University of Michigan-Flint

UM-Flint students enjoy high-level faculty-to-student interaction from tenure-track professors with comprehensive premedical advising experience, including instructors who have taught at several different medical programs and are as well extensively involved in the major medical facilities in the area. Your access to our experts will position your education unequivocally ahead of medical school admission expectations.

You’ve most likely heard it before: A college education trains you to become a critical thinker. It’s true, but in order to take your critical thinking to the next level—higher-order thinking skills, which are expected by medical schools—you also need to not just analyze information, but synthesize and evaluate it for practical application. Our rigorous programs are specially designed and taught by professors who build such higher-order thinking into their coursework.

Still, one must never forget that medicine is a humanist profession; you have to be fantastic at science and great with people. Students often approach medical school preparation as science, science, and more science. There is a utility to such a rigorous, science-centered approach, of course, but being a physician requires you be a good writer (and have good penmanship!), be a good speaker and an active listener, and understand your patients and the public—all with the highest expectations of professionalism. Accordingly, in order for you to gain insight into people and have cultural awareness, an expansive, liberal education is required.

The general education requirements at UM-Flint will help you broaden your education—but consider adding a minor to help make your application to med school stand out. A minor in Africana studies or cultural anthropology, for example, will stand-out against 100 other applications with science minors. Even a minor in Gerontology would gain notice, and which, in light of our aging society, would be worthwhile for aspiring physicians.

Medical schools are moving beyond the old model of learning by apprenticeship, whereby a student works closely with a physician to gain the teacher’s knowledge in replication. Instead, instructors want to see students apply the scientific method to their own problems—they want evidence-based decisions rooted in process thinking. Science courses at UM-Flint will demand you to use such thinking daily.

Our recommendations are going to be tough to follow—but exceedingly worthwhile. For example, taking two science laboratory courses back to back is purposefully preparatory for when you will have back-to-back labs in medical school. In addition, science courses such as our cadaver lab are not only useful for you to develop your anatomical and physiological knowledge, but also to make some elements (like med school cadaver lab) of your first year of medical school easier.