This message is from Edward Via Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine
The Edward Via Virginia (VCOM) will be offering a one year pre-medical post-baccalaureate program this fall!
This program will comprise preparation for students interested in applying to an osteopathic or allopathic medical program and/or for students interested in pursuing a master’s degree in biomedical sciences or a related field. The curriculum will include biomedical coursework, clinical experiences, and will have an MCAT prep component.
The integration of clinical experiences into our program is an exciting component! Several early clinical experiences will be incorporated where students work with local patients AND students will also be afforded an opportunity to participate in an international medical mission experience. VCOM has one of the most comprehensive and extensive international programs for medical school students, with permanent clinics and medical relationships in the Dominican Republic, Honduras and El Salvador. The skills VCOM post-bac students will acquire by integrating clinical experiences with intensive biomedical coursework will enhance their preparation for medical school and/or other graduate level degrees.
Options after completing the VCOM post-bac program! While many students will pursue admission to medical school upon completing the post-bac program, some may want to pursue other graduate degrees. VCOM is currently working with two universities for acceptance of credits from the VCOM post-bac program into master’s degree programs in biomedical sciences. It is expected that we may have a third university on board in the future, giving more options to students who enter the post-bac program and either choose not to, or do not ultimately, gain admission to medical school.
Students applying to VCOM’s post-bac program will need pre-med coursework (one year each of Biology, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and Physics) and to complete their baccalaureate degree prior to matriculation. MCAT scores or other graduate level standardized test scores are desired but not required.
Students interested in more information and application instructions for the VCOM Post baccalaureate program should e-mail Julianne Smartt at jsmartt@vcom.vt.edu.
William P. King
Assistant Vice President for Student Services
Edward Via Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine
2265 Kraft Drive
Blacksburg, VA 24060
For the fall 2009 application cycle, as of October 31, the number of applicants was up 10 percent and the number of designations to individual medical schools was up 16 percent compared to the same time in the application cycle for 2008. The number of available seats in first-year classes was up approximately 5 percent.
American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine
5550 Friendship Blvd., Suite 310
Chevy Chase, MD 20815-7231
Medical-School Applications Dip for the First Time in 6 Years
By KATHERINE MANGAN
After five years of application increases, the number of students applying to the nation’s medical schools slipped 3 percent this year, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Association of American Medical Colleges. The drop came at a time when medical schools were being urged to accept more students to stave off a projected shortage of physicians.
Nonetheless, the schools increased their combined enrollments by 2 percent over 2007, largely because of the addition of three new medical-school campuses, established by Mercer University, Texas A&M University, and the University of Arizona. Nationwide, first-year enrollment is now about 18,000, the highest in history.
“America’s medical schools are continuing to increase their enrollment, which is absolutely critical as our population grows and ages,” said Darrell G. Kirch, president and chief executive of the medical-colleges association, in a news conference on Tuesday.
The association has called on medical schools to increase enrollment by 30 percent by 2015, compared with 2002 levels, by expanding existing schools and opening new campuses. It has also been working aggressively to try to attract more members of minority groups to the profession.
A Continuing Call for Expansion
Those efforts drew mixed results this year. Applications among Latino students were up 3 percent, partly because of the opening of new campuses in regions with large Latino populations. However, the number of black and Native American applicants dropped by 4 percent and 3 percent, respectively. Women represented about 48 percent of this year’s applicants, down slightly from 49 percent in 2007.
Richard A Cooper, a professor of medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and leading expert on the physician work force, said he was troubled by the application drop. Based on demographics alone, the number of applications should increase until 2010, when he predicted they would peak and start to decline. “We need to be expanding faster than we are,” he said, “and the fact that applications are down is bad news. ”
Dr. Kirch played down this year’s drop, pointing out that it followed five years of increases.
The figures released on Tuesday were for the nation’s 130 allopathic medical schools, which grant M.D. degrees. Applications were up 2.5 percent this year at the 24 osteopathic medical colleges and branch campuses, which grant D.O. degrees. The two kinds of medical schools follow similar curricula, but osteopathic schools emphasize holistic practices and often train students to manipulate muscles and joints to treat disorders and diseases.
The American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine reported that a record 11,742 people applied to its schools this year. According to the medical-colleges group, 42,231 people applied to allopathic medical schools. (There is some overlap in those numbers because some students apply to both kinds of schools.)
High-Quality Applicants
Even though those medical schools accepted more applicants from a slightly smaller pool this year, Dr. Kirch said the quality of first-year students remained high. “There are still more than two applicants for every available seat in medical school,” he said. This year’s applicants also had higher undergraduate grades and scores on the Medical College Admission Test, as well as more community-service and research experience, Dr. Kirch noted.
He cautioned that graduating more medical students is just part of the solution to what the association projects could be a shortage of physicians as baby boomers age. The nation also needs to pay for more residency programs, he said. Those programs, which typically last three to seven years, allow medical-school graduates to receive on-the-job training in their specialties at a hospital or clinic. The number of positions that Medicare pays for has been frozen at 1996 levels, although some hospitals and clinics have used their own or state money to expand their programs (The Chronicle, October 24).
While a growing number of medical schools are opening their doors to more students, a few schools are bucking the trend. The University of Chicago’s Pritzker School of Medicine plans to reduce its average class size to 88 from 112 per year by the fall of 2009.
Officials at Chicago and some other medical schools believe that the problem is not the overall supply of physicians, but how they are distributed—too few in rural and inner-city areas and not enough pursuing careers in primary care. Chicago officials cited statistics from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services predicting that the supply of physicians in the United States was expected to rise to an all-time high, from 200 doctors per 100,000 people in 1980 to 293 per 100,000 in 2010.
Smaller class sizes will allow the medical school to focus more on providing mentors to students and opportunities for hands-on learning, officials said.
“This is a way to address the maldistribution of physicians and make a clear investment in both our community and our graduates,” said Holly J. Humphrey, Chicago’s dean for medical education.
The medical school is located in Chicago’s South Side, a chronically underserved area whose residents have higher-than-average rates of diseases like hypertension, diabetes, and asthma.
The medical school has also announced a plan intended to make it affordable for students to practice in the South Side even though medical-school graduates carry an average debt load of $140,000. The school will offer a $40,000 stipend, for up to four years, and will initially supplement the salaries of up to five of the approximately 100 students it graduates each year if they work in that neighborhood.
The Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine has an outstanding summer program that is designed for rising seniors and beyond. The program is called Summer Scholars and it is 6 weeks in length. The participants take course work they will see in the first year of medical school; gross anatomy, biochemistry, immunology, histology, integrated pharmacology and an introduction to case base learning. Courses are taught by the OU-COM faculty. The program also includes clinical shadowing and overview of research at the medical school. In addition, there is a guaranteed interview for the next entering class at the medical school (if eligible). The program includes room and board, a modest stipend, and a travel allowance to attend the program.
Information and application materials for Summer Scholars can be found at the link.
Please contact the OU-COM Admissions Office if you have any questions.
John D. Schriner, Ph.D.
Director of Admissions
Assistant Professor, Department of
Social Medicine
Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine
800-345-1560
www.oucom.ohiou.edu
As we alluded to Tuesday on the prehealth listserv , the AACOMAS application is expected to be launched today at 9:30 a.m. Please click on the link above.
Please see note below regarding submitting a comprehensive and error free application. Typically once these applications are submitted online, they cannot be “pulled back”. If there are any mechanisms to retrieve a 2009 application, this could result in significant processing delays that can impact admissions’ decisions.
There is a Prehealth Mixer THIS WEEKEND!! There will be pizza, games and a chance to meet students from other prehealth clubs! THIS Saturday, April 5th from 12-4pm in the Hadley Community Building.
The next AED meeting will take place in 145C Student Union on Wednesday, April 9th at 5pm. We will be hosting Dr. Myers as our guest speaker to discuss D.O. medicine and education. Also, we will be holding elections for next year’s officers.
AED is volunteering at St. Vincent DePaul Soup Kitchen on Saturday, April 12th. We will be meeting in front of Starbucks in UB Commons at 8:45 to carpool and we will be done around 12:30pm. If you are interested in going, please e-mail me and let me know. For more information about this click on the link provided above.
We will be selling AED Sweatshirts for $22 at the meeting, but if you can’t make it and would still like a sweatshirt, please contact Manu at rgp4@buffalo.edu.
Katie Brewer
AED President 2007-08
Applications to U.S. colleges of osteopathic medicine (COMs) have already reached record highs again this year, with many applications yet to be received before the mid-April deadline. The application numbers reflect a six-year period during which several new osteopathic medical schools have been built and thousands of additional potential medical students have applied to enter one of the fastest-growing health care sectors.
Some 11,650 individuals are hoping to fill one of the 4,462 total fall 2008 seats available at the nation’s 25 COMs and their branch campuses, compared with last year’s record-setting 11,459. The growth represents an increase of more than 4 percent over this point in the application cycle last year.
from Inside OME, March 7, 2008
Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF)
Summer Research Fellows will work for 8 weeks in an active research laboratory under the guidance of a Biomedical Science faculty member at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine. The program will run from June 16 through July 28, 2008. Participants will be provided with room and board, $1750 for living expenses and 8 quarter hours of biology credit with a tuition waiver from Ohio University. Students who are eligible to apply to medical school will have the opportunity during the summer to interview for admission to OU-COM. Additional information and application materials can be found be clicking on the link.
The application is due by February 1. Letters of recommendation and transcripts must be postmarked by March 1 in order for a file to be considered complete.
On Campus Day - Learn About Osteopathic Medicine Saturday, October 27 from 10:00-2:00 p.m.
They offer: a tour of the facility, gross anatomy lab presentations, osteopathic manipulative presentations, microbiology lab presentations, an overview of the DO program and trolley tour of the City of Erie, PA. LECOM is approx 90 miles south of Buffalo within the state of PA.
At its meeting last weekend, the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation (COCA) granted initial provisional accreditation to Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences College of Osteopathic Medicine, Yakima, WA and Rocky Vista University College of Osteopathic Medicine, Parker, CO.
Both colleges plan to begin instruction in late summer/fall 2008.
Information about each of these colleges is available on their college www sites:
Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences COM
Rocky Vista University COM
Each of these new colleges is in the process of joining AACOM. Once that process is completed these colleges will be added to the AACOMAS www site for designation for applications. Until then, applicants who want to initiate an application can complete the AACOMAS application through the point of submission and payment and have their application saved for submission once the new colleges are added for designation. Applicants who have already completed and submitted their applications will be able to add designations for the new colleges. Once the new colleges are available for designation AACOMAS will notify all applicants in the AACOMAS system of the availability of the new colleges for designation.
