Houghton College has just announced an affiliation with the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine (LECOM) that will grant early acceptance for up to 15 Houghton students per year into LECOM’s associated schools of medicine, dentistry, or pharmacy provided they meet certain academic criteria.
“This can help reduce the uncertainty of the medical school application and acceptance process,” said Dr. Keith Horn, associate dean for natural sciences and mathematics at Houghton College. “Once a student is granted early acceptance, the final application processes are relatively standard. As long as the student has met the course, GPA, and all other agreement requirements, they will be accepted for schools of medicine, dentistry, or pharmacy at LECOM without going through the competitive interview process.”
The new affiliation agreement will enable students who are U.S. citizens to simultaneously apply to Houghton College and LECOM. If accepted into the program, the student will begin an education at Houghton and be provisionally accepted into LECOM. Students in the program must meet certain requirements including maintaining an overall grade-point average above 3.0 (all science classes must maintain a 3.0 GPA or higher) and completion of a standard list of required classes.
Dr. Horn also commented, “In today’s competitive medical school environment, the LECOM-Houghton affiliation provides a path of greater certainty for students who are called to serve as physicians, dentists and pharmacists.”
The LECOM agreement also has an option for an accelerated medical school program where top academic quality students can attend three years at Houghton and then move into LECOM a year early. Credit from their first year at LECOM School of Medicine allows them to receive a bachelor’s degree from Houghton College and also counts as their first year of medical school. Students who want to participate in this accelerated program can sign up as late as their sophomore year at Houghton.
Annually, LECOM will hold open a maximum of five slots for Houghton students for each of the three associated schools of medicine, dentistry and pharmacy with a maximum of 15 Houghton College students being accepted into LECOM each year.
Houghton College is consistently ranked as a top liberal arts college by Forbes, U.S. News and World Report and The Princeton Review. Houghton has also recently been featured by CNN/Money, Yahoo News and the New York Post for its innovative new Loan Repayment Assistance Program.
LECOM is the nation’s largest medical college and has campuses in Lake Erie, Pa. and Bradenton, Fla.
