Dear all,
I am writing to introduce myself as Hunter College’s newest Pre-Health Advisor. Welcome to a new academic year, during which I hope to work closely with you to optimize your preparation for health professional school. If you browse through our website, you will see that I am listed as the person to contact during your junior/senior year when you are contemplating applying or are applying to health professional school. As the old adage goes “one ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”, which should be especially poignant to you, as the future of America’s healthcare.  The more you know and do ahead of time, the less work(cure) we have to do later in the process and the more efficient we will be. To that end, I’d like to invite you ALL, freshman all the way through applicant to join me for a talk next week on admission criteria and application procedures in which I aim to inform you of:
1. what health professional schools are looking for in applicants
2. what lies ahead in the application process
3. how our office can facilitate the application process for you. 

Whether you are applying this year or in 3-4 years, this talk will put on your radar what you might be missing in your current approach and overall profile and how to best strategize to address deficiency and enhance competitiveness.  We have intentionally placed this talk early in our speaker series so that you can hear about the different components of a health professional school application so that me may devote the rest of the semester talking about the resources our office offers you that will serve as great tools in your application toolkit.   Attending this talk will provide you with a comprehensive overview. Then you and I or you and Kelly (depending on your stage) will meet individually in advisement session to address your specific case and your specific questions.  Hearing a comprehensive overview will provide you with the background information so that you may ask more insightful questions of admission officers from different health professional schools when they come to visit us on campus. We have many an exciting event planned for your common hours (1-3 pm on Wednesdays) when we know few classes if any are scheduled. We will kick off September with a presentation from Weill Cornell Medical Center (September 14, 511 West) and my overview of admissions criteria and applications procedures (September 21, check website/ email for location).  I will give yet another more detailed application workshop to go over the actual components of the applications for those who will be applying to health professional school in Spring/Summer 2012.

Looking forward to learning more about you and assisting you with your development and growth as Hunter Pre-Health students. 

Hope to see you at our Cornell event on Wednesday, Sept 14 and during my talk on Sep 21 from 1-3 pm.
As always check our website frequently to learn about all that we have to offer you.
http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/prehealth

Cathy Jalali, MEd
Pre-health Advisor