Sunday, October 10, 2010

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine

VCU Med has a program with its undergrad, VCU. The program is called Guaranteed Admissions Program. There are three big Guaranteed Admission Programs: Medicine, Dental, and Pharmacy.

To remain in the program, you have to maintain a 3.5 GPA. MCAT is waived.

To be admitted, you have to have done a lot of extracurriculars. I noticed that the profile for 2010 GMED students has extremely low stats. Unweighted GPA of 3.85 and SAT score of 2150? Come on! But then it says that each student has 450 hours of health care related service. That is A LOT. This program is similar to the Siena/AMC program. They don't really care about your stats, but they do care a lot for your extracurriculars.

The GMED program is also for current VCU Honors students. This program is called the Preferred Applicant Track. I thought this was also quite interesting. It is similar to SLU's Medical Scholars Program. Only that you don't have to get into the program as a freshman. You just apply at the end of your second year. If you get in, you only need a MCAT score of 26. This sounds like a really good deal. Even if you don't get into the program as a high school student, you can apply again in college.

Admission Requirements:
Virginia Commonwealth University
  • Apply by November 15th
  • Minimum SAT score of 1910 or ACT score of 29
  • Unweighted GPA of 3.50
  • References

6 comments:

  1. when it says 450 hours, is that like community service related to healthcare or does it incude things like shadowing a doctor?

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  2. I believe it also includes shadowing a doctor. Even then, 450 hours of community service is quite a number to reach.

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  3. VCU should be placed in the easier category and drexel programs should be moved into the medium category. When you take into account that drexel programs have much stronger undergrads, higher accepted stats, and lower acceptance rates, Drexel programs are definitely far more competitive than VCU.

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    Replies
    1. Really? I get the feeling that lots more people are accepted into the Drexel programs than VCU.

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  4. do you need to be invited to apply to VCU? because there isn't an option in the common app

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  5. As of 2016 VCU now requires MCAT for its guaranteed admissions program

    ReplyDelete