As Williams is located in a rural setting, I wonder whether there are any internship and volunteer opportunities available outside the school? Or do students mostly just do extracurricular activities in the school? Also, how strong is its premed program? It would a great honor to hear the opinions from current Williams students and alumni!
To preface, I’m a freshman at Williams.
Despite its rurality, there are lots of opportunities to volunteer or intern in any kind of field at Williams. First of all, the college itself does an awesome job of providing those opportunities. There are plenty of students working at the health center, tutoring local kids, conducting paid research with professors, etc. The positions can be paid or unpaid, but what many people do is have a work study job, where they work during the year at a school-based job in order to have a better financial aid package. Because it’s so rural, there aren’t many jobs outside of the campus, but up until recently there was a great program where students could volunteer at the hospital located in the next town over North Adams. I don’t know if that’s continuing still because the hospital itself is shutting down or something (or maybe it’s just become an emergency care center? I’m not sure), but even without that option you can pretty much do any kind of job or volunteer opportunity that you want. I’ve never heard anyone complain about the lack of opportunities to volunteer.
The premed program at Williams is really strong, surpassed in the NESCAC by probably only Tufts which has that world-renowned program. Science at Williams is, in general, surpassingly good, and the premed program reflects that. However, it’s also really hard. A lot of my friends planned on being premed and pretty quickly dropped off track because of the amount of lab credits you need to get. However, I also have plenty of friends who are on track and finding it quite manageable because they’re taking the classes that interest them anyway - and they really want to be doctors. It’s by no means impossible. It’s a hard path to take, but the dividends are clear if you want to be a doctor; I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but a cursory glance at any Williams admissions flyers will certainly show you the excellent acceptance rate at medical schools from Williams. If you want to be a doctor - and, more specifically, a doctor at an excellent medical school - Williams is probably a pretty good place for you academically.
Thank you so much for your response! It is very helpful to know that lots of volunteer opportunities do exist! If the hospital does shut down, does this mean that medical observation or shadowing would not be available at Williams as compared to some other schools like Johns Hopkins?
Possibly, but Williams knows that this experience is really valuable to its students. Even without the hospital, there would still be plenty of hands-on medical experience to go around. I know that there’s and EMT course whose students actually help out in the ambulance, so that’s certainly an option, and if things really go south there’s a large regional hospital in Pittsfield about a half hour away. Should the North Adams location close fully, I would absolutely expect Williams to recreate any programs it had at the North Adams location in the Pittsfield hospital.
There are also Winter Study (January Term) offerings like these:
Thank you jersey454 and momrath!! 
You both helped rid my worries of whether Williams allow students to have much hands-on premedical experience. @jersey454 The EMT course sounds really interesting to me and something I would love to participate in.
@momrath Wow, these are two cool Winter Study projects!
@HappyMagic333, my D is doing the pre-med ‘track’ at Williams and also did the 144 hour EMT course this year. It started in January at the beginning of winter study and completed with the National Registry Exam just before spring break. The course is run out of North Adams but they make it easy for Williams students to participate by holding the (long) Saturday sessions on campus and a lot of the classroom work can be done online. Once you pass the national exam you can actually start to work for the North Adams ambulance (if you want) and it’s a great certification to have for summer jobs. Williams is a liberal arts college so understand the pre-med ‘program’ in that context - it is really a health professions advisor who keeps interested students on track to complete the necessary courses and obtain relevant experience and internships. The guidance is excellent and you will be well prepared to apply to med schools but you can major in any subject as long as you also complete the required science sequences. And of course you can change your mind about your course of study, as many students do.