Hopping on the pre-Med track in college?

[ucbalumnus]

@JHS

Some colleges have some kind of committee that exercises a gatekeeper role on medical school applications – the college “supports” (or, conversely, fails to support) the student’s medical school applications. They do this because it looks a whole lot better to say “85% of the students (including alumni) who apply to U.S. medical school with the support of the college are accepted to at least one U.S. medical school” than to say “45% of our students or alumni who apply to U.S. medical school are successful.” Students (and recent alumni) who do not get that “support” at colleges that offer it can be at a terrible disadvantage. So the OP’s child may want to understand what it will take to have a supported application if he or she attends that sort of college.

Although being weeded out by the college’s pre-med committee may feel terrible at the time, it does mean that the pre-med can abandon medical school dreams early and switch to an alternative educational and career plan before spending another year and several thousand dollars on what would be futile medical school applications (since those pre-meds weeded out by the pre-med committee were the ones the pre-med committee sees as having no realistic chance of admission to medical school).