Year 1
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- Register for an AAMC account and access Careers in Medicine®, a great resource during medical school as you prepare for your career.
- Self-Assessments – Discover who you are. Identify what you want for your future.
- Medical Specialties – Info on specialties and subspecialties, the nature of work, training and residency requirements.
- Join a SOM student organization specialty interest group.
- You will be assigned a College Mentor, who serves as an advisor and advocate throughout medical school. Mentors are an important source of general information and guidance concerning careers in medicine. You may have a clear idea of what fields interest you, but you also may not. Your mentor’s role is to help you explore your interests, be a sounding board, and direct you to resources. Your mentor will not provide in-depth information about applying to residencies.
- Yr 1 & 2: Focus on academic counseling
- Yr 3 & 4: Focus on career counseling
- Arrange shadowing and preceptorship experiences. Preceptors are practicing physicians who volunteer to give personal instruction, training, and supervision to a medical student. A preceptorship experience during the first two years of medical school is a mentoring experience.
- Register for an AAMC account and access Careers in Medicine®, a great resource during medical school as you prepare for your career.
Year 2
The Step 1 exam is taken after the Foundations Phase. Step 1 is considered an indicator of your basic science knowledge, and many residency programs use it as a cut-off score, below which applicants are unlikely to get an interview. This exam is important; even lesser competitive specialties value a strong Step 1 score. Learn more at USMLE and Your Medical School Training.