Which schools have the top pre-med programs in the country?

<p>yeh, I just wanted to know what are some of the top pre-med programs in the country, and which ones provide its students with the highest acceptance rate into med schools. Thanx in advance.</p>

<p>I think this is hard to answer because pre-med students can major in just about anything so you should go to a school that is strong in your area of study. For premed, you have to take bio, chem and physics but you don't have to major in them. It helps on the MCATs to take a lot of courses in these subjects and most premeds do major in them but you don't have to. I have read that it might actually be an advantage to major in something non-science or to dual major. The pre-med process involves students weeding themselves out so the percentage going to med school is inflated in a way. By the time the premeds are seniors, only the best ones are left. Go to a school that is strong in the sciences. Go to a school that has an established pre-med advising program. Go to the most selective school you can. There must be a hundred excellent schools for pre-med. There might be an advantage to attending an undergrad school at a university that has a medical school and that is affiliated with a hospital. Advice from medical admissions staff, opportunities for volunteer experience, etc. could be helpful (but not essential).</p>

<p>Emory, John's Hopkins, or Top LAC</p>

<p>W&M sends 80% who want to go to their first choice med school.</p>

<p>At least this is the stat I heard, honestly, it seems really high to me.</p>

<p>My d's roommate used to be a tour guide at W & M, and she was given a somewhat similar figure to use when conducting tours a few summers ago. I think the actual figure was 80 percent of applicants with GPAs over 3.0 were accepted at med school (not necessarily their top choice, though).</p>

<p>An important element in the app process is that prospective pre-meds at W & M (and I think most other schools) are evaluated by a faculty recommendations committee, and NOT everyone who goes through that process is recommended. The weaker candidates are discouraged from applying.</p>

<p>Tufts has an ~87% acceptance rate.</p>

<p>Does it really matter? Just go to your top-choice college you get in to for pre-med. You can satisfy pre-med requirements in just about any major these days (and it is becoming more and more common to major outside pre-med/biology), and as long as you study for the MCATs you should be fine.</p>

<p>Duke, Tufts, Holy Cross, and Hopkins</p>

<p>For what it is worth, here is a list of top 20 premed from the Princeton Review Gourman Report. This report has been criricized because the methodology is a mystery and it did not use surveys and it seemed to favor the Public Ivys. In order: Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Cornell, Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Illinois, Columbia, Michigan, Chicago, Notre Dame, Princeton, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Duke, Brown, MIT, Dartmouth, U Penn.</p>

<p>Rugg's Recommendations on the Colleges is more likely to include LACs. Here are some selected from Rugg's "most selective" list for premed with special attention to LACs: Allegheny, Amherst, Bates, Boston Coll, SUNY Bing, Bowdoin, Brandeis, Bucknell, SUNY Buff, Cal Tech, Carleton, Carnegie Mellon, Case Western, Centre, Claremont colleges, Clark, Colby, Colgate, Colorado C., Davidson, Dickinson, Emory, SUNY Geneseo, Georgetown, Hamilton, Franklin and Marshall, Fairfield, Gettysburg, Grinnell, Haverford, Holy Cross, Kalamazoo, kenyon, Knox, Lafayette, Lawrence, Macalaster, Bryn Mawr, Middlebury, Mt Holyoke, UNC, Occidental, Reed, Rhodes, Rice, U of Rochester, Rutgers, Skidmore, Smith, U of South, Southwestern, Stetson, St Mary's MD, St Olaf, Swarthmore, Tex Austin, Trinity CT and TX, Tufts, Tulane, Union, Ursinus, Vanderbilt, Villanova, Wabash, Wake Forest, Washington U MO, Wellesley, Wesleyan, Wheaton, Whitman, Willamette, Wm and Mary, Williams, Yeshiva.</p>

<p>A good premed committee will initiate contact with premed majors at every point along the way to make sure they are doing what they need to do. The committee will have a system in place to prepare a meaningful and effective official premed letter of recommendation. The committee will help arrange volunteer, clinical, and research experiences. The committee should make sure students take the required courses in physics, chemistry, and bio and suggest Biochem, cell bio, and molecular bio in addition.</p>

<p>percentages are not always what they seem, so I wouldn't trust them as being accurate. First, a lot of times the college will only let students with a certain gpa apply to med school, so this raises the percentage. Secondly, many schools will only count students above a certain gpa (as in the w&m case above). It's why umich has a lower percentage than a lot of other schools because of reason #1.</p>

<p>I have said this before here, but it is worth considering that many good LAC's send an excellent proportion of kids to med school, where JHU, etc, weeds them out, the lac's support them, perhaps. I know a woman who is a neonatologist who went to Colby in Maine, because of the excellent rate of med school acceptance. She said her HS gpa was not that hot, but she knew what she wanted to do. She had unique opportunities to do med research as an undergrad. She then was accepted to WashU for med school.</p>

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<p>This is really important - perhaps more important than the "name brand" of the school. Let's face it, med school admissions require high MCATs and high GPAs, particularly in the pre-req courses, also it is important for the student to get some feeling for what medicine is like - there are too many unhappy physicians now, don't add to that total. A good committee will not meet to decide a student's fate for the first time in April of the junior year. A good program will have a number of events, opportunities and advisement sessions beginning at freshman orientation. The student has to take advantage of these, but if he does, they should get out of the process volunteer experience, research experience, and perhaps some real advising. Medicine is not FOR all the kids who start out wanting pre-med as freshmen, that is the hard truth, and a good program is one that spends as much time helping the students who don't end up in med school as those who do.
I think the LACs are so successful because they are smaller, and there is more opportunity to develop a personal relationship with faculty, this translates into more support as well as more of a reality check for the students.</p>

<p>This might help in the abstract, it gives a ranking by the Wallstreet Journal:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.wsjclassroom.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.wsjclassroom.com/pdfs/wsj_college_092503.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Regarding the sample of universities on which the above Wall Street Journal ranking was based: Only 10 different universities were consulted, 5 were Ivys, 7 from the northeast. The ranking is a composite of medicine, business, and law... not just medicine.</p>

<p>Collegehelp,</p>

<p>True, but it is still a relatively objective survey rather than just posting my feeling, or someone elses feeling on the subject. It should be at least somewhat helpful to anyone who's trying to form an opinion on the op.</p>

<p>Fountainsiren,
I thought the Wall Street Journal ranking was very interesting and there is probably a lot of truth to it. I myself often refer to other rankings (e.g Gourman Report, US News) that have limitations but I just throw the information out there so people can factor it into their thinking. It is important to think critically about everything you read. I simply wanted to share some of my observations about the interesting Wall Street Journal ranking with others. I had never seen it before. The "feeder school" method they used was a great idea. I wish they had sampled a wider variety of elite programs and had reported different rankings for different areas of study. Have a wonderful day!! :)</p>

<p>The problem with the WSJ ranking is that it looks at business and law school as well as med school, and it is only looking at "elite" grad programs - your in state medical school is often a better choice for most students, if they understand how the med school game is played.</p>

<p>explain plz cangel about the in state medical school thing?</p>

<p>I believe that SUNY Buffalo has the best premed program in the country. All of you premeds taking up spaces at the Ivies should report there immediately, with your snow shoes.</p>

<p>Many state-supported med schools accept 99% of their students from their home state.</p>