Med students mentor Cornell undergrads aiming for a doctorate
Cornell junior Robyn Anderson faced a major decision: should she take a gap year and travel the world after graduation, or go directly to medical school?
Through the program, Anderson was matched with a mentor, Nick Maston of Weill Cornell's Class of 2016. In a conversation over Skype, Maston helped her assess the pros and cons of taking a gap year. "He reminded me that interviews take place in the fall, and thus it would be very difficult to be abroad during that time," says Anderson, who ultimately decided to forgo a gap year and instead aims to travel during the summer before med school.Luckily, a program linking undergraduates on the Ithaca campus to medical students at Weill Cornell Medicine provided some valuable perspective. Dubbed the Weill-Ithaca Network (WIN), it helps aspiring doctors get first-hand advice from older peers who've already gone through the medical school application process.
Launched in fall 2014, WIN is the brainchild of James Wang '16, who graduated from the Ithaca campus in 2012. He recalls that as an undergraduate, he wrestled with conundrums such as how to get clinical experience or gain insight into doctors' working lives. "I decided to pursue medicine at the end of my sophomore year, but I didn't have any physicians in my family," Wang explains. "I kind of just stumbled through the process and got help where I could."
Part of the challenge, Wang realized, is that Cornell's medical school is located more than 200 miles from its undergraduate campus. After talking with some Weill Cornell classmates who'd attended other undergraduate institutions — and hearing how they'd had much easier access to their respective medical schools, some of which were literally across the street — he decided to try to bridge the distance. Wang and Cornell undergrad Catherine He put together a proposal, garnered funding, and recruited mentors and mentees.
There are currently about two dozen mentors; the number of mentees, who were chosen through an application process that drew 140 hopefuls, is capped at about 70 — a figure dictated by space on the two buses that WIN charters from Ithaca to the city for visits during the school year. Last September, WIN hosted a day trip that included a tour of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, informal chats with faculty members, and meetings with mentors. Later in the semester, the undergrads returned as part of a regional premed conference, where they learned more about financial aid and the application process.
In mid-April, WIN hosted its first event in Ithaca, an hour-long panel discussion featuring five mentors and a student representative from the Weill Cornell Medical College physician assistant program. They talked about the pros and cons of a gap year, how to study for the MCATs, coping with the application and interview processes and what medical students' daily lives are like, among other topics. The event was open to all Cornell undergrads, not just those enrolled in WIN, and about 50 attended. "It was good for students to get different perspectives," says Wendy Aquadro, senior associate director of advising in the Ithaca campus's Office of Undergraduate Biology. "Nobody can provide better information than the people who are in the thick of it."
—Jim Catalano
This story first appeared in Weill Cornell Medicine, Vol. 14, No.2.