Pre-Health Advising

For students interested in pursuing a career in a health care-related field (such as medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, veterinary medicine, etc.), pre-health advising is available. Students receive information on prerequisite coursework, admissions tests, and admissions requirements, standards, and procedures for the health care area of their choice.  Interested students can also sign up to join a pre-health distribution list to receive e-mail notification of programming, scholarships, and other opportunities relevant to pre-health majors. 

Please email asadvise@louisville.edu for more information!

Sign up for the mailing list!

1. First step - Deciding if pre-health is for you:

The UofL Career Development Center (Link) has online assessments (the Cards Career Navigator), or you can make an appointment to meet with a career counselor. These assessments can help you choose your career based on your strengths and interests. They can also connect you to internship, shadowing, and part-time employment opportunities so you can get a sense of what different careers in the healthcare field are like.

Additional websites that you may choose to explore: explorehealthcareers.org

2. Determine which health career you wish to pursue and research graduate options

Once you determine which health career you are interested in you will want to research available profession/graduate school programs with those degrees available. The best way to start is by viewing a listing of accredited programs in the United States.

Health Occupation	Degree	Test for Application	Apply via	Accrediting Agency	More info
Audiology	AuD	GRE	School Application	Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology
Dentistry	DDS/DMD	DAT	ADEA AADSAS	CODA
Medicine	MD	MCAT	AMCAS	AAMC
Medicine	DO	MCAT	AACO MAS	American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine (AACOM)
Occupational Therapy	M. OT or DOT	GRE	School Application	AOTA's Accreditation Council for Occupational Therapy Education
Optometry	OD	OAT	Optom CAS	ASCO
Pharmacy	PharmD	PCAT	PharmCAS	ACPE
Physical Therapy	DPT	GRE	PTCAS	APTA
Physician's Assistant	Master's - PA	GRE	CASPA	Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA)
Podiatry	DPM	MCAT	AACPMAS	American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine (AACPM)
Public Health	Bachelors, Masters, Doctorate	GRE	sophas or School website	Council on Education fro Public Health
Speech Therapy	Masters in SLP	GRE	School Application	Council on Academic Accreditation in Audiology and Speech-Language Pathology
Veterinary Medicine	DVM	GRE	VMCAS	AVMA

3. Graduate School options

In your research on programs of interest, you will want to make note the following:

• Prerequisite coursework required for application as this may vary from school to school
• Required test for admission
• Number of recommendation letters required
• Does the school utilize a common application system or the standard graduate school application from the institution?
• Review student profile for students admitted to the program. What is the averaged GPA of students admitted? How many seats are available?