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Kriti  Mishra gives advice on getting into medical school during a panel in the Dean of Students Conference Room on Monday afternoon. The panel consisted of six students who are currently in the program.

Kriti  Mishra gives advice on getting into medical school during a panel in the Dean of Students Conference Room on Monday afternoon. The panel consisted of six students who are currently in the program.

Panel helps women prepare for medical school

While there are a number of support groups and services offered at UNM for students seeking advice on their studies, junior biology major Ari Mishra said she wanted to coordinate a more personal group for women who plan to pursue medical school after graduation.

For her first event as the coordinator for the Women in STEM collaboration between the Women's Resource Center and STEM Gateway, she chose to organize a panel for undergraduate students to get their questions answered by first year medical students.

“The idea came from my personal experience as a pre-med student. I've heard a lot about the adversities that women face, non-traditional paths they take and advice they have for other women,” Mishra said. “I couldn't wait to bring people together to talk about these topics in medicine.”

Mishra said she did her best to bring a diverse group of women to the panel to discuss their unique experiences and share multiple points of view on getting into medical school. She said she hoped to proportionally represent the diversity of women in the medical field.

Some of the women chosen include students who took “non-traditional pathways” to medical school.

“The term ‘traditional pathways’ refers to doing four years of college and then going straight into four years of medical school. On the other hand, ‘alternative pathways’ includes everything else on the spectrum,” Mishra said.

One of these non-traditional students was first-year medical student Christine Meadows.

“I had a friend who is a fourth year now … she was kind of my mentor throughout the whole process of applying to medicine,” Meadows said. “I really had no idea what the process was like and so having someone to talk to dispel all the myths and calm me down was really valuable. And I wanted to pass that forward.”

Amanda Yaney, who is a mother juggling the task of caring for her children along with her studies, is also a non-traditional first-year medical student. She said she wanted to speak at the panel in case any other mothers were seeking advice about pursuing their degree while raising their families.

Along with Yaney and Meadows, Kriti Mishra, Ari Mishra, Kelley Stewart, Shana Drake-Lavelle and Tilly Ngo spoke to provide a mixture of perspectives from both traditional and non-traditional students.

The discussion included debunking application myths, giving interview and application advice and sharing personal experiences involving each student’s process of getting in.

During the discussion, panel members emphasized the importance of experiences and making themselves interesting as applicants, rather than just focusing on transcripts.

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“People get really caught up in the numbers aspect of medical school. While that’s important, it’s not the only thing that is important,” Meadows said. “Medicine at its heart is a very human profession, so while you do have to be smart and learn a lot of facts, you also have to be a decent human being who is willing to put in the time and extra effort to reach out to other people."

Mishra said she considered the event, which ran over the allotted hour with the enthusiasm of the discussion, a success and she hopes the attending students’ questions were answered.

“I also hope that the women that came to this event felt inspired and even more motivated to pursue medicine,” she said. “I know I did.”

Skylar Griego is a culture reporter for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.

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