CMED now accepting online applications for inaugural class
Applications for Central Michigan University’s College of Medicine inaugural class are being accepted online as of Wednesday.
CMED will open its doors in 2013, with a first class of 60 students. According to the eligibility criteria found on CMED’s website, all students must apply through the American Medical College Application Service, complete and submit their Medical College Admissions Test scores.
Students need to have obtained their undergraduate degree with an overall GPA of 3.25 or above, have completed both biology and organic chemistry, include three letters of recommendation and have at least 200 hours of documented community service in a health or medical related field.
“Students will submit all materials electronically through AMCAS, which allows them to select the colleges they are interested in,” said CMED Dean Ernest Yoder. “AMCAS will make those applications available to CMU sometime in late July or early August. We will then explore the applications to identify students who meet our standards.”
Applications will be reviewed by an admissions committee of about 20 people. The committee will consist of faculty, staff, members of the Mount Pleasant community, physicians from the community and, once CMED is up and running, medical students who have been trained in both the interviewing and application process.
Once applicants pass the initial review, they will be invited to campus for an interviewing process. A subgroup of the admissions committee will interview each candidate and make recommendations for admittance.
“The team that performs the interviews will create a report, and at least one representative of the interviewing team will present each report to the admissions committee,” Yoder said.
Students will be accepted on a rolling basis, and can expect the entire acceptance process to take a number of months.
“We’ll begin to review applications in early August. Students will be invited to campus to interview as early as September, and that process will continue until around February, and maybe even into March,” Yoder said. “As we process applications and students meet criteria, we’ll offer students spots.”
Yoder said it is unrealistic to estimate the number of applications CMED expects to receive, but the William Beaumont School of Medicine at Oakland University is comparable in size and received about 3,000 applications last year.
Every application will be reviewed in order to ensure the best students will attend CMED, he said.
“We’re looking for people that we want to take care of us and our families in the future, individuals who have not only excellent academic qualifications, but people who are ethical and altruistic, have strong personal skills, understand logic and reasoning and demonstrate good communication skills,” he said. “Ultimately, the kind of people we’d all like to have as friends and colleagues.”
