How to Get Accepted to the Perelman School of Medicine [Show Summary]

Dr. Neha Vapiwala, Dean of Admissions for Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the first medical school in the United States, explores the values the school instills in its community while reflecting on the new wave of interest in medical careers that has developed over the course of the past two years. 

Interview with Dr. Neha Vapiwala, Dean of Admissions at PSOM [Show Notes]

Welcome to the 455th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in. Are you ready to apply to your dream medical schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted's Med School Admissions Calculator can give you a quick reality check. Just go to accepted.com/medquiz, complete your quiz, and you will not only get an assessment, but also tips on how to improve your chances of acceptance. Plus, it's all free. 

Professor and Vice Chair of Education in the Department of Radiation Oncology at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Neha Vapiwala is also the Dean of Admissions at Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine. She earned her Bachelor's in biology and Hispanic studies from Johns Hopkins and her MD from the University of Pennsylvania.Dr. Vapiwala, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk.

Could you start by giving an overview of the Perelman School of Medicine's curriculum? [2:00]

Absolutely. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak to listeners today about our idea of medical school education here at the Perelman School of Medicine. We think of it as learning for life, so really establishing the foundation of medical education, but recognizing it goes and extends well beyond our students' time with us and working to establish the best practices and the foundation for a lifetime of learning, which I think all of us in the healthcare field understand. It's a very humbling and constant reminder of how much there is yet to know.

We start in the summer of the first year of medical school with the core principles, what we refer to as Module One. It's all of the basic sciences. This is a pass/fail block. The idea is really for all of our learners, all of our students who may or may not have been science majors in undergraduate, who may or may not have done a post-baccalaureate year, it's bringing everyone onto that same page as far as our basic sciences.

After that first six-month period, we launch into Module Two, which is a full calendar year. It runs from January of the first year into December of the second year and teaches what's called Integrative Systems and Disease. It's taking all of those foundational basic science elements, and it's saying, "Okay, how does this apply to the human body? How do we think about the cardiovascular system, the pulmonary system, renal, and so on and so forth?" It goes through all of these disease site, organ-based modules with this idea that you're learning about the normal function of the human body, the physiology, and then learning to identify the pathology, both in terms of what you see under the microscope and what you see in the human patient, in front of you in the exam room, and really integrating all of it so that the learning in the classroom i...