Another "which LAC for Premed"

WayOutWestMom
Thu, 26 Mar 2026 19:08:03 +0000

thumper1:

you might not get a good sense of what “premed advising” means. This advising varies wildly from college to college.

Pre med advising is nebulous term. It usually means the pre med office offers advice about what courses to take and the timeline for applying. A pre med office is usually good about helping a student get their letters of rec together and things like that. Sometimes the office will make suggestions about ECs, but the advisors don’t arrange ECs. Students still need to do that themselves. Advisors may or may not review and critique personal statements for med school applications. As for the quality of the critiques—YMMV depending on the individual advisor.

However, pre-med advisors will not provide individualized suggestions about what medical schools to apply to. Nor do they provide a review of the strengths and weaknesses of the overall application.

Additionally, some pre-ed advising offices serve as gatekeepers to keep a college’s pre-med acceptance rate high. They will weed out applicant the advisors feel don’t have an excellent chance for med school acceptance. (Thye do this by discouraging certain applicants or by outright denying the applicant a LOR from the advising office–whihc is HUGE red flag on a med school applications.)

Lastly, if you student applies as a new grad or alumni instead of as a rising college senior, the pre-med office may not offer much support at all.

Also do not expect pre-med advisors to be familiar with medical school outside the immediate area of the school. (IOW, New England LACs will know about New England area med schools, but not, say, upper midwest or Pacific coast med schools.)

So, think about what you expect from a pre-med advising office.

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FWIW, there are national organization for pre-med that provide networking and med school fairs where students can ask questions directly with med school representatives. AMSA, HOSA, Alpha epsilon Delta for any pre med. LMSA, MAPS and SNMA for particular ethnic/racial affinity groups.