Starting a Pre-Soma Chapter at my school

[zma21]

For various reasons, I'm interested in starting a Pre-Soma chapter at my school. There already exists a "pre-professional" society, and for information purposes it blows. I've had to research and find things out 100% on my own, and this greatly impeded my progress during sophomore year. Besides that, the Pre-professional society meets about 4 times per year, having various dentists, pharmacists, etc come. That's perfectly fine, but I'd like a more dedicated means of getting information to unknowing students.

There is an osteopathic school less than 2 hours away from my school, and there are currently 3 graduates of my university at that COM. It's an option people don't know they have, from what I've gathered.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done this. Will this politically crush any chance I would have at an allopathic school?(Even if it does, I'm still willing to start the chapter).

I already have leadership experience, so that's not the main motivation for this. I would be lying, however, if I told you that I wouldn't be using this to my advantage during the application process.

Thanks for any insight!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[dbizzy]

For various reasons, I'm interested in starting a Pre-Soma chapter at my school. There already exists a "pre-professional" society, and for information purposes it blows. I've had to research and find things out 100% on my own, and this greatly impeded my progress during sophomore year. Besides that, the Pre-professional society meets about 4 times per year, having various dentists, pharmacists, etc come. That's perfectly fine, but I'd like a more dedicated means of getting information to unknowing students.

There is an osteopathic school less than 2 hours away from my school, and there are currently 3 graduates of my university at that COM. It's an option people don't know they have, from what I've gathered.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done this. Will this politically crush any chance I would have at an allopathic school?(Even if it does, I'm still willing to start the chapter).

I already have leadership experience, so that's not the main motivation for this. I would be lying, however, if I told you that I wouldn't be using this to my advantage during the application process.

Thanks for any insight!

Have you thought about getting involved with your pre-professional group, such as running for a board position, and implementing your ideas that way? Maybe start with having them meet on a bimonthly basis, rather than four times year (which is pathetic).

Most larger universities tend to have separate pre-med, dental, opto, pharm, etc groups because there is a large enough of an audience for it. Since your school just has just a single "pre-professinoal" org (like my school), I suspect that it is doesn't have a huge pre-health student body. If that's the case, I'd suggest you try gauging just how much interest there is in Osteopathy before you go all-in. It might be wiser to go broader instead, like a pre-med club, that would allow for a larger audience. You'd still be able to promote Osteopathic medicine.

This is all from first-hand experience. The school I'm finishing up my post-bacc at is a smaller university with a modest-sized science dept. The pre-health organization I started a few years back currently has 40+ members (decent for a small school) and is very successful, while the pre-pharmacy club has had <10 for the past three years and is pretty much dead. Even pharm kids join our org instead. Point is, the pharm club didn't really think things through to realize that there ain't pre-pharmacy kids on campus to start up a successful organization.

10 people makes for a sh*tty organization with few resources. Again, I'd start broad if I were you and consider starting up a pre-med club, assuming there isn't one already, and not limit yourself to Osteopathy.

Just my .02

 

[HockeyDr09]

For various reasons, I'm interested in starting a Pre-Soma chapter at my school. There already exists a "pre-professional" society, and for information purposes it blows. I've had to research and find things out 100% on my own, and this greatly impeded my progress during sophomore year. Besides that, the Pre-professional society meets about 4 times per year, having various dentists, pharmacists, etc come. That's perfectly fine, but I'd like a more dedicated means of getting information to unknowing students.

There is an osteopathic school less than 2 hours away from my school, and there are currently 3 graduates of my university at that COM. It's an option people don't know they have, from what I've gathered.

I'm wondering if anyone else has done this. Will this politically crush any chance I would have at an allopathic school?(Even if it does, I'm still willing to start the chapter).

I already have leadership experience, so that's not the main motivation for this. I would be lying, however, if I told you that I wouldn't be using this to my advantage during the application process.

Thanks for any insight!

I'm the Liaison for our SOMA chapter (LECOM-E), and we have a chair dedicated to Pre-SOMA. Send me a PM and I can give you the details on starting a new chapter. There are a few scholarships open to Pre-SOMA members and if you have a strong SOMA chapter near your school you could definitely get some good information from current med students.