Preparing for Medical School

The premedical advisor can help you in planning the sequence of courses needed to meet the requirements at most medical schools. He or she will also offer suggestions as to which schools to apply to, when to take the MCAT, and how to interpret the scores. The advisor is usually assisted by a committee of faculty members who evaluate your academic performance and potential as well as your overall fitness to study medicine. The premedical committee maintains a file of your records and evaluations by individual members.

Most schools reognize their obligation to appoint an individual who will serve as a pre-professional health sciences advisor. The administration may select someone who is a faculty member, usually from one of the sciences, a person from the school's career guidance center, or an individual from a dean's office who is actively involved with student advising. The advisor will generally have set office hours and require that appointments be made in advance so as to ensure that adequate time will be allotted to meet the students' needs.

Students at any class level — and even graduates — should feel free to seek guidance from their school's premedical advisor. Naturally, the nature of the advice may vary depending on the stage of the student's career and a variety of other factors. The possible issues at different stages are reflected in Appendix F, Table 1. The general responsibilities that advisors may assume in part or entirely, depending on the school, can be grouped into five categories.

1. Academic advising. This may involve guiding individuals in selecting a major, or, if necessary, changing it, helping to select and schedule courses, and ensuring proper sequencing of courses.
2. Support services. This may cover a broad spectrum of activities — being merely a good listener or sounding board for troubled or overworked students. Advisors may also help students who are caught in some bureaucratic maze with the administration, or assist those who are finding the premed curriculum too challenging and therefore desperately need guidance. A sympathetic and knowledgeable advisor can be an invaluable asset in all such cases.
3. Resource center. Many questions may arise that require checking, such as specific school requirements, deadlines, and so on. These may require access to reference sources or specific medical school catalogs, both of which may be part of the advisor's library. In addition, advisors may have information files dealing with preparing for the MCAT, medical school interviews, sample essays, and a list of summer job opportunities, all of which are useful for prospective applicants. Some schools that have web sites will provide space for their premedical advisor to post information that may be tapped into by high school students and can serve as a useful recruitment device.
4. Extracurricular programming. The advisor can enhance the quality of the school's overall premedical program by facilitating the group activities of prehealth students. Advisors are in a position to help with planning extracurricular activities by helping secure appropriate speakers to discuss topics of relevance to prehealth students. Speakers may include representatives from medical schools and other schools that train health professionals, and alumni who can share their professional experiences and/or discuss their work. Frequently, the advisors may ask seniors to relate their interview experiences. In this case, a mock interview session may be conducted and the advisor can then voice some constructive criticism.
5. Facilitating admission. An important function of premedical advisors is to actively assist in the admissions process, which goes beyond providing the documentary information sought by the medical schools. The extent of their individualized help will vary. Clearly they should be able to assess your chances for success, help determine how many and which schools you should apply to, and answer any specific questions. They may offer to read and/or even edit your application essay and give you personalized advice about how to improve your interview performance. The advisor may also serve as a useful source of support during this stressful time, while you are awaiting responses from the schools to which you applied.

Finally, it should be noted that prehealth advisors have a national organization, the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions, P.O. Box 1518, Champaign, Illinois 61824. The organization issues a variety of publications and has a current list of advisors. Its web site is www.naahp.org.

It is the obligation of the advisor or committee to provide the medical schools with supporting information in your behalf (see pages 82 and 83). Some medical schools will utilize their own recommendation forms that they send out to be completed. Most rely on the college's forms and even accept them in lieu of their own. Undergraduate schools vary in the format they use to provide their evaluation. Many use a letter of recommendation drafted by the advisor or a member of the committee who knows the student. It may include written comments about the applicant submitted by faculty members, and it will reveal the committee's consensus of the student's abilities and potential and may rate the applicant in comparison to others applying during the year from the same school. Some schools provide a letter of recommendation and a separate sheet of faculty comments. Others may provide a letter and a quantitative rating sheet (see page 84) and possibly also a comment sheet.

Attributes listed on rating sheets, and the ratings used, vary from school to school. However, in general they refer to the applicant's personal as well as academic attributes and attempt to portray them in a quantitative and objective manner.

In view of the generally high caliber of applicants to medical school, recommendations (and interviews) have assumed major importance in the application process. Thus, students should make themselves and their abilities well known to faculty members. Their knowledge of you should be as thorough as possible so that they can rate you not only quantitatively but also qualitatively. Recommendations by science professors, whether they know you from coursework or as an individual, are of special value. Of particular usefulness are evaluations from honors work or independent study supervisors who can comment on such qualities as initiative, determination, and reliability.

To facilitate preparation of letters of recommendation in your behalf, some college premedical committees require that prospective applicants complete a standard form that may be several pages long (see pages 78 to 81). This mechanism provides the committee with data relative to your personal life, family background, outside jobs, extracurricular activities (both school or non-school related), and special interests. They may also request that you submit a tentative list of the schools you wish to apply to as well as an essay relevant to your application to medical school. By this means, not only is a database available to the committee to formulate your letter of recommendation, but you will also be able to secure advice on where to apply and how many schools to apply to (see also pages 99–102). In addition, your premedical committee essay can serve as a prototype for your AMCAS essay. If your school does not use such a form, you may, nevertheless, wish to use the sample format shown to provide information to your premedical advisor and/or committee. In addition, you may wish to solicit your advisor's (or an English composition instructor's) reaction to your essay as to content, style, and effectiveness in “marketing” your candidacy for admission.

Finally, a word of caution about advisors. It is essential that you are courteous and respectful at all times in your dealings with members of your college faculty and especially with your preprofessional advisor. Your advisor will be responsible for transmitting the qualitative impression of the faculty to the medical schools. Thus, your advisor's good will is most desirable and can be developed, not by ingratiating yourself, but by establishing a genuine relationship.

On the other hand, it is not necessary to accept your advisor's recommendations as the only truth if you have valid reasons to question it. As with physicians, there are both good and mediocre advisors. Moreover, there are no licensing or certification processes for accrediting advisors as there are for MDs or DDSs. The institution usually selects a member of its science faculty who may be interested in doing advisory work and assigns the responsibility to this individual, in turn relieving that person of some teaching responsibilities. The quality of the advice you will receive will depend upon the advisor's innate ability, experience, conscientiousness, other academic responsibilities, and number of other advisees. Thus, the extent of personal attention students receive varies greatly. All too frequently, student counseling is provided on a “clinic”-type basis. Students frequently turn to upperclass-level premeds (especially seniors) for advice; their advice can be misleading since their experience is limited, even if they have been successful in getting into medical school. In the event that you have reservations about some important issue, you can seek to validate your advisor's recommendations by discreetly discussing them with another faculty member on a confidential basis, by asking a friend at another school to pose the same question or problem there, or by contacting a medical school admission office or a private counseling service.

Some undergraduate schools, especially those with large premedical populations, may utilize the services of peer advisors and/or mentors.

Peer advisors. Where such a program exists, premedical advisors select high-performing upperclass students to serve in such a capacity. They may be qualified to respond to many common questions based on their own recent experience. You should not, however, use them as a replacement for your premedical advisor. It is especially important to consult with your advisor relative to the selection of prospective medical schools, essay and interview preparation, and other key elements in the premedical experience.

Mentors. Many schools appoint official student mentors. Should you decide to make use of a mentor, you need to select one with care, in order to obtain the most benefit from him or her. In making your choice, ask successful upperclass students for their recommendations in terms of the mentor's availability, knowledge, judgment, and compatibility.

Bottom Line

Where a premedical advisor is conscientious, he or she can be of help to the student body in a wide variety of ways, such as:

• • offering incoming freshmen with health science career interests an in-depth orientation to the school's advisory and guidance programs. They have multiple functions.
• • providing information as to course and other requirements for admission to U.S. medical schools.
• • counsel students on a one-on-one basis about the advisability of pursuing a medical career as well as an appropriate major (and minor), and the appropriate program of courses and best sequence for taking them.
• • assisting students having academic difficulties with advice and information as to the best services for help.
• • conducting group seminars on appropriate preparation for the MCAT examination, the AMCAS application, and medical school interviews.
• • counseling students individually as to which schools to apply to, what choice to make if they receive multiple acceptances, or the best option if, unfortunately, they fail to get into a medical school.
• • helping organize a premedical club or honor society (such as Alpha Epsilon Delta) to provide student-directed programs during the academic year, featuring both appropriate speakers and relevant events.
• • providing information on summer and year-long volunteer and research opportunities.
• • distributing AMCAS medical school applications and other materials as well as maintaining a library of reference sources including current relevant AAMC literature, medical school catalogs, and listings of important Web sites.
• • meeting with the premedical committee to facilitate preparation of letters of recommendation and also arrange that they be sent out in a timely fashion.
• • providing students with moral and psychological support during the stressful application time until all responses from medical school are in.