Curious which postbaccalaureate premedical program we believe is the best in the nation? That’s an easy one. Bryn Mawr College, the all-women’s liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, ranks #1 in our book — hands down. If you’re unsure what exactly a postbaccalaureate premedical program is, it’s for college graduates who haven’t taken the necessary premedical coursework while in college but must do so in order to apply to medical schools. Maybe these students realized they aspired to be physicians after a couple of years in the workforce. Maybe working in banking wasn’t for them. Or maybe these students felt a college experience without having to take organic chemistry would be less stressful and more fun. It’s these kinds of students (and others too!) who join postbac programs.

There’s Bryn Mawr’s Postbac Program and Then There’s All the Rest

Bryn Mawr’s postbaccalaureate premedical program is for both women and men. As the school touts on its website, “Bryn Mawr offers highly motivated career changers who never took the premedical courses the opportunity to complete an intensive, full-time preparation for medical school in one year. The home of one of the nation’s oldest, strongest, and most respected postbaccalaureate premedical programs, Bryn Mawr achieves a consistent medical school acceptance rate of more than 98 percent.” Pretty impressive, right? You see, Bryn Mawr doesn’t admit a whole lot of students to its postbac program but for those students who are admitted and do complete the program, the fact that they completed their coursework through such a respected program only helps their case for admission to highly selective medical schools. Many would also term Bryn Mawr’s postbac premed program as a backdoor to the nation’s best medical schools. And we’d certainly agree with them! At Ivy Coach, we’re all about the backdoors.

Bryn Mawr certainly isn’t the only postbaccalaureate premedical program, though we would argue it’s the most prestigious. There are several other top postbac programs. They’re cash cows for universities — students need to complete the coursework in order to apply to medical schools so why not offer the requisite coursework to students who’ve already completed college but didn’t complete the premedical requirements? Some schools, like Columbia University (which has, we believe, the oldest postbac premed program in the nation), one-up their postbac competition, like other universities in New York City. You see, a student in New York City might consider attending The Hunter College Post Baccalaureate Program in Health Careers Preparation because it’s not like you’re getting a degree so who cares where you take the courses, right? And even if you did get a degree from one of these schools, it’s not like a degree from Hunter is all that meaningful when compared to the likes of Columbia, right? Sorry Hunter. A degree from Columbia University is incredibly meaningful. That’s why students in Columbia’s postbac program also take coursework towards a master’s (e.g., a Master’s in Public Health). So they end up with a master’s degree from an Ivy League institution.

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