Pre-Medical

About the Profession

Medical doctors are professional focused on promoting, maintaining, and/or restoring health through the study, diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of disease, injury, and other physical and mental impairments.  In addition to direct patient care, doctors can conduct medical research, teach, and/or run medical centers.  There are two pathways to becoming a physician: allopathic medicine, which leads to an M.D. (medical doctor) or osteopathic medicine, which leads to a D.O. (doctor of osteopathic medicine).  Either pathway allows for physicians to work in one or more specialties:

• Anesthesiology
• Dermatology
• Family and General Medicine
• General Internal Medicine
• Obstetrics and Gynecology
• Pediatrics
• Psychiatry
• Surgery

Preparation Starts Now

From the time you begin college, you are assembling a complete dossier with which to apply to medical schools.  Applicants are expected to have:

• Completed a bachelor's degree in any major, though many of SUNY Geneseo dental school applicants complete a major in Biology, Chemistry, Sociomedical Sciences, Neuroscience, or Psychology
• Be aware of the premedical competencies and understand how  your experiences fit within these categories. Download Anatomy of an Applicant to get in depth information on the premedical competencies, resources, and a self-assessment guide
• Completed medical school course requirements
• Involve yourself in sincere, sustained health-related shadowing, volunteering, or a paid position.  Committees value a wide breadth of unique experiences and multiple hours in one setting. Must demonstrate continual commitment to service!!
• Demonstrate leadership and community involvement 
• Participate in research and extracurricular activities
• Before selecting programs make sure you purchase the Medical School Admission Requirements™ (MSAR®)  an online database of comprehensive medical school profiles which includes all MD-granting LCME-accredited medical schools in the U.S. and Canada. If applying to osteopathic schools get the free Choose DO Explorer resource
• Achieve excellent grades; overall and science GPAs should, at a minimum, be at a 3.5 (the average mean for student entering MD schools is 3.77) for allopathic schools and a 3.3 (the average mean for student entering DO schools is 3.6)  for osteopathic schools
• Earn a good score on the MCAT; ideally scores should minimally be a 508 (the average mean for students entering MD schools is 511.7 and for DO schools is 504)
• Determine if your programs of interest require a situation judgment test
• PreMed Committee Letter; Letters of Recommendation in Interfolio are required for the PreMed Committee Letter (two science faculty, one non-science faculty, and one clinical)

Course Requirements

Start planning as a first year student to meet the following course requirements for medical schools.  Below are the courses at SUNY Geneseo that are recommended you complete to prepare for the MCAT and meet medical school requirements (please note, there may be some variation in course requirements for medical schools, so be sure to check the requirements of the schools you plan on applying to):

*Courses generally not required by medical schools, but MCAT covers this material.

It is recommended that course requirements are completed at SUNY Geneseo, but there are instances where a student would need to complete one or two courses elsewhere.  If that is the case, it is suggested that coursework be completed at a four-year higher education institution.  All course requirements must be taken for a grade and demonstrate mastery, no lower than a C, for most professional schools.

For further information about allopathic schools, visit Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC).  For osteopathic schools, American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM).