7 year Medical Program in the USA

By Arnav Goel

Rowan University, was formerly known as Glassboro State College until an engineering plant owner, Henry Rowan, made a $100 million donation to the institution to create a curriculum for an engineering education. Later that year, Rowan University was established in honour of the industrialist.

Bonjour, my name is Arnav Goel, and I am majoring in Biomedical Engineering at Rowan University. If you're wondering what Biomedical Engineers do, is that they apply engineering concepts to try and find solutions in the medical field. As part of the 3+4 program, I will graduate from Rowan University in 3 years and then have a guaranteed admission into a medical school, owned by the university known as Cooper Medical School of Rowan University.

Some of the interesting things I do at my school include working in research. For instance, what we are doing in our research is a concept known as CAR T cells, which is where you take C cells from someone and add your own receptors to fight cancer. My current work focuses on testing various receptor combinations to see if they would react to certain chemicals that the tumours express. Some of the other fascinating things we do, include covering our basics of mechanics and electricity. It really gives us a foundation of engineering as well as a chance to learn more about biological concepts.

In high school, I was part of my school's robotics team which I believe helped me better grasp the physical side of engineering and polished my computer science skills. Since I was also a member of the debate team, and I know engineers are notorious for being poor communicators engineers, having those communication skills felt like I was more equipped for many of the classes as a result.

I had taken two biology classes in high school and had done some research on the subject, so I was certain that I really enjoyed biology because I also had a lot of fun studying this particular field. However, I wanted to focus on more than just biology, so I decided to major in biomedical engineering. I was also interested in engineering because of robotics, and I thought this would be a nice way to combine those two interests.

I attend college in the US, therefore there are essentially two main apps : the Common App and the Coalition App. Since I knew I wanted to pursue a career in medicine, I filled out both of those and applied to quite a few universities, including a number of combined bachelor/medical programs. Starting off, you fill out your application which composes a primary essay that is sent to the universities, and then they each have their own secondary essays that they want you to write. After completing those, you find out if you're admitted or not. I applied sometime around September for Rowan University, after I got in then I had to apply for the medical school by filling out the application. Then the last step is the interview, where they ask you common interview questions on why you want to go into the medical field and situational questions to see if you are mentally prepared as well.