Q: What experiences do I need to apply to health professions school?
A: When we focus on co-curricular activities, there is a broad array of areas future applicants will want to focus on to round out their experiential preparation. These can be broken down into clinical experience, which refers to both shadowing and direct patient care experience, community service and volunteering, and research.
With all of these experiences, we encourage students to regularly reflect on how they are building their strengths in certain core competency areas. These core competencies are the “language” or the “lens” through which committees will review your application, so it is important to identify how you have cultivated certain things like oral communication, leadership, or social skills through your experiences.
Q: What is clinical experience?
A: Clinical experience is an umbrella term used to refer to both shadowing and direct patient care experience. These experiences are critical for your development and for showing prospective schools that you have “tried out” the field you’re interested in pursuing and are dedicated to your chosen career path.
Shadowing is when you follow alongside a healthcare professional during their work day and observe the flow of their job. This is a great introduction and logical first step to take. It will allow you to gain helpful knowledge and experience, understand the role of that person as a part of the healthcare team, and observe the provider-patient interaction. For pre-medical and pre-dental applicants, you will want to accumulate around 50-75 hours of shadowing experience by the time you apply. Ideally, this would be split up either across specialties–for pre-medical applicants–or between different providers. This allows for the accumulation of diverse perspectives.
Direct clinical experience refers to when you gain one-on-one interaction with patients and/or you are the one directly administering the healthcare in some form. There are many different avenues through which people can garner direct patient care experience. Ideally, pre-medical and pre-dental applicants should bring in a minimum of 100 hours of direct patient care experience (hour expectations will vary for other careers, such as physician assistants). This is a critical part of the application for showing schools that you have hands-on experience in the field that you want to enter, and you are dedicated to your chosen path.
Q: How do I gain shadowing experience?
A: Typically, the easiest way to gain shadowing experience is to utilize your network and any connections you may have to the healthcare field. We do not recommend that applicants directly shadow any family members, though you are encouraged to use family and friend resources to find someone to shadow.
If you do not have a connection through the healthcare field through personal means, which is very normal and not a cause for concern, we encourage you to first start by asking any doctors you regularly see or have met with in the past. Your primary care provider can be a good place to start; if you have had an injury of any kind, that provider might also be willing to let you shadow them, or put you in touch with someone who might.
Our office has also put together a Shadowing Guide that you can use to find opportunities throughout Connecticut. If you are a non-Connecticut resident and would like to shadow in your home state, we still encourage you to review this document so that you can glean helpful information for your own search process. Please also see this Virtual Shadowing Guide developed during the pandemic.
Keep in mind that these connections you make with physicians/providers are important to build and keep so that you may ask for a letter of recommendation for your application. (If you are following a pre-medical path and know that you would like to apply to DO schools, it is important to try and find a DO physician to shadow.)
Q: How do I get direct patient care experience?
A: There are many ways for applicants to gain direct patient care experience. We encourage you to consider what is most of interest to you and what you feel fits best with your future career goals. Keep in mind as well that you should look to complete a minimum of 100 hours of direct patient care; this can either be in the same setting, or in various settings.
Some examples of opportunities are Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA), Medical Scribe, Medical Assistant, Physical Therapy Aide, and Personal Care Aide (PCA). Several of these positions do require formal certification, so make sure to research those requirements and where/how long you will be able to work with your certification.
Our office does not directly connect you to any direct patient care opportunities, though we routinely send out information about opportunities through our newsletter. If you are not already subscribed to our newsletter, email our office at premed_predental@uconn.edu and ask to be added to our distribution list (please note that we can only add UConn email addresses). UConn Health does offer a few programs for undergraduate students that we encourage our pre-health population to apply to if they are of interest. Those are the University of Connecticut Health Leaders (UCHL), Collegiate Health Service Corps, and the Migrant Farm Worker Clinics. We also encourage you to explore the Health Service Semester-Long Programs offered through the Community Outreach office.
Keep in mind that connections you make with physicians/providers or your supervisors in this setting are important to build and keep so that you may ask for a letter of recommendation for your application.
Q: What do I do if I’m having trouble accumulating hours during the pandemic?
A: This has, unfortunately, become a common theme for pre-health students over the past year and a half. While it is frustrating, first off remember that many of your peers are in the same boat, and that schools are aware of the difficulty in gaining in-person shadowing and/or direct patient care experiences.
Professional schools have indicated that the most important thing during this time is staying proactive, involved, and engaged in something, even if that thing is not medically related. You can use this time you would have otherwise dedicated to gaining clinical experience to some other cause or activity you’re passionate about, that will add depth and richness to your candidacy.
This document from the NAAHP is a great resource to use to find opportunities during this time. Remember as well that your peers can be a resource, and UConn itself has many great ways to stay involved, both through student clubs and organizations, and through other offices and institutes.
Q: What is community service?
A: Community service is a broad term that refers to any kind of volunteer work that is done in service of others. Community service does not need to be medically related to be a wonderful addition to someone’s application, though it can be if that is what is of most interest to you.
Applicants to pre-medical and pre-dental programs are expected to accumulate somewhere around 200 hours of community service experience. Admissions committees will typically only consider collegiate and post-collegiate service experiences as counting towards this hour total. High school experiences might be considered as adding to an application, only if the applicant continued to engage in that same opportunity following high school graduation.
One important thing to note is that committees much prefer to see quality of experiences over quantity of experiences. It is optimal to be engaged in only a few endeavors over a long period of time, rather than to bounce around from experience to experience in order to boost your resume. Maintaining longitudinal commitments to your service opportunities showcases your authentic passion and will allow you to have something meaningful to discuss on your future applications.
Keep in mind that connections you make with your supervisors or coordinators in this setting are important to build and keep so that you may ask for a letter of recommendation for your application.
Q: What volunteer work should I do?
A: You are free to volunteer in whatever setting feels most interesting and fulfilling to you. This is not only a way to showcase your service orientation, but also a great way to show how you are a well-rounded person and candidate for health professional school.
Applicants are welcome to volunteer in health settings, such as at a local hospital, through the Red Cross or similar organization, or, more recently, at something like a Covid-19 testing or vaccination site. Applicants can also volunteer in other ways, perhaps by spending time at a local soup kitchen or homeless shelter, tutoring or mentoring younger students, or working at a refugee or immigrant centers.
Volunteer work can also be university-related; students can become involved in the Student Union Board of Governors, volunteer at the Spring Valley Student Farm, or participate in events like HuskyTHON.
We even encourage you to think of how some of your hobbies can be viewed as a volunteer or service engagement. Are you the leader of a video gaming club? Do you create and produce your own podcast? Have you volunteered at your old high school for years as a gymnastics coach? All of these kinds of endeavors can be used as a way to show who you are as an applicant and why a school might potentially be interested in you as a candidate.
Q: How do I find volunteer opportunities?
A: There are myriad ways to find volunteer opportunities, both on-campus and off-campus.
In terms of on campus resources, we suggest exploring the UConntact site to discover student clubs and organizations, as well as the general Student Activities site.
UConn has an incredible wealth of offices and institutions that we encourage you to explore so you can find opportunities that stand out to you. The Community Outreach is a great place to start, as they offer not only one-time projects, but also semester-long programs and alternative breaks. The cultural centers, such as the Rainbow Center and African American Cultural Center, are also a wonderful way to find connections and volunteering opportunities.
A few other examples of places on campus are the Health Disparities Institute, UConn American English Language Institute, and El Instituto: Institute of Latina/o, Carribean, and Latin American Studies.
Beyond just the UConn community, we encourage you to explore opportunities in the surrounding town(s) and community, or within your hometown. Ask your fellow students and peers what they are involved in and how they found that experience. This is a great way to learn about what others are doing and how you might get involved in the same experience, or something similar.
Our office does not directly connect you to any volunteer experiences, though we routinely send out information about experiences through our newsletter. If you are not already subscribed to our newsletter, email our office at premed_predental@uconn.edu and ask to be added to our distribution list (please note that we can only add UConn email addresses).
Q: Should I engage in research?
A: Research is an element of a pre-health application that is not necessarily “required” in the same way that clinical experience and community service are “required”, though it does add significant strength to any application and can be a great avenue for building up certain competencies like critical thinking, scientific inquiry, and teamwork. There are various ways to engage in research.
Students can pursue research in the traditional bench research or wet lab setting. This can be done through an on-campus or off-campus opportunity, either during the school year or over the summer months. Some people choose to pursue internships or fellowships that are research focused, and some applicants will even take a growth year or two to work in a research setting before applying to medical school, if that is something that interests them. If you are in a major or program that requires a capstone project or thesis, this is also viewed as a form of research known as independent scholarship.
Keep in mind that research does not necessarily need to be within your major field, or even necessarily in a traditional STEM field. We encourage students to pursue those opportunities that they are most interested in and passionate about. As long as you are able to articulate what you have learned from your experience and how you can translate that knowledge into your future career, you are welcome to explore a variety of research fields and opportunities.
Remember as well that connections you make with your PIs or research coordinators in this setting are important to build and keep so that you may ask for a letter of recommendation for your application.
Q: How do I find research opportunities?
A: Our office does not directly connect you to any research opportunities, though we routinely send out information about opportunities through our newsletter. If you are not already subscribed to our newsletter, email our office at premed_predental@uconn.edu and ask to be added to our distribution list (please note that we can only add UConn email addresses).
The university has the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR), which is a fantastic resource for learning how to get started in research and for finding research opportunities. OUR does also run several programs, such as the Health Research Program, that offer funding for undergraduate students, which we encourage you to look through.
Students are also welcome to explore specific department websites at the university to find any ongoing research projects certain professors might be conducting. If you find something that you are interested in by doing this, you will need to formally and politely reach out to the professor. We suggest utilizing OUR’s resources on Connecting with Faculty and Email Etiquette.
Q: How do I connect with student organizations on campus?
A: UConn boasts an incredible number of student organizations on campus through which students can become involved in the university community. The best place to explore all the university has to offer is the UConntact site. The general Student Activities site is also a great place to begin your search.
Some popular health-related student organizations are the Pre-Medical Society, Pre-Dental Society, Pre-Physician Assistant Patient Care Alliance, Minority Association of Pre-Medical Students (MAPS), UConn Rescue, Global Health Symposium, and the Kidney Disease Screening and Awareness Program (KDSAP).
We would encourage students to attend the involvement fairs offered each semester to become acquainted with the on-campus groups. This spring 2023 semester, the Storrs Campus involvement fair will be held in Gampel Pavilion on February 1, 2023 from 1:00p.m. to 6:00p.m.
Q: Do I need to gain leadership experience?
A: No, you do not need to gain leadership experience, though we strongly encourage you to do so if possible. Leadership is one of the fifteen core competencies, and also offers the chance to develop and deepen other competencies like teamwork, oral communication, written communication, and social skills.
The purpose leadership serves as a part of your application is that it shows you will be able, as a future provider, to be in charge of a healthcare team, and be able to be a leader in that environment for your fellow colleagues and for your patients.