The Premedical Years

The premedical baccalaureate period is critical to shaping a high-achieving, diverse, and service-oriented medical school applicant pool. The focus on achieving superior academic performance in premedical coursework captures the attention of most premedical students, but equal attention must be paid to developing the personal qualities and experiences that will form the foundation of their future capacity to understand and communicate with patients. Premedical students are best served to major in a field for authentic intellectual reasons regardless of the field's immediate connection to the health care field. There is a growing trend for applicants to have a gap year or more between the undergraduate period and medical school. The authors discuss the role of letters of evaluation and the premedical committee in the application process. The authors have more than 40 years of combined experience in premedical academic and career advising at a large, research-focused public institution.