Students interested in pursuing a health profession are encouraged to enroll in the Health Professions Advising Office.
The Honors College experience does much to develop students pursuing a career in medicine. Our smaller classes in the sciences give you skilled professors whose pedagogy helps you master the material, and who will get to know you well enough to write detailed letters of recommendation. Also, you’ll be with a company of classmates who all share your academic determination and focus.
The Community Action Challenge provides a structure to gain the exposure to medicine that medical schools want to see. In addition, fulfilling CAC, even in a way that is not related to medicine, shows medical schools your compassion for others.
Our thesis requirement (whatever the field) gives you a level playing field when you compete for placement with talented students who attended universities that require a thesis and demonstrates superb evidence that you can wrestle with a complex problem and figure out where to begin, learn how to frame the appropriate questions and methodologies, clearly communicate your process and findings, and stick to a task despite its challenges.
For many years, the SMBHC has worked with the University of Mississippi Medical Center to provide opportunities for our students. For example, the SMBHC and UMMC partner to offer rising junior and senior honors students the chance to participate in a Clinical Shadowing Program.
We also want to publicize many other opportunities that can help students determine if medicine is the career for them and to help develop students to be strong candidates for medical school.
Mississippi Rural Physicians Scholarship Program—the MRPSP identifies rural college students who aspire to return to their roots to practice medicine. Through academic enrichment, faculty and physician mentoring, plus solid medical school financial support, the MRPSP can help develop the next generation of rural physicians. For more information visit their website.
Physician Shadowing Program—the North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo offers two Physician Shadowing Program sessions each summer. Students spend three weeks with physicians in areas including: emergency medicine, family practice, radiology, surgery, and cardiology. Rising college juniors and seniors are eligible to apply. The application deadline is usually in mid-April. For more information, visit the NMHS Youth Programs website.
Mississippi Rural Dentists Program–Similarly to the Mississippi Rural Physicians Program, the MS Rural Dentists Program identifies and supports students who plan to practice dentistry in a rural area of the state. For more information, click here.