If you were considering applying to one of the easiest medical schools to get into out of state, you’re not alone. Getting into college is tough. You’ve got a mountain of paperwork to sort through, essays to write, letters of recommendation to solicit, and on top of it all vaunted standardized test score thresholds to reach. That’s to say nothing of the arbitrary grade point average requirements that most schools impose on their applicants. I’m getting PTSD just thinking about the hurdles I had to jump through when I was applying to schools.
With all of that being said, if getting into college is tough, getting into graduate school is even tougher. You’ve got added paperwork to complete, more stringent grade and test score requirements, additional essays to compose in which you’ve effectively got to sell yourself to anyone who’s willing to buy, and on top of it all, the novel addition of nerve-wracking interviews with admission boards.
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Though I haven’t personally opted for the graduate school route just yet, I envision the process of applying as compared to that of applying to college as something similar to what professional athletes encounter when they want to make the jump to a more competitive league. That’s to say that in much the same way that the gatekeepers of a more competitive league impose exacting standards on all who would try their hand at gaining access, admission boards to graduate schools do everything within their power to make sure that only the best of the best make it through their ever-finer sieve of requirements.
But even that analogy is somewhat fraught. Professional athletes (or those on the way to becoming professional athletes) are already known. The same is true for high school athletes on their way to competing at the college level. They don’t need to sell themselves or provide evidence of their worthiness to anyone. On the contrary, they have people beating down their door for the chance at having them provide their services at their university or for their professional club. The only thing they really share in common with graduate school applicants is the fact that the competition becomes stiffer as they ascend the ranks.
And if college is ‘tough,’ and graduate school ‘tougher,’ getting into medical school these days is pretty much impossible. All of the aforementioned requirements still exist, but with a significantly lower margin for error applied to all of those seeking admission. Admission rates themselves (in the nation’s top programs) often hover at less than 5%, despite the fact that schools receive applications from thousands of comers each year. Your academic resume must be sterling, the terms in which your references speak about you: glowing, and your test scores seemingly flawless.
What can you say? Just as the NBA only wants the best dribblers, passers, shooters, and defenders, med schools, too, only want the best and the brightest.
Assuming you have all of the aforementioned criteria going for you, the sobering truth remains that you still may not be able to gain admission to the program on which you had your sights set. It’s a well-known fact among applicants everywhere that many schools give preferential treatment to a certain pool of applicants over others. These applicants may be legacy students, those whose parents, grandparents, siblings, or other relatives attended, or those who are geographically representative of the school’s location: in-state students.
For out-of-state students, this can serve as a tremendous disadvantage, which makes the task of applying and gaining admission to certain medical school programs downright Sisyphean. There you are: having made it all the way to the top of the med school application mountain only to slide right back down once confronted with the unaccounted for the prospect of going up against the slightly-buffered in-state applicants that are also seeking admission.
Because of all of this, we decided to cobble together a list of medical schools that we believe are likely to be most forgiving to out-of-state applicants. The list of easiest medical schools to get into. To do so, we had to do a bit of filtering of our own to whittle down a massive list of potential programs to something significantly more manageable. In the interest reaching that goal, we started with a list of medical schools with a higher-than-normal acceptance rate for applicants. From there, it hit us: private schools are likely to be a lot more forgiving to out-of-state applicants than would public, state schools. The only problem with that logic is that private schools are also a lot more competitive in terms of acceptance rates than are public schools. What resulted was a bit of bending on our part to allow public schools that interview a lot of out-of-state applicants ultimately resulting in the following list: a combination of schools that boast either more inviting admissions rates or that don’t discriminate against out-of-state applicants.
For those that may have previously been put off by the medical school application process for any of the aforementioned reasons, rest assured that there’s still hope. Though it will still be an uphill battle, getting into med school just got a whole lot easier. Take a look at the list below and see what you think. If you find it to be of interest, you may also want to check out our list of the Easiest Doctor of Osteopathy Schools to Get Into.
Whatever the medical discipline in which you’re looking to specialize, getting into med school is the first step. Why make the process harder than it needs to be? Consider applying to one of the easiest medical schools to get into out of state!
