The Pre-Professional Advisement Center at BYU provides workshops, drop-in appointments and interview preparation for undergraduate students interested in applying to law school, medical school, MBA programs and more.
Located in 3328 WSC, the center’s advisors work with students at all points of their undergraduate career. Whether they be freshmen trying to decide if studying law or medicine is right for them or seniors finalizing their applications, all students are welcome to meet with the center's advisors or attend their seminars, according to the center’s director Kristina Carlston.
“One of the things that we do that we found to be so valuable for our health students is that we really encourage them to attend our two workshops of Pre-Health 101 and Pre-Health 201,” Carlston said, speaking of the resources available to potential pre-med students.
With only four advisors currently on staff, Carlston said students can get answers to most of their questions from attending their seminars. By doing so, students can come prepared with more specific questions when they do meet one-on-one with their advisors.
In addition to Pre-Health 101 and 201, pre-med students can attend workshops designed to develop individual and group interview skills, as well as receive help to write their personal statements.
Medical school applications vary from law school applications, Carlston said. After determining a pre-med student has met the required grades in each prerequisite class, a medical school’s admissions committee looks at the extracurricular aspects of their application.
“Has the student been involved in research? What kind of community service have they been involved in? What extracurriculars have they participated in and what's their patient care and clinical care experience? Those are kind of the four things that (the admissions committee) is going to look at,” Carlston said. The Pre-Professional Advisement Center works with pre-med students to make sure their application answers each of these questions.
Pre-med student Hannah Duarte had met with the center’s advisors when preparing her personal statement.
“You're so much in the weeds of the classwork that sometimes you even forget — in yourself — who you are,” Duarte said. “And so, they’ve been helping me kind of work through, like, 'Who is Hannah? What kind of physician do I want to be?'”
In contrast to medical schools, law schools such as the J. Reuben Clark Law School on the BYU campus don’t require prerequisite classes, but rather admit students based on their GPA and LSAT scores, Carlston said. If a student’s GPA and LSAT scores are low, admissions committees look at the student’s letters of recommendation, personal statements and resume to determine which students to admit.
“If you're in that high GPA, high LSAT bucket, the admissions committee is automatically in a good mood, and they're thinking, ‘Great, we can admit everybody in this bucket and things look good,’ ... But if you're in the low GPA, low LSAT bucket, they're like, ‘Oh, we can only accept 10 out of 150 people in this bucket or whatever. So, who's it going to be?’”
Students who have taken advantage of the center’s resources shared how their meetings with advisors have helped them prepare for post-graduate education.
Annie Crawford, a pre-law student double majoring in international relations and economics, plans on meeting with Carlston once she gets her LSAT scores back.
“She's been really great about helping me work through my personal statement for law school admissions and how I should be studying for the LSAT, and we're gonna meet again once I get my score back,” Crawford said. “I don't know how she does it all, how she manages to help so many students, but she's been incredible, and the pre-professional center has been great.”
The center saw more than 6,000 appointments last year, according to Carlston. Despite the large number of students meeting with advisors, students said a personal connection is still possible.
“The center is very personalized and it becomes very personalized to you, especially as you've met and built relationships with the advisors,” Duarte said.
More information, including handouts, seminar sign-ups, internships, fairs and more, is available to all students at the Pre-Professional Advisement Center’s website.