What You Need to Know About Applying to Pre-Med Programs in College
Webinar transcript. The following has been lightly edited for clarity and length. Watch the full replay above.
Speakers: Venkates “Swami” Swaminathan, Founder and CEO of LifeLaunchr, and Claire Schadler, College Admissions Coach at LifeLaunchr. Audience questions were submitted in the chat and Q&A and read aloud during the session.
Welcome and introductions
Swami: Hi, Claire. Good to see you, and hi everybody. Claire and I are happy to host this webinar on what you need to know about applying to pre-med programs in college. We’ve done a series of webinars on different topics, and I’m excited about this one because it’s such a big subject with so much to cover. If you have questions, please type them into the chat on the right-hand side of your screen, and we’ll answer them as we go. If a question needs a longer answer, we might hold it for the Q&A section, but please ask as we go along.
If you’d like personalized help, I’d invite anyone attending who isn’t already a LifeLaunchr client to schedule a free, no-obligation initial consultation. You’ll find the link on the offers page.
My name is Swami, Venkates Swaminathan. I’m the founder and CEO of LifeLaunchr, a college admissions coaching company that helps students find and get into the best program or college for them. I’ve spent more than ten years helping students with college admissions and have been a speaker at NACAC and HECA conferences. Claire and I are both contributors to our blog, Swami’s Take on College, where we write about admissions and about higher education, college parenting, and related topics more broadly.
Claire: Hi, my name’s Claire Schadler. Like Swami said, I’ve been working in college admissions for about ten years, helping students reach their goals for where they want to go and what they want to study. A lot of my current students are thinking about pre-med, so I’m excited to get into this topic today.
Swami: There’s already a good question in the chat to start us off: “We don’t have a med background. Is it just highly academic students? Are there specific kids who tend to do well and complete their med courses?” Great question. Hold that thought. We’ll get to it as we go through the presentation, and if we haven’t answered it by the end, we’ll come back to it.
What we’ll cover
Swami: First, what is medical school, and how does medical college admissions in the United States actually work? Second, we’ll start at the end: what medical schools look for in their applicants, so that even though that’s a ways down the road for a high school student, you can understand it now and work backward. Then we’ll talk about choosing a major, choosing the right college, building your record while you’re still in high school, and finally we’ll touch briefly on BS/MD programs. That’s a whole topic on its own, so we won’t cover it in depth today. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, BS/MD programs are guaranteed-admission medical programs that a high school student can apply to and, if they meet certain conditions, be carried through medical college.
Some takeaways to watch for as we go: medical college in the United States is a graduate program, so you cannot apply to medical school while still in high school. Because of that, you don’t need to decide in high school whether you want to be a physician, and there’s no advantage to deciding that early. BS/MD guaranteed-admission programs are a good fit for a small number of students and a poor fit for most. There is no required or preferred major for medical school. All applications require coursework in biology, chemistry, physics, and math (often called BCPM), along with clinical experience, research, a strong MCAT score, recommendations, and personal statements. And far more than a school’s name or ranking, what matters is fit and advising support for that particular student.
Claire: Maybe it’s worth touching briefly on what good advising actually means, since we’ll come back to it.
Swami: We’ll definitely go into that in depth. Briefly, good advising is a way that works for a particular student, since “good” looks different for different students, to help them navigate the complex path from college to medical school.
Understanding medical school as a graduate program
Swami: Medical college is a graduate program. The trajectory runs four years of college, four years of med school, and then somewhere between three and seven years of residency before someone actually practices. That’s roughly 11 to 15 years after high school before a student is practicing as a physician. Because it’s such a long path, taking time to decide if it’s right for you is important. Deciding too soon and then changing your mind partway through can mean other opportunities were set aside along the way.
People often say medical college is hard to get into, and it is. About 52,000 students apply to medical college in the US each year, and about 23,000 are admitted, an acceptance rate in the low 40s. That’s much lower than typical undergraduate acceptance rates. It’s also not unusual for students to apply more than once, trying again after an unsuccessful first attempt. Waiting to decide, rather than rushing into it, tends to mean a stronger, more committed application when you do apply.
What medical schools look for
Swami: Medical schools look at overall GPA, coursework in biology, chemistry, physics, and math, clinical experience, research experience, MCAT score, personal qualities shown through the personal statement and recommendations, and essays and recommendations from faculty and mentors.
On coursework: if there’s one course that separates students who finish the pre-med path from those who don’t, it’s organic chemistry. Most people find it difficult. Because of that, it’s worth testing yourself early to see whether chemistry comes easily to you, even more so than biology. Physics and math matter too.
Claire: Students often default to thinking biology is the whole story, so it’s worth underscoring that all four subjects matter. The physics piece can feel counterintuitive to families.
Swami: The chemistry piece feels counterintuitive too, but it’s arguably more important than biology, simply because more people struggle with it.
On clinical experience: this means any experience in a setting where medicine is practiced, shadowing a doctor, volunteering at a hospital or clinic, or working at a community clinic that offers free medical care. Medical schools want to know that applicants understand what a physician’s life is actually like, rather than an idealized version drawn from television.
On research: this can be in any discipline, not just the sciences. What matters is the ability to pick a narrow topic, research it in depth, think critically, analyze data, and test a hypothesis, ideally work that could lead to a peer-reviewed publication.
The MCAT covers biology, chemistry, physics, psychology, and critical analysis, and it’s one of the hardest standardized tests to take.
On personal qualities: think carefully about why you want to be a physician. The two most common answers we hear are “I want to help people” and “I have a family member or friend who went through a difficult health condition.” Both are genuine motivations, but because the road is so long, it helps to dig into a deeper reason: why this particular way of helping people, and not another.
Claire: People interactions are such a large part of medicine, even more than the academic side. When you think about what a doctor’s day actually looks like, it’s fast-paced and stressful, and it requires clear communication and real empathy while everyone around them may be worried. If a student’s real interest is the subject matter itself, research or work in a related field might be a better direction than clinical medicine. On clinical experience specifically, I often hear students say they’re not sure volunteering is worth it if all they’ll do is sit at a front desk. I always encourage them to do it anyway, to be the person who welcomes people in or wheels them out. It won’t teach chemistry or biology, but it teaches what it means to be part of the medical world.
Swami: My father struggled with his health for many years, and of the large team of doctors who cared for him, one geriatrician made those last years so much better, simply by walking in, smiling, holding his hand, and asking how he was doing. That’s what makes a great physician. The clinical protocol is set by medical boards and followed by everyone. Intellectual knowledge matters enormously, but it isn’t what people remember about a great physician.
Choosing a major
Swami: Medical colleges don’t care what you major in. There are required classes everyone has to take regardless of major: Biology 1 and 2, a course in cellular biology or genetics, Chemistry 1 and 2, Organic Chemistry 1 and 2, general physics, calculus, and statistics. Majoring in something like math only helps in the narrow sense that you’d already be taking calculus and statistics as part of your major, rather than fitting them in separately.
Students in the biological sciences do dominate the raw numbers of applicants, but only about half of matriculants to medical school actually majored in a biological science. Students from the humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and other physical sciences all go on to medical school. This data comes from the AAMC, the Association of American Medical Colleges, which is the umbrella organization that tracks the full process. Acceptance rates and MCAT scores aren’t meaningfully different by major; more biology majors are simply admitted because more of them apply.
Major does matter in one sense: your GPA in your major and your GPA in your BCPM coursework both matter a great deal. So the most important thing you can do is choose a major you’ll do well in. Pick something that comes easily to you, whether that’s music, art, literature, history, or chemistry. A lower GPA from struggling with a harder-for-you major will hurt your application more than the major itself would help. Second, keep other doors open. Choose a major that leaves you a real second career path if you decide partway through that medicine isn’t for you, so that a change of direction feels like a normal choice rather than a crisis.
Claire: Not every high school student who’s thinking about medicine now will end up pursuing it, and that’s not a bad thing, it’s just how interests and life circumstances change. Two years into college isn’t a devastating point to change direction if you’ve been exploring and your interest has genuinely shifted. It’s such a long process that you have to be truly interested in your major and how you’re spending your time, even if that sounds counterintuitive at first.
Swami: Parents and students often underestimate how much they’ll grow and change over four years of college. Plans made at 17 or 18 should leave room for that growth, for a professor who inspires a new interest, or a lab visit that changes a trajectory. College isn’t as regimented as high school, and if you find something you love, it tends to work out.
Choosing the right college
Swami: Colleges genuinely differ, and it’s not just a matter of large state schools versus smaller colleges. We once worked with a student who was accepted to UC Berkeley and was very committed to medicine, but she also had offers from smaller schools with exceptional pre-med programs. At a large school, many students do go on to medical school, but the process is more competitive: research opportunities are often contested against graduate students with more years of experience, and everything requires more self-direction. At a smaller school, it’s often easier to find research and clinical placements because there’s less competition and the office is proactively working to place students.
Look into partnerships that work in a student’s favor. Case Western, for example, is closely connected to the Cleveland Clinic, one of the finest clinics in the world. Arizona State’s Barrett Honors Program has a similar partnership with the Mayo Clinic.
Claire: This is true across all college admissions, but it matters especially here because pre-med is such a specific path. There are real pros and cons to a large university versus a smaller college, personal relationships with professors, class sizes, and so much else ripples out from a school’s size, even when it’s not obvious at first.
Evaluating pre-health advising
Swami: A few questions worth asking about any college’s pre-health advising:
- Can every student access pre-health advising, or is it gated by GPA or other criteria? Some colleges only assign a pre-med advisor to students who clear certain thresholds; others make advising available to any interested student.
- Are there hospitals, clinics, or medical centers nearby, and does the college proactively help with placement, or is it left entirely to the student?
- How many students apply to medical school, and how many receive committee letters, the recommendation letter that goes to medical schools as a group? Some colleges gate who receives a committee letter, which can inflate a school’s reported success rate while excluding some students from the process entirely.
- Does the college run workshops, mock interviews, essay reviews, and MCAT prep support?
Being at the top of a mid-ranked school is generally much more valuable for medical school admissions than being in the middle or bottom at a famous university.
Building your record in high school
Swami: Focus on building clinical experience. Nearly every hospital in the US runs volunteer programs for teens, though you often have to apply early and sometimes reapply if you don’t get in the first time. Family friends who are doctors, local clinics serving low-income or undocumented populations, and free clinics are all good places to look. What matters most is a willingness to show up and work with people who need help.
Pursue research in any discipline, whether through a university program, a connection to a professor, or a program that places students with researchers. And build a clear connection to community service.
Claire (on a shadowing question): International shadowing experience isn’t a credential that gets checked off a list; it comes down to whether the connection feels genuine.
Swami: Report it on your application, and how it’s weighed will vary by college. What matters is whether it reflects a real, sustained connection to a place, rather than something arranged solely to create an advantage. It isn’t a checklist system.
Claire: In my experience, shadowing is consistently one of the most meaningful experiences students have. I can’t think of a student who came away from a shadowing experience feeling like it was just okay.
Question from the chat: At what point in undergrad does one decide to apply, and at what point does that decision become irreversible?
Swami: The decision is never truly irreversible; reversing it may have consequences, but no one is forced down the path. Students on the pre-med track typically commit around sophomore year of college and then work through research, clinical experience, and MCAT preparation. Many students finish college first and take a gap year to focus on MCAT prep, since preparing for it alongside coursework is difficult. Some students apply once, don’t get in, and reapply the following year. For a parent trying to map out every step in advance, the more useful approach is to focus on the next right step and let the steps after that sort themselves out.
Claire: Starting as early as ninth grade with clinical volunteering or community service, and keeping a reflection log along the way, pays off later. Writing down what you did and how it felt, in the moment, gives you far more to draw on for essays than trying to reconstruct it years later.
Swami: Tenth grade is a good time to get serious about clinical volunteering and research. CPR training is useful and genuinely clinical. Depending on age, some students can enter a CNA (certified nursing assistant) program, working alongside a nurse at a retirement center, which teaches a great deal about caring for other people.
Claire: Anything that moves the idea of medicine from a concept to something real, at whatever level a student is capable of in high school, is valuable.
Swami: Research that leads to publication takes a long time: finding a topic, doing a literature review, running the research, writing it up, and going through review and publication can span years even with breaks in between, so sophomore year is a good time to start. Later years focus on clubs like HOSA and other pre-health groups, SAT or ACT preparation, and then applications in twelfth grade.
Claire: There are different paths into research too, some students contact professors directly and work as assistants, others go through a formal program.
BS/MD programs
Swami: We’re only going to touch on BS/MD programs briefly; it’s a large topic on its own. If the most important thing about a BS/MD program is the guarantee, it is not a good fit for you. Medical college overall has an acceptance rate in the low 40s, but BS/MD programs accept fewer than 1% of applicants, roughly 40 times harder to get into than medical school itself. If you could get into a BS/MD program, you could get into medical school.
The real question is whether you’re genuinely certain medicine is what you want, since most students at that age don’t yet have the life experience to be that certain. BS/MD programs are also only a guarantee if a student clears every hurdle along the way, and there are many, GPA requirements, specific course grades, and more, so students do leave these programs without completing them.
Most BS/MD programs exist for a specific purpose. UC Merced’s program, for example, exists to place physicians in California’s San Joaquin Valley, where practitioners are needed for farming communities, and it’s intended for students connected to that mission. Programs generally look for near-perfect academic profiles: SAT scores in the 1570 to 1600 range, an ACT around 35 or 36, exceptional GPA and coursework rigor, calculus and beyond, AP science and math, along with clinical and research experience and a genuine, well-examined commitment to medicine.
Claire: BS/MD programs are compressed and rigorous, leaving little room for flexibility, an elective here or there, or a change of direction, even for students who don’t ultimately change their minds. Flexibility matters because people and circumstances change.
Swami: When students in BS/MD programs do change direction a couple of years in, it can become a fraught family conversation, even though they were never truly locked in to begin with.
Question from the chat: Is BS/MD just an accelerated path, or is it tied to specific types of doctors?
Swami: There are two dimensions. Some BS/MD programs are accelerated, compressing the usual four-plus-four years of college and med school into six or seven years. Others aren’t accelerated but guarantee admission if a student meets specific criteria, sometimes an MCAT requirement, sometimes GPA thresholds. The most renowned medical schools, UCSF, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Stanford, don’t offer BS/MD programs; these programs tend to exist at schools with a specific mission to serve a particular population or region. Accelerated programs can also appeal on cost, fewer years of tuition, but compressing a medical degree into seven years leaves little room for anything but studying.
A related audience question asked about specialization, such as orthopedics. That’s a separate stage entirely: after the undergraduate degree and medical degree, physicians complete a residency and board exams in a specific specialty. A BS/MD program doesn’t change or shorten that part of the process; from the end of high school to full board certification can take around 18 years in total.
Paying for medical school
Swami: Medical college is very expensive. As an undergraduate, financial aid is based on parental income and assets. Graduate programs, including medical school, treat applicants as independent, based on their own income and assets rather than their parents’, so students may qualify for somewhat more aid, but graduate financial aid overall is limited, and recent federal legislation has made it more so. Most students borrow to attend medical school and pay off that debt while practicing as physicians.
Closing takeaways
Swami: Medical school is a graduate program. Start thinking in high school about the quality of pre-health advising you’ll have access to, remember there’s no required major, build a record with real depth, and look for high-quality programs that are a genuine fit for you.
Claire: Students sometimes look at BS/MD programs and are drawn in by the challenge of getting in, without weighing everything that follows. It’s such a long process that focusing on speed and a guarantee misses the bigger picture.
Swami: Patience matters. Make good decisions as you go, and trust that the process will unfold in its own time.
Additional resources
Swami and Claire shared a three-part Substack series covering this topic in written form, along with the underlying AAMC applicant data and the AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service) applicant guide, in the chat during the session.
- Part 1: Choosing the right major (and why it doesn’t have to be biology)
- Part 2: Choosing a College: How Pre-Med Advising Infrastructure Varies—and Why It Matters
- Part 3: What BS/MD programs are, who they fit, and how to decide—plus a definitive list, a candid checklist, and a timeline
The webinar was recorded, and the replay is available above. Slides are not published separately.
Have questions about your own student’s path to medical school? Reach out to us at help@lifelaunchr.com, or schedule a free, no-obligation consultation.
