 Medical Student Affairs and Admissions Mission The mission of the Office of Student Affairs and Admissions is the recruitment, admission and support of medical students who have the academic and personal qualifications to become excellent physicians and whose diversity reflects the society they will serve. Vision The Office of Student Affairs and Admissions will provide leadership and administrative support for activities which range from recruitment and selection to the daily support of students throughout their medical education. The Office will assist the Promotion Boards in the maintenance and enforcement of academic standards. Student Affairs will advocate for the rights and legitimate personal and academic needs of each student. Goals for Medical Student Affairs and Admissions 1. Expand the applicant pool and improve the rate of matriculation. To date, the College’s recruitment programs have been targeted primarily to under-represented minority students. These “pipeline” programs need to be evaluated carefully to be certain that they are fulfilling their goals of recruiting underrepresented minorities into medicine and the medical sciences. In view of the anticipated overall decline in the applicant pool generally over the next 5–10 years, recruitment efforts must be broadened to increase both the number and quality of applicants of all types. Particular attention will be paid to the appropriateness and quality of information supplied to potential applicants and their advisors. More effective strategies to communicate with applicants and potential applicants will be developed with the help of outside consultants. Efforts to recruit students will be broadened to include a larger number of colleges in our region which traditionally attract academically highly qualified students. Strategies will be developed to assure matriculation of a higher percentage of accepted students who are ranked highly by the Admissions Committee.2. Have Early Acceptance Programs with selected undergraduate colleges. A small number of undergraduate colleges serve as “feeder schools” and consistently provide the College of Medicine with a significant number of qualified applicants. In order to assure the flow of the most qualified students from these colleges to our College of Medicine, an Early Acceptance Program will be explored. Initial focus will be upon the criteria to be utilized by the College and its undergraduate partners when identifying students who qualify for Early Acceptance and the standards of performance expected while they are undergraduates. These students must have credentials at entry into undergraduate college which predict they would rank in the upper half of the present medical student body. The initial focus for such programs will be recruitment of the strongest students academically from the best of our traditional feeder schools such as Miami and Dayton. The Office of Admissions must target highly regarded regional colleges for inclusion in the Early Acceptance program. Many of these are not traditional feeders to our College, but enroll significant numbers of Ohio residents. Examples include Notre Dame, Northwestern, Oberlin, Kenyon, Denison, Indiana, Ohio University, and Berea. An Early Acceptance program was recently implemented with the UC College of Engineering and a link with the newly created UC Undergraduate Honors Program is possible.3. Combined degree programs with other professional schools. Medical school graduates have entered many different specialized areas of medicine and contributed in diverse ways to the profession and society. In order to encourage this diversity, and enrich the background of entering students, the development of combined degree programs will be explored with the UC Colleges of Law and of Business Administration. Selected exceptional students would be given the opportunity to complete the requirements for a graduate degree from one of those colleges as well as the College of Medicine.4. Sustain cultural diversity in the student body. The proportion of women and minority students enrolled in the College of Medicine has increased over the past decade. The goal is to sustain a level which reflects the diversity of the population. All students, regardless of their gender, race, or ethnicity, should have sensitivity to the uniqueness of others and should have a sense of caring and support for each other as they will have for their future patients. Programs will be presented to foster a supportive interaction between students, to enhance the understanding of the faculty with respect to the diverse background of the student body, and to facilitate the utilization of support services by all students as they are needed.5. Have an integrated career counseling program. The degree of competitiveness of various residency programs will change from time to time as projections of physician income and size of the specialty workforce change. As a result many students may experience difficulty in choosing a specialty and acquiring a satisfactory residency position. While there are many activities currently offered to assist students in planning their futures, at the present time there is no programmatic approach to providing students on a year by year basis comprehensive assistance, timely information, and guidance in their career choice.6. Enhance the awarding of financial aid and provide financial counseling. Financial aid should be awarded and administered in a way that is responsive to projected changes in medical practice and reductions in physician reimbursement. Debt management counseling must be integrated with career counseling. Students must be informed about the probable economic realities they may face as they consider the amounts of money they should borrow.7. Provide a personal/professional development program. Reaching one’s potential as a student and, ultimately, as a physician is a complex process. Students often express frustrations or raise questions about personal and professional growth which may not relate to the formal curriculum. Development of a series of enrichment seminars/workshops on topics such as professional writing, team leading, win/win negotiating, serving as a change agent, time management, and financial planning, would provide a forum for students to develop insights and skills which are important to overall effectiveness, but are not presently a part of the curriculum. Student advisors need training to function conceptually as coaches who help the student achieve goals and establish personal bench-marks.8. Improve information systems. The College’s present management systems in Student Affairs are obsolete. New systems to meet the needs of students and faculty are under development for both student records and financial aid. The new systems will permit students to access their records and schedule electives, faculty to submit grades and evaluations electronically, and financial aid to be processed and awarded electronically.9. Improve the availability of psychological counseling and psychiatric services. Medical school is extremely stressful to students and their families. More ready availability of psychological and psychiatric assistance would prevent problems which disrupt students’ lives and impair performance.Measurable Benchmarks of Success in Medical Student Admissions 1. Early Acceptance programs will be established with at least eight academically well regarded feeder schools within the next five years, with the goal of filling approximately 25% of the first year class with highly qualified students from these feeders, as relationships mature. 2. Our AAMC Institutional Profile will place us at or above the 50th percentile nationally in percentage of our students who are underrepresented minorities. 3. Our AAMC Institutional Profile will place us at or above the 70th percentile nationally in the mean Biology MCAT score for entering students. 4. A formal marketing program for student recruitment will be in place by Summer 1998 with the goal of having at least 60% of the students who are offered acceptances actually matriculate in our College by the year 2000. Measurable Benchmarks of Success in Medical Student Affairs 1. Management of student records will be updated by Summer, 1999. 2. Management of financial aid will be updated by Summer, 1999. 3. Survey of student needs in and satisfaction with personal and career counseling will be done on an annual basis beginning in the 1998 academic year and used as a basis for improvements in service. 4. A tracking system will be put into place to measure the relative success of our various programs which aim to increase the number of underrepresented minorities who enter the health professions. |
