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One way to get a rough idea of how successful a school is with a premed program, is to get the number of chem/bio/ natural sci majors declared as freshman, then compare that to the number accepted to med school. This figure is useful if you do this with, say, 10 schools. At a school like Johns Hopkins, which is a pre med mill, most pre med enter declaring those sciences as their majors. Though there are a few who are studying those disciplines just because they like the subject, or want to get into doctoral (non MED) research, those numbers are relatively few. Most of those who can get into med school will apply. Otherwise, they change to a social science or other major. Those who have a good shot of getting into med school are the ones that school will recommend through their premed committee. And those who get in will be a very high percentage of those who apply. This occurs at all schools. That's why you should have the beginning data. It isn't perfect, but it is near impossible (for me, anyways) to get from any school the number of premeds freshman year vs how many of those premeds actually got into med school 4 years later.
There are some premed programs, that do nurture the students towards a medical school application. Some of the smaller, lesser known colleges have such programs. My understanding is that those programs, given the same type of student (test scores, grades), do better than some of the big boys in getting kids into a medical school.
I have heard that Goucher is nurturing that way. But I have not seen a rush of Hopkins students going there to get their sure path to med school, and many of those students and family have their sniffers to the ground looking for any in. Goucher and Hopkins have an exchange agreement, so I would think this would happen if that were the case---take those pre med courses at Goucher, major in a social science area at Hopkins, and voila, better chance for med school.
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