Following up on the suggestions above about LACs and women’s colleges in particular, some are known for their supportive atmosphere. And, though my child hasn’t gone through this yet, I understand from this forum three major factors to consider. The first is that as @mom2collegekids has said, too many kids apply from CA for med school. The idea is to avoid that state for premed. The second piece of wisdom that I’ve gleaned is that med schools look at GPA and MCAT scores more than they do the name of the school. People who went to Princeton for premed or Yale for example, are sometimes rumored to have a harder time getting into med school over someone at a lower-tier school. This is because of the curve described in another post on this thread. The curve at Princeton or Yale is tight at the high end. All students are competitive. If your highly academic child is in a lower tier school, they would be more likely at the high end of the curve. A friend of mine whose daughter struggled through Princeton and had a very hard time getting into med school told me: I wish I’d told my child to go to nursing school instead of Princeton. The child would have been far less miserable while achieving the goal. Add to that third factor, which is the fact that some schools actually seem to promote collaboration among the students rather than competition. These three Venn diagram circles (not CA, slightly lower tier; promote collaboration) overlapping creates the sweet spot.
Colleges that seem to fit into this sweet spot, in my estimation, include:
Earlham (has a cadaver course!)
Muhlenberg
Juniata
Bryn Mawr
Mt. Holyoke
Simmons
and several others.
Also: you may want to figure in the post-bac part of the equation. There seem to be two kinds of post-bac. One for people who didn’t realize that they wanted to be premed while they were in undergrad. Those programs are set up for, say, the poetry major to collect all of the premed courses s/he would need after graduating college. The second kind seems to be about grade-recovery, to the extent that’s possible if a student got a score in a premed subject lower than desired. Do your research on this. I mention this because to my mind knowing about it can relieve some pressure. Anything that relieves pressure is good .