Prematriculation program helps disadvantaged students

When the fall 2007 semester began this August, one group of first-year medical students had already been attending classes for nearly a month.

They were participating in UofL's Prematriculation Program, an effort to attract more applicants from under-represented or disadvantaged communities and give them the support they need to succeed, said Mary Joshua, associate director of special programs in the School of Medicine.

The program offers supplementary instruction on a variety of challenging first-year subjects, including physiology and biochemistry. Teachers also devote a significant amount of time to study skills, stress management, computing resources, financial planning and clinical activities.

The program was created in 1989 to help boost the number of physicians who practice in underserved areas of the state, explains David Wiegman, Ph.D., associate vice president for health affairs and vice dean for academic affairs at the School of Medicine.

"Our ultimate goal is the health care of the citizens of the state, and we know that there are geographically and ethnically underserved populations in Kentucky," he said. "Data show that the best way to counter that is to train students from those geographic areas or ethnicities, because those students are more likely to go back and provide medical care to those underserved populations after they graduate from medical school."

Wiegman noted, however, that medical schools across America - including UofL's - have difficulty attracting minority and rural students.

"One of the reasons is that early education is not as strong, in general, for people in those populations, and so they don't typically aspire to go to medical school," he said. "And if they do aspire, their credentials - things like college GPAs and medical school entrance exam scores - are often lower.

"But what the Prematriculation Program remarkably has done is that it has enabled these students to be competitive. Many of them might never have attended medical school, but now they can make the jump to the point where they can be successful here."

Without the program, Wiegman said, UofL would have a much smaller number of rural and minority students - and higher failure rates. Conversely, graduates of the Prematriculation Program tend to be very successful in medical school and often go on to become leaders in the medical community.

This year's 17 participants say the program was an excellent experience.

"It was an amazing program - and probably one of the most valuable things I could have done before diving into medical school," said first-year student Rahel Samuel, who was born in Ethiopia.

"It really prepared us for the intensity of the medical school experience by helping us build a very strong foundation for the future."

Jared Bolton agreed.

"I really appreciate the fact that it helped us focus on the study skills necessary to succeed in medical school," said Bolton, a first-year student from rural Kentucky.

"It also gave us an opportunity to get to know each other and develop a network of support. When school started, I felt like we were 10 steps ahead of the other first-year students who didn't participate in the program.

"It was an absolutely wonderful opportunity."