Building list for pre-med, small to medium schools

College Search & Lists
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Looking for some suggestions on schools for pre-med, probably small to medium sized with great community feel and generous merit. Prefer a warmer climate but not a hard requirement - limiting location to midwest to east coast. Thanks!

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Stats, budget? You can do premed anywhere, so knowing the constraints is going to help.

There are colleges which dole out 5K merit awards like candy which is a different set of schools than if you need 20K.

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In my circles, Case Western and Rochester are both popular medium-sized universities with pre meds chasing merit.

Lots of smaller colleges are also possible candidates, but forum-favorites St Olaf and Kalamazoo are good places to start since you are looking for a great community feel and generous merit possibilities.

Unfortunately none of these are warm, but I think generous merit when it comes to these sorts of colleges is often associated with, shall we say, less naturally-attractive climates. If you were instead looking at, say, big merit from large publics in the South, then the dynamic would be different.

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I’ll echo the above comment. The cost of attendance is what matters more than merit specifically. You can get $25-30k merit from Fordham but the costs is ~$90k so I wouldn’t call that affordable.

So what’s your limit after merit?

In the mean time, some thoughts:

Muhlenberg is small, with merit, good community, and a strong feeder to grad schools. Not sure it will be enough depending on your finances.

UDel gives merit which often brings the out of state cost to in state flagship prices. Its not small but mid size for a flagship (like Pitt and UConn) but also not as large as the massive flagships elsewhere

If you just want a good LAC with merit that’s medium size, the Catholic city schools (other than Fordham) often work well. You can get $20-30k from the likes of St Joes (Philly) or Loyola Maryland and the COAs aren’t as bad yet.

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Rhodes in Memphis. Good merit. A lot of premed students

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Look at the Colleges that Change Lives list. You will find some good options there…and if the stats align, decent merit aid.

You got a lot of good suggestions on your previous thread…

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For a reach school, Vanderbilt perhaps?

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Yes but we’re not limiting to only D3’s anymore so hoping for some idea’s away from that spec!

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You can do pre-med at many small to medium schools - so budgets, etc. and desires - urban vs. rural matter.

For example, a College of Charleston is urban. A Coastal Carolina isn’t.

There are LACs galore with merit from a Hendrix or Ogelthorpe who will match your in state price depending on stats…to a Rollins, Stetson, Trinity in TX and so many more schools.

So you really need to provide more info - or you can just get a guide or look at niche best schools in a state of interest - and start picking any schools size and environment wise that meet your need.

If the stats are there, you’ll find enrichment through Honors Colleges, some groups like at my daughter’s school - for the top students they have the Fellows program, or to name a big school - but Alabama has the McCullough Medical Scholars - which is a smaller cohort to tackle the pre med requirements but also enrichment, etc.

But your question is sort of - very open and I mean, we could give you a list of 100 colleges.

PS - you are limiting to Midwest and East Coast - not sure how far south or west that entails - but neither one (unless it includes the south) goes with a warmer climate - so can you define what you mean by east coast and mid west a bit more?

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Has she discussed baseball with her coach? What suggestions is he giving? Is she hoping to be recruited

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That’s very fair - higher stats, no test scores yet but top 5 of high competitive high school, community service, extra curriculars… Prefer suburban or rural, would love a school closer to medium sized. COA - well, as low as possible but isn’t that most people! And for location, fold the map of the US in half and we’ll consider anything north or south!

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St. Olaf, Juniata or Washington College for small community feel and generous merit.

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Reading the OP of your other thread, you are a full pay family looking for merit, presumably to help offset the costs of med school. Your student has a high GPA (what is unweighted?) and is a current sophomore. We will be able to provide more specific feedback this time next year, but here are some schools to research. They are all in warmer areas, small-mid, and a range of chances for acceptance and merit (some very competitive and others offering tuition discounts for high stats).

Rhodes
Furman
Sewanee
Davidson
Washington & Lee
Univ of Richmond
Gettysburg
Wake Forest
Appalachian State
UNC-Asheville
Emory
Vandy
Rice
SMU
Trinity (TX)
WashU (too cold?)
Univ of Tulsa (fantastic merit for NMSF so prep for the PSAT!)

Edit: I see the OP is now open to schools in northern areas. I had not seen that when I created this list.

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Rice is a D1 school. Baseball is very strong there. Not sure about softball.
And while the campus is beautiful, it is urban (Houston). OP- has your daughter changed her mind on any of these issues?

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Thanks. I forgot the suburban/rural preference in my list. There are a few that do not fit if that’s a priority.

My philosophy when merit is the driving factor is that some compromises may need to be made. Plus this student is a sophomore and their priorities may change. So I may not have given enough weight to the OP’s guidelines. Oops.

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I’m going to suggest the 3 CTCL schools that my kid applied to…they all have really awesome auto-merit scholarships and all have really excellent pre-med/pre-health programs.

They’re all small liberal arts colleges (~1400-1500 students each), but they’re all really cool colleges that a lot of people haven’t ever heard of.

  • Centre College in Danville, KY (~45 min from Lexington, ~1.5 hr from Louisville airport)
  • Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX (30 min from Austin airport)
  • Austin College (~ 1 hr from Dallas airport)

There’s a lot of other really awesome CTCL schools you should consider, too, which would fit the bill.

** edited to add **
Our family visited all 3 of the above colleges. I posted thoughts/review of each on the big “colleges you visited and did they go up or down after the visit and why” thread.

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Washington college in Maryland does nice job supporting pre-med, I know a few high stats students going for that that there. They got great merit from the school and are able to arrange their school schedule to have a day to be in a hospital for shadowing. Rural, beautiful campus, cute town to walk to, near a beautiful river, close knit collaborative community, and really involved professors. High stat students get a lot of extra opportunities (big fish, small pond).

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Some mid-sized schools that your D may want to consider include:

  • Christopher Newport (VA): About 4400 undergrads

  • College of the Holy Cross (MA): About 3100 undergrads. If you’re from outside of the northeast, merit aid may be more likely.

  • Elon (NC): About 6300 undergrads

  • Hope (MI): About 3300 undergrads

  • Marshall (WV): About 8k undergrads

  • Mercer (GA): About 4900 undergrads

  • Missouri Science & Technology: About 5500 undergrads

  • Salisbury (MD): About 6400 undergrads

  • Samford (AL): About 3700 undergrads

  • Southern Illinois - Carbondale: About 8k undergrads

  • SUNY Geneseo (NY): About 4100 undergrads

  • The College of New Jersey: About 7k undergrads

  • Truman State (MO): About 3600 undergrads

  • U. of Dayton (OH): About 8400 undergrads

  • U. of Scranton (PA ): About 3600 undergrads

Slightly larger, but will likely give a great merit aid package is U. of Alabama - Birmingham. It’s a residential campus with about 13k undergrads and is very well-reputed for the health sciences.

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If looking for schools a bit smaller (between 2-3k), then these are some additional schools your D may want to consider:

  • Augustana (IL): About 2300 undergrads

  • Baldwin Wallace (OH): About 2700 undergrads

  • Clark (OH): About 2400 undergrads

  • Denison (OH): About 2400 undergrads

  • Dickinson (PA ): About 2100 undergrads

  • Furman (SC): About 2300 undergrads

  • North Central (IL): About 2400 undergrads

  • Oberlin (OH): About 3k undergrads

  • Otterbein(OH): About 2200 undergrads

  • Rollins (FL): About 2600 undergrads

  • Stetson (FL): About 2600 undergrads

  • Susquehanna (PA ): About 2200 undergrads

  • Wheaton (IL): About 2200 undergrads. Has closer ties and practices to its religious affiliation than many other religiously-affiliated colleges.

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Rollins is D2 and Stetson D1, but I recommend looking into these types of schools in the south. Softball is a rough sport to play in the spring in states where the weather doesn’t like to co-operate and it is much more pleasant to play in Florida, North or South Carolina, etc. (In Denver it was 80 on sunday and it’s 35 today, and playing softball here today would be chilly) Plus the schools are close together so less travel. If she plays D1 or D2, she could get some scholarship money. Most of the schools in the Sunshine state conference (Florida) would meet your 2000-10000 students, and several are STEM (Embry Riddle, Florida Tech) or science heavy (Rollins, Florida southern) with psych majors or medical-psych.