Leaving this comment for posterity!
I just graduated from UIUC’s college of Applied Health Sciences and will be starting med school this fall as a traditional med student (no gap years) so I wanted to add to this convo bc I know AHS info is unfortunately extremely hard to come by.
AHS is by no means the smallest college, we have a little more than 600 students each year. It is definitely an active college with lots of opportunities. What initially sold me to come to UIUC was the SPARK program in this college that allows freshman to start research that’s paid with a stipend when they start in August. While the stipend stopped after 1 year, I was able to stay in the lab for all 4 years of undergrad and got publications and presentations both at my school and at large international conferences. This experience was asked about in every med school interview I did! The kinesiology department (in AHS) is actually very strong research wise with the American College of Sports Medicine organizing an official meeting for UIUC students and alumni at their annual conferences.
As for premed requirements, it is very possible to get them done before the MCAT, which like others mentioned you take the second semester of your junior year if you are planning on being a traditional student and entering med school right after you graduate undergrad. My major, Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, has one of the higher hour requirements to graduate, requiring 128 instead of the usual 120 at UIUC. I was also an campus honors student meaning I had to take 4 honors courses, 1 each semester of my first and second year, as well. I had still finished every prereq aside from orgo 2 (which is more of a soft prereq these days) before taking the MCAT. I also took my MCAT January instead of the more traditional march/april, so if I had pushed back my date I would have had a lot more exposure to orgo 2 as well. And I even “underloaded” the first semester of my junior year, taking only 13 credit hours which is 1 above the minimum to be a full time student at UIUC.
I would like to point out too that while most AHS majors don’t require gen bio, gen chem, orgo, or gen physics, the faculty are well aware that most students in AHS are in someway prehealth and will need to meet some level of prerequisites to go to grad school or med school. They will absolutely make sure that if you are even considering premed, you will take gen chem/gen bio your first year to see if it’s a good fit, and also to get some of your gened requirements for the university met that way too. I’ve never heard of any of my friends and classmates in AHS struggling to get their prereqs on time.
Also, GPA is probably the most important thing you have to watch as a premed, and AHS classes have a significantly higher GPA avg than for example bio or biochem courses (the two most popular undergrad majors for premeds). We have a grade disparity website you can google to see. Just anecdotally, it was really nice to have a “psychology of physical activity” or “health communication” course to take alongside biochem + physics 2 instead of struggling to find an easy upper level course which many bio, biochem, bioe, or chem premed friends often had to do lol
And finally finally, for those in Community Health or Interdisciplinary Health Sciences, in your senior year you are actually required to do an internship as a capstone course, and these internships are often at clinical or research sites! Many of my friends who decided to take a gap year used this to bolster their application. A very not well advertised “perk” of these two majors.
AHS majors are by no means perfect, but I hope the info I’ve provided can help people make a decision about what path to choose at UIUC!