Part II: The Medical School Application Process

Health Professions Guide to Medical School Part II (Fall 2023)

Applying to medical, veterinary, or dental school is an exciting culmination to your many years of hard work, dedication, and preparation for a new chapter in your life. It’s also a major opportunity to support and bond with your pre-health peers in a spirit of community. At the same time, it’s a complex, demanding, competitive process.  This provides you with an opportunity to understand yourself in a deeper way, to clarify why you want to be a doctor, to refine your own strategies to stay healthy, and to join with your fellow applicants from Amherst College to strengthen a sense of community and collaboration among pre-health students. Nationally, fewer than half of all medical school applicants in any given year are accepted to allopathic (MD) medical schools. Amherst students do much better, and we want to sustain that. There are roughly 20,000 places in first-year allopathic medical school classes for the more than 50,000 applicants each year. This Amherst Guide for Premedical Students aims to place you among the successful 20,000. In addition, an increasing number of Amherst students and alumni apply to doctor of osteopathy (DO) schools and are accepted. Ultimately our shared goal is to launch you on becoming a great doctor. Although much of this guide is geared to medical school applicants, a substantial portion of it is relevant to veterinary and dental school applicants.

By now you will have read and followed the advice in Part I of this Guide.

Please stay in close contact with us. Even if you aren’t 100% sure you want to apply for medical school, set up a phone call with Dean Aronson and talk to him about your plans and experiences.  We’re here to support you!