Williams for Pre-med？

afan
Sat, 30 Dec 2006 15:57:11 +0000

If Williams does not publish details, you will have to contact the premed advisor and ask for information. It will hep to be specific. You could ask for the average GPA (overall and in BCPM), and the average MCAT for accepted Williams students. Ask for the overall Williams student GPA. At elite schools like this, a “med school ready” gpa is usually about the average gpa for students overall. Given their academic preparation going in, Williams students probably do quite well on the MCAT’s.

For comparison, Amherst publishes a detailed guide that suggests gpa’s of 3.2 or better and MCAT’s above, I think, 28, implies good likelihood of success. Williams is likely to be similar.

As ID suggests, the stats at top LAC’s are probably quite similar. The general answer for Williams, or any other top college is :“If you go to Williams and do well, you have an excellent chance at getting into medical school”. For some reason, Williams tends not to have that many people going. In a large review of reports from alumni they had more MBAs and JDs. They also reported that their students attended higher ranked law and business schools than medical schools. You could search for this or ask for it.

People used to go directly to med school as the norm. Nowadays it is very common to take a couple of years. I believe that both Harvard and Brown report that most of their applicants are alumni, not seniors, when they apply. both have extremely high sucess rates.

I could not agree more that your college makes little difference. The medical school admissions results reflect the quality of the students. If you are a good enough student to get into Williams, then you have a good chance at getting into medical school, where ever you end up in college. You should choose a college where you, as an individual, would do well. If Williams fits you, then by all means go there with no concerns about damaging your shot at med school. If you want urban or D1 sports, obviously Williams is not the right place.

As bex56 notes, applying to medical school is time consuming, emotionally intense, and quite expensive. A premed advisor would be shirking responsibility not to tell a student the truth about his/her prospects. Sometimes “get more experience, research, masters degree, then apply” is not discouragement or obstructionism, just good advice.