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Advising Tips:
The single most important advising tip for first-year students is to tell them that they should seek the advice of a health professions advisor to plan their course through and after Dartmouth. Too much misinformation is given out through anecdotes from fellow students and many faculty do not have the up-to-date expertise to advise about the complex career path.
Initial Contact:
Annette Hamilton
Health Professions Coordinator, Career Services, Dartmouth College, 63 South Main Street, 2nd floor
Phone: 646-3377; e-mail: Annette.Hamilton@dartmouth.edu
Advisors:
Kim Whitney Sauerwein
Career Services, Dartmouth College, 63 South Main Street, 2nd floor
Phone: 646-3377; e-mail: Kimberly.Whitney.Sauerwein@dartmouth.edu
Professor Lee A. Witters M.D.
Chair, Dartmouth College Health Professions Advisory Committee
Eugene W. Leonard 1921 Professor of Medicine & Biochemistry, Dartmouth Medical School
Professor of Biological Sciences, Dartmouth College
Faculty Advisor, Nathan Smith Premedical Society
Office: Remsen 322, Dartmouth Medical School
Phone: 650-1909 e-mail:Lee.Witters@dartmouth.edu
Some VERY IMPORTANT standard information for all students considering a career in the health professions is available from the Nathan Smith Society. On its web site and updated annually (www.dartmouth.edu/~nss) are documents entitled"Advice for Entering Students" and "The Road to Medical School Application." These documents have a considerable amount of information useful to the first-year advisors and their advisees. In addition, many documents for all the health professions have been assembled on the Nathan Smith Society Blackboard site, a convenient place to identify and retrieve information. One can “self-enroll” in this site by following the instructions in the box on the NSS home page. Documents on this site are frequently updated and there is also a discussion board to ask questions (it is monitored by Professor Witters).
Excerpted from these documents are some particularly important points:
- Dartmouth does not have a standard pre-health curriculum. See Required Courses for Medical, Dental, or Veterinary Schools. (Veterinary schools also have other requirements. Students should become aware of those additional requirements early-on.)
- Let your advisees know that over 80% of students from Dartmouth, and country-wide, are applying to medical school AFTER they graduate (i.e. either beginning in the spring of their senior year or as alums). This allows for more flexibility in scheduling courses, leave terms, FSPs, etc, and often strengthens applications. Some students choose to complete their required courses in post-baccalaureate programs following graduation, rather than during their time at Dartmouth.
- It is possible for students to fulfill pre-health courses, have a non-science major, and study off campus on one of the LSAs or FSPs, but it will require careful and early planning.
- Students should make a four year schedule for the required science courses needed to apply to medical/dental/vet school. Constructing alternate D-Plans is strongly encouraged.
- Students are accepted into medical school with any undergraduate major. A student must complete minimally 13 courses, but can major in anything from Anthropology to Studio Art to Engineering and still be admitted. Students do, however, have to master certain categories of material in the sciences. Students without a strong background in the sciences, including Biology, should consider taking BIOL 2 in the fall of their first year to begin this mastery and adjust to the demands of a college science curriculum.
- If an advisee is struggling in the required science courses,encourage them to seek the advice of one of the pre-health advisors. You may also want to encourage them to make use of the Academic Skills Center.
- A student who wants to keep open the option of attending medical school immediately following graduation is advised to complete General Chemistry sequence in their first year, and to complete the Organic Chemistry sequence in their second year. It is possible to delay the Organic Chemistry sequence until junior year, but that may limit a student’s ability to enroll in other courses that may be helpful in preparing for the MCATs. Students are also advised to complete BIOL 11, and 12, 13 and/or 14 (and other recommended courses in Biology and Chemistry - see following section) before the MCATs, which they should take by no later than early summer following their junior year, if they plan to go directly to medical school. This would be followed by submission of their application during that summer. All students should consult with a pre-health advisor in when devising their curricular plan.
- First-year students who do not have credit for MATH 3 should at a minimum be encouraged to take a Math course in their first term as it is a prerequisite for CHEM 5.
- In planning for their “pre-health” science requirements, students should take into account whether two courses with laboratories in the same term might present extra challenges.
- Students should NOT use the NRO (non-recording option) in a course required for med/vet/dental school admission and should be very cautious about using it in any natural science course. In any event, the potential use of an NRO or decisions about course withdrawals should be discussed in advance with one of the pre-health advisors.
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