Interview with Darrel Nabers, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine [Show Summary]

Darrel Nabers, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, is our guest today, and he shares details about the differences between Stritch and other allopathic medical schools in Chicago, how Stritch winnowed their initial applicant pool of 15,000+ to a class of 170, what they are looking for in a successful candidate, and how the admissions process works. Listen in!

Get into Loyola Stritch School of Medicine [Show Notes]

Our guest today is Darrel Nabers, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Darrell earned his bachelors and masters degrees from Whittier College and Golden Gate University respectively. He then held various admissions positions from 2000 to 2005 before joining the University of Chicago’s admission staff, where he served in different roles until 2015. He joined Loyola Chicago Stritch in 2015 as Director of Admissions and became Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment in February 2019.

What is distinctive about the Loyola Stritch approach to medical education? [2:15]

A Jesuit education is pretty rare, and we are the only one in Chicago, though there are five other allopathic schools in Chicago. Having been at another medical school what I think is different is the service orientation, with the program actively promoting service-related events, advocating for DACA students when no one else was admitting them. It becomes clear when you are here that students are positive and compassionate people, and receptive to insights of people from lots of different backgrounds and experiences. They also have global networks from conducting service each year. In terms of relationship with the community, students possess an effective sense of inquiry and love of learning, with students taking that inquisition and looking at society in very different ways with the aim of improving society, assistance, care, and empathy, especially with those on the margins of society.

Bioethics and ministry are also part of the foundation in the coursework. With the global health honors track the coursework is elective based, and you become a member of the bioethics team. With the ministry effort, it is a physician vocation program, an immersive track that is an elective and covers a different set of goals each year of the program, in order to achieve understanding of the Ignatian spiritual dynamism and focus on medicine and medical care.

Last year you received 15,015 applications per AAMC and you whittled it down to 165 students. How did you do it? [9:30]

We made a concerted effort to focus our recruiting on Jesuit undergraduate schools. We also are largely attracting students from out of state, so to find those students we focus on the west coast, southeast, and northeast. The largest number of students come from California. 1 out of every 4 people west of the Mississippi River lives in California, so with population dynamics, age, and the dearth of medical school programs on the west coast, we become an automatic consideration, as the next largest metro area going east is Chicago. We also utilize the MCAT registry as kind of a cold call.