Four years is a long time. Yet if you have designs on entering medical school as you enter college—or if you want to keep your options open—there are steps you can take during each of those four years to strengthen your chances of making a career in medicine.
Grow your leadership, advocacy and research skills and set yourself apart for residency with this helpful AMA guide.
John D. Schriner, PhD, spoke with the AMA to offer guidance on what students aiming to apply to medical school should be doing during each year of their undergraduate education to make it happen successfully.
Schriner is associate dean for admissions and student affairs at Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, one of 37 member schools of the AMA’s Accelerating Change in Medical Education Consortium.
Medicine can be a career that is both challenging and highly rewarding but figuring out a medical school’s prerequisites and navigating the application process can be a challenge into itself. The AMA premed glossary guide has the answers to frequently asked questions about medical school, the application process, the MCAT and more.
Freshman year: Pick major, identify resourcesYour first year of college is a time of exploring your academic options. While you may not be expected to declare a major, you want to identify the topics that you find most fulfilling.
“It could be in the natural sciences, but it could also be sociology or anthropology,” Schriner said. “You need to align yourself with a major that you can immerse yourself in and enjoy. The one thing you have to understand is you will be expected to comply with the required medical school prerequisites, no matter what your major.”
In exploring what your school has to offer, you also should start to look for resources that will make the process of building a body of work that will make you a strong medical school applicant. To do so, it’s wise to seek a premed adviser, if your institution has one. As a freshman, your premed adviser can help you begin the process of building a premed portfolio, the experiences and documents that will be the basis for your medical school application.
Sophomore year: Research, required courseworkYour sophomore year is going to be your last chance to make sure you continue to fulfill core requirements for entering medical school before entering your major. If you are not on a scientific track, it’s best to work with your premed adviser and academic adviser to create a schedule that builds a solid foundation in topics that will be broached during medical school.
Your premed adviser can also help you to better understand what schools are looking for, which is going to include volunteer experience—though your options for patient-facing volunteer experiences may be limited because of the COVID-19 pandemic—and begin the process of researching medical schools.
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