Williams for Pre-med？

interesteddad
Sat, 30 Dec 2006 15:42:57 +0000

You can get into med school several years after graduation as mentioned, but that is not the norm. I don’t have specific data, but I teach med students and by far most are admitted to med school out of college.



The median age of matriculating first-year medical students in the US is 24 years old. This would suggest to me that more than half of them did not start med school immediately following college.

IMO, comparing “med school acceptance rates” (whatever that means) is meaningless for high school seniors. Four years from now, you won’t automatically get into med school because you graduated from Williams or Swarthmore or Yale. You’ll get into med school because you are a good applicant. Williams, Swarthmore, or Yale have high med school placement rates because their students are good applicants, not because med schools have a table listing the percentages from each college they are supposed to admit.

If you still want to look at percentages, try to really dig through each colleges health advising website to find a specific statement such as this one from Swarthmore’s website:



“In 2005, Swarthmore’s acceptance rate for the 7 graduating seniors was 100% and the 36 alumni/ae applicants was 86% for an overall acceptance rate of 88%.”



I know that Amherst provides a great deal of statistical data on admissions right out of college, first try alums, second try alums, etc.