Summary: This course is aimed at helping pre-health students gain a greater understanding of the basics of selecting target schools.
What’s the best strategy for creating the list of health professions schools to apply to? What should you take into account? How do you improve your chances of success?
In this course, we will be providing the foundational content that allows students to understand why careful school selection is key to success during the application process. Students will first identify what matters to them, and then practice identifying what individual schools want. Since it is impossible to cover every health professions school that exists, we will be using example schools for students to witness, practice with a team, and practice individually to explore these points.
Students will have time inside and outside of class to implement what they learn and begin to build their target school list. Nevertheless, it is not expected that students will complete their list of target schools, although it is possible. Instead, we will be focused on building skills that students can continue to effectively utilize before finalizing their school list.
Format: Onsite, Homewood campus
Eligibility: Current JHU students (including undergrads, graduate students, and post-bac students) across the University. All participating students must submit an application to the course by the stated deadline.
Access: This course begins ran February 28, 2024 and ends April 10, 2024 (opt. office hours 4/17).
Credit: This course is not for academic credit and will not appear on transcripts.
Spring 2024 Content Topics
- “Foundations of Application Strategy” – To understand to successfully create a target list of schools, it is important to understand the underpinning principles of how admissions committees assess applicants. Specifically, we focus on ‘mission-driven admissions,’ an important concept to understand to be a successful applicant.
- “How Do You Know How to Select Your Target Schools?” – First and foremost, school selection should be a subjective process based on your specific needs. How then should students go about determining how to create their school selection priorities?
- Knowing the ‘Personality’ of a School Based on Available Resources – To know whether you fit with a school, it is important to understand what individual schools care about. How can you determine this based on information available online? In class, we will demonstrate how to do this as well as leading several group and individual exercises to help you practice this skill.
- Understand Factors that Impact Competitiveness – While it is important to focus on target schools whose goals align with your own, creating a successful target list must also keep your relative competitiveness in mind. In class, we will be drawing your attention to factors to keep in mind when finalizing your target schools list.
- Optional Office Hours – This office hour opportunity allowed you to chat with faculty and ask additional questions on this topic as well as get additional guidance on how to tackle the challenges you’re facing with your list.
Cost: The course is free for eligible Hopkins students.
Learning Objectives:
Students will be able to:
- Understand how individual schools select competitive candidates based on specific criteria including but not limited to mission-driven admissions.
- Understand the importance of considering fit when selecting target schools.
- Be able to identify factors personally important for them as applicants that can be used for more thoughtful and successful target school selection.
- Be able to use a school’s mission/goals/values to predict qualities of interest in assessing applicants.
- Be able to reliably identify the primary focus of a health professions school based on their information session, website, mission statement, or other resources.
- Be able to list factors to consider when assessing the riskiness of their target list.