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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
Phone: 646-3377; e-mail: Blitzmail; Office: Career Services, 63 South Main
Street, 2nd floor
Advisors:
Kim Whitney Sauerwein
Joe Cullen
Health Professions Advisors, Career Services, Dartmouth College
Phone: 646-3377; e-mail: Blitzmail; Office: Career Services, 63 South Main
Street, 2nd floor
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
Phone: 650-1909 e-mail: Blitzmail; Office: Remsen 322, DMS
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” (edited annually). 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-med
curriculum. See
Required Courses for Medical, Dental or Veterinary Schools for courses
required to get into medical school. (Veterinary schools
also have other requirements and students are encouraged to find out early what
those individual requirements might be.)
- Let your advisees know that MOST 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 an
unrelated major, and study off campus on one of the LSAs or FSPs, but it will
require careful and early planning.
- Tell advisees they should make a four year schedule for the
required science courses needed to apply to medical school.
- Students are accepted into medical school with any undergraduate
major. A student must complete minimally 13 courses to get into
medical school, 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 – see below. 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.
- If an advisee is struggling in the required science
courses (See
Required Courses for Medical, Dental or Veterinary Schools) 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 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, 12 and 13 (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. This
would be followed by submission of their application during the summer before
their senior year. All students should consult with a pre-health
advisor in Career Services 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
pre-requisite 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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