Brown PLME vs Yale

pmyen
Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:45:59 +0000

My brother had a classmate at Harvard who turned down Brown PLME. His friend did well at Harvard and then went on to Harvard Medical School. I don’t think there is an absolute right or wrong answer here. If someone is 100% sure they want to go into medicine, then PLME may make some sense. On the other hand, there is less time to explore other majors and careers in the program, and the whole experience is a bit “pre-professional” rather than a typical college one as you attend certain core classes and programs with a clique of other students from PLME. The also become your main social group. At Yale or non-PMLE Brown, you are fully integrated into the college and are free to discover your calling, which may or may not be medicine. Even for someone committed to medicine, it is possible that Yale could be better, if one felt the overall educational experience in whatever area, be it neurosciences, humanities, general education were superior to that of PMLE. One other point is how well the student handles stress and risk. There will be a certain group of top high school students who want to be premed that will not make it at Yale. Presumably, they also had good “stats” too upon entrance to Yale. On the other hand, if the student has the self confidence and foreknowledge that as long as he does reasonably well, he will have a 90-95% chance of acceptance, he should be able do fine. It is a risk but certainly not a very high one. On the other hand, if he does not handle stress well, being preadmitted, and being able to dabble in courses of interest while taking the required premed courses without pressure can be attractive. This is definitely a personal decision although I did point out some of the obvious advantages to PLME in my earlier post.