About the Johns Hopkins University Postbac Program [Show Summary]
For many future doctors, the simple step between college and medical school is not so clear cut. For various reasons, some sudents will choose to attend a pre-medical post-baccalaureate program to help boost their skills and experiences and to help them get into medical school. Dr. Alex Tan is the director of the Johns Hopkins postbac program for premed career changers and founder and director of the postbac Health Science Intensive (HSI) program. Her approach to the premed experience is thoughtful and is strongly influenced by her passion for guiding students to med school and to better self-exploration.
Interview with the Director of the Johns Hopkins Postbac Program [Transcript]
Linda Abraham: Postbac programs for physician wannabees can make all the difference between rejection and acceptance for academic enhancers and career changers. Let’s learn about the two postbac programs offered by Johns Hopkins University from their director, Dr. Alexandra Tan.
Dr. Tan earned her BS at the University of Central Arkansas and then went on to get her PhD in Biology at Johns Hopkins in 2009. Somewhere along the way, she got bitten by the premed postbac educational bug. She became director of Johns Hopkins post-baccalaureate pre-medical program for career changers in 2012 and founded and became director of the Johns Hopkins post-baccalaureate Health Science Intensive program, also in 2012. Her approach to postbac education is highly analytical and data driven. She’s been working to identify objective predictors of success in the medical school admissions process and develop tangible steps that help students achieve that success.
Linda Abraham: Let’s start with the basics, what is the post-baccalaureate pre-medical program at Johns Hopkins and who is it for? [1:59]
Dr. Alex Tan: Sure. So, postbac programs, in general, for anybody who isn’t familiar, are essentially programs that are designed to give students an extension of their undergraduate time to accomplish a particular set of goals. There are two types of postbac programs. They are classically called career-changer programs or academic enhancer programs.
The premedical program is a career-changer program, which means it’s essentially designed for students who need that extra time to be able to complete the lower division science classes. These are students who haven’t had the year of biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics. More specifically, Hopkins, in general, is true to its reputation for being very strong in research. We certainly care a lot about leadership and independence and support for our unique, individual students. So, this program also encompasses a lot of those other qualities, as well.
Linda Abraham: Okay, so the postbac pre-medical program is for career changers. What about the Health Sciences Intensive? How is it different, both in its structure and its outcome? [3:28]
Dr. Tan: Sure, yes, that’s true. In both cases, the students have the same goals. That’s very true. As I said, there are two kinds of programs. The Health Science Intensive program is categorically considered an academic enhancer program, which essentially means that you’ve had the biology, the general chemistry, the organic chemistry, and the physics courses, the associated labs, and all of that completed.
So, postbac programs vary a lot, if you just look at what they accept and nationally what they look like. But, generally speaking, students who are eligible for one program would be ineligible for the other one and vice versa. So, the academic enhancer programs nationally are going to have some version of upper division courses of advanced science courses and opportunities for students to demonstrate their academic prowess in a science classroom.
But, on upper division or graduate level classes, the HSI program, in particular, is a graduate level program. The students are exclusively taking graduate level courses. But, you’re right – a lot of the outcomes and goals are largely the same.
One pretty significant difference between the two programs, though, is that career-changer programs, nationally, could be a two-year program or it could be a one-year program. So, it’s a lot of classes to complete. The way that would be closest to an undergrad completing the classes would be a two-year program, so that’s the level of the pace of studying and comfort that most students are familiar with, having gone through the US education system. When you compress that into a one-year, as we do with the postbac premed program, our career-changer program, it doesn’t leave a lot of time for a lot of other things. But, in return, you get to move through the process more quickly.
The HSI program, the academic enhancer program, it’s still a one-year program, but it’s closer to the typical pace of an academic setting, which means that it also allows students a lot more time for personal exploration, building on the application they have as far as experiences are concerned, exploring topics of social justice, advocacy, research, community health, innovation, any topics that are of interest to them. There’s a little more time in the HSI program to focus on those things.
Linda Abraham: Is it a two-year program?
Dr. Tan: It’s a one-year program, still. Because of the amount of coursework, it’s just a little more relaxed.
Linda Abraham: I believe with HSI, you also get a degree, right?
Dr. Tan: You do, yes. You get a Masters of Science degree in Biotechnology. Typically, career-changer programs are certificate programs, because they’re undergraduate level.
Linda Abraham: Right. HSI is more for academic enhancers, right?
Dr. Tan: Yes.
Linda Abraham: So, people who might have had the science courses, but didn’t do so well in them? [6:43]
Dr. Tan: Well, actually, that’s not necessarily true. Academic enhancer programs classically, thus the name, were originally designed for people who went through their undergraduate career and didn’t do as well as they should have. That’s definitely true. But the definition of that has changed as schools have gotten more competitive. We have students who, I’m sure, their mothers and fathers are very proud of them, but they’re not competitive for medical school. There’s definitely that piece and there are lots of reasons why that could be the case. We have a growing number of students who are working their way through school. They have a lot on their plate; it’s not that they’re not academically capable. It’s just that they’re exceedingly busy. Then, we also actually have students who academically are strong enough that theoretically they could probably get into medical school, but maybe not the schools they want to go to. So, you can have a student who could get into a medical school, but they want to do MD/PhD programs or some other combined degree program, maybe that’s more competitive, or maybe they just want to be more assured that they’re going to get into their top tier schools. So, we see more and more students pursuing academic enhancer programs for that reason.
Then, in addition, as economic things have changed in the world and there’s been more pressure on universities, we’re seeing the changing landscape of advising and the ability of students to get lots of hands-on, direct, very well-informed help to also be impacting students. Sometimes students just feel like they don’t know what they’re doing in the admissions process. They don’t understand what the expectations are. They feel totally lost in the process. Their advisors – and I’m not dumping on advisors; I feel for them – they feel very overwhelmed and unable to give each and every student under their care the level of dedication that students are hoping to receive.
Sometimes those students also will pursue an academic enhancer program because typically, certainly in the case of Hopkins, but typically, postbac programs tend to have a stronger, more hands-on, more direct advising component that helps those students figure out exactly what they need to do to be successful in that process.
Linda Abraham: What is different about HSI, as opposed to other academic enhancer programs? [9:09]
Dr. Tan: A couple of things. So originally, when I designed it, we were thinking about going back to the literature, really thinking about what medical schools want in premed students and really trying to address that much more directly, rather than it being a byproduct that students happen to go to medical school. I saw in the literature that there was definitely this emphasis on the sciences and the things that we expect everyone understands to be an expectation of premed students applying to medical school.
But, then there is also this other broad swath of characteristics that are part of that medical school expectation. They include leadership. They include professionalism, communication skills, some cultural competency, a dedication to service – all these other components that they want to see in students.
As an educator and somebody who has spent a lot of time in an educational setting, it occurred to me that we, especially for the sciences, expect students to be good communicators because they are surrounded with people that they must communicate with. We expect them to be culturally competent because they are surrounded by people who come from different cultures. But, we don’t necessarily do that with the sciences. If I said, we’re going to teach chemistry by just putting somebody in the presence of the periodic chart, people would think that was crazy.
So, I felt like those additional components, maybe there was a way to be more deliberate, to not hope that students get that stuff, but to deliberately, in a classroom setting introduce them to those topics, get them thinking, and more importantly discussing those topics, so that hopefully when we send them off to medical school, they feel more competent, they feel more capable, they feel more confident with those skill sets.
The HSI program, in addition to including a heavy dose of the science courses that everyone would expect and that you see in academic enhancer programs, there is also non-science courses that are included in the curriculum. That currently includes a leadership course, a communications course, and then we have a psycho-social determinance of health and implications on diagnostics course. So, that’s more cultural competency. I say currently because right now we’re looking in a new direction.
The other thing that we are starting to see with our students, truly organically, is that we have an unusually high number of really innovative students that are really eager to develop things towards social justice and change in the world, student organizations, lecture series. Some of them want to create nonprofit blogs for outreach, all sorts of things. They’re doing this totally organically. It’s not really part of our curriculum, but innovation and creativity is one of my favorite things, one thing that I find very professionally satisfying. Right now, we’re working on the question: Are there ways that we can build into the curriculum more encouragement for students and more support for students who are innovatively inclined, even to a small degree? The reason that we’re doing that is that certainly all of the sciences and all those things that are going to remain in the program are extremely important. I don’t want to deemphasize that.
Linda Abraham: No, they’re foundational.
Dr. Tan: Yes, absolutely. We do spend an immense amount of time on that. But, I also think that in order to apply those sciences, you have to think about, “Okay, I’m going to create a drug for this particular disease that my patients are suffering with and here’s how I’m going to tackle that,” and the science foundation and all of that is really, really important for these future physicians to be able to do that. But, the ability to be able to look at something and say, “That is a problem and it’s a problem that I can solve,” is a very important quality for, really, anybody professionally, but certainly future physicians. They’re tackling an incredibly changing world. We have to arm them to be able to not just look at those things and say, “It would be great if that would change, but I don’t know how to do that.”
So, the goal is to evolve as the needs of our students are evolving and it looks like we have a lot of students who want to change stuff. We’re looking to further support them.
Linda Abraham: You’re encouraging them, really, to take initiative?
Dr. Alex Tan: Yes, absolutely.
Linda Abraham: What is the application process for these two programs? [13:59]
Dr. Tan: It’s a pretty typical application. If you go to the website, I know we’ll be talking about that later, it’s a pretty classic online application that in many ways mimics the American Medical School Association application, the classic AMCAS application. It has all the components that you would expect. There’s a personal statement essay. There’s a request for a resume or experiences, your medically relevant experiences, references, all those sorts of things.
There is one slight difference for the HSI application. We have two oddity additions. One is there is a second essay. It’s called Different This Time, and we included that because we found in the early iterations, students wanted to write their personal statement about how this time it was going to be different. That’s not what we want in a personal statement, so we wanted to give students an opportunity to set out a plan about what their goals were for the year and how this year was going to be different, how they were going to grow and learn and improve, and separate that from their essentially, Why Medicine, classic personal statement.
Then, the second thing we added, I think this coming year we’re going to make it optional because I don’t want it to be an obstacle for students, but we’ve been playing with a video component to the application. So often, when you sit on admissions committees, you get these paper applications and it makes the students feel very two-dimensional, which is misleading. So, we included the video component. It’s very open-ended for students, just a short video, just so we have a human being that goes with the application, which helps us to think more humanistically and holistically about the person and the application that we’re reviewing.
Linda Abraham: So, you’re planning to make the video component optional? [15:53]
Dr. Tan: Right, we’ve had it as a required part of the application and we have found it to be exceedingly helpful. But, we have gone back and forth about whether there are students that are not applying because they’re intimidated by that and how to tackle that and we’re in discussion about it. One possibility would be to eliminate it as a requirement. Then, if students were intimidated by that, they didn’t have to do it. But, then just to make a compelling case for why it would be a good idea for students to do, so that they feel encouraged, but not required.
Linda Abraham: It’s an increasingly common component in business school admissions and job interviews.
Dr. Tan: Yeah, and they’re great. Students do amazing videos. I haven’t seen one yet that I didn’t just love. They do great stuff. It’s wonderful to watch, but I wouldn’t want anybody to be overly self-conscious.
Related Links:
• The A-Z of Applying to Postbac Programs
• Johns Hopkins Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program
• Johns Hopkins Post-Baccalaureate Health Science Intensive (HSI)
• Johns Hopkins Post-Baccalaureate Premedical Program
• Johns Hopkins Post-Baccalaureate Health Science Intensive (HSI)
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This article was originally posted on blog.accepted.com.• The Unbelievable Story of an Orthopedic Surgeon
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