Going through “the Committee”
Each spring, the Pre-Health Professions Committee helps students formally begin their application process for medical, dental, or podiatric school by using an interview process.
What is the Pre-Health Professions Committee?
The Pre-Health Professions Committee is composed of 6 faculty members and the Director of the Career Center. One role of this committee is to assess junior, senior, or alumni candidates who choose to go through the interview process as they begin their application to medical, dental, or podiatric school. The function of the interview is to provide a comprehensive evaluation of each candidate’s academic record, activities, and interview. In addition, this group engages in strategic planning for the Pre-Health program, runs our clinical internship program, and advises Pre-Health students according to their specialty.
Who should consider going through the Committee interview process?
Only students getting ready to apply to allopathic medical school, osteopathic medical school, dental school or podiatric school should consider going through the interview process with the Pre-Health Professions Committee. Most medical, dental, and podiatric schools prefer this committee letter of evaluation over individual letters of recommendations, as it gives a more well-rounded view of the student’s abilities than individual letters typically do. If you are applying to optometry school, veterinary school, nursing school, occupational therapy school, pharmacy school, etc. you do NOT need to consider the committee process. Most schools (other than medical, dental, and podiatric) use a more traditional approach to evaluation, which is three letters from faculty and health practitioners.
What are the advantages of going through the committee interview process?
What are the advantages of opting out of the Committee interview process?
How do I proceed if I decide to skip the Committee interview process?
What are the prerequisites for students to go through the Committee process?
Several criteria have been developed for going through the committee over the years with the purpose of helping students to be realistic about and achieve their potential to be a well-rounded candidate for medical, dental, or podiatric school.
Students must meet the following criteria to be eligible to go through the committee process:
What information does the Pre-Health Professions Committee use to assess my application?
In order for the committee to evaluate the applicant’s credentials, the committee will collect the following information prior to the interview:
Once we have these materials, your interview time will be set with the Pre-Health Advisor and two other members of the Pre-Health Professions Committee.
What should be included in my autobiographical essay?
This essay should be 3-5 typed pages, double-spaced. Be sure to proofread and check your grammar and spelling! It is helpful to write this before you try to write your one-page personal statement. This essay is intended to acquaint the members of the Pre-Health Professions Committee with you. In many cases you will already know one or more members; however, we often know your academic abilities but do not know what is important to you on a personal level or the formative experiences in your life. Sometimes, the committee can make more helpful suggestions on how to craft your personal statement based on your autobiographical essay.
What should be in my personal statement (eventually sent to AMCAS/AACOMAS/AADSAS)?
Because many admissions committees place considerable significance on this essay, consider and construct your remarks carefully. Use this space to continue, explain, or elaborate on answers given elsewhere in your application. Personal Comments must be accurate and original. It is to be one page, single spaced. Be sure to use a font that can be easily read. Do not refer by name to any school because these references cannot be deleted if you later choose to forward your materials to additional schools. Please proofread carefully. Comments may not be added, deleted, altered, corrected, returned, or substituted in any way after they are submitted to AMCAS/ AACOMAS/AADSAS.
This essay allows you to provide personal information to admission committees, and convey your qualifications, motivations and reasons for wishing to become a doctor or dentist. Tell the admissions committees what makes you a good candidate. Remember the admissions counselors read several hundred of these each year! Write with confidence but don’t be cocky. Use clear language and straight-forward sentence construction. Focus on events or ideas that have meaning to you and are important in your endeavor to become a physician or dentist. If possible, do this through visual images, anecdotes, and descriptions of what you believe. If you can paint a picture or tell a story, these images tend to linger in the readers’ minds after the words have blurred together. Be sure to include college thinking/experiences into this personal statement because essays that focus exclusively on childhood and high school experiences typically lack depth and mature thought. Above all, be honest and sincere. If possible, avoid repeating information found elsewhere on the application (lists of activities, lists of medical experience, etc.).
What should be included in my practice vision essay?
This is a one to two page double spaced essay that the committee uses to see how much thinking you have done about your role in your future profession and how you will balance your work and the other parts of your life. You should address where you see yourself in the next 10-15 years. At this point, you will be a young doctor/dentist trying to establish yourself. Do you see yourself in the inner city, small town USA, big city, country, etc.? What type of practice do you intend for yourself? Are you looking at a large practice, one primarily housed in a hospital, single doctor/dentist practice, etc.? The committee wants to get a feel for how you picture yourself in the profession that you have chosen. You are not committing yourself to this essay for the next 20 years, but we want to see what insights you have into yourself and your career. Again, this esaay can be helpful to the committee in making suggestions about how to present yourself in your personal statement and/or interview.
What should be included in my medically related experience essay?
At this point you should have at least 100 hours of health related experience. In a one to two page double spaced essay, describe your participation in health care or other activities which reinforced your decision to become a physician/dentist. Any major work or volunteer experiences in the health field should be included in this essay in the context of what you learned or how these confirmed your desire to become a physician/dentist. Some of this information may be very relevant to your personal statement and writing this can help you better decide what medically-related experience best fits in your personal statement.
What should be included in my research essay?
If you have done research, briefly describe the whole picture and the role you played in the work in a one to two page double spaced essay. It does not matter to the committee what your research was (as long as it was an independent project) or whether it ties directly to medicine. Explain, in layman’s terms, the research project and your findings to this point. If you have not done any independent research, you may skip this essay.
Who should I ask to write letters of evaluation to the Pre-Health Professions Committee?
You should select 3 to 4 individuals who know you well to provide letters of evaluation on your behalf. You may select Wittenberg faculty, research mentors, athletic coaches, medically/dentally related supervisors, or anyone who knows you well. If there is adequate reason, you may ask that 4 letters be submitted on your behalf (i.e., there may be two Wittenberg professors, one medical/dental supervisor, and one research mentor). Take the time to talk with these individuals and to ask if they can write a favorable evaluation letter for you. The personal approach is much better than their receiving an unexpected letter from the Pre-Health Professions Committee requesting an evaluation. Give them a copy of your resume to acquaint them with your medically related experience, extracurricular activities and leadership positions, etc. We ask that you refrain from asking members of the Committee; members that know you will have ample opportunity to speak on your behalf. Members of the committee change each year (except for the Pre-Health Advisor and Director of the Career Center), and information will be shared with you each year when the committee process begins. There is typically one member from Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, and two other faculty members.
Your three evaluators will fill out the same table that the entire committee does when it prepares letters to the medical school (below). In addition, they answer the following two questions:
If you were in a hospital ten years from now and this student introduced him/herself as your doctor, would you feel confident that you were in good hands?
” Yes ” No
How would you rate this person as an overall candidate for medical/dental school?
” Highly recommend ” Recommend with reservation
” Recommend ” Would not recommend
What happens during the interview?
The interview is a formal, 30 minute time frame during which three members of the committee ask you a series of questions to see how prepared you are to enter medical or dental school. We start each interview with “Tell us about yourself.” We are hoping for concise, thoughtful answers to our questions that relate to your interests in the social and practical issues of medicine. While we do not intend to make the interview particularly stressful, we understand that you are nervous and use this opportunity to see how you handle stress and think on your feet. At the end of the interview, the committee members will shake your hand and wish you well. At this point, we go into a closed session to discuss what happened (both good and bad) during your interview. We want you to do well in the interview process with us, and even better at your first medical/dental school interview!
What happens after the interview process is complete?
When all interviews are complete, the full committee meets to discuss each applicant. After the committee’s discussion of each applicant, you will receive an assessment of your application to that point, and recommendations about what you can do to improve prior to submitting your application to the medical or dental schools in July. This letter is for your use only, and we sincerely hope that it is helpful to you as you prepare for the interviews with the medical or dental schools the following fall. This letter is not used or accessed in any way when the Pre-Health Advisor writes the letters to the medical or dental schools.
During the following summer, an entirely separate letter is written by the Pre-Health Advisor to be sent directly to the medical and dental schools. While being an honest assessment of your potential for medical or dental school, this letter is more general than the letter you received from the committee and is written to accentuate your strengths. You will have an opportunity to send updates on medically related experience and research experience prior to the letter being finalized, so make good use of the summer break!
What does the committee letter sent to the medical and dental schools look like?
The committee letter can be very important to your overall application, and both the Pre-Health Advisor and the Pre-Health Professions Committee take the letter very seriously. It is generally a total of 5-6 pages in length and written by the Pre-Health Professions Advisor. The committee reads and comments on all letters each fall semester before the letters are sent to the medical or dental schools.
The first page is a general cover letter which demonstrates to schools the quality of a Wittenberg education, gives some information about our general education program, and rankings for Ph.D. production, etc. to familiarize medical or dental school admission committee members with Wittenberg.
The second page is a table which is filled in by the three interviewers and tweaked by the Pre-Health Professions Committee as a whole at our final meeting. We send this table (shown below) to your evaluators as well, and use their rankings to guide us:
Evaluation of Candidate for Admission to Health Professions School
XXX, social security number XXX, AAMC ID number XXX, has been a pre-health professions student at Wittenberg University, and is now an applicant for admission to a health professions school. In order that his/her application may be given fair consideration by interested schools, a composite evaluation has been prepared by our Pre-Health Professions Committee.
The evaluation follows:
Excellent Good Fair Poor
Maturity:
Emotional stability - ability to cope with life situations |__________|________|______|_______|
Reliability - sense of responsibility, dependability |__________|________|______|_______|
Poise and self confidence |__________|________|______|_______|
Judgment - common sense, decisiveness, self understanding |_________|________|______|_______|
Intellectual Ability - keenness, independence of thought |__________|________|______|_______|
Communication Skills:
Oral Expression |__________|________|______|_______|
Written Expression |__________|________|______|_______|
Scientific Aptitude:
Class work - ability to analyze problems |__________|________|______|_______|
Laboratory work - technique, sense of what is important |__________|________|______|_______|
Initiative - perseverance, energy, independent |__________|________|______|_______|
Interpersonal Relationships:
Ability to get along with others |__________|________|______|_______|
Extracurricular activities - leadership |__________|________|______|_______|
Empathy - concern for the needs of others |__________|________|______|_______|
Commitment to chosen profession:
Health related experience |__________|________|______|_______|
Understanding of medical issues (ethics, managed care) |__________|________|______|_______|
Research experience (when chosen) |__________|________|______|_______|
Ability for the study of chosen profession:
Has acquired study habits, techniques and maturity
for success in health professions school |__________|________|______|_______|
The overall evaluation of this applicant for health profession school is:
Outstanding Excellent Good Fair Poor
Candidate Evaluation |__________________________________________________________|
Overall distribution for the Class of 20XX __1__ __12__ __3__ __0__ __0__
Overall distribution for the previous 5 classes __8__ __43__ _19__ __0__ __0__
What process is used to determine my rating on each scale on the first page of the actual committee letter?
Most of the rankings are based on the impressions of the members of your particular interview team and may be tweaked by the committee as a whole. The committee uses all of the materials that you submitted (essays, transcript, evaluation letters, etc.), their impressions from your interview, and any personal history that committee members have had with you inside or outside the classroom to place you on each scale.
Two scales, however, have numerical descriptions attached, and have been subdivided by the Committee to assure fairness between interview teams. These are the class work and health related experience scales.
Class work: guidelines used by the committee are based on your cumulative GPA. Remember that the floor for going through the committee process is a cumulative GPA of 2.8.
| Scale | Cumulative GPA |
Off the scale |
4.0 |
High excellent |
3.7-3.9 |
Middle excellent |
3.5-3.6 |
Low excellent |
3.3-3.4 |
High Good |
3.1-3.2 |
Middle good |
2.9-3.0 |
Low good |
2.8 |
Health related experience: guidelines used by the committee are based on your total number of hours in a health related setting. Remember that the floor for going through the committee process is a total of 100 hours in a medically related setting. We do leave room in our minds for the quality of the experience as well, based on your essays and expression of your experience during the interview.
| Scale | Number of Hours |
Off the scale |
>1000 |
High excellent |
500-999 |
Middle excellent |
201-499 |
Low excellent |
151-200 |
Borderline |
126-150 |
High Good |
116-125 |
Middle good |
100-115 |
The rest of the committee letter falls under four general headings and is generally 3-4 pages in length:
The evaluations that you had submitted from your three or four reviewers are quoted extensively in the committee letter if the evaluator agreed to have his/her comments passed on to the professional schools. In addition, text is written by the Pre-Health Professions Advisor about the actual interview, written materials that you submitted, and our overall impression gathered over the last three or four years.
The last page of the committee letter is the waiver that you signed at the beginning of the process, which discloses to the schools whether or not you waived your right to review the committee letter. In general, most students sign the waiver for the evaluators and the committee letter. This demonstrates to the evaluator, committee and professional schools that you trust the people writing on your behalf and have no concerns about the contents of the letters. If you choose to not waive your rights, it can lead people to believe that you have some areas of concern.
GOOD LUCK IN YOUR APPLICATION PROCESS, and please don’t hesitate to contact members of the Pre-Health Professions Committee if we can be of assistance to you. We want you to do well!