University administrators have approved a new three-campus program that offers high-achieving undergraduates at the University of Colorado the early assurance of admission to the CU School of Medicine in Denver.
The University of Colorado Medical Scholars Program is expected to be implemented after the Spring 2006 semester, when administrators will admit five or six sophomores who have taken between 45 and 60 credit hours as undergraduates, said program Director Anne Bekoff. Final admission to the CU medical school is contingent on continued academic and extracurricular achievement, said Bekoff. Bekoff also is associate faculty director for the Pre-Professional Advising Program on the Boulder campus and a professor in the integrative physiology department at CU-Boulder.
The purpose of the program is to encourage participating students to continue high academic achievement in their final years of college and to decrease the cost in time and money invested in the medical school application process, Bekoff said. Some parts of the normal application process to the CU medical school will be waived for students in the Medical Scholars Program, she said.
Administrators also think the program will allow them to increase successful recruiting of outstanding students from each of the three campuses to the CU medical school, said Bekoff.
"We believe this program will enhance the already strong relationship between the University of Colorado undergraduate campuses and the School of Medicine," she said. Because of the size of the undergraduate population at CU-Boulder, most of those admitted to the Medical Scholars Program in the early years of the program are expected to come from the flagship campus, she said.
The new program is one of several offered on the CU-Boulder campus for premed students, said Bekoff. The Pre-Professional Advising Office in CU-Boulder's Academic Advising Center provides services and resources to all CU-Boulder students as well as alums, she said.
A summary of resources provided by the Academic Advising Center to students who are pursuing health and medical careers can be accessed on the CU-Boulder Web site at: