Smart, hardworking immigrant students from Ossining have made it to premedical programs at well-known colleges, but the road is long and hard.

He studied mathematics at the University of California, Berkeley, doing a premedical programme at the same time.

Mr. Ancel, also 27, is studying in the premedical program at the University of Vermont.

The bride, 26, graduated from Princeton and has finished her second year of a postbaccalaureate premedical program at Georgetown University.

He graduated from the University of Michigan and completed his premedical post-baccalaureate program at Columbia University.

In September, he is to begin a premedical program at Columbia.

"We have an 87 percent placement success in medical schools," Barbara Berkowitz, director of Goucher's post-baccalaureate premedical program, said recently.

As part of the medical school arrangement, Cornell will also run a two-year science-intensive premedical program to prepare students to apply.

She is in a premedical program at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.