<p>Any current students or alumni that can comment on pre-medical experience at HWS both in terms of under grad experience (research opportunities, how cut throat premed classes are) and success of getting in to med school.</p>
<p>Nancygood, please stay tuned. I’m putting together a response to your question and I have to run some of the information by someone to verify its accuracy. You should hear from me soon.</p>
<p>About a year ago or more, a former HWS student who was currently attending med school posted a few times but it seems those posts were so old, they have been taken off the forum. He felt that the school had prepared him very well. I don’t know what med school he was attending but he clearly was an excellent student and was very thankful for his academic experience at HWS.</p>
<p>The following information I wrote jointly with my son’s girlfriend, a current pre-med student:</p>
<p>My son’s girlfriend is a Blackwell Scholar; as such, she has a free ride for all four years at HWS and she’s automatically accepted to SUNY Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. She has just finished her first year and this summer she’s doing paid research synthesizing potential anti-cancer compounds, which will be published in collaboration with her organic chemistry professor. She provided the following link for the HWS Summer 2011 research:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.hws.edu/academics/pdf/undergrad_research_list11.pdf[/url]”>http://www.hws.edu/academics/pdf/undergrad_research_list11.pdf</a></p>
<p>She said you do need to be proactive in getting to know your professors, so they can choose the best applicants for the research opportunities both for summer and during the school year, but there is no cutthroat competition for these positions. Also, there are options to do research during the year as an Honors project or Independent Study, which are both independent, credit-bearing electives chosen by the student. If you want to be pre-med, you just complete the pre-med requirements (4 chemistry, 3 biology, 2 physics, 2 math [and sometimes 2 English] courses) and do your best; there is no specific number of pre-med slots, but there are a limited number of research positions. The fact that she’s just finished first-year and is already doing publishable research will help build her college career as pre-med.</p>
<p>The other activity she’s doing this summer is being trained to be an EMT. HWS has an Emergency Medical Service (EMS Squad) and if you are accepted, the school will pay for your training ($1000), which is really nice. There is also the option to take the certification course during the school year as a class. The summer research and the EMT training are not at all related to each other but they are both HWS programs that are very useful for pre-med experience.</p>
<p>In terms of getting accepted to medical school, HWS is very supportive of its students. There is a Health Professions Club that is a student-run organization for students interested in pre-med, pre-vet, pre-dental, nursing etc. that functions as a student network organizing speakers, field trips and distributing information to help students in their career explorations. HWS also has a Health Professions Advisory Committee, which is a group of professors and administrators functioning as advisors to students interested in health professions, helping students make plans and decisions regarding classes, internships, networking, research, graduate school applications and admission, etc. Advising starts as soon as the student expresses an interest in a health profession and runs through post-graduation plans. The school also organizes several practice graduate school admission exams (e.g. MCAT, LSAT, GRE, GMAT) which are free and open to all students to give the student exposure to the kinds of exams out there. More information about health professions at HWS can be found at: </p>
<p>[HWS</a> Health Professions](<a href=“http://www.hws.edu/academics/healthprof/beyond_hws.aspx]HWS”>http://www.hws.edu/academics/healthprof/beyond_hws.aspx) </p>
<p>But a final statistic: In the past decade, 100 percent of HWS graduates who applied to medical school were accepted.</p>
<p>If you have further questions, please don’t hesitate to ask and I will try to get information for you.</p>
<p>thanks so much. very helpful and kind of you to get all that information. My son is a junior, so we may have more questions along the way. But on our visit this Spring, I was pleased to find out how small the classes were, even for intro sciences.</p>
<p>One more question, from my reading, the Blackwell position requires you come from a rural area or something like that. Is that correct?</p>
<p>Yes, that is true. In my son’s girlfriend’s situation, she’s from a rural area.</p>
Hi–hoping that this thread is still young enough. Could someone please update how the premed is doing at HWS? I’m interested in the statistic taht 100% of premeds were accepted into med school. That’s impressive, but would someone please comment on whether this number represents all of the people who started in premed? or just those who were weeded out by the end? What sort of support is there at HWS for premed students who need extra help?