Admission Requirements
Read about the admission requirements for the M.D. program at the Covenant HealthCare College of Medicine at Central Michigan University.
Eligibility
- 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.
Basic science requirements
Two semesters of biological science courses with laboratory sections.
Courses such as anatomy, biology, genetics, physiology, and microbiology
fulfill this requirement.
Two semesters of organic chemistry with at least one
laboratory OR one semester of organic chemistry and one semester of
biochemistry with at least one laboratory section.
Additional coursework recommendations
Admissions to the Covenant HealthCare College of Medicine at Central
Michigan University 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 identify 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.
Personal attributes
Covenant HealthCare College of Medicine employs a mission-aligned
admissions process to identify applicants who demonstrate both academic
ability and the personal and professional characteristics necessary to
become empathetic, highly competent physicians consistent with the
College’s mission.
The personal attributes considered include:
• Reliability and dependability.
• Service orientation.
• Teamwork
• Resilience
• Cultural awareness.
• Compassion and empathy.
• Integrity and ethical behavior.
• Commitment to the medical college’s mission and diversity.
Letters of recommendation
We require a minimum of three letters of recommendation (or a committee
letter) and allow a maximum of five 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.
Personal experience
Your application must include 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.
Overview
Medical education requires that the accumulation of
scientific knowledge be accompanied by the simultaneous development of
specific skills and other competencies.
The Covenant
HealthCare College of Medicine at Central Michigan University has a
responsibility to society to graduate the best possible physicians:
- Admission to the college 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 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.
The mission of the college is to graduate well-educated physicians who strive to attain the highest standards of academic and personal honesty, compassion, integrity, dependability, and self-awareness. Students are immersed in a safe and positive learning environment and follow the altruistic tradition of medicine, placing the welfare of their patients and society above self-interest. The medical school supports the development of professional behavior through integrated curricular, mentoring, advising, and co-curricular activities. The medical student must also comply with the college's technical standards for professionalism (mature and ethical conduct)
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 medical school, 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 the Covenant HealthCare College of Medicine
at Central Michigan University, and those accommodations sometimes
involve an intermediary or an auxiliary aid.
However, no
disability can be reasonably accommodated at the college 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. 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.