For those of you who are comparing schools’ premed programs, I would recommend that you pay attention to the number of applicants from each school (mentioned above) and the majors which students graduate with a degree in. Rice has much fewer students in traditional bio-related majors (see https://oir.rice.edu/students-scholars/outcomes/majors-and-programs-completed) Rice has more than half of its students who graduate with either a business-related or engineering related degree. Brown has close to 1/4 of its students who graduate with a degree categorized as “Life or Medical Sciences”. (https://www.brown.edu/about/administration/institutional-research/factbook/degrees-and-completions click “Undergraduate Completions”)
In this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lemiUwKzWgU&list=PLZd0XUJhKv3-ZYrSgUMT_fGiwNID4wwpb&index=2), these two girls (one from Brown) are talking about their “research” in freshman year. We don’t recommend our kid to do wet-lab research too early. As you can see from the video, one girl said she is not doing much (as expected). It is best for freshman to focus on academics. For example, do well in organic chemistry, physiology, statistics, etc. Statistics is very useful for internships.
My kid only did medical related volunteer works during freshman year; then this past summer, for three months, working at a tippy top hospital associated with a tippy top medical school doing clinical research. It was a great experience. The acceptance rate for the program was less than 15%. Most of the accepted students were from big-name schools. Few were freshman. Some are in gap year. No research can compensate for weak academics. That is the biggest mistake/misconception most “failed” premeds make/have. They thought their ECs can rescue them.