In 2024, 80% of Oregon State University students who participated in the university’s pre-med services were accepted to medical school, nearly twice the national average acceptance rate of 41%. Specialized advisors and a wealth of practical resources and workshops helped them get there.
There is a clear difference in med school acceptance rate among students who meet with the multi-college Pre-Medical Committee of advisors and those who don’t, said Maureen Leong-Kee, associate director of health professions advising in the College of Science.
“It’s always lower for the students who don’t work with our committee. Those students are not getting the advice or taking the extra steps to figure out what they need to do,” Leong-Kee said. “If students engage with us early on, they know what to expect. We have a lot of resources and I think students are just really prepared along the way.”
Pre-med is not in itself a major at OSU. Instead, there are specific prerequisite courses that all students vying for a slot in med school must complete, alongside whatever major they choose. Most OSU pre-med students go through the College of Science in majors including biology, biohealth sciences, microbiology, biochemistry and molecular biology, biochemistry and biophysics and chemistry. An increasing number are coming from the College of Health via kinesiology (pre-therapy and allied health), nutrition and health sciences, human development and family sciences and the public health pre-med or pre-clinical tracks.
But med students can come from anywhere, as long as they have the drive and the skills, said Greg Vaughn, pre-med advisor in the College of Health. Prior to his role at OSU, Vaughn was the assistant director of admissions at Stanford Medical School, so he knows what med schools are looking for.
“If you happen to be an English major but you are strong with the sciences, I say go for it,” he said. At Stanford, “What successful students all had in common was a demonstrated commitment to medicine, the depth of their scholarly engagement with whatever work they were doing, demonstrated leadership and a commitment to service outside the classroom, regardless of what their major was.”
What pre-med support looks like at OSU
While students can pursue medical school on their own, advisors highly recommend they use OSU’s comprehensive Pre-Med Program, which includes access to specialized advising, an application workshop series, a pre-med orientation course and guidance in finding practical research opportunities, community service opportunities and preceptorships or job shadows. In the 2025-26 academic year, about 200 students are actively working with the committee as they apply to medical school, while more than a thousand have officially declared pre-med intentions, Leong-Kee said,
“There’s a lot of nuance and a lot of detail that goes into the med school application, more so than any other application I know of,” Leong-Kee said. It also costs $2,000 to $3,000. “We have a really strong, collaborative community of advisors and I think that has really served the students well.”
Advisors from the colleges of science, health, engineering, agricultural sciences and liberal arts participate in the Pre-Medical Committee, led by Leong-Kee. Students first meet with their college’s advisor for a pre-intake meeting to learn about the process and OSU resources, then with Leong-Kee one-on-one when they’re ready to apply to medical programs. The committee also writes letters of support for students’ med school applications.
The support doesn’t end at graduation: Alumni can come back after a gap year or work experience and receive the same application guidance from the Pre-Medical Committee.
“What I hear from students is that they choose OSU over other institutions in the state because we have multiple degrees with these built-in pre-med tracks as part of the major,” said Alyssa Dart, the College of Health advising representative on the Pre-Medical Committee. “Students are seeing these degrees and these pathways and specifically identifying programs that align with their interests. They also see our strong science and public health programs and connections in the community.”
College of Health advisors also talk with students about options at Linn-Benton Community College, where students can complete transferable coursework and pursue short-term health care training and certification opportunities to work in direct patient-care roles. The college hopes to build more public health partnerships with Oregon community colleges to make pursuing a health-related degree more affordable and accessible to students, Dart said.
Making med school possible for all students
Encouraging students from a wide range of backgrounds to pursue medical school means more equitable health care at all levels, Vaughn said.
“The salient social issue in this country is significant structural disparities in the delivery of health care for a diverse, multicultural population,” he said, citing research showing that ethnic minority patients in the U.S. do not receive the same quality of care as the majority white population. “If we are to even contemplate the amelioration of fundamental health inequities and disparities in this society, it is essential that we diversify the workforce in terms of physicians and other health care practitioners.”
Between 2015 and 2025, Black/African American student enrollment in medical school nationwide increased from 7.2% to more than 10%, while Hispanic/Latino enrollment increased from 9.2% to more than 12% in the same decade, Vaughn said.
To help continue that growth, Vaughn recently worked with two OSU programs, the Educational Opportunities Program and ROOTS — Reaching Our Opportunities Through STEM — to bring a group of 31 OSU pre-med students to the Stanford University Minority Medical Alliance conference in February.
After 20 years of watching his Stanford mentees attend the SUMMA conference and successfully reach medical school, Vaughn was thrilled that OSU students got the same opportunity for connection. ROOTS and the Griggs center paid for conference attendance for 22 of the students who participated.
“It’s a transformative conference. It is a recruitment venue for medical school admissions officers from around the country, and it’s an inspirational, motivational day because students see people who look just like themselves,” he said. “People network; they start mentoring relationships. One OSU student told me she spent 30 minutes with the dean of admissions at Stanford. I’ve told mentees in the past: You must go, because they are looking for you.”
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