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Extracurricular Planning Tools

Preparing for a health profession goes beyond completing course prerequisites. Health programs seek applicants with a strong background in service, teamwork, leadership, and the maturity to work with patients in vulnerable situations. This page includes downloadable handouts and links that cover a variety of preparation experiences, including study abroad, internships, clinical experiences, and more. 

Visit the "Gain Experience" webpage for more on experiential preparation and discuss your plans and reflections with your HPA advisor to develop the necessary competencies. 

Pre-Dental Planning Tool

  • This comprehensive excel document allows for course planning, and application bench marking on tab one. Tab twos provides a space to be tracking and reflecting your experiences. Tab three incorporates the GPA calculator for convenience and tab four outlines resources and steps for approaching the DAT. Links are embedded through out to help guide you to applicable resources!

Pre-Medicine Planning Tool

  • This comprehensive excel document allows for course planning, and application bench marking on tab one. Tab twos provides a space to be tracking and reflecting your experiences. Tab three incorporates the GPA calculator for convenience and tab four outlines resources and steps on approaching the MCAT. Links are embedded through out to help guide you to applicable resources!

Importance of Clinical Experiences

  • Explains why clinical experience (one’s exposure to the world of medicine/patients/health professions) is important; offers shadowing and volunteering resources

Summer Opportunities

  • Resource for students seeking summer opportunities throughout their college career.

Study Abroad as a Prehealth Student

  • Resource for students hoping to incorporate a study abroad opportunity within their undergraduate course plan.

Volunteer & Shadowing Hours

  • Resource sharing Volunteer and Shadowing Hours survey data from past MD accepted applicant pools.

AAMC Anatomy of an Applicant

  • Non-HPA resource for self-assessment and tracking the development of competencies valued by all health professions.

Gap/Bridge Year (s)

  • Reference when considering a gap/bridge year, to learn why more than 80 percent of Northwestern students choose to take a gap/bridge year post-graduation.

Job Application Organization

  • Utilize this document when applying for professional position to aid in keeping organized, a central location for application job boards, as well as HPA's tips for the job search process