Lewis Associates e-Newsletter
Volume 1 Issue 1
November, 2001=> Welcome to Success Stories Newsletter!
=> Important News and Useful Links
=> Dates and Reminders
=> Important People and Schools
=> Success Story of the Month
=> Question of the Month
=> Focus on a Health Profession
=> Our Services
=> Contact
Welcome to Lewis Associates!
Dr. Cynthia Lewis has been advising Pre-health students with an overall acceptance rate of 85% since 1985. Lewis Associates was launched in 1998 to provide long-term personalized advising services to students across North America, specializing in Medicine, Osteopathic Medicine, Dentistry, Physician Assistant and Veterinary Medicine. Our success is real. You may be like our Advisees–highly motivated and intelligent, but needing focus, guidance and specific technical expertise. Dr. Lewis is a trained biologist, having taught and directed her own research programs for many years at two universities. She received two postdoctoral fellowships (one at NIH) and received the 1990 NACADA Outstanding Institutional Advising Program in the U.S. She teaches Professionalism, Leadership and Quality and sets high standards for her Advisees.
n e w s a n d l i n k s
N E W S :
"Top 10 Medical Schools"
Each year U.S. News and World Report provides an Allopathic medical school ranking embedded into a larger special section about graduate and professional programs and trends for these careers and their educational pathways. This year, the rankings include the "top 50" schools for both primary care and research. And there is a "Top 10" for each of the categories: Women’s health, Rural Medicine, Family Medicine, AIDS, Drug-Alcohol abuse, Geriatrics, Internal Medicine and Pediatrics. I advise you carefully read the Methodology section! I always caution my Advisees to define for themselves the most important criteria that they want from their medical education. Just because a school ranks in the "Top 10" this year, doesn’t mean it is a good match for you!
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/edu/beyond/gradrank/mdp/gdmdpt1.htm
L I N K S :
AAMC STAT Useful Link of the Month
This is the Association of American Medical Colleges’ weekly electronic newsletter, emailed free to subscribers over the Internet. "AAMC STAT" offers brief and immediate summaries of the latest news from around the country important to the academic medicine community, plus information about new AAMC activities, initiatives, policy statements, publications, data releases, etc.
http://www.aamc.org/newsroom/aamcstat/aamcnews.htm
d a t e s
D E A D L I N E S:
Applicants - you should be aware of the timeline for application (link to my timeline doc). The word, "deadline" should NOT be in your vocabulary! Make certain that your college transcripts plus primary AMCAS, AACOMAS, AADSAS, VMCAS, or CASPA application is filed in a timely fashion with transcripts and submit all secondary materials, including your letters of evaluation within about two weeks of their request.
C O N F E R E N C E S:
(HCOP) CUHRE Eleventh Annual Alumni Conference: "Communication in Medicine", February 9th, 2002, 9 a.m.- 5 p.m. at Casa Real, Aztec Center, San Diego State University. Register with Chris Scott, Chair sdsupro@netscapet.net Cost: $20 non-CUHRE member. First 100 students will be registered. Keynote Speaker: Dr. Ted Ganiats is professor and vice-chair of the department of family and preventive medicine at the UCSD School of Medicine. He is also the Executive Director of the UCSD Health Outcomes Assessment Program. Dr. Ganiats did his undergraduate work at UC Davis and all of his medical training at UC San Diego. In the past he has been the Chief of the UCSD Division of Family Medicine and he has chaired the Commission on Clinical Policies and Research for the American Academy of Family Physicians. He was participated on over 20 national clinical practice guidelines and has over
100 publications. His main research interests are in quality of life measurement and cost-effectiveness.
p e o p l e & s c h o o l s
S T . G E O R G E ' S University Medical School Report:
I visited St. George’s University medical School in Grenada in late September 2001. Over the 16 years I have been advising Pre-health students, I have visited this campus several times, beginning in 1991. The campus, faculty and student body have grown tremendously during these years. St. George’s takes two entering classes per year- in August and January of about 285 students in medicine and 64 students in veterinary medicine. Drs. Joseph Allen (Chief resident in Family Medicine in New Jersey) and Erik Lacy (second year Emergency Medicine Resident in Michigan) are representative of the achievements our St. George’s alumni. Dr. Allen is planning to share a medical practice post-residency in his home neighborhood in San Diego.
I have long held that St. George’s University is an "American quality" school. It just happens to be in the Caribbean.
Dr. C.V. Rao, Ph.D., Dean of Student Affairs, discussed strengths of the medical program with the advisors:
1. St. George’s is primarily a teaching institution. They hire faculty who enjoy teaching and do it as a complete commitment. they have about 110 fulltime teaching faculty in the medical school who are augmented by up to 150 visiting faculty each semester. Visiting faculty are experts in their specific teaching areas. At St. George’s, students are saturated with great teachers. Anatomy, alone, boasts eight fulltime teaching faculty.
2. Facilities at St. Georges are top notch. There are state-of-the-art laboratories with gigantic screens to teach histology, for example, and low student to cadaver (6 to 1) ratios is the rule. One of the newest buildings is Pathology-Microbiology.
3. They have more flexibility for program development and shifting than do most medical schools in the U.S. Thus, if the faculty or administration see a need or a problem, they can address it quickly.
4. Their USMLE Board I first-time taking pass rate was 93% in 2000 (308/317) and has been near this level for the past three years.
5. Their graduates enter competitive residency programs and do well, including specialties like surgery and emergency medicine (http://www.sgu.edu/ go to search for USMLE).
s u c c e s s s t o r y
S U E W I E P E R T - Doctor-to-be Class of 2001:
Sue has been a practicing pediatric Physical Therapist for about 8 years. Her "magic acceptance phone call" came in mid-August 2001, taking her off the waitlist.
In a recent email she says, "Hi Dr. Lewis. I just finished my first week at medical school. I don’t think I have ever been quite as busy as I have this week, although I know it will only get worse! We had an extensive orientation the first four days, and social events every night. It was busy, but just wonderful! My class is generally young with an average age of 23, but there are a few of us that are in our 30’s. Everyone is very friendly, and very supportive of each other. Lunch was provided for us everyday this week - I no longer like pizza as much as I did, but it was nice of them to have something for us. There are two other physical therapists in the class. Everyone keeps telling us that they are going to be in our group for anatomy lab, as they know that we have already worked on cadavers. My first class, which started Thursday, is on evidence-based medicine. It is taught by the department of epidemiology, and will be finished next week. The new curriculum is interesting, and broken into system-based modules. This first module only involves principles of research design, and our other coursework will not begin until the week after next. I do not have formal classes in the afternoons from Tuesday to Friday, and Monday afternoons involve going to a clinic to shadow a physician. We tell the school what population we would like to see first, as well as the location. I am thinking of a placement in a rural or suburban pediatric clinic for my first preceptorship. Everyone has been very accommodating to the first year students, and I can’t tell you how many times we have heard "we are here to help you". The second year students have been wonderfully supportive, and have even started a beeper service for the first years. If we have questions or difficulties, there is always a second year student available via beeper. The first day, I found myself staring at the poster that welcomed the first year medical students. I still can’t believe that I am now here. I am so ecstatic about this! I truly believe that this would not have been possible without your guidance, Dr. Lewis. Please let me know if I can be of any help to you, as I imagine that many prospective students contact you just as I did two years ago. I will keep you posted from this end, and please keep me posted on how you are, as well".
Sue is typical of our Advisees: committed, motivated, intelligent. She is part of our Lewis Associates Family and a true Success Story. If you would like to ask Sue a question, please email us at drlewis@lewisassoc.com and we will forward it to her.
q u e s t i o n o f t h e m o n t h
If you are submitting secondary (supplemental) applications or preparing for interviews, that ever-present question looms, "Why do you want to be a doctor? (you can insert physician assistant, dentist or veterinarian in there as well). Someone, somewhere will ask and you need to be ready with an answer. If you say you want to help people, the devil’s advocate might say, "Why not become a social worker, teacher, physical therapist?" You need to articulate the difference between the type of "help" you think you will provide in medicine as opposed to many other helping professions. You will be challenged to be honest and to relate your experiences to your career objective. For example, "What have you done to make anyone believe you understand what this career is about?" Generally, if you have a long-term demonstrated record of involvement with medically-related and other experiences helping people, your motivation becomes easy to describe. So, what is the answer? It usually becomes very personal–--description of a personal health incident or family member in the profession, or how you see problem-solving in this challenging arena, or life-long learning, or meeting the needs of a specific community or meeting needs in a specific setting or by a specific discipline. The more you have done, and the more "self-knowledge" you have, the easier it becomes to answer this question.
We will feature an important question each month. Please submit one that interests you for Dr. Lewis to answer. Send email to drlewis@lewisassoc.com and label your subject as "Question of the Month". I prefer the separate address idea.
h e a l t h p r o f e s s i o n
D E N T I S T R Y:
"Preparing for the DAT" should be termed more correctly "Practicing for the DAT". After a summer of taking a full length DAT every week for eight weeks, I was prepared and comfortable for my real DAT exam. Obtaining the three full-length computer exams from scholareware.com was a good strategy for me. The format of these tests and their level of difficulty greatly aided my confidence level during the real DAT. In addition to that resource, the Kaplan DAT test prep program was a major plus (link to Kaplan is here). The center provided me with many practice tests, although not all were on the computer. Nonetheless, Kaplan study guides and lessons helped me review general chemistry in depth, a subject that I had not touched in over a year. I highly recommend the scholarware.com tests, and if one has the funds, I would recommend the Kaplan program or at least the Kaplan DAT prep book.
-Binita Patel, Pre-dental Student and Lewis Associates Advisee
lewis associates advising services
Lewis Associates specializes in personal, effective and professional
premedical advising and placement for traditional and non-traditional
applicants. Often, non-traditional students are older than 21 years
of age, career changers, international applicants or second-round applicants
for admission to health professions school.
Lewis Associates' services meet the needs of all types of students from
pre-applicants to applicants, including hourly advising support for
specific needs. Click
here.
contact
"It's never too late to be who you might have been."
If this is how YOU feel, then, maybe Lewis Associates is the place
for you. Lewis Associates provides Mentoring and Coaching through
the rigorous and often circuitous pre-health preparation and application
process. Other consultants may support programs like Law and Business
or graduate school -- not Lewis Associates. We are the experts in
Health Professions based on 23 years of a successful
track record.
Call or email today to set your first appointment!
805.226.9669 imaclewis@lewisassoc.com
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