East coast Colleges with excellent pre-med advising and support?

That’s because Skidmore uses a health professions committee letter to control which pre-meds are allowed to apply to med school. The HP committee provides LORs only to those students whom they believe have the very best chances to gain an admission. No HP letter = no med school application.

HP committees hold a huge amount of control over students. And one of the goals of HP committee is to keep the applicant success rate high.

And applying without a HP letter when your school offers one is huge red flag on your application. Students are asked to explain this omission on secondaries.

(Med schools have 2 step application process. One first sends out an application through AMCAS, AACOMAS or TMDSAS to those schools one is applying to. Then the individual med school will send out a more detailed, school-specific application, called a secondary application, to individual students.)

Additionally, different undergrads count med school admissions differently. Some only count a MD acceptance. Some count only MD and DO admissions. Some count any admission to a med school, including overseas med schools. (Most of which will admit anyone with a big enough checkbook.) Still others count an admission to any advanced health care profession program (MD, DO, PA, NP, OD, DMD/DDS, PsyD, DPT, MOT, DC, etc) as med school admission.

Also absent from the HP data is information about whether the student has completed a grade-enhancing or career-changer post-bacc program at another undergrad before applying to med school. Or completed a SMP (Special Master’s Program) program. Or how many years post-grad the student applied to med school. Given that most successful med applicants take a gap year or 3 before their FIRST round of applications, simply being a first time applicant tells you nothing about the strength of the undergrad advising at a college.

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