Madeline Pesec knew by eighth grade that she wanted to work in medicine. But she also loved the humanities and didn’t want to spend her undergraduate years slaving over premed classes and worrying about the MCAT.
So she applied to Brown University‘s eight-year Program in Liberal Medical Education, which fulfilled her dream criteria: Once admitted as freshmen, PLME students have a guaranteed spot at Brown’s Alpert Medical School and can study whatever they want until then, aside from making sure they have a grounding in the sciences so that med school won’t be too much of a shock. Pesec double majored in public health and in Latin American and Caribbean studies.
[Gauge applying to accelerated medical school programs.]
For ambitious high school students who know early that they’re headed toward medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, law or other fields requiring a professional degree, programs similar to Brown’s now offered by many schools can provide a chance to pursue their undergraduate degrees without the specter of professional school admission looming so large over junior and senior year.
Though Pesec’s path and many other undergrad/ medical school programs take the usual eight years total, sometimes students may also save a year, cutting their tuition and potential indebtedness.
Applicants to George Washington University, for example, can aim for admittance to dual degree programs that lead to an M.D. degree in seven years. Drexel University and the University of Denver offer programs leading to a bachelor’s and a law degree in six.
“Legal educators know how expensive higher education is, and shortening it is a good option for some students,” says Judy Areen, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools. The association doesn’t track these bachelor’s/J.D. programs formally, but Areen says their numbers are growing.
[Here are five things to know about accelerated B.A./J.D. programs.]
Some of these programs allow — or require — you to enter once you’re in college. Meharry Medical College in Nashville works with seven historically black colleges and universities, including Fisk University in Tennessee, Tennessee State University and Hampton University in Virginia, to offer conditional admission to science students with strong high school records and test scores who maintain their performance after entering college.
Based on their freshman GPA and personal recommendations from their schools, they are invited into the B.S./M.D. program and spend their undergraduate summers at an enrichment program at Meharry that helps prepare them for med school.
These programs, not surprisingly, target high achievers, since the coursework is often compressed, and typically require students to keep up the good work to hold their place. The Brown program is competitive even compared with the university’s already minuscule 8.3 percent acceptance rate.
It gets almost 2,500 applications every year and admits 80 to 90 students, for an acceptance rate of under 4 percent. The upside? Once you’re in, you’re in, and Brown does not require PLME students to take the MCAT. Julianne Ip, associate dean of medicine, says 90 percent of PLME students complete the program.
The Pre-Professional Scholars Program at Case Western Reserve University in Ohio extends conditional acceptance to medical or dental school to “outstanding” high school applicants who must then maintain a 3.5 GPA and get no grade lower than a B as undergrads.
The Association of American Medical Colleges keeps a list of joint undergraduate/M.D. programs by state and length of program.
The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy lists more than 50 pharmacy programs offering early assurance or guaranteeing a spot in a Pharm.D. program to high school students, contingent on their successful completion of anywhere from two years of preprofessional study to a bachelor’s degree. A few early assurance schools include the University of Missouri–Kansas City, Oregon State University and the University at Buffalo–SUNY.
Some professional schools, like the University of Iowa law school, work with multiple colleges. In addition to its own undergraduate college, Iowa has set up programs with 13 schools in the state, including Cornell College, Coe College and Iowa Wesleyan University.
Pesec, who has completed her first year at Alpert Medical School, observes that being absolved from the standard premed track has its downside.
“I knew that for the first three months of med school I wasn’t going to know up from down,” she admits. “You have to learn how to study as an undergrad or you’ll be in trouble.”
[Discover six red flags medical school isn’t the right choice.]
For Zoie Sheets, 22, having a spot reserved in medical school “created more freedom to explore,” she says. Sheets immediately accepted her offer of a place in the University of Illinois–Chicago‘s Guaranteed Professional Program Admissions track in medicine, one of a number of UIC pathways that also include options in the health sciences, law, engineering, business, education and urban planning.
Most of the programs, which typically entail a four-year bachelor’s and full-length professional program, require admission to UIC’s Honors College plus an additional selection process. About 250 to 300 Honors College students are in a GPPA program, says Honors College Dean Ralph Keen.
Sheets, who has completed her bachelor’s in biology with minors in chemistry and Spanish, has appreciated being able to study a mix of arts and sciences. She also was able to get a feel for the med school campus and to shadow physicians, which confirmed her career choice. She’ll now take a year to get a master’s in public health before heading to medical school next fall.
This story is excerpted from the U.S. News “Best Colleges 2018” guidebook, which features in-depth articles, rankings and data.
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