Pre-med or Pre-health Club?

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StudyShy

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Yeah, so I'm going to start a pre-med club at my small college (~5,000 students). I know this is lame, but I think that with my ties to my hospital I can be a great "in" for those in need of shadow and clinical volunteer time.

I need to have at least five signatures of prospective club members in order for a club to be taken to my school's committee for consideration. If I make it a pre-health club and include those going into everything from nursing to pre-vet, I could easily get enough signatures to get a club rolling. As such, it would probably be a pretty large club. Alternatively, if I just make the club specifically for those aspiring to go to medical school, I will have a more difficult time getting signatures and the club might fizzle out due to the limited size.

What would you guys choose? Would you limit the club to just pre-meds or include all pre-health fields?

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Just pre-meds. It's not going to be difficult finding 5 pre-meds to get a signature from, especially on a campus of 5,000+.
 
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I would limit it to pre-meds. The only similarity between the other pre-health fields is the "pre" designation.

I agree with Cole. Providing pre-medical opportunities will be enough for you to focus on, especially for a new organization. And I doubt you'll have trouble generating enough interest.
 
I attend a university that is similar in size and I am the president of our pre-HEALTH club. We actually have over a hundred members, and continuously win awards for our community service. If it were only pre-meds, the club would be significantly smaller and we would be much less active in the community. If you want to start something that will continue on even after you leave, I would say definitely start a pre-health club instead of a pre-med club.

If you have any questions about types of activities you could do, possible community service opportunities, how to line up speakers, etc.... I'd be happy to help as best as I can.

Good Luck. If your successful in starting a club, it will look great on you resume!
 
I would limit it to pre-meds. The only similarity between the other pre-health fields is the "pre" designation.


I would have to disagree. Every pre-professional student needs to have shadowing, volunteering, patient exposure, leadership, and good grades. Honestly, the only real difference between pre-med and pre-pharmacy, pre-dental, pre-PA, etc...is the MCAT.
 
I would have to disagree. Every pre-professional student needs to have shadowing, volunteering, patient exposure, leadership, and good grades. Honestly, the only real difference between pre-med and pre-pharmacy, pre-dental, pre-PA, etc...is the MCAT.

Even though the requirements seem superficially the same, I would argue that each field requires a nuanced set of experiences for each category of requirements. This is why we designate ourselves as "pre-x" rather than simply as "pre-health."

And, perhaps more importantly, combining everything would reduce the number of opportunities for overambitious people to start pointless clubs.
 
I'm a pretty active member if and my roommate is the president of our pre-health society, which is quite large (100-200/weekly meeting) (We switched to pre-health focus this year). People may come in premed, but that's often VERY SUPERFICIAL. Other careers in health care have likely hardly been explored. This is one reason I'm a proponent of pre-health rather than pre-med. Rather than having various specialists come in and go on about interesting things about that specialty, we have talks that are generally geared to at least be somewhat applicable to most - decision-making in health care, mental health issues in health care, etc. These meetings are significantly more interesting and I think more beneficial than the way they were set up tailored to premed.
 
I'm a pretty active member if and my roommate is the president of our pre-health society, which is quite large (100-200/weekly meeting) (We switched to pre-health focus this year). People may come in premed, but that's often VERY SUPERFICIAL. Other careers in health care have likely hardly been explored. This is one reason I'm a proponent of pre-health rather than pre-med. Rather than having various specialists come in and go on about interesting things about that specialty, we have talks that are generally geared to at least be somewhat applicable to most - decision-making in health care, mental health issues in health care, etc. These meetings are significantly more interesting and I think more beneficial than the way they were set up tailored to premed.

This. Also, it's nice to be surrounded by people who aren't necessarily in competition with you but who have something (an interest in health/science) in common with you.
 
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