Pre-Professional Advising

Professor Mary Jane Niles, Committee Chair and Chief Pre-Professional Advisor

Charlene P. Lobo Soriano, Administrative Coordinator

The Pre-Professional Health Committee (PPHC) serves to guide and recommend students to professional health schools, primarily medical and dental schools, but including pharmacy, optometry, veterinary medicine and podiatry. Most professional schools either prefer or require a committee recommendation. While the PPHC is optional, it is in the student's best interest to use the PPHC. A student may complete the pre-medical or other pre-health science requirements as a part of, or in addition to, the requirements of the academic major. The following courses are normally the minimal program requirements. However, it is important that each student study the catalogs of professional health science schools for any variance in requirements.

The science course requirements for medical (including podiatry), dental, pharmacy, and veterinary schools, and almost all allied health programs vary little for the lower division courses:

• General Biology, two semesters, lecture/lab

• General Chemistry, two semesters, lecture/lab
  

• Intro to Physics (non-calculus based), two semesters, lecture/lab

• Organic Chemistry, two semesters, lecture/lab
  

• Biochemistry, 3 units, lecture

Other highly recommended courses include Analytical Chemistry (required for pharmacy schools), and Calculus.

The Pre-Professional Health Committee provides many other services to students, including:

• Comprehensive pre-professional guidance in selecting professional schools, preparing application materials, and securing recommendations to professional schools--in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, optometry, veterinary medicine, or podiatry. USF students have recently been accepted to some of the finest professional schools in the nation, including the University of California, San Francisco; Yale University School of Medicine; Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons; Creighton Medical School; Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York; and the University of Washington School of Medicine. Typically, USF students are accepted to professional schools at rates that exceed the national average.

• Linkage to professionals in various health-related fields. USF has a mentor program involving more than 40 alumni in the Bay area who have gone on to distinguished careers in medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, and other health-related fields. These alumni have agreed to serve as mentors for current USF students; to invite students to visit their offices and clinics, to provide information about their chosen professional fields, to advise students on getting into professional schools, and to share other useful career information. In cooperation with the Health Professions Alumni Society, we also organize evening social/ informational events where current students can talk to USF alumni and other professionals (such as admissions officers) about health-related professions and professional schools.

• Development of a professional career file. Our office maintains a confidential file for every pre-professional health student at USF. Each file contains letters of recommendation from faculty, employers, and supervisors at volunteer and intem sites; an autobiographical statement; information on any awards; a resume; transcripts; test scores; and other materials that our committee draws upon to write letters of recommendation on behalf of our students. We interview each student to get a firmer sense of what the student is like as an individual, knowledge that helps us endorse our students for acceptance to their chosen professional school. 

How to Take Advantage of the PPHC: Forms

• Overview
• Candidate Information Sheet
• Candidate Agreement Form
• Waiver Statement Form
• Letter of Evaluation Request Forms
• Complete Information Packet (includes all .pdf's listed above)