SATs on steroids, the Medical College Admission Test – MCAT for short – is the standardized test that can make or break a student’s application to medical school. After hours and sometimes entire summers spent preparing for the exam, most premedical students breathe a sigh of relief once they complete this foreboding and necessary part of the journey to become a doctor during their junior or senior year of college.

But Weinberg freshman and aspiring doctor Jemma Kang isn’t worried about the MCAT. She won’t be taking it.

As one of 55 freshmen in Northwestern’s Honors Program in Medical Education, Kang is guaranteed admission to the NU Medical School after completing three years of undergraduate work at NU – three years that won’t include preparation for the MCAT or the stress of maintaining the perfect grades coveted by medical school admissions committees.

“For premeds, the competition is so crazy. It seems like they’re not encouraging people to do medicine but weeding them out,” says Kang, whose love for science drove her to study medicine. “I didn’t want that. I didn’t want my passion spoiled by that pressure.”

Now in its 41st year, the HPME admits about 55 students each year from a pool of 400 to 600 applicants screened by NU’s regular admissions committee. One-third of the students entering the NU Medical School come from the HPME. Competition for admission to the program is fierce, and students considered for the program are interviewed by both an NU faculty member and a medical student before being admitted to the program.

“We want to make sure students want to do this on their own, and they’re not being forced into it by their families,” says Eve Veis, the coordinator of the HPME. “Often, it will come out in the student interview process that the person doesn’t necessarily want to pursue medicine but is being forced to by his or her parents.”

The stringent admissions standards result in acceptance of students who, even as college freshmen, are committed to pursuing a career in medicine, says Veis.

“HPME gives the security of already being admitted to medical school. It takes off a lot of pressure,” says second year HPME student Katie Good. “We can really focus on what the classes are teaching instead of being grade-grubbers.”

Both Good and Kang are quick to point out, however, that the benefits of guaranteed admission to medical school don’t make the lives of HPME students pressure-free. In addition to premedical requirements, HPME students typically complete a major or a senior concentration in Weinberg, McCormick or the School of Speech by the end of their three undergraduate years. Weinberg students also have the option to study abroad.

“Even though I’m in HPME, I still feel pressure because everyone around me is working so hard,” says Kang, who adds that most HPME students are naturally driven to succeed; their pressure is largely self-inflicted.

For Kang, being an HPME student means more than avoiding the MCAT. Born in South Korea, Kang grew up in Hong Kong and England and is an international student – a characteristic that she says makes getting into medical school without programs like HPME all the more difficult.

Third-year HPME student Tim Tan, an international student from Australia, echoes Kang’s sentiments. While Tan is considering other medical schools that will provide him with more of an inner city experience than NU’s, he says his initial attraction to HPME had a lot to do with the security it provided him as an international student.

Tan also says NU’s HPME appealed to him because of its duration, a happy medium between the six-year premed/med programs offered by places like Pennsylvania State University and eight-year programs like Brown University’s Program in Liberal Medical Education.

But fitting both undergraduate and medical education into seven years doesn’t appeal to all future doctors.

While premedical senior Jyoti Jain admits she is slightly jealous of her hpme counterparts because they don’t have to take the mcaT or apply to medical school separately, she says a program like HPME wouldn’t have worked for her coming out of high school.

“i was unsure that i would do premed when i came to college,” says Jain, who is pursuing a psychology degree in addition to her premedical requirements. “you need to be really focused to commit to a seven-year program at such a young age.”

And according to Kang and others HPME students, this intrinsic devotion to the medical profession at a young age is what drives HPME students to finish both their undergraduate and medical educations in only seven years.

“we’re like a family,” Kang says, noting that hpme students in her first-year chemistry class all sit together in the same two rows every day. “we have this sort of understanding between us. all of us really want to be doctors, and in that way, we all kind of click.” nyou