTSW when I saw that they have over 90% in-staters!!!
Baylor has some of the worst odds for OOS students, even for a private school. U Miami here in FL does the same thing as Baylor; they have over 75% Floridians, less than 25% OOS students. Case Western has historically given preference to Ohioans, although they told us at my interview that they are increasing the number of OOS students there. The current MSAR says that they have 30% Ohio residents for the 2004 entering class. U Chicago seems to give some preference to Illinois residents; it’s about 30% in-state to 70% OOS. AECOM seems to give some preference to NYers: it’s about 37% in-staters versus 63% OOS. Penn has about 25% in-state residents, and Pitt has about 31%. Wash U, Vanderbilt, Yale, Duke and Harvard do not seem to have much residency preference (if any at all). I don’t know about any others off-hand, but you can find all of this info in the MSAR.
Megboo, I would definitely let the schools konw that you have experience with those languages. I would not classify yourself as “fluent,” however, unless you can carry on a conversation in them. If you can read/write and speak/understand a little, I suggest listing that as one of your ECs/activities instead. Like I said, your interviewer may well start speaking to you in a language that you say you know, especially if it’s a common one like Spanish.
As a general FYI: Besides Baylor, I would say that AECOM was also interested in my Spanish skills, and so was U Miami. None of the other schools seemed to care much. This makes sense, since NY, FL, and TX are all states with large Spanish-speaking populations.

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Baylor has some of the worst odds for OOS students, even for a private school. U Miami here in FL does the same thing as Baylor; they have over 75% Floridians, less than 25% OOS students. Case Western has historically given preference to Ohioans, although they told us at my interview that they are increasing the number of OOS students there. The current MSAR says that they have 30% Ohio residents for the 2004 entering class. U Chicago seems to give some preference to Illinois residents; it’s about 30% in-state to 70% OOS. AECOM seems to give some preference to NYers: it’s about 37% in-staters versus 63% OOS. Penn has about 25% in-state residents, and Pitt has about 31%. Wash U, Vanderbilt, Yale, Duke and Harvard do not seem to have much residency preference (if any at all).


Beware of statistics, particularly your interpretation of in-state vs. out of state residency preference. For instance, Stanford has NO, repeat NO, state preference. However, to look at the stats in the MSAR, one might be inclined to think that there is some preference given to California residents. Case Western also emphatically states in the Premedical Advisor’s Reference Manual, “State residency is not taken into consideration.” Additionally, what you do not see in the MSAR is the number of offers of acceptance made to fill the class. You see the number of interviews offered, and the number who matriculated. You are not given the “yield” percentage. Knowing how many offers are actually made may give a better indication of how important state residency is to the admissions committee.
Cheers,
Judy

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In nutshell Judy, what you are saying is that apply to as many schools regardless of residency? Aren’t there some schools that will flat out refuse any out of state students?
Gabe

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Beware of statistics, particularly your interpretation of in-state vs. out of state residency preference. For instance, Stanford has NO, repeat NO, state preference. However, to look at the stats in the MSAR, one might be inclined to think that there is some preference given to California residents. Case Western also emphatically states in the Premedical Advisor’s Reference Manual, “State residency is not taken into consideration.” Additionally, what you do not see in the MSAR is the number of offers of acceptance made to fill the class. You see the number of interviews offered, and the number who matriculated. You are not given the “yield” percentage. Knowing how many offers are actually made may give a better indication of how important state residency is to the admissions committee.
Cheers,
Judy

That’s a good point; the MSAR doesn’t tell how many applicants from in-state versus OOS get accepted but choose not to matriculate in their home state. Just to clarify: I was told at my Case interview that the school has recently greatly increased the number of OOS students that they accept. I don’t know how recently they meant when they said “recently,” and it’s of course also possible that this person was mistaken and that Case has been doing this all along. Baylor really does give considerable preference to TX residents; they’re required by TX law to do that.
One other stat that we haven’t mentioned but that might give a “clue” about whether a private school has a state residency preference would be to check whether the school has different tuition rates for in-state versus OOS matriculants. Baylor does. Case and Stanford don’t.

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Here’s the new student 2005-2006 statistics from Baylor’s web page.
http://www.bcm.edu/admissions/?PMID=1775
http://www.bcm.edu/about/fastfacts.cfm
There are more TX residents than OOS that were accepted.

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, I think with their TX resident favoritism, avg GPA and MCAT scores on that Baylor stats page, I have not much chance of gettin in there.





Ah well, I’m going to be trying, anyway. My science GPA is really strong (3.93) at least, just because I never took any science until doing it post-bacc. Maybe that will help offset my crappy undergrad GPA (2.9, with a couple of D’s and F’s in there, albeit in ridiculously easy classes), if I can also pull off a great MCAT score in 2 months. I’m working hard to hopefully be able to make that happen.





I’m kind of approaching the attitude that TX is a longshot, and all the schools there (of which I am applying to all of them) are great if any of them happen, but for the most part I’m just applying to all the schools outside of TX as though that is my real list.





Sam

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I thought that undergrad and post-bacc gpas were lumped together, provided the post-bacc was not a graduate-degree program.
Is this the case for you, Sam?

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yes, and that gives me around a 3.33, which i guess isn’t too bad, but that average of 3.77 or whatever i saw on the baylor site, was pretty intimidating.

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One good thing about the TX schools (well, at least Baylor; I don’t know if the UTs have the same policy) is that you can gain in-state residency after one year. You would have to purchase some real estate there to establish residency. If you know for a fact that you and your wife want to go to TX, and you don’t mind waiting one more year, you might consider moving to TX a year early to establish residency.

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Yeah, believe me, we’ve considered that. The problem is that it’s really more than one year, because it’s one year by the time you apply, not matriculate (I checked this one out with TMDSAS pretty thoroughly). Were it not for needing to stay here until my son graduates HS next year, we would already be down there…it’s pretty easy to find programming work in TX.

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I wish I could think of a better idea…UTSA doesn’t have ED, so I can’t even suggest that. Maybe you could contact the admissions office at UTSA and ask them for some suggestions? You could tell them they are your top choice and that you would definitely attend if admitted, and ask what they suggest you do about the residency issue, as well as how you can make your app there as strong as possible.

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In nutshell Judy, what you are saying is that apply to as many schools regardless of residency?

No, not at all. You need to take residency into account by looking at the MSAR to try to get a handle on which state schools matriculate about 20% (or more) of out of state applicants.
Cheers,
Judy

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I wish I could think of a better idea…UTSA doesn’t have ED, so I can’t even suggest that. Maybe you could contact the admissions office at UTSA and ask them for some suggestions? You could tell them they are your top choice and that you would definitely attend if admitted, and ask what they suggest you do about the residency issue, as well as how you can make your app there as strong as possible.

Thanks, that’s good advice. I think I will do that. They have a dual degree program there, that if accepted into, you are automatically considered in-state for tuition, however that doesn’t have any bearing on the selection process, and my chances of getting into that program are pretty slim, as it’s more research oriented (which I have about zero experience at, but I’m applying anyway and trying to play up all my data warehouse and computer science experience).
They have seemed very nice any time I’ve contacted them with questions about that program, so I will try asking them what you are suggesting too.
Sam

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Good luck, Sam; I hope it works out for you. This whole process is very trying and difficult. I was asked at a couple of interviews what I would do if I didn’t get in this year, and I told them that I’d post doc for a year and then re-apply. I was serious about the post doc plan; I am definitely going to do a post doc at some point regardless, either during or after med school if not before. But I am not so sure that I would have it in me to go through this whole app process all over again.
This is a little off-topic, but I’ve been thinking about it more lately, because several people have said that they won’t be getting in this year and are thinking of re-applying. Do you guys as non-trads, and especially those of you who are already on the older side (say, 35+) where interviewers might give you some grief over your age, plan to keep applying over and over if you don’t get in the first time? When do you decide that it’s time to just cut your losses and call it quits? I told my mom the other day that it’s not like I hate being a chemist, and maybe if I didn’t get in after giving it the absolute best shot I could, then it wasn’t meant to be. Not that I’m fatalistic, and I did do everything in my power to make sure that I did get in, but if I hadn’t gotten in anyway…I just don’t know. Anyone else have thoughts about this?
And I apologize in advance if this post is kind of a downer. I am actually very excited about starting med school, but I am also ten days away from submitting my dissertation draft to the committee, and I’m just really really tired.

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Yeah, I plan to re-apply until I get in. Period. I don’t think that will be a problem, though. Plan B, if it has to be, would be to move to TX, get a job (a very easy thing to do for my field of work), save up some money while family gets established in the state (hopefully in the town where I most want to go to school) and re-apply as an in-state Texan, who speaks conversational Spanish.
I spent about 18 months or more thinking “screw this, if I don’t get in, I don’t really care, at least this whole process of going back to school got me up and living life again,” but now that it’s getting so close, I can’t even imagine not getting in either this year or another.
The committee at my school told me the record there is 7 years of reapplying by someone (a non-trad), and he supposedly got in that 7th try. Now that’s some persistence!!
Sam

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The committee at my school told me the record there is 7 years of reapplying by someone (a non-trad), and he supposedly got in that 7th try. Now that’s some persistence!!
Sam

Oh my goodness. lol. That really is persistent. And here I was bummed for a while about having applied four times.
I think that moving to TX is a good idea actually if you can do it. They have so many schools, and good ones too. The Texas Medical Center is very impressive; that’s the only one I’ve seen, but I’ve heard good things about the others too. And their tuition is so cheap for in-state residents. Even Baylor students get to pay state tuition rates. Our state schools here in FL cost $20,000 for in-state tuition; that would pay for three years’ of in-state tuition at any TX school.