444 Biology & Pre-Med Schools with Swim Teams, Ranked

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Add your swimmer’s times to compare fit across 444 schools. Then add academics and preferences in Match to shape the ranking.

Alexandra Turvey was the 2024 NCAA Woman of the Year, the first ever from Pomona-Pitzer. She finished four years there as a 21-time All-American and a three-time SCIAC Female Swimmer of the Year. As senior captain she led Pomona-Pitzer to the 2024 D3 200- and 400-yard freestyle relay national titles, the program's first national titles since 1984. She majored in biology at Pomona College, logged 2,500 hours of science and clinical research, was named both a Goldwater and a Beckman scholar, and published three scientific papers as an undergraduate. She is now in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program, a combined medical and research doctorate. None of that happened around the swimming. It happened in the same hours.

Ashley Karpinos was the 2003 NCAA Woman of the Year, the first Division III athlete to win it. She swam at Kenyon from 2000 to 2003, where the women's program collected three D3 national team championships during her four years. She graduated summa cum laude in molecular biology from Kenyon in 2003, then earned an MD from Vanderbilt in 2007 and an MPH from Vanderbilt in 2013. She is now an associate professor at Vanderbilt and serves as team physician for the Commodore cross country, swimming, and track and field teams. The molecular biology degree from a D3 liberal arts college turned into a medical career inside a major SEC athletic department. The pre-med swimmer became the team physician twenty years later.

Amy Fulmer

Ohio State · Biology

Scholar All-America · 5 seasons

Peyton Richardson

Gustavus Adolphus · Biology

Scholar All-America · 5 seasons

Amanda Ray

Florida · Biology

Scholar All-America · 4 seasons

Amy Riordan

South Carolina · Biological Sciences

Scholar All-America · 4 seasons

Andrew Simmons

Auburn · Biomedical Sciences

Scholar All-America · 4 seasons

Anna Kwong

TCU · Biology

Scholar All-America · 4 seasons

Callie Dickinson

Georgia · Comparative Biomedical Science

Scholar All-America · 4 seasons

Elizabeth Moore

Wisconsin · Biochemistry

Scholar All-America · 4 seasons

Division I

Thirty-four of the top fifty are Division I, and the top of that group does not match the usual ACC or SEC expectations. Northeastern lands at second on the strength of its co-op earnings ($74,200) and 5.2% admit rate, ahead of every Ivy. Cornell, Notre Dame, UC San Diego, Harvard, Holy Cross, and Northwestern fill out the rest of the D1 top ten. The Patriot League shows up early, with Holy Cross at eighth, Lehigh at eleventh, Boston University at twenty-third, and Lafayette at twenty-fourth, each with a long history of placing graduates into medical school.

Division II

No Division II programs land in the top fifty for Biology & Life Sciences. The ranking algorithm weights graduate earnings and selectivity, and undergraduate biology programs rarely produce direct earnings outcomes at any school because most bio graduates continue to graduate or professional school before earnings get measured. For a swimmer whose times fit D2 and whose target is medical school, the variables that matter most are the school's MCAT pass rate, the strength of pre-health advising, and the presence of nearby teaching hospitals for clinical hours.

Division III

Sixteen of the top fifty are Division III. MIT leads at first, Carnegie Mellon at sixth, and Hamilton at tenth. Hamilton is also the highest NESCAC finisher, with Bowdoin sixteenth, Williams twenty-seventh, Middlebury thirty-first, Colby thirty-seventh, and Tufts thirty-eighth. The UAA contributes Carnegie Mellon at sixth, Chicago at twelfth, and NYU at nineteenth, and Johns Hopkins lands at thirtieth out of the Centennial Conference. For a swimmer whose times fit D3 and whose plan involves medical school, MD-PhD work, or laboratory research, this list is exceptionally deep.

Can you realistically swim and study biology with a pre-med track?

Yes, but the timing pressure is higher than on any other major covered on this site. Pre-med candidates need a 3.7+ science GPA, a competitive MCAT score, hundreds of clinical and shadowing hours, and meaningful research experience by the spring of junior year. Swimmers add a 20- to 24-hour weekly training load and 6 to 10 travel weekends per season on top of that. The pre-meds who finish the path tend to land at schools where pre-health advising and athletic academic support are coordinated rather than parallel offices. Holy Cross, Notre Dame, Cornell, and Northwestern have built that infrastructure out over decades.

What is the specific scheduling conflict between pre-med and swimming?

Organic chemistry and biochemistry lab sections meet in three- and four-hour afternoon blocks during the same hours as practice. Hospital clinical shadow programs run Monday through Friday afternoon, when hospitals are operating, and the slots fill quickly because pre-meds across the campus all need them. Independent research, the kind that lands in a med-school application as a faculty letter, expects 10 to 15 hours a week in a working lab. The MCAT, which most pre-meds take in the spring of junior year, falls in the same window as conference championships.

Which programs handle that conflict best and why?

Holy Cross, Notre Dame, and Cornell each have decades of pre-health advising for student-athletes and consistently place swimmers into medical school. Northwestern adds the Feinberg School of Medicine on the same campus, which gives undergraduate pre-meds direct access to clinical sites and research labs without a commute. Northeastern's co-op model is the wild card: a swimmer doing a six-month co-op in a Boston hospital lab gets the clinical-and-research credit that takes other pre-meds three summers to assemble. UC San Diego is the public-school version of the same story, with the Salk Institute and Scripps within driving distance.

Is D3 a better fit for swimmers in pre-med?

For a pre-med specifically, D3 deserves a serious look. The training load is lighter, the championship season ends earlier in the spring, and the summer after sophomore year is genuinely available for clinical work or a research internship rather than a long-course training base. MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Hamilton, Chicago, Bowdoin, NYU, and Johns Hopkins all rank in the top thirty on this list, and their bio graduates land in the same medical schools as Ivy League graduates. The tradeoff is that the recruiting pool at D3 is shallower, which matters or does not depending on whether you want to be the best swimmer on the team or pushed by ten faster ones.

What does admission actually require at the top programs?

At the schools at the top of this list the bio major is declared after matriculation, so the science department does not run separate admissions. The bar is the school's overall admit rate, which sits between 3.6% and 11.7% at the top fifteen. The academic profile that clears the bar is a high school transcript with AP biology, AP chemistry, AP calculus, strong grades across all four years, and at least one science research experience or competition. Recruit status helps with admission to the school. It does not help with admission to medical school three or four years later. That second bar resets when you matriculate.

Which top-10 schools actually offer a strong undergraduate pre-med track?

The Biology & Life Sciences ranking on this list is broader than pre-med specifically, so a few of the top schools rank on related strengths rather than a conventional pre-med pipeline. MIT, Cornell, Notre Dame, UC San Diego, Harvard, Holy Cross, and Northwestern in the top ten all have established pre-health advising offices and consistent medical-school placement records. Carnegie Mellon at sixth ranks more on quantitative biology and biological engineering outcomes than on a traditional pre-med reputation, though the major exists and a number of CMU graduates do enter medical school each year. Hamilton at tenth ranks on liberal-arts earnings and admit-rate strength rather than a defining pre-med program. If pre-med is the specific goal, weight the seven schools above more heavily than the other two.

What do people who swam and studied bio and pre-med say about it?

Alexandra Turvey was named a Goldwater and Beckman scholar and published three scientific papers as an undergraduate at Pomona-Pitzer while swimming 21-time All-American. She is now in the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD program. Ashley Karpinos majored in molecular biology at Kenyon during three D3 national championship swimming seasons, then went to Vanderbilt for an MD and an MPH. She is now the team physician for Vanderbilt's swimming, cross country, and track teams. The molecular biology degree at a D3 liberal arts college and the swimming career inside the same four years can produce a working physician inside a major SEC athletic department a decade later. Both of them have.

Will a college coach let me be pre-med?

Some coaches support pre-med and some steer recruits away from it, and the pushback is about the calendar, not the student. Pre-med means afternoon labs, research hours, clinical shadowing, and an MCAT that most students take around junior spring, which lands near conference championships. A coach who wants a simple, uniform schedule may see all of that as a problem. It is a preference, and it varies a lot by program. Ask directly: how many swimmers on the current roster are pre-med, have any been admitted to medical school, and how did the team handle labs and MCAT season. A coach who has coached pre-meds will answer with names and specifics. A vague answer is telling you the program has not really done it.

How do I tell which programs support pre-med athletes?

Look past the ranking to two things a coach cannot fully control: pre-health advising and lab scheduling. Ask the pre-health advising office, separately from the coach, whether they have worked with athletes, how they handle lab sections that collide with travel, and what the medical-school admission rate is for their advisees. Ask the coach how many swimmers have gone pre-med and where they ended up. A D3 program often has an edge here, since the championship season ends earlier in the spring and frees the window around the MCAT, and smaller pre-health cohorts get more direct faculty attention. A program that supports pre-med athletes will have specific answers about advising and lab conflicts. One that does not will point you back to the ranking.