Program in Liberal Medical Education

Alpert Medical School's Richmond Street building, where many PLME events are coordinated

The 8-year PLME was first endorsed by Brown University in 1984, which had previously been a 6-year program.[6] It was originally the only major route of admission to the Alpert Medical School, until the medical school began accepting pre-medical students from the standard AMCAS admission route in 2004. According to the PLME, the goal of the program is to combine the open curriculum concept of Brown (the College) and the competency-based curriculum concept of The Warren Alpert Medical School to encourage students of medicine to pursue in depth their interests in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences through a liberal education philosophy as they prepare for their careers as physicians.[7] Julianne Ip, M.D., Associate Dean of Medicine for PLME, described the program as a way to "accept the 'best' high school students who would utilize Brown, and the College’s unique Open Curriculum to craft their own educational paths. These individualized educational plans would allow students to pursue their passions be they in science or liberal arts but always with the view of medicine as a humanitarian pursuit, not a “trade” to be learned."[8]

Because the PLME draws applicants from around the U.S. and internationally, its applicant pool is significantly larger than those of most other medical programs, which receive primarily in-state applications.[9] With large numbers of applicants competing for very few spots, the program consistently reports an extremely low acceptance rate. For the undergraduate class of 2020, 2,447 high school students applied and 90 were admitted, yielding an acceptance rate of 3.7%. For the class of 2019, 2,290 applicants applied for the same 90 spots, for an acceptance rate of 3.9%. The average SAT scores of matriculants between 2010 and 2015 were 731 in Critical Reading, 741 in Math, and 746 in Writing.[10]

Graduates from the PLME are alumni of Brown University, but members of the program specifically have become prominent figures in the medicine and health world as well as in other areas.

55th Governor of Louisiana, Bobby Jindal, graduated from the PLME program

• Barrett Bready, (B.A. 1999, M.D. 2003) and President and CEO of NabSys, a DNA-sequencing startup which employs technology developed at Brown.
• Atul Butte, (B.A. 1991, M.D. 1995), leading researcher in biomedical informatics, and biotechnology entrepreneur in Silicon Valley.
• Seth Berkley, Adjunct Professor of Medicine, (B.A. 1977, M.D. 1981), leading medical epidemiologist, CEO of the GAVI Alliance, founder and former President and CEO of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative (IAVI), and one of TIME Magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World" (2009).
• Bobby Jindal, (B.A. 1991), 55th Governor of Louisiana, and former member of the U.S. House of Representatives. He was one of 50 students nationwide to be accepted to the PLME, but forfeited his spot in the medical school to pursue studies in health policy at Oxford University through the Rhodes Scholarship.
• Arthur L. Horwich, (B.A. 1972, M.D. 1975) who discovered the role of chaperonins in protein folding.
• Srihari S. Naidu, (Sc.B. 1993, M.D. 1997) Director, Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory and Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy Treatment Center at Westchester Medical Center, Associate Professor of Medicine at New York Medical College, President of Brown University Medical Alumni Association (2012-2014), and Trustee of the Corporation of Brown University (2013-2019). Noted authority on Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.