My kid got accepted by both Washington Lee University and University of Richmond. He is interested in being on pre-med track, but he worries about the weed-out situation he hears about in different schools. If anyone knows about that, could you please share your insight or give some ideas about which school to pick? Especially if you are going to either one of these schools. Financial aid packages are about the same, so money is not a issue.
Here’s what we saw with our D at W&L: she struggled in chem class her first semester there (she was the only one in that class who had taken just one year of HS chem, so she was overplaced and probably should have dropped to a lower level class). Her prof was extremely helpful, worked with her during office hours, & pointed her towards supplemental tutoring. She passed with the first (and only) “C” of her academic career, but it was the first time she felt she had worked her hardest and not done well.
If your kid is well-prepared and willing to work hard, I would not worry too much about weed-out happening intentionally at either school, given their small class sizes and accessible faculty. Many kids think they want to be pre-meds when they start college but then gravitate toward other fields due to changing interests. Other kids decide they don’t want to put in the hours required to do well enough in pre-med classes to be successful med school applicants.
I imagine both schools are similar in their pre med tracks. At W&L something around 125 students+/- enroll thinking they are going to be premed (25% of the class). Yes, there is serious weeding that happens and yauponredux is correct that students often veer into other areas, often business. By graduation the number of premed majors is down to the 20’s. That is part of the reason W&L has a good record of getting students into med school even with an average MCAT in that group of around 27 - 29 (good but not great). Med schools know they are well-prepared even if their scores are only good. They send a few kids to the Harvard’s of the world, but most go to their State U’s. After $250,000 (or whatever the net cost to a family) most are tapped out so State U works just fine.
UnivPro is partially right. Most premeds that change stay in the sciences though. I know many that went to Geology and other that went to Neuro. I saw very few former premeds in my business classes, albeit I was in mostly accounting courses.
I do think UnivPro is on to something with the “tapped out” comment, however it is important not to view that a something that is positive or negative, it just is, and I don’t think those students regret their W&L education or their med school choices.