Mission Fit for your School List Q&A - April 13, 2025 at 9:00 PM Eastern

[WildWing]

Join SDN and Emil Chuck, PhD as we discuss assessing your mission fit with health professional programs. Learn how to determine which schools have a mission that resonates with your personal values and goals as a future healthcare professional.

Post your questions for this livestream below!

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[Mr.Smile12]

Here are a few articles that serve as background to this session:

How To Choose Which Medical Schools To Apply To - SDN

The Student Doctor Network provides free tools, resources, and advising services to help students become health professionals.

www.studentdoctor.net

Choosing a Medical School As A URM Student - SDN

The Student Doctor Network provides free tools, resources, and advising services to help students become health professionals.

www.studentdoctor.net

Mission Fit: Key to Your Success - SDN

The Student Doctor Network provides free tools, resources, and advising services to help students become health professionals.

www.studentdoctor.net

Finding Your Purpose as a Health Professional - SDN

The Student Doctor Network provides free tools, resources, and advising services to help students become health professionals.

www.studentdoctor.net

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Bumping. If you have questions for the Livestream, post them below!

 

[polymerization]

Hey, I'll bite if no one else will, even if a little self-serving. Thanks for hosting.

How do I know that a school is truly mission-aligned? Everyone has a bright and forward-facing humanistic mission statement, but recent events have shown us no school is safe from the administration. Cornell and Northwestern are the most recent victims, but we've been hearing about Columbia for weeks now. I've been seeing a lot of posts from professors at Brown Alpert over the school's refusal to protect a professor from deportation, despite legal status. These are not small things...if it can happen at the ivory tower, it can happen at Podunk Med. The reality is that this year is likely the most salient in 20 years when it comes to inclusion in admissions—why would anyone believe mission statements at all if they are contingent on who's asking...and what does that mean in terms of strategy for students applying this year?

If mission alignment is no longer reliable at the level of formal statements or even historical reputation, then what artifacts or signals do matter? What should we be looking for in student governance, faculty culture, or institutional resilience that actually suggests commitment to equity will survive institutional pressure?

 

[WildWing]

Thanks to everyone who attended! Here's the articles that were mentioned during the livestream:

1. DVM-PhD - Pursuing a Combined DVM/PhD Program: A Path to Research in Veterinary Medicine - SDN
2. DDS-PhD - Bridging the Gap Between the Bench and Chairside: The DDS/PhD Pathway - SDN
3. Rural Health - Application Advice for Future Rural Health Professionals - SDN
4. Beyond MSAR for Building a School List - Beyond MSAR: Additional Resources for Building Your School List - SDN

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Addendum to our discussion on mission fit (see recording).

I'm reading through the discussion about admit.org's newest rating system based on match results. I encourage you to read the thread beginning with @Mr. Macrophage 's comments.

Post in: 'Updated Post II Acceptance Rates 2023'

Sunday at 5:53 PM

In my opinion, there should be a penalty in the match list component for schools where an abnormally large number of students take over 4 years. Stanford (only about a third of students graduate in 4 years), Penn (over half of students take at least one extra year), and Yale (nearly half of students take an extra year) come to mind. That definitely skews their match data.

• Mr. Macrophage

• 
• 

Taking it to this discussion on mission fit: research-focused programs likely have mechanisms for students to take an extra year to do research, so it's up to the applicant to find out which schools do this, and how many schools have a large number of students who take advantage.

Sometimes this information is posted on the program's website, but you should still check if that is an understood part of the student experience or expectations (to do the research year).

 

[hommefatale]

this is very helpful! i feel like i'm so focused on whether a school will accept me or not that i also need to consider if the school is a good fit for my interests/background