Preprofessional

Preprofessional programs provide guidance, mentoring, and advice for students who plan to enroll in professional programs upon their graduation from St. Mary's College.

Preprofessional / Other Health Careers

Other Health Careers

Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine

Students interested in medicine may decide to pursue a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine instead of a traditional medical degree. Osteopathic physicians, like traditional physicians, can choose any specialty, prescribe drugs, perform surgery, and practice medicine anywhere in the United States. Osteopathic medicine has a focus on holistic treatment and patient-centric care, and osteopathic physicians are trained in osteopathic manipulative treatment (OMT). Here are some links that should be helpful to students considering / pursuing a career in osteopathic medicine:

Applying to Osteopathic Medical School
  • Similar timeline and procedure as traditional medical school
  • Admissions test is the MCAT
  • Apply through AACOMAS
  • Although some schools offer a work-around, it is highly recommended that you have a committee letter of recommendation for osteopathic medical schools.
Osteopathic Medicine: AACOMAS (Instructions)
  • Ideally you will have strong MCAT scores from April or before.
  • You pay a base fee which covers 5 applications – you pay extra for each additional school to which you apply.
  • The application is submitted on-line. You fill in pages of questions – record keeping type information -about grades, experiences, etc.
  • You also submit a personal statement. The personal statement is a one-page statement about why you want to go to medical school.
  • Personal statement is often the distinguishing element at the first evaluation since all applicants will be expected to have good grades, strong MCAT scores and a healthy laundry list of activities/honors. No committee letter of support accompanies this level of application – students must make the first cut on their own, hence, the importance of grades, MCAT scores, and that personal statement.
  • Make sure you check that AMCAS/AACOMAS has received your transcripts
  • Other students have had their applications held up because their transcripts didn’t arrive at AMCAS. When this happens the application never makes it out of the starting gate.
  • If you don’t check, they may sit in limbo for months while other applicants’ primaries are processed.
  • It is very, very seldom a glitch in our Registrar’s office that results in non-submission of transcripts to AMCAS; it is your responsibility to follow up on your application and find out if it is complete.
Pharmacy

Congratulations on choosing pharmacy as your future career field!

Choosing a Pharmacy School
Course Planning
PCAT
Nursing

Congratulations on choosing nursing as your future career field! Nursing is pursued by people from a variety of backgrounds and goals, so that means there are many options available for obtaining nursing degrees. While you plan for your educational path towards nursing, it is extremely important that you explore all of the options available to you to make sure you have chosen the right path.

Choosing a School
  • The main priority when choosing nursing schools to apply to is making sure that they are accredited by the board of nursing.
  • Otherwise, you will not be able to take the NCLEX at the end of the program.
  • Make sure you talk with admissions officers and faculty at the schools you are looking into, to make sure the program is a good fit for you.
  • Check out the school’s website to check its prerequisites and work toward getting all the admissions requirements.
  • There is no set prerequisite coursework for nursing school (each school sets its own prerequisites), so you must be ahead of the game in terms of choosing schools and planning your undergraduate classes!
  • Be aware of the admissions test (if any) that each school requires you to take.
Admissions Test
  • Some programs (especially BSN programs) require you to take the Test of Essential Academic Skills (TEAS)
  • Some CNL programs (depending on the school and/or your undergraduate GPA) require you to take the GRE
  • Be aware of which test you need to take to apply to the programs you hope to get into, and plan ahead!
Nursing Scholarships & Loan Repayment Assistance

If you are interested in more programs where you agree to work in underserved areas in exchange for tuition assistance, look at the Health Resources and Services Administration site, or do a google search for Health professional Shortage Areas (HPSAs) to learn more about such programs.

University of Maryland Nursing Programs
Physical Therapy

Congratulations on choosing physical therapy as your future career field!

Application

Some schools require you to use the PTCAS application service.

GRE
  • ETS Official GRE Site
  • ETS: About the GRE
  • Purchase or borrow at least one GRE study book, such as The Princeton Review’s “Cracking the GRE”, or study books from Kaplan and Barron.
  • The GRE changed in August 2011, so any study guides / books published before then will be obsolete.
  • Register early, and start studying even earlier! Staying on top of the admissions test will help make application season less stressful.
Practical Experience
  • Physical therapy schools expect to see a large number of hours of practical experience in the field.
  • Some schools require a certain number of logged hours. This could be over a hundred hours of experience, so plan ahead and make sure you start these experiences early!
  • It doesn’t matter if the experience is paid or unpaid. The important parts of practical experience are to make sure physical therapy is the right field for you, that you are committed to the field, and that you have enough hours to be a competitive physical therapy applicant.
  • Keep track of all of your practical experience hours. Having a complete log of hours will make it much easier for you when application season comes around.
Physician Assistant
Speech-Language Pathology And Audiology
Congratulations on choosing speech-language pathology / audiology as your future career field! Official Association: American Hearing and Speech Association (ASHA)
Application Service: CSDAS

Choosing a Program
Typical Prerequisites
  • Speech Pathology
  • Introduction to Psycholinguistics
  • Anatomy & Physiology of the Speech Mechanism
  • Anatomy, Physiology & Pathology of the Auditory System
  • Introduction to Phonetic Science
  • Speech and Language Development
  • Introduction to Hearing Science
  • Introduction to Audiology
  • Principles and Methods in Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology
  • Audiology
  • Introduction to Psycholinguistics
  • Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology of the Auditory System
  • Speech and Language Development in Children
  • Bases of Hearing Science
  • Principles and Methods of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology
  • Statistics

For both speech pathology and audiology, ASHA certification requires at least one course in each of the following areas:

  • life sciences
  • physical sciences
  • behavioral sciences
  • mathematics beyond college algebra

If you haven’t completed all of those general requirements at St. Mary’s, some graduate programs allow you to take necessary undergraduate classes concurrently with the graduate classes.

GRE
  • Most SLP and Audiology programs require the GRE as part of the application process, and most do not currently require any GRE Subject tests.
  • Some resources for preparing for the GRE…
  • ETS Official GRE Site
  • ETS: About the GRE
  • ETS: Free Test Prep Materials
  • You should strongly consider purchasing at least one GRE study book, such as The Princeton Review’s “Cracking the GRE”, or study books from Kaplan and Barron.
  • The GRE changed in August 2011, so any study guides / books published before then will be obsolete.
  •  Register early, and start studying even earlier! Staying on top of the admissions test will help make application season less stressful.
Funding
Interested in Research?
  • Many schools offer a Ph.D. program in speech pathology that puts the focus on research, rather than clinical practice.
  • Some schools offer programs that allow you to get your clinical master’s / Au.D. in a combined program while you work toward the Ph.D.
  • You also have the option of going back to school to pursue a doctorate after finishing the speech pathology master’s program.
  • A good resource from ASHA: Considering a Ph.D.
Sports Medicine

Congratulations on choosing sports medicine as your future career! Here are some resources to get you started in researching the options. The prerequisites for sports medicine programs are more varied and new programs are being created every year. Students interested in these kinds of programs are encouraged to gain practical experience in a physical therapy or sports medicine/training clinics to be sure it is what they want. Individual faculty instructors or advisers usually prepare letters of recommendation for students interested in programs in sports medicine.

Careers within Sports Medicine