I write this so that you, as an applicant, can see Brown and PLME from another light. Many of the opinions expressed here on this blog are high school students. Some of the comments written, however, are Brown U public relations staff. Be aware that some comments are… not 100% genuine.
I encourage the college student to review everything about Brown and Brown med. After all, you will be spending 8 years there. And so the decision will require more thought than other colleges. For starters please read the Brown daily herald (BDH) and see what is going on campus. Make sure you visit campus.
Universities are more and more like corporations than teachers. Truth is, Brown is a corporation. They are interested in the bottom line. They have good marketing and teaching is just a part of that.
If you get into Brown PLME, you are smart, and they are trying to take you for what you worth. During the undergrad years, plme will try very hard to get you out of the program. Most plmes who start freshman year do not enter Brown med. The programs wants you to drop out. Why? Because more spots at Brown med open means more traditional applicants. Traditional applicants = application money. That is a lot of money.
Brown spends lots of money on marketing to present a great image of themselves, similar to Mcdonalds and Starbucks. But at the end of they day they are businesses.
Look up the stories about Katie Flynn, McCormick at Brown and what happened with them. Actions speak louder than words.
What do a softball coach and a wrestler (who I don’t believe was a PLME) have to do with PLME?
Also can you provide a source for the stat that the majority of PLMEs don’t go to Warren Alpert? It’s pretty hard to push someone out of PLME given the only real requirement is “graduate.”
How on earth do you know that "Some of the comments written, however, are Brown U public relations staff"? I am one of the most prolific posters here, and I am not in any way connected with Brown's PR staff. Based on what I know of some of the other active posters (current and past ones), and my knowledge of Brown's PR staff -- this comment is not based on reality.
"plme will try very hard to get you out of the program. Most plmes who start freshman year do not enter Brown med. " I just did some research into PLME, and your statement cannot be true. Let's look at these two page -- here, https://www.brown.edu/academics/medical/plme/information-prospective-students/admissions-facts-and-figures, we learn that for the class entering in 2015, there were 53 PLMEs. Here, https://www.brown.edu/academics/medical/admission/student-life/class-profile, we learn that there were 45 PLMEs in the med school class. While these aren't the same cohort, assuming these numbers are roughly the same from year to year (another story says that PLME is capped at 50 students), that means a loss of up to 8 students -- nowhere close to your assertion that "most plmes do not enter Brown med." There are always going to some students who decide to apply to a different med school or decide they don't want to be doctors. It is true that the percentage of the med school who are PLMEs is declining -- but that's because the med school is getting bigger, not because PLMEs are dropping out.
I looked up Katie Flynn. Not sure what point you are trying to make -- according to a 2015 BDH story, she bullies students and many left the team -- but she appears to still be the coach. If your point is that administration sometimes makes bad choices -- can't disagree with you there, but I challenge you to find a college that hasn't at some point made decisions that are questionable and controversial and result in student/faculty protest
Marketing -- please point to a US college that doesn't spend a lot of money on marketing to present a good image.
Brown is not a business. The purpose of a business is to make a profit. Indeed, publicly traded companies like McDonalds and Starbucks have a fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Brown is not-for-profit. Its purpose and mission is education. It has no authority to make any profit whatsoever. And of course it has no shareholders to whom it owes any fiduciary duty. So the comparison to McDonalds and Starbucks, which are publicly traded companies, is unfounded.
Brown has a group of people, or a body (a “corp”), which has certain responsibilities and makes certain decisions for the university. This is called the Corporation. A corporation is simply a “body formed and authorized by law to act as a single person.” (Merriam-Webster). Neither the university nor the corporation makes any profit. In fact members of the corporation are not paid. Every other non-profit university has a similar governing structure. The fact that Brown’s governing body is called “Corporation,” and not Board of Trustees for example, does not make it profit-driven, or interested in the “bottom line,” as the poster suggests. Neither does Brown market itself with a profit motive.
Apart from its official non-profit status, Brown’s culture is distinctively uncommercial. Compared to other schools, Brown resists the tendency to view education as a mere commodity - a body of knowledge or set of skills to be traded in a marketplace. That’s one reason why, unlike most of the other Ivy League schools, it has no law or business school. In my experience, Brown uniquely encourages intellectual curiosity and exploration unencumbered by pragmatic considerations. (In fact one of the purposes of PLME is to allow undergrads to explore their academic interests without having to worry about getting into med school). Not coincidentally, many Brown alumni choose careers guided primarily by their passions and interests rather than money. Brown cultivates this ethos despite the possible ill-effects on alumni giving and, consequently, the endowment. This particularly Brown quality very much contradicts the characterization provided in the original post.
p.s. I’m a Brown alum but in no other way affiliated with the university.
I’m concerned that since I’m the main poster about PLME, OP in this thread thinks that I’m a Brown employee. I’m not. I’m just a Brown alum/current med student who has gained a lot through being a PLME and who cares a lot about Brown.
If any Brown admissions/public relations people are reading this, please PM me - I’d be happy to send you my name and address so that you can start paying me for posting on here. I’ll even waive all owed back pay for the 11.5 years worth of work I’ve already put in.
How about this take? Every Med school or BS-MD program face wash out of students. Why? Because it’s a freaking hard path! And they can’t simply pass along people.
Nowhere does anyone who gets admitted into PLME or Brown Med assume a degree is at the end of the road. THey actually have to do the work and pass.
People fail out. Med school slots open up and they fill them (of course).
Big difference between causation and correlation – ever heard of this theory?
I graduated from PLME, and have many MD friends who went to other medical schools, including my husband. Brown’s is one of the most laid-back, low-stress med schools that exists. They go out of their way to nurture the student, and faculty are much more ‘touchy-feely’, emphasizing MD to patient interaction, the art of truly listening and understanding a patient, how to be respectful, sensitive, and not overbearing or intimidating towards both patients and colleagues. The only classmates that didn’t stay decided to go onwards to other med schools (Stanford and Harvard), or decided they didn’t want to be a doctor in the end. No MCATs! Have you looked at some of the other combined med programs out there? There is at least 1 that explicitly states that students will be weeded out from freshman year to senior year - Medical Hunger Games.
I doubt this thread will deter anyone from applying to the program. I believe every year, they have one of the lowest admit rates in the country. Didn’t they decide this year that ED applicants HAD to commit to Brown undergrad, even if they didn’t get into PLME but got into Brown undergrad? Does that sound like the move of a corporation that wants more applicant fees and cares about their acceptance rates? That move will only drop their ED applicant pool and hence increase their admit rate. I really don’t think Brown cares about that - they just want kids who want to be at Brown, not just a med program.