University Of Pittsburgh Med Students Start Free Advising Service For Medical School Applicants

A group of medical students at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine has started an organization that provides free, comprehensive medical school application assistance to aspiring med students who can not afford a professional application consulting service, which often can cost thousands of dollars in fees.

The volunteer-driven organization, called Giving A Boost (GAB), was founded by Pitt med student Daniel Pan in 2019. Its mission is to help students from disadvantaged backgrounds, including those who are underrepresented in medicine, first-generation-to-college and low-income individuals, and students with disabilities, by providing them a suite of free, individualized peer support as they go through the medical school application process.

GAB offers several forms of assistance to the applicants it serves. It provides guidance and feedback on standard med school application components, such as personal statements, work and activities, and secondary essays. It conducts mock interviews – usually virtually – to prepare its mentees to perform will during personal interviews. And it hosts informational sessions to provide guidance on topics like meeting application timelines, updating letters and letters of intent, and navigating reapplications.

GAB charges no fees and receives no ongoing funding. Students learn about the service primarily through word of mouth, social media, notifications from other student organizations, or by accessing the GAB website. There is no formal screening of GAB mentees as to whether they represent an underserved group or come from an socioeconomically disadvantaged background. As Pan explained to me, “we operate on an honor system.”

Each GAB mentor is paired with an average of one to three mentees from colleges in the region who are going through the application process. According to a recent survey of GAB mentees, over 90% had received an offer of med school admission in the 2021-2022 admission cycle, and more than 80% had received offers in the two years, 2020-2022.

Since the 2020-2021 application cycle, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine chapter of GAB has mentored more than 350 students in the greater Pittsburgh area, helping them gain admission to leading medical schools such as Harvard, Columbia, Drexel, Emory, the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, and the University of Pittsburgh.

Now, GAB is going nationwide, expanding from the University of Pittsburgh to more than 20 medical schools across the nation, including such highly ranked schools as Yale, St. Louis University, Columbia, Harvard, Georgetown, Cornell, Tulane, the University of Iowa, Rutgers, the University of Pennsylvania and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Pan, who is now a third-year med student at Pitt, told me he believes that, with continued growth, GAB can revolutionize the application process for aspiring medical students by eliminating financial barriers and offering personalized assistance that many students would otherwise simply be unable to afford. His short-term goal is to double the number of GAB chapters in the next few months.

The medical school application process is competitive and expensive, and applicants often spend thousands of dollars in application fees, counseling services, and interview expenses. Although many applicants can afford to pay for third-party application consulting services, applicants from underserved and lower SES backgrounds typically cannot purchase such help and they often do not have the personal contacts that can assist with applications, putting them at potential disadvantages in the competition for med school slots.

GAB is intended to even the playing field for these students, and it points to a model of peer-based advising that could help medical schools diversify their student enrollments in the future.