Pre-Professional Advising

The PreMedical and PreDental Advising Office is located in University Center 116, within the Dean’s Suite of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, and serves all current UMBC students, regardless of major, and alumni who are interested in pursuing careers in medicine, dentistry, optometry, podiatry, and veterinary medicine. The PreMedical and PreDental Advising Office provides academic advising that is focused on the professional school prerequisites, in addition to guiding students on all other issues relevant to the professional school admissions process, such as the standardized entrance exams required by the professional schools and their application timelines. Because of the complexities inherent to the professional school process, students are encouraged to contact the office as early in their exploration process as possible to ensure that they reap the most benefit from the available services. A Health Professions Evaluation Committee (HPEC), composed of faculty and coordinated through the PreMedical and PreDental Advising Office, assists students as they complete the medical and dental school application processes.

Professional schools, while not requiring any particular undergraduate major, do require that a certain selection of undergraduate courses be completed and these prerequisite courses vary per professional school. Admissions requirements are subject to change without prior notice. In order to ensure that students are fulfilling both UMBC’s graduation requirements and the professional school admission requirements, pre-professional students at UMBC have two advisors: their assigned academic advisor in their declared major and their pre-professional advisor.

Gaining admission into professional school is highly competitive and requires not only a stellar academic record and satisfactory scores on entrance exams, but also strengths in other areas such as research, extracurricular involvement and leadership, clinical related experience, as well as community service and philanthropic work. An in-depth discussion of each of the aforementioned categories is provided on The PreMedical and PreDental Advising Office website.

Pre-medical, pre-dental, pre-optometry, pre-podiatry, and pre-veterinary students have been accepted into many programs throughout the United States, including those at Columbia; Georgetown; Howard; Johns Hopkins; New York University; Penn State; Temple; University of Maryland, Baltimore; University of Pittsburgh; and Yale.

Students interested in medicine, dentistry, optometry, podiatry, or veterinary medicine should visit The PreMedical and PreDental Advising Office website or contact the Health Professions Advising team, at healthproadvising@umbc.edu.

Programs

• Pre-Dental
• Pre-Medical
• Pre-Optometry
• Pre-Veterinary Medicine