Core Competencies and Areas of Focus

We expect students to work closely with our HP advising team, their academic advisors, and Gateway advisors in the Gateway Career Center in requiring the requisite coursework and experiences to prepare them for matriculation into a health professional graduate school. However, it is critical that students are able to honestly and realistically self-assess the strengths and weaknesses of their application portfolio.

Areas to focus upon include but are not limited to:

• academic preparation
• health-related experiences
• research experiences
• community service and volunteer work
• admissions tests/entrance exams
• letters of recommendation
• the actual health professional school application essay and interview

In addition to the above, health professions schools are looking for students with:

• an evident commitment and passion for a health professions career
• preprofessional competencies as endorsed by the Committee on Admissions of the American Association of Medical Colleges:
  • Interpersonal skills (service orientation, leadership, teamwork, social skills, oral communication skills)
  • Intrapersonal skills (integrity and ethics, reliability and dependability, resilience and adaptability, capacity for improvement)
  • Thinking and Reasoning competencies (critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, scientific inquiry, written communication)
  • Science competencies (Living Systems, Human Behavior)

Students are also strongly encouraged to become familiar with the Anatomy of An Applicant: Competence Resources and Self-assessment Guide. This is a great resource that was developed by the AAMC to help medical school applicants gauge their performance in each of the focus area mentioned above.