University of Virginia Health System

College preparation for a health care career can be complicated, confusing and frustrating, if only because you've never done it before and you want to do it right-you know what you want the end result to be, but don't know exactly how to get there from here. The rumor mill is loud and constant. You'll hear everyone's opinion, belief and slant, whether it's true or not, from your relatives at home, your roommate, classmates, even from practicing health care professionals who know a lot about their jobs but not enough (most of the time) about pre-professional education or preparation, or professional school admissions. Whom to believe? What advice and path to follow? Where does a pre-health professions student turn for help in the confusing bombardment of well-intentioned "advice"? Here are some good sources, in order of importance.

First, last, and foremost, your pre-health professions advisor at college is the one source who can be the greatest help to you. This is without question or reservation the one individual who can give you the most accurate, objective, and helpful advice. Why? Because he or she has facts, quite unlike most other sources, and an overview perspective on health professions school admissions. Your pre-health professions advisor's job is to keep track of how applicants from your college (including alumni) have fared in the admissions process at professional schools, to study those results, and to share with you the findings. Your advisor is in touch with professional school admissions officers, often knows them rather well, has occasionally attended an admissions committee meeting, and is in ideal position to interpret general statements and apply them to your specific situation. Your pre-health professions advisor is the one person on your campus who subscribes to publications vital to understanding professional school admissions, and who cares most deeply about this particular aspect of college life. He or she is there to do precisely what you need and to cut to the core of issues you must address, academic and otherwise. Your advisor has facts, answers, and the service orientation you need to solve your problems. This person is one of your best friends and strongest supporters at college. No one at your school cares as much about your professional future as you do, of course, but the pre-health professions advisor is next in line, far ahead of most others you know. This is your pre-health professions coach, teacher, cheerleader, confidante, advocate, and counselor. Getting to know and work with your pre-health professions advisor is one of the smartest things you'll do in college.

What you need are facts, not hearsay, opinions, rumors, anecdotes, or misinformation. The best sources for facts are publications. You'll find in books and professional school catalogs precisely what courses are required for admission, the curriculum of the professional school you're considering, names, addresses and telephone numbers of officers at the school you may wish to contact or learn more about, and a general flavor of the school as told by the school itself.

This is valuable information, for it represents a body of details the school wants known publicly, and to which it adheres. You can trust it.

For example, the most reliable written information about a particular medical school is the catalog of the school itself and the annual publication, Medical School Admissions Requirements, published as a paperback by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which is located in Washington, DC (see Appendix B for the address). Most college bookstores carry this book (about $15). Your pre-health professions advisor has a copy and will gladly share it with you.

Other professional school organizations (e.g., dentistry, veterinary medicine) have similar publications, though they're not available for all types of professional schools. Catalogs of all U.S. professional schools are available on microfiche at most college libraries; if yours doesn't have this resource, go to a nearby college or one near your home and use it there. You don't necessarily need your own hard copy of a school's catalog to find out what you need to know.

Other useful publications are periodicals such as health-related magazines, journals, and books. For example, you'll learn what medical students think about their professional school experiences in The New Physician, a bimonthly magazine. Late-breaking news of the medical profession in practice, including political and financial reports, is in the biweekly American Medical News, a newspaper-type publication of the American Medical Association. The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) and The New England Journal of Medicine, both weekly, glossy (and expensive) journals, carry abundant news as well as research articles in biomedical science; they are not often concerned with pre-medical topics or admission to medical school, but they do give other insights into the medical profession. You'll find them in many college libraries, and in every medical school library. The Student National Medical Association (SNMA) publishes newsletters regularly, too, and these contain useful information for future physicians. The Association of American Medical Colleges also has a catalog of useful brochures, including a handbook of minority medical education. They also have a website <http://www.aamc.org>. Many medical schools have made videotapes, available free from the school; these are usually distributed to pre-medical advisors, who are glad to share them with advisees.

Some "review book" companies (e.g., ARCO, Peterson's Guides, Princeton Review) publish so-called guides to medical school (and other types of professional schools, too). These are best used for facts, not subjective opinions! You'll find information in them about a school's location, class size, tuition and fees, admission requirements, and curriculum. But it is a mistake to use these as your primary written sources of information in preparing for professional schools; use them sparingly and carefully. They are not the final word. Your college bookstore also carries a number of paperback books by various authors promising to guide you through the pre-med experience and admission process for medical school. These are not completely useless, but know as you look at them that they usually tell the story of one author only, and the biases he or she carries. That author's "formula for success" might differ considerably from your own! And these books don't have any information not already available to you at less or no cost from other publications or your pre-medical advising office. A list of some of these references appears in Appendix A.

At college you'll get to know some deans or other administrators and counselors you like, trust, talk to a lot, and who care about you and your academic and pre-professional progress. These people are very solid resources for advice, for they usually take a long view of college life, and life in general. And their job is to help you. They will listen to your concerns, not judgmentally but helpfully, and try to suggest ways for solving your problems, whatever they are, academic, extracurricular, or personal. These are people who like to listen, to talk, to advise, and, ultimately, to serve. Usually, though, they do not have specific, current information about professional school preparation and admissions, though they talk to many pre-professional students. They usually go to great lengths not to give misinformation, preferring to guide you to sources closer to the heart of what you need. They will, for example, refer certain students to Student Health, a learning needs evaluation center, a student club, a certain publication, or, in the case of pre-meds, to the pre-medical advisor. You may feel most comfortable discussing personal issues with a dean and specific medical school preparation with the pre-medical advisor, and sometimes this is the same person. But you can count on a friendly smile, a warm welcome, and a sympathetic ear from your favorite dean. This is a person who wants to help you find what you need.

Your academic advisor is an important advocate. Develop a rapport with your advisor as early as your freshman year. If you are unable to "connect" with this individual, choose another advisor that can motivate you and help you make good decisions for yourself. You should go to your academic advisor in order to complete the requirements for your major as well as your pre-health professions school requirements. This individual can help you in the sequencing and balancing of your courses and can clear up misconceptions. Be prepared to show your advisor a copy of your transcript so that he or she can best help you. Do not self advise or obtain the advice of your peers. While your friends are well meaning, they may not have the most current data.

College faculty are in place to teach you, and teach you well. It's their job, they love it, and they have particular affection for their own academic disciplines. That's to be expected; they're experts in different fields, and maintaining that expertise takes most of their time and effort. Your relationship to them is almost exclusively as a student who is there to learn some body of information about a particular subject. They are not your parents, uncles, or aunts, or older siblings, and they don't want to be. They also usually have little or no desire to be your pre-professional advisor, though they are very concerned that you learn what you need to know from their subjects to succeed in the next level of your education, whether graduate school or professional school. Most faculty members gladly refer pre-professional students to appropriate advisors. At many colleges a professor of biology or chemistry is also the pre-health professions advisor, and so is willing and able to wear two hats-one as instructor and one as advisor. These two roles are quite different, and it serves you well to separate them in your mind, though this may seem difficult some of the time.

The good news about family members and friends is that they want to help you. They like you, care about you, are supportive, and want you to succeed. The bad news is obvious: they seldom know the details of what you need to reach your pre-professional goals. Let them love you and support you in ways they can and will; you need all the emotional support you can get. There may be some risk, however, in letting them advise you in matters for which better sources exist, as discussed above. Regarding pre-medical advice, probably the most helpful family members and friends are those who have very recently gone through what faces you now-the pre-professional college experience and the admissions challenge. Their stories and suggestions can give you real-world examples of successful and unsuccessful strategies. But remember, their experiences are limited, and their circumstances may be quite different from yours; take what they say in context. Continue to value and appreciate the concern they have for you, and let them share your joys.

The pre-health professions advisor or officers of the student health professions organization at your school may invite recruiters, admissions staff, or other health professionals to meet with students interested in a health career. This is a great opportunity for you to ask questions about the schools that they represent. You can prepare for the scheduled visit by reading materials from the health professions school and making a list of questions that you would like to ask. If the visitors are making a formal presentation, find out whether students will have a chance to meet with them individually or in small groups and where this question-and-answer session will take place. Limit the number of questions that you ask if the information is being presented in a group. Also, talk with your pre-health professions advisor or with officers of the student health professions organization to determine what the format and rules are for meeting with these visitors.

In addition to meeting with recruiters, admissions staff, and other health professionals at your institution, you may also have the occasion to visit the health professions school. Many schools have designated recruiting days in which a group of students from one or more undergraduate institutions travel to a health professions school and participate in a formal program. These programs vary from school to school, but they are usually designed to cover most pertinent topics and to give students a chance to tour the facilities. Question-and-answer periods generally follow the formal presentation, which may be given by admissions staff, faculty, and students, singly or in panels. These question-and-answer periods allow students the opportunity to address more specific topics. Again, prepare for this visit by reading available literature about the school and listing questions that you would like to have answered. Try to get the students' perspective while you are at the institution. Tours of the health professions schools can be very informative. However, you are urged to stay with your group and not enter areas that are off limits or are sites of activity or instruction.

Ironically, this group of would-be advisors is often the least reliable source of specific information to you. Although these people have been through what you're trying to do, it's often been a while ago, and the "information" they share with you may be quite outdated and thus even counterproductive. They can certainly tell you the details of their professional work, and most willingly do this, but that work is seldom related to pre-professional requirements, academic and non-academic, or to professional school admissions. And they basically have one story to tell, which is their own. The best advice they can give you is to seek facts and details of the current pre-health scene and health professions school admissions from your pre-health professions advisor and reliable published material. Speak at length to health care professionals about their work, for they are a wealth of information about the daily business of tending the sick or injured-it's their job, and they're the experts. Many will offer or agree to write a recommendation letter for you to their own alma mater, and other schools, and these letters may help you. However, do not be seduced by the authority of their positions in society into believing that they are experts in other things, too, even admissions to schools in their own profession.

The one exception to this rule is the professional school admissions officer who also practices some form of health care delivery. This is a person who will certainly tell you what you need to know to be admitted to his or her school. Oddly, perhaps, admissions officers generally lack detailed information about admissions to any other institution, and most of them don't like to speak for "medical school admissions" in general; they want to discuss their own institutions, usually in somewhat non-specific ways (they don't make promises!). Your best approach to health care professionals is to ask of them what they can give you-details of their work, opinions of their profession-but do your professional school admissions planning with other sources.

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