Just What the Doctor Ordered

The road to medical school is often paved with difficulties, but the advising system at Harvard is designed to make the process as painless as possible.

Students say the advising system here possesses several qualities which not only make it unique, but also helpful.

"I think it's pretty good, [but] I...don't know about other houses in general," says Jerry Y. Hsu '97, an Adams student who just applied to medical school.

"I think most other houses have a head pre-med advisor," Hsu says. "What Adams House does is hook you up with a personal pre-med advisor, usually a student at Harvard Medical School."

Hsu says he met with his pre-med advisor once or twice a semester his sophomore year to talk about the courses he was taking, his extra-curriculars and medicine in general.

With the number of people applying to medical school increasing and the process becoming more convoluted, advisors can play a crucial role in helping applicants get through the process successfully.

"[It is] getting more and more difficult to apply to medical school," says Allison S. Bryant '94, a pre-med advisor in Quincy. "Numbers of applicants is sort of increasing exponentially from year to year."

Bryant says that one of the ways advisors aid students is by instructing them on how they can make themselves more appealing to a medical school admissions committee.

"[Pre-med advisors help students] to package themselves to help them to get into med school," she says.

For the most part, the pre-med advising system lies in the houses, where the roughly a dozen advisors, some of whom are resident and some of whom are nonresident, make themselves available to students.

Deepu S. Nair '97, who lives in Quincy House, says he was very pleased with the experience he had with his pre-med advisor.

"The one I had was phenomenal," says Nair, who is currently applying to medical school. "She was very friendly, very helpful and very responsible."

In addition to house-based advising for pre-med students, the Office of Career Services (OCS) also provides resources for them.

Lee Ann Michelson '77, a health advisor at OCS says one of her roles is to encourage students to explore the field of medicine through activities such as volunteering in hospitals or shadowing doctors.

"So students get a sense for what medicine is other than from ER," Michelson says.

OCS also holds several groups meetings with students, which Michelson says is even more advantageous.

"There's myth of...the premeds being very isolated and not very supportive," she says. "There's a lot students learn from each other when we do the workshops."

Mock Interviews

In past years, OCS conducted mock medical school interviews for juniors and seniors to help prepare them for the real thing, Michelson says.

However, with 200 undergraduates applying to medical school and past alumni also applying, Michelson says she suddenly found herself confronted with about 500 to 600 applicants, all of whom were eager to have a mock interview.

"I can't do mock interviews with 500 to 600 people," she says. "[There were] people calling in August and booking for November...and I just felt like it wasn't fair to the students," she says.

Michelson says the interviews became too difficult to do by herself and they were eventually discontinued.

She says it is a better idea to have these interviews conducted in the houses, some of which have 12 pre-med tutors available.

Adams is one of the houses which offers mock interviews for its students.

"I think Adams House is one of the only houses that does mock interviews," says Samia Mora '92, who has been a pre-med advisor in Adams House for three years.

The house is holding mock interviews for its juniors and seniors next week.

"We feel that this is an opportunity for students at Adams to have one run-through...as well as to make them think about the issues of students' applying to medical school," she says.

Problems with the System

Despite the avenues of support that are available, students and advisors say the main problem they see with the advising system is its decentralization.

"The biggest problem with the system is the lack of uniformity between the houses," Mora says

"One thing I think that should be changed is that I think it should be more standardized advising across the different houses," she says. "That's something that people are working on right now, in making it more uniform across the different houses."

Mora says there should be more consistency between houses in terms of deadlines such as handing in letters of recommendation.

Michelson agrees that lack of uniformity in the Harvard system is a key weakness and says she tries to ease the problems to coordinate the advising throughout the university.

Uniform house letters written for students would also create a greater degree of uniformity, according to Mora.

"Students won't feel that [in] going to a different house, they'll be at a certain disadvantage," she says. "It'll also be better because you'll feel like you're doing something that's also being done in [other houses]."

Mora says another problem with the system is the advisors' having to write all the letters for the students.

"Writing the Dean's letters is a big time commitment," she says.

Unlike other schools, Mora says Harvard does not hire a full-time staff to write those letters.

Mora says she believes the ideal system would be to have the advisors provide an office staff with the information for the letters and then have a full-time staff write the letter.

Another option would be to have advisors provide counseling to students and then have an office staff write the letters.

Mora says the problem is especially noticeable in Adams because the two resident tutors in the house are responsible for either writing or editing the letters of about 100 pre-med students in the house.

"It's a lot because you have to make sure everybody's letter is up to the same quality," she says.

Compared to Other Schools

Despite the glitches in the system, students and advisors agree that advising at Harvard is much better than that at other schools.

"I think in general the advising system at Harvard is great," Mora says. "I think many other colleges and universities do not have such systems."

Michelson says that at many other schools, there is one pre-med office for all the students so pre-meds do not get the personal attention that they receive here.

Some schools have only one advisor for all the pre-med students, according to Hsu.

"It's really a strength in comparison [to other schools]," he says. "It's definitely a big plus here."

Wealth of Experience

Michelson says the Harvard advisors are advantageous for many reasons, including the fact that almost all of the advisors are medical students, residents or physicians.

"[It] is really nice in a lot of ways so that students really get a sense of what medicine is," she says.

Bryant says medical schools are very impressed with the advising program at Harvard.

"Harvard actually has a great system...You speak with people on medical admissions [committees] and they are very pleased," she says.

Michelson says she has also received positive input from medical schools about Harvard's strong advising system.

"The feedback I've gotten from admissions officers...is that the Harvard letters are wonderful because they really know the students," she says.

"Because it's so competitive, the admissions officers need more than just numbers," Michelson says. "And that's what the premed advisors can do."

Although advisors in the house can really get to know students and therefore write more in-depth recommendations, problems may still arise, such as an advisor's having to leave before writing a student's letter.

But this is a dilemma addressed by Quincy's policy.

"When you assign advisors in the middle of junior year, you know who's going to be around to write letters," Bryant says.

Katy E. Black '98, a history and science concentrator in Leverett House says that overall, she is pleased with the advising system.

"They've had a lot of meetings and told me to get letters of recommendation," Black says.

"It's helpful sort of to know they're there...but the advice sometimes sort of varies depending who you talk to," Black says. "[T]hey're really good about the MCAT and the application process."

Black's one complaint is that Leverett has yet to assign pre-med tutors to the students, which is important because students face a variety of challenges in the application process.

"Even though we're all premeds, we're all different," Black says.

Black says she had hoped Leverett would assign pre-med tutors by the beginning of second semester junior year at the latest, if not the semester before.

"What they give is advice, they don't tell you what to do," she says. "It's nice you can sort of listen and decide what to do on your own."

Med Students as Advisors

Hsu says he found having a pre-med advisor who is currently in medical school helpful because med school students are closer to the process.

"[They are] not that far removed from the medical school application process," he says.

"[My advisor] was very close to the process" Nair says. "She was in my shoes a couple of years ago...She was definitely very helpful and she really knew what I was going through."

Med school students say they definitely feel the pain of the students they're advising.

"You kind of appreciate the anxieties that students have about letters of recommendation," Mora says.

However, Mora says the non-student advisors are also helpful because they give students an idea of what the medical profession entails from a different vantage point.

"I think that's good, people see what you're going through," she says. "I think that makes it more realistic for people."