Organic chemistry, MCATs, depressingly low acceptance rates -- a pre-med's life is far from easy.
Realizing that, Jeremy Brauer, a second-year student at the School of Medicine, started a program to bring pre-med undergraduates advice from the people perhaps best qualified to give it -- those who have already made it to medical school.
The mentor program, called Insight, debuts this fall. It aims to match pre-med sophomores in Penn's undergraduate schools with students from the Medical School. The mentors will be assigned two or three undergraduates each, and will meet with their mentees at least twice a semester. The program also includes monthly topical panel discussions.
According to Andrew Coopersmith, a pre-health and pre-sciences adviser at Career Services, the program is "meant to tap the excitement of undergrads."
"We're so fortunate to be an undergraduate school with a medical school next door," he said. "The opportunities for cooperation are built in."
Coopersmith helps Brauer run the program, focusing on the undergraduate side. Gaye Sheffler, director of admissions at the Medical School, coordinates the graduate aspect.
Coopersmith said he hopes the program will accomplish more than just mentoring -- he also sees it as an opportunity to bring the medical and undergraduate schools closer.
"There is a myth that the Med School does not embrace the undergrads, that it doesn't like to take from its own," he said. But in fact, "Penn undergrad is the biggest feeder school for Penn Med."
According to Coopersmith, approximately 20 of the 150 students who started at the Medical School this year were Penn undergraduates.
Brauer also has high hopes for the program. He wants to increase the number of social activities for graduate students that include undergraduates, a number that, according to him, is far from sufficient.
"Aside from age, [medical students might have] more in common with undergrads in medicine than grad students in say, law," he said.
Brauer called the response from medical students so far "very encouraging." They are "very willing and wanting to help out other students," he added.
He expects the mentors to learn something from the program as well. The monthly panel discussions will be an opportunity for first- and second-year medical students, as well as undergraduates, to learn from the experiences of third- and fourth-year students.
Brauer emphasized both the informality and the student focus of Insight.
The goal of the program is "not advising, but just relating," Brauer said. "It's not 'take this course or take that course.'"
Pre-med students have academic advisers to help them choose classes, he said, but what they lack is someone who has been through what they are going to go through.
"This is really a student-run operation for students," Coopersmith said.
"One hundred percent student-run," added Brauer.
The fact that Insight is run by medical students is what Brauer hopes will distinguish it from pre-med mentoring programs already in existence.
Penn has a pre-med mentoring program for minority students that matches freshmen and sophomores with upperclassmen, and the American Medical Students Association also has a program to link undergraduate students with ones already in medical school.
But all these programs are run by administrators or faculty, not students, which Brauer said might intimidate students.
Manjool Shah, an Engineering sophomore who has already signed up to participate in Insight, said the program's appeal is the opportunity to interact with medical school students.
"You have to be the best of the best to get into Penn Med," he said. And through Insight, he hopes to learn "tricks to help me along."
