Make pre-medical FIGs accessible to students across colleges

Ellie Monday, Columnist
April 18, 2023

My choice to enroll at UT came with the expectation I would be given the best pre-medical opportunities in the state. To my disappointment, I quickly realized I was at a disadvantage compared to my peers. I lacked one critical characteristic: being a traditional STEM major.

I always knew I wanted to incorporate liberal arts into my undergraduate career. When I was admitted as a health and society and Plan II Honors major in COLA, it was a dream come true. But I was unaware UT catered so heavily towards pre-medical students in CNS instead.

Pre-medical first-year interest groups (FIGs) should be equally accessible to students from all colleges.

Although it is understandable that most pre-medical students belong to CNS, a new reality has emerged. Pre-medical students increasingly hail from humanities backgrounds – a testament to medical schools’ focus on holistic applications.

While COLA does offer a “Pre-Health Professions” FIG, its reserved courses do not fulfill the expected medical school prerequisites. Pre-medical students are expected to take an introductory biology and chemistry course their first semester. However, only CNS FIGs reserve both of these classes for their students. This procedure affects students outside of COLA and CNS because a universal pre-health FIG is nonexistent.

Even though her first love is medicine, sophomore Paulina Martinez chose to major in linguistics – another passion of hers. Martinez wanted to explore this interest while she had the opportunity since medical schools are non-major specific.

“Medical schools want us to stand out,” Martinez said. “They want us to be outside of the box, but the universities who are supposed to provide us resources to prepare us for applying to medical school and any post-grad programs, don’t really provide much support for us if we are outside of the box.”

UT offers FIGs through each college, meaning these individual groups are restricted to the students of that college. While this type of arrangement makes sense for most majors, the pre-medical pathway should not be limited to CNS students.

The pre-medical pathway is strict in that certain classes are required for medical school. Additionally, the benefits of pre-medical FIGs include reserved spots in pre-medical courses and new networking opportunities.

According to the Director of First Year Experience, Jeffrey Mayo, UT used to offer FIGs that were open across colleges called interdisciplinary FIGs.

“There was enough interest across colleges to have something like that,” Mayo said. “If all the interest, for instance, came from within a certain college we probably would just work with that college to offer a stake through that unit.”

Being on the pre-medical pathway doesn’t equate to being a CNS student, and UT has a responsibility to serve the entire pre-medical community.

The FIG program benefits incoming freshmen tremendously through its small community and advising opportunities. However, for broader career pathways like pre-medical, FIGs should expand beyond specific colleges to address career prerequisites over degree requirements.

Since UT routes its pre-health pathway through CNS, nontraditional pre-medical students may fall behind. CNS’ minority interest within their own school limits knowledge and opportunities required to navigate this pathway. The expansion of pre-medical FIGS could support a more interdisciplinary path to medicine and foster greater cohesiveness between the colleges.

“There should be an effort made because I feel like there hasn’t really been an effort made to help us out,” Martinez said.

Ellie Monday is a Plan II and health and society freshman from Houston, TX.