Planning your career
The first thing you should do is contact a member of the Pre-Medicine Advisory Committee. If you are considering going to medical school (even if you are not certain about your plans) it is important that you start preparing early. Here is a timeline to give you an idea about the length of the process. (Timeline)
To help you decide if Pre-Med is for you, check out this link: http://www.premed.cc
as well as the following document published by the University of Missouri School of Medicine (This document is a couple of years old but the information is still appropriate):What Every Pre-Med Should Know.
A critical part of the decision making process is getting first hand experience with the medical profession. This is best obtained by shadowing a physician, nurse or other health care provider. Because of confidentiality laws, it is important to make these arrangements through an organization such as you local AHEC office. You can locate your nearest AHEC office at the following link:Missouri AHEC. The Rolla area AHEC is the Mid-Missouri AHEC at 1101 Duane Avenue, next to PCRMC or visit their website:MidMOAHEC. If you want to obtain shadowing experience throug MidMOAHEC, please check out and complete the following application:MidMOAHEC Shadowing Application.
Once you decide that pre-med is for you, then I would suggest that you take a look at the MCAT page to see how you can prepare for it.http://www.mcatscore.com
A very important decision that you will make in your journey to med school is the whether you want to apply for an allopathic school or osteopathic school. They do require different methods of application:
Osteopathic-https://aacomas.aacom.org/
Allopathic-http://www.aamc.org/audienceamcas.htm
Getting into medical school requires planning, and preparation that one cannot just figure out by themselves. To help you in this planning is this website:http://www.getintomedschool.com/amcas.htmlbut also talk to a member of the pre-medicine advisory committee.
Once you have sumitted you application, you will need to be prepared to complete the secondary application specific for each school:http://pre-health.uchicago.edu/handbook/secondaryapps.html
You will also need letters of recommendation. Most professional schools prefer one composite or committee letter of recomendation instead of multiple individual letters. Therefore, the Missouri S&T Pre-Medicine Advisory Committeee provides a committee interview that will be used to prepare a committee letter of recommendation. This is also a great opportunity to practice interviewing and to get tips from the committee. Interviews are scheduled for several dates from August to October. Watch the Scrubs listserv for dates.
To prepare yourself for an interview, be prepared to talk about current topics in health care, particularly some of the more controversial issues. Here are some links to essays on various topics that may help you think about some of the main issues of the day.
http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/about/Crossroads/
