CMU College of Medicine's recommendation for coursework taken during the Winter/Spring 2020 time frame:

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many colleges and universities have offered students a pass/fail or credit/no credit option. We want all future Central Michigan University College of Medicine applicants to know that we will allow pass/fail or credit/no credit grades for any coursework taken during the impacted time frame, including prerequisite coursework. While we believe that academic coursework is an important component of your preparation for medical school, we don’t believe that an applicant’s total body of academic preparation should be negatively impacted by the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Eligibility for Admission

To be eligible for admission to the CMU College of Medicine, applicants must:

  • Be a U.S. citizen, Canadian citizen, or permanent resident of the United States or Canada.
  • Complete the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS) application.
  • Complete and submit scores from the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT).
  • Complete an undergraduate baccalaureate degree with a strong record of academic performance.

Select applicants will be invited to continue the application process by submitting a secondary application. The secondary application will be emailed. The deadline for receipt of the secondary application will be noted in the email.

  • Two (2) semesters of biological science courses with laboratory sections. Courses such as anatomy, biology, genetics, physiology, and microbiology fulfill this requirement.
  • Two (2) semesters of organic chemistry with at least one laboratory OR one (1) semester of organic chemistry and one (1) semester of biochemistry with at least one laboratory section.

Admissions to the CMU College of Medicine is very competitive in nature. In addition to the courses listed above, we expect our most competitive applicants to be successful in a variety of courses, including upper division courses in both microbiological and macrobiological sciences.

Our recommended prerequisites are a means to assess competencies and are not specific course requirements. The purpose of our recommended prerequisites is to identiry individuals with the competencies necessary for success in our medical curriculum.

We expect competitive applicants to demonstrate academic strength in the following areas:

  • Biochemistry
  • Genetics
  • Human anatomy
  • Human physiology
  • Mathematics or statistics
  • Organic chemistry
  • Physics
  • Social sciences

We require a minimum of three (3) letters of recommendation (or a committee letter) and allow a maximum of five (5) letters. Please submit only the letters you wish. There is no advantage to submitting more than the minimum three letters of recommendation.
The following requirements apply to the letters of recommendation:
  • Each letter should be written by an author who knows the applicant through a professional relationship or association. The author must have firsthand knowledge of the applicant's qualifications, skills, attributes, and values.
  • Letter authors must be professionals whose background enables them to determine the applicant's qualifications.
  • If a student applies from a university that provides a composite letter from a premedical program, that letter will be accepted in fulfillment of our letter requirement.

Applicants are encouraged to have letters prepared early in the application process and include their AMCAS ID numbers on the letters.

Your application must include at least 200 documented hours of personal experiences and include activities that demonstrate your preprofessional preparation for medical school. The AMCAS application will allow you to discuss up to 15 work and experience activities.

The following themes comprise the areas we feel best align with our mission and solid preprofessional preparation for our medical curriculum:

  • Clinical exposure and employment
  • Volunteer and service activities
  • Leadership and community involvement
  • Research, publications, and awards

These activities are a significant opportunity for applicants to explore a variety of medical environments and grow both personally and professionally.

Essential Standards for Matriculation, Promotion, and Graduation at Central Michigan University College of Medicine

It is important that all applicants and current students read this document to better understand what is expected at the CMU College of Medicine.

Overview

Medical education requires that the accumulation of scientific knowledge be accompanied by the simultaneous development of specific skills and other competencies.

Our College of Medicine has a responsibility to society to graduate the best possible physicians:

  • Admission to the College of Medicine is offered to applicants who present outstanding qualifications for the study and practice of medicine.
  • All students must successfully complete the entire medical school curriculum.
  • All students must meet both our academic standards and our standards for capacity (SFC) in order to progress through the College of Medicine and graduate.

Academic standards refer to acceptable demonstrations of mastery in various disciplines, before matriculation and after, as judged by faculty members, examinations and other measurements of performance.

Acceptable levels of mastery are required in six broad areas of competency once a student matriculates at CMU College of Medicine:

  1. Medical/scientific knowledge
  2. Clinical skills
  3. Professionalism
  4. Communication/interpersonal skills
  5. Practice-based learning (engaging in self-assessment and making improvements in one's learning and performance)
  6. Systems-based practice (effectively carrying out responsibilities in a complex system of medical and associated professionals)

Standards for capacity, also known as technical standards, are the essential aptitudes and abilities that allow medical students (and physicians) to perform in the vast array of requisite ways summarized by the six areas of competency above.

"Standards for capacity" may sound unfamiliar, even though the abilities they represent are extremely important in the field of medicine. Those abilities are the foundation for academic success at the College of Medicine, and for the eventual practice of medicine itself. Our standards for capacity are described in detail in this document.

Disabilities

It is our experience that a number of individuals with disabilities (as defined by Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act) are qualified to study and practice medicine with the use of reasonable accommodations.

To be qualified for the study of medicine at the College of Medicine, those individuals must be able to meet both our academic standards and the standards for capacity, with or without approved accommodation. Accommodation is viewed as a means of helping students with disabilities to meet essential standards, not to circumvent them.

Use of Auxiliary Aids and Intermediaries

Qualified students with documented disabilities are readily provided with reasonable accommodations at CMU College of Medicine, and those accommodations sometimes involve an intermediary or an auxiliary aid.

However, no disability can be reasonably accommodated at the College of Medicine with an auxiliary aid or intermediary that provides cognitive support or medical knowledge, substitutes for essential clinical skills, or supplements clinical and ethical judgment. That is to say, accommodations cannot eliminate essential program elements.

The faculty believes that visual impairments severe enough to require a medically trained intermediary cannot be accommodated at the College of Medicine. Certainly, there are advances in technology all the time, and at some point, there may be acceptable accommodations for blind students, but an intermediary that would have to select and interpret visual information (e.g. slide configurations, clinical presentations, etc.), would constitute cognitive support and/or a supplement to clinical judgment.

This kind of assistance would also, undoubtedly, depend on medical/scientific knowledge to some extent. Use of this type of intermediary, in the faculty's opinion, would represent a fundamental alteration to the medical program. Reliance on an intermediary trained to perform physical exams for a student with a severe physical disability would also be unacceptable for the same reasons.