During this episode, Dr. Leila Amiri who is the University of Illinois College of Medicine’s Assistant Dean of Admissions and Recruitment, not only dissects the UI COM admissions process but also provides a wonderful and experienced perspective on the overall medical school application process.
Welcome to the 423rd episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for joining me today. Before we meet our guest I want to invite you to attend this next med school admissions webinar: How To Create Successful Secondary Applications. It’s a free webinar which I will present on July 8th, 2021. Secondary applications are going to flood your calendar and consciousness in the weeks ahead and maybe even have already started doing so. You have to turn them around quickly and effectively, but how? We’ve got you covered. Register for How To Create Successful Secondary Applications for free.
And now a little information about our guest today. Dr. Leila Amiri joined the University of Illinois College of Medicine team in 2017. As Assistant Dean for Admissions and Recruitment she oversees admissions and recruitment for all three campuses of the College of Medicine. She is a passionate advocate for holistic review and admissions and provides strong support for students striving to achieve their academic and professional goals.
Dr. Amiri has spent her career in higher education, starting as a peer advisor in the biology department. Over this time she has worked with a variety of students at seven different institutions as an advisor, faculty member, administrator, and mentor.
In the medical education arena she has engaged in leadership at the national level serving as a liaison for the committee on admissions for the Association of American Medical Colleges, AKA the AAMC, and as an AAMC holistic review facilitator working with other medical schools admissions committees on how to include holistic review in their process. She is currently serving as the vice chair for the BA/MD Affiliate Group.
Dr. Amiri, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk.
Absolutely, we’re one of the larger medical schools in the country. We admit 300 students every year to three different campuses. We’re very mission driven in that the mission is to advance health for everyone with outstanding education, outreach, healthcare, research, and really with a focus of social justice and social responsibility at the core of what we do.
What I really appreciate about our program is that we are so diverse, not only in the student body and the faculty, but also the programming that we offer. So we’re able to offer, for example, urban focused healthcare programs all the way up to rural medicine focused programs.
I think because we are a multi-campus school I think sometimes students feel that the educational programming may be different on the different campuses. Once we implemented our new curriculum in 2017, we actually have standalone four-year medical programs on each of our sites with live instruction and curriculum that’s delivered simultaneously and assessed simultaneously.
Now, the feel of the curriculum will be a little different, obviously, because they’re in different locations, but the educational experience is very similar. And the other thing that I want to point out is that we don’t have a specific type of student that we’re looking for. Because we are old and because we are big we like to welcome students to join us with whatever passions they have, and the joy for us is to help them achieve their goals.
There is. Our Chicago campus is our oldest and largest campus. We matriculate 180 to Chicago, followed by Peoria with 65 and Rockford with 55.
Those scholarly concentration programs are focused on the different campuses because of resources and faculty members that have those interests. Urban Medicine is restricted to the Chicago campus. Rural Medicine, for example, is a specific program that’s on our Rockford campus. But in comparison to those we have something like our Clinician Executive Medicine program which is for those students who are interested in leadership roles and complex healthcare delivery systems. That’s available to all students on all three sites, because, needless to say, they will serve as leaders wherever they decide to end up with their careers.
The primary is comprehensive, and because it is a general application that needs to be palatable to all medical schools I think it’s a good snapshot of what the student has accomplished until this point: their academic accomplishments, obviously, their test scores, and in the context of that.
The secondary for all schools, including us, is specific to the information that we’re seeking from the student, and because we have the three sites and because we have unique opportunities on the three sites that’s really the tool that we use to help determine fit of the student for the specific campus that they’re interested and how the resources that we offer will fit the goals that they have for themselves.
It’s a matching. Based on what they shared with us in their secondary and all of the other experiences that they bring to the table during the screening process we’ll find a campus that we feel is the best fit for them. Then it goes to the committee on admissions, they agree with that recommendation, or they’ll make a different suggestion. We’ll invite the student to meet with us on the campus (it was virtual this year, but we invite them in times when it’s not virtual).
Then when we offer acceptance to a student we ask them to rank the campuses based on their desired placement. We work with the content of the application as well as what the student is asking for. Obviously, if they’re accepted to one of our extracurricular programs if that has a specific campus assignment they’ll be assigned to that campus.
Not at this time. We adopt holistic admissions, so we look at the grades and we look at the MCAT for two reasons.
The grades tell us how the student will function in our curriculum. How much academic stamina do they have? How much science load can they handle? Will they need additional support as they join us? It’s a similar thing for the MCAT.
Now, the step score is obviously going to be a pass fail type of experience in 2022, but it’s still an indicator for us of how well the student can handle standardized exams, and will they need some extra support from us in terms of learning how to master these standardized tests that don’t go away, right? So there’s the multiple step pieces, and then there’s the re-certification that they have to do. And so, really, those are indicators for us on how well we can support the student that’s joining us.
Absolutely. We have a couple of pipeline programs that are specifically designed for students who perfectly match our mission and we feel that they could benefit from some academic enrichment. So we have a full-year pipeline program, we also have just a summer pipeline program, and embedded in those programs are the tools that they would need in order to manage a complicated medical curriculum.
Then we have what I like to call our army of learning specialists. They are a network of individuals that are in all three of our campuses who work very closely with students. So part of the incoming information is to look at the incoming class and see who may need some additional support and in what areas.
Well, that’s a great question. I don’t have a number that is the threshold below which a student will not receive a secondary, but we are realistic about it as well. So we do want students to come to us with a science GPA that’s around a 3.0 so that we’re at least maintaining a B average.
In our secondary we also ask for the SAT and ACT as part of that academic support that we provide. If they’re performing an MCAT in the lower teens and 20s we’re not going to send out a secondary because what’s missing there maybe isn’t the content knowledge but how to take a test. And because how to take a test is not part of what we do. We do support students in test preparation but how to take a standardized test so that they’re performing at least at the 50th percentile will be important for us.
But it’s not a one on one, right? Because there’s first generation and college considerations, there’s first generation immigrant considerations. So there’s varying things that we will also look at. It’s not AI driven for us. It’s literally opening up each of the 7,500 applications that we got this year.
We did an experiment, well it was an experiment because there were some challenges with the MCAT administration because of the pandemic this past year. So many students were concerned about their ability to take the MCAT and when it would come through so we released secondaries to all students this year.
We did have some applicants that submitted applications to us where really we wouldn’t have released a secondary to them had it been a different year. I feel that applicants have all the data available to them based on the MSAR and what’s out there. The decision is theirs to submit the application or not, and it’s our way to support them with that decision making, because oftentimes they feel, if I could just get in front of the admissions committee, but the screening piece is the part that will allow that or not.
That’s interesting. Up until this year we weren’t certain. We were asking students to take the CASPer and we weren’t really certain how to use it. I have friends that have very specific ways and metrics that they use for the CASPer. The group that graduated this year was the first group that went through our new curriculum since it was implemented in 2017, and we had CASPer scores for them. So there’s fun data that we’re digging into.
What we’ve seen thus far is that there’s a correlation between our students’ professional identity formation and their CASPer scores. Because the curriculum basically asks our students to describe how they see themselves as a physician at each part of the curriculum. Basically, as they’re going through in the beginning there’s uncertainty and there’s anxiety, and as they’re going through the process, as expected, they become more and more confident.
So we saw a great correlation there. Also knowing where their place was in the healthcare field, we saw that. So now we’re digging into the data of how good of team players they are. We have some data from our own students. They evaluate each other in their problem based learning, in their team based learning activities. It’s not complete data because it’s not required. Not everyone fills out all of the surveys all of the time, but based on the data that we have it looks like there might be a correlation there for us as well, that the students with the higher CASPer scores seem to be better team members in their TBL groups.
It gives us those things that we don’t see from the application. Because even if we do have a letter of recommendation from a PI still that’s one snapshot of their understanding of the student. We still don’t know how they are as a peer and because the culture is so important for us, the CASPer is giving us that type of information.
We did make the decision to remain virtual this next year just because we weren’t certain what would happen when the cold season rolls around and if there’s going to be a resurgence or not, so we will be virtual again this next year.
We felt the virtual interview process went well for us. Every year there were students that we were not able to interview, and basically it was because it was financially not possible for them to get the flight to Chicago and cover everything else that goes with coming to a new city. We had no candidates cancel interviews with us this year or decline our offer because they couldn’t visit us.
There was also a sense of community that I was concerned that we wouldn’t have. The night before we had meet and greets with our current students, we had monthly meet and greets with our accepted students and our student ambassadors, and then we had a whole host of events after second look to the point where attendance was declining and we canceled the last few because I feel that the incoming class had had enough of meeting the people and having a sense of the culture. Those are the things that we will carry over to next year.
The only thing that we’re looking forward to being able to do, if we get permission to do that, is maybe have groups of accepted students come on for site visits during the year, whereas this year we opened it up to interviews after second look once Chicago had moved into phase three and number of vaccinations were going up and we were able to open up the buildings to small groups of students.
Our students were telling us that the accepted students had a really great time just coming in, seeing the building, meeting some other people. If we’re able to implement that for this next year I think that’ll be great.
Absolutely. We’ve already decided that, particularly to accommodate those students that I mentioned. We always have students that are on a Fulbright scholarship or out of the country, or they’re doing something with the Peace Corps and they basically get a two week window to come back to the States to do their interviews. Often they’re trying to schedule five or seven interviews in a 10-day window darting around the country. It’s really stressful for them.
We, obviously, will accommodate those types of situations which are unique and really inconvenient for candidates. We also felt that for a second look as well. Even last year before we knew what was going to happen, we had a virtual second look with very little time to plan because we went and shut down on the 16th and the second look was less than a month away, literally three weeks away for us.
Last year we decided whatever happens we’ll have a hybrid model for those who are not able to join us because of work. This year it wasn’t great that we weren’t together, but we had students who were at work and they got permission from their supervisor, for example, for a couple hours, because there were presentations that they really wanted to take advantage of and that were not going to be recorded. They were able to join us even though they were still back in Philadelphia or Houston or wherever they were.
We’ve worked really hard to have a screening model that’s reflective of the mission. The screening rubric that we have really mirrors the mission that we have.
We look for candidates that exhibit excellence in one or more of the areas that are pillars for our mission, and that comes through the experiences section. So they’ve spent a lot of time, for example, with an underserved community, or they’ve spent a lot of time doing research, or they’ve spent a lot of time clinically as one of the pillars that we have where there’s really high levels of service that they’ve done for a particular underserved community addressing structural violence, for example.
Then it goes back to the rest of the application. So now let’s look at your personal statement, now let’s look at your letters of recommendation. And once those things all come together that’s the applicant that we would invite to join us.
I think a lot of students say, “I just want to get in. I don’t care where I go,” and I think they’re selling themselves short. They have to be at a place that’s supportive of who they are as an individual and what they aspire to become. Because if they don’t like the culture or the community or the mission of that place they have no choice but to live with that and learn how to be that because that’s the only way we know how to do business.
It was interesting, in my time when I was a premed advisor they would say, “Well, I’m going to ignore those things. I’ll just do my own thing.” You can’t do that. The only way that you’re going to get through is to do what they’re expecting of you to do. And so, basically, we look for that. I say when the application makes sense, and by making sense it’s basically you’re saying they’re stating something in their personal statement about their motivation. Then I look at the experiences section, it’s supported by where they’ve spent their time and where they’ve spent their efforts, and the letters are supportive of that as well, and that’s a candidate that we’ll invite.
We’re slow in sending out invitations for interviews because this process is a labor of love. It passes through three different checkpoints before an individual is invited to actually interview with us.
It’s hard to say. I’ve been with the institution, as you mentioned earlier, since 2017. And while we’ve recently undergone the first ever strategic planning for the college university that’s over 100 years old, the mission has always been the same. If you look at the history of why the institution was established, it was basically the social responsibility so the mission hasn’t really changed.
It’s been relatively the same since I’ve been here in terms of looking at candidates that are a good fit for our mission and students that would fit well with our community. Our patient population is really important to us, as I believe it is for every medical school that students are applying to, and so we really look for the student that has the humility to understand that it’s a privilege to take care of the individuals that entrust us with that.
That hasn’t changed, and I can’t imagine it ever being any different even 10 years ago, but I can’t speak for 10 years ago.
I think it’s the second one because schools will look at what they want differently. I’ve been doing this side of medical school admissions for 10 years now, and through the four different programs that I’ve been with, the approaches to shadowing have been different.
I was at a school where we did require three shadowing experiences. We wanted two with primary care physicians and one with a specialist. It was very prescribed. All the way to now, where we don’t care if a student has shadowing or not. The challenge with shadowing is that it is not an easily attainable experience because of HIPAA regulations and where students are.
We admit students from very underserved rural colleges, for example, and the local community has to drive many hours, or at least an hour and a half, to get to a physician. So there’s one doctor for 25,000 people. There’s no opportunity for shadowing to happen there, right? And we would lose the opportunity to train a great physician that would go back to that underserved community if we were denying them admission just because they didn’t have shadowing.
What I can say to students is that you can get a sense of what the school is going to be like by looking at these types of things because I feel we have to meet students where they are. What I expect of them is to show me that they understand what being in a clinical environment will be like. That it’s not going to all be as sexy as ER is, it’s not all going to be House. It’s going to be dealing with individuals when they’re sick and most vulnerable and not feeling well and probably not very pleasant and understanding of all of that.
However that understanding comes to the student is fine for us. So if they need to do some shadowing, I mean, it’s great, but we get people with hundreds of hours of shadowing, and their takeaway is always the same thing, which is communication between the physician and patient is important, and everybody knows that.
I would say there isn’t a particular thing that’s the right answer for all schools. I think students will have to look to see what the programs are looking for, but where they can be in an environment where care is being provided, I think, is most important.
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