Freshman

First of all, welcome to college. If you know already that you want to be a physician you can already start to take action toward that goal.  If you feel confident about your study skills, you might want to start and take the premedical courses right away.  Depending on your own strengths and weaknesses, these courses may be tough.  If you did not do very well in high school, you might want to take it easy and build up your confidence for a semester or two and then go into the harder classes. 

Premed is not a major in Hunter College, so you are going to have to choose another major. If you don't know right away what you want to major in, don't worry. you won't have to declare your major until you have earned 60 credits.  When you first register, the advisors will try to push you to take some distribution requirements.  However, I am not sure that this advise is a good one for everybody. The reason for this is that if you have a GPA of 3.65 by the time you earn 24 credits, you will be automatically invited for an interview with the Honors Department (better known as the Thomas Hunter Honors Program), which can end up being your major. In this case, you will be exempted from most of the distribution requirements, and those that you have already taken will have become electives.

Another important thing you should do is go to the Pre-Professional office at room 812 HE, have a file opened under your name and meet the Pre-Professional advisor, Professor Howard Krukofsky.  As a premed student you should meet with him at least once a semester. He has both appointments in advance and walk-in hours so that you can come at your convenience.

Volunteering in a hospital is an important for an aspiring medical student.  By keeping a volunteer job at a hospital you achieve a few things: you show a commitment for medicine, you demonstrate responsibility, and you familiarize yourself with the field of medicine, so that you will be able to make a decision to be a physician based on knowledge.  Therefore, the early you start, the better.  Go to a hospital close to where you live or close to school and talk to their volunteer office. You will not have to volunteer more that one day a week (you can do it in the weekend) but be consistant.

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• Academic Requirements
• Hospitals in New York State
• Honors Department

Sophomore

By now you should start taking premed science courses.  Ideally, if you wish to go into medical school immediately after you graduate, you should be done with those classes by the end of your junior year. This way you'll be able to take the MCAT in April of your junior year after having completed all your sciences.

If you haven't selected a major, now is a good time to do so. Premed students tend to major in biology or chemistry, but it is not necessary. You can be accepted into medical school with any major you choose, so you might as well choose something you find interesting. This way your grades will be higher.

Maintaining contact with the premed office is important. You will have to submit an evaluation letter from all your science courses' instructors (physics 1+2 lecture+lab, biology 1+2 labs(the lectures are too big for the professor to know everybody), inorganic chemistry 1+2 lecture+lab, organic chemistry 1+2 lecture+lab, and calculus 1+2 (if you take them). You can also ask other instructors who know you well to write a letter of evaluation to the Pre-Professional office. These letters will be instrumental, along with other information, in the composition of a committee letter which will be sent by the Pre-Professional office to the medical schools you apply to.

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• Sample Premed Science Course Evaluation Form

Junior

The junior year may be the toughest for a premed student who plans to apply in the summer.  If this is the case, have all the materials required by the Pre-Professional office ready by March of that year.  This is so that you can get an interview with one of the committee members and have the committee letter written by the end of the spring semester. 

If you are planning on taking the MCAT in April, find out the deadline for registering and obtain an MCAT package either from the Pre-Professional office or the Premed Club.  You will have to send a passport picture of yourself with your application, and you can have those taken in Genovese at 68 St. and 2^nd Ave. for $5.

Studying for the MCAT is a time consuming task.  Many students prefer to enroll in one of the courses offered in the area (some of them, such as the Princeton Review and Dr. Blank Review take place at Hunter College) while others, who don't happen to have an extra $1,000 study by themselves. Either way, you should allocate a substantial number of hours a day for a couple of months for studying.  This is not an easy task for students who have to support themselves as do many of us in the public school system, so plan on a light spring semester.

After having taken the MCAT you should start working on your AMCAS application.  The AMCAS application can be sent in 2 formats: electronic and paper.  The electronic application (AMCAS-E) can be downloaded from the AAMC website, while the paper version can be obtained from the Pre-Professional Office. The electronic version is much more convenient to fill out and is recommended.

June 1st is the date you can start send you application to AMCAS for processing, so you should complete your application by that date. The most time-consuming part of that application is the personal statement.  Treat it very seriousely. Finding a friend who can read it and give you feedback may be beneficial. In particular have a person who speaks English as a first language read your paper and correct gramatical errors and spelling mistakes.  The application itself should be free of spelling mistakes and errors. Review it carefully before sending. You might want to wait for your MCAT results to come back (around mid June for the April MCAT) but don't delay your application for too long, since medical schools consider applicants on a first-comes-first-served basis.

Deciding which schools you wish to apply to is a a time consuming task as well. Once you have your MCAT scores you can go over the school listings in the Medical School Admissions Requirement (MSAR).  The MSAR is a book which is published by the AAMC and which contains the listings of all the medical schools in the US and Canada. The statistical information of the applicants to each school is available in the book, and you'll be able to estimate to which schools your chances of acceptance are higher.  The Average applicant applies to about 15 schools, but I've heared of a person applying to as many as 89 schools at a time. The processing fee increases as you apply to more schools and you'll probably take this into account as well.

In addition, contact the non AMCAS medical schools if you wish to apply to such schools, and request their application. These schools include NYU School of Medicine and Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York as well as foreign medical schools.

After sending your application you should provide the Pre-Professional Office with stamped envelopes labled with the addresses of the medical schools you applied to.  These envelopes will be used to send the committee letter to the various schools as part of your secondary application.

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• The MCAT
• Download AMCAS-E
• Personal Statement help from Ivyessays
• Order MCAT tests and the MSAR from AAMC
• List of all the Medical Schools in the US and Canada

Senior

Soon you will start receiving Secondary applications from the medical schools you applied to. These applications should be filled out using a typewriter (available in the 7th floor of the Hunter College Wexler Library). Try send those out as fast as possible and cross your fingers. Hopefully an interview will come out of this. 

In the meantime, don't forget to make sure you have fulfilled all the requirements for graduation, it would be sad if you get accepted but cannot attend since you did not complete your degree...

By the spring of your senior year you'll know if you have been accepted, rejected, or placed on a waiting list. If you are accepted to more than one school, you'll have to send a deposit to hold your space in one of them, while notifying the others you will not be going there.  This is done by May 15.  Those who have been placed on a waiting list might receive a notice of acceptance after this date.

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• The Interview