Easiest Premed Schools

College Search & Selection
1

Hello!

I’m currently a junior in high school and I wanted to get some advice on where I should apply. Wherever I go, I plan doing premed and getting into med school, but I want to optimize my chances of doing that.

Just to give some background, I am an all A student with relatively high test scores (not perfect, but close). I will major in something liberal arts related since that is something I enjoy and my major won’t affect my chances of getting into med school. The biggest considerations I have for the school are research opportunities and difficulty.

Obviously, I want to go to a school where I can keep my GPA high with minimal effort. This isn’t to say that I am a lazy student that is unwilling to work hard, I’d just rather have more time to distribute to other activities. As far as research opportunities go, I want to go somewhere where I can be really involved with research and medical opportunities (like volunteering).

The environment and location play a minor role (I’d like to go to a smaller school near a big city if possible), but my biggest priorities are factors that would increase my likelihood of getting into med school. Cost matters, but I’m willing to pay a larger price tag if necessary.

What schools should I look at?

2

OChem is hard everywhere.

3

I don’t know of a school where you will be able to get a high gpa in pre-med classes… with minimal effort.

4

In general, if you attend a school that is less rigorous, i.e., lower SAT scores, selection process, the competition to get top grades for medical school is easier than at a very competitive school.

5

This is a very legitimate question that I have seen asked many times in many forms here. It could have been stated better than “minimal effort”, but I think everyone knows what you mean.

You will probably be told to keep costs down, and to go to “the best school where you will still do well.” While that is technically good advice, it isn’t very useful.

On the off chance that someone actually has good advice, I would love to hear the answer too. If you aren’t comfortable making a post, please pm the OP and me with any advice you have.

Thanks.

6

I’ve seen kids have some good success from LACs ranked in USNews from, say, around 20 to around 70. You still are going to need to work very hard and study for your MCAT. But the smaller class size gives you more support. You could get some merit aid, too.

7

Washington & Jefferson seems to have good success getting students to med school. I have no idea if it’s “easier” but it is an easier school from an admittance standpoint. And they are very generous with merit aid if you’re a strong student.

8

@intparent I’m curious–what do you think are the reasons that students from that range of LACs (ranked 20 to 70) are particularly successful in med school admissions?

9

Colleges with more grade inflation, relative to the strength of students proxied by admission selectivity, would be more favorable for pre-meds trying to get top-end GPAs to get past automated GPA screens in medical school applications.

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-topics/2074436-some-colleges-have-grade-distribution-information-available-by-course.html has some pointers to some schools’ grade distributions by course.

10

Pick a college you’ll want to be at when you’re no longer pre-med.

There have been posts over the years along these lines, often couched as “can I still have fun in college as pre-med?” There is nothing intrinsically wrong with what they ask or what you ask, I’m not judging you. But these questions seem to be a marker for kids that aren’t going to see it thru. I think a good part of it is that while any one afternoon or weekend blowing off studying isn’t going to keep you out of med school, the accumulation of dozens of these will. So each time you face a decision (study or have fun) then fun often wins. But they add up.

The kids asking these questions that hang around often post around the end of frosh year “I didn’t do so great, got some C’s in Chem and Math, if I get all A’s can I still go to med school?” The answer is sure, but somehow they don’t get it done. The same day-to-day tradeoffs are still there, and by the end of soph year they’ve decided they never really wanted medicine after all.

You’re a first-time poster, not a regular part of the forum. So we’ll probably never find out what happens to you. But I am curious. So just for grins set a calendar item for 2 years from now in April 2021 which will be towards the end of your frosh year in college. Let us know how its working out for you.

11

Medical school is a lot of work. I think it’s important to develop good study habits and time management skills while in undergrad. If you can manage a high gpa very easily in college, without learning these skills, it may hurt you down the road as a medical student.

Attending a school that is less rigorous will help, but it will still require work.

12

I’m not saying they are particularly successful. But if you want an environment where you might be a bit higher scoring than the rest of the pack and can more easily get individual attention when you struggle with something like OChem, you’d find that there.

13

I can tell you where NOT to go, if “minimal effort” is a prerequisite. Michigan. :wink:

14

@intparent, @badgolfer thank you for the great advice.

I was actually pretty interested in LACs. On a personal level, most would be a better fit for me. However, I am slightly concerned about the opportunities available. Outside of the top 10, I haven’t really heard of many LAC schools that are strong in research. And although reputation doesn’t personally matter to me, it’d be better to attend a school that has somewhat of a name so that I can get internships while at school. This isn’t to say it needs to be highly ranked, just something that people would recognize.

I was really interested in Soka University of America until I found out people thought it was either a Buddhist cult or unaccredited (neither are true, but that reputation still stands).

Just to clarify to all the other respondents, I’m not planning on partying or slacking off in college. Actually, I was hoping to instead spend time on things like research, volunteering, and internships if possible. I’m a very hard worker and definitely motivated to become a doctor. I just don’t want unnecessary burnout which will hurt me in the long run.

I’m aware that premed is hard. I know that I will have to put in a lot of work and compete with thousands of other premeds with the same goal. But I also don’t want to blindly approach the premed pathway without any insight on what schools will best prepare me for med school admissions.

15

The best success I’ve seen in students leaving my high school and wanting to get into med school have come when they have selected schools where they are in the Top 25% stats-wise for both ACT/SAT and GPA.

My theory for this is because when they get into class, their foundation is solid where the prof expects to “start.” They learn new things at an expected rate. When students go to places where they are below those stats, there is often some foundational knowledge they didn’t receive in their high school classes compared to their peers, but the students don’t see it that way. They see “everyone else knows this except me” and conclude they must be dumb. That psyches them out in a vicious circle. A few students devote more time to closing the gap and delve into the material doing ok, but most give up quickly and swap out of pre-med figuring they “aren’t good enough.” They see it as an intelligence/smart issue instead of a foundational issue.

The school, itself, rarely matters. Work ethic and self confidence do. Look around at some options that suit your desires (area of country?) and ask them where recent pre-meds have gone to med school. If they made it in, you can too. Be sure to ask though, because some schools will count Caribbean Med schools in their acceptance stats. That’s mainly cooking the numbers. Don’t worry about actual stats they give you, you want the names of the schools they were accepted into knowing if you do your part, you have a decent chance.

One note my med school lad noticed in his class… those students (like him) who went to “harder” schools had more knowledge of the med school material than some other entering students had. If your Top 25% schools are the “tougher” schools all is fine to attend one of those and if could make life easier in med school itself. You’re just as capable as the other students…

The balance between those is your choice.

Do not go into high debt for undergrad. Med school is expensive enough.

Don’t major or minor in “party,” but find things to do and have fun with in addition to studying. Your med school app is more than your GPA/MCAT and medical extra curriculars. Here’s a site showing why my guy’s med school looks for:

https://www.urmc.rochester.edu/MediaLibraries/URMCMedia/education/md/documents/2022-profile.pdf

Change the year in the url and you’ll see it’s a template. They look for similar things every year. You don’t need everything listed, but you want to have something on your application that is list worthy for the med school you get accepted to.

Best wishes to you. Our country needs more good doctors!

16

What state are you in and what is your GPA/Test Scores (for merit purposes)?

17

LAC’s have really good medical school acceptance rates (Claremont McKenna/Bowdoin/Williams) are especially good

18

“In general, if you attend a school that is less rigorous, i.e., lower SAT scores, selection process, the competition to get top grades for medical school is easier than at a very competitive school.”

Unfortunately, this is not true. In fact, it can be the opposite. Some very easy admission schools grade very hard and give little care to who they cast off. The two schools with the highest grade inflation are Brown and Stanford. Grading rigor and selectivity are not tightly correlated if correlated at all.

Look at the link @ucbalumnus posted to get a better handle on this. Good luck!

19

Again, no one should use acceptance rates to figure out anything. Those numbers are far too easy to cook - and do not often help the student.

Some/many schools list anything health related in the stats - not just med schools.

Some list Caribbean med schools.

MANY set minimum limits for students they will support, with some setting that bar pretty high. What if you’re a student with a slightly lower GPA? At these schools your chance is nil, but at a “lower rate” school you still have a chance.

You want a school that can list places recent grads have gone, then you need to do your share to get what you need on your app.