COVID-19 FAQs and updates

Academic questions (updated November 22, 2021)

In 2020 and the first half of 2021, when most classes were being taught remotely, professional schools temporarily accepted prerequisite courses that were ungraded and taught in a virtual format, including remote lab courses. If a school has said that they will accept ungraded and/or remote coursework from a certain time frame, that policy will remain true for that period of time.

From Fall 2021 onward, all prerequisite courses should be completed for a grade. Online coursework should be considered on a case by case basis, as it may be acceptable for certain courses or professional schools, but not for others. If you are considering taking a prerequisite course online, we strongly recommend that you first consult with the pre-health office.

Summer plans and other non-academic experiences (updated March 18, 2022)

Ideas for Prehealth Students During COVID-19

The above document was created as a collaborative effort among members of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions. If you have ideas to add, please email klipp@mtholyoke.edu.

For those in Massachusetts who would like to be involved in supporting pandemic-related needs, you may wish to visit MA Responds.

If you have questions about your own activities or summer plans, please set up an advising appointment using Handshake.

COVID-19 and health profession school admissions (updated January 15, 2021)

EMAIL SENT ON JANUARY 15, 2021

Dear pre-health students and alums,

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, professional schools are continually assessing their admission processes to ensure that they can continue to fill their classes with well-qualified applicants while recognizing that elements of applicants' professional school preparations are necessarily different now than they were pre-COVID. We have a page of our "Resources" section devoted to addressing COVID-related questions, here.

While our office can provide information that is generally applicable to health profession schools, or to schools within a certain profession such as medicine, or dentistry, nursing, etc., it is always a good idea for you, as a future applicant, to look at the websites of individual schools that you may wish to apply to in order to get a solid understanding of individual admission offices' responses to COVID.

Broadly speaking, health profession schools are adopting more flexible policies and means of assessing applicants' qualifications while continuing to seek the most qualified applicants for their programs. Some policies are temporary in response to the immediate crisis - e.g. virtual interviews - while others will continue into future application cycles - e.g. schools' decisions on whether to accept ungraded prerequisite courses completed in Spring 2020.

Below is information on the topics that we are most frequently asked about:

Online prerequisite courses/online labs

Like at Mount Holyoke, in March 2020 most higher education institutions shifted much or all of their instruction to a remote format, and at many institutions this continued through the summer months. There is a little more variation among institutions this fall, and that variety will continue through the spring semester as different institutions around the country adopt different policies and protocols within the ongoing pandemic.

In general, if you are taking prerequisite courses/lab courses online at a time when online is the only option available to you ("only option" could also include a situation where there might be an in-person course available but for health reasons you select an online course instead), those will be acceptable to health profession schools. Mount Holyoke's current "mod" system for courses will have no bearing on professional school admissions, as the courses themselves present the same information and bear the same number of credits as in a typical year. As always, schools will look at the big picture of your academic record and not only at courses taken during the pandemic.

Ungraded prerequisite courses

First, ungraded courses that are not prerequisites for the schools to which you will apply are generally not a problem. Mount Holyoke allows up to 16 credits of ungraded coursework (details on the Registrar's website). Any courses that were taken ungraded in Spring 2020 do not count towards those 16 credits (full information here).

Most professional schools will accept ungraded prerequisites taken in Spring 2020. However, there are exceptions and variations on this. Details are on the COVID-19 section of our Resources page. Prerequisite courses taken more recently should be completed for a grade whenever possible, as professional schools are unlikely to accept ungraded prerequisites beyond the Spring 2020 semester. Regular advice on prerequisite grading applies. Be aware that most professional schools will require a grade of C or higher in prerequisite courses. In any semester, if you think you will earn a C- or lower in a prerequisite course we encourage you to seek the advice of a pre-health advisor about whether to remain in the course for a grade or to select the ungraded option or withdraw.

Entrance exams

Now that we are many months into the pandemic, administration of entrance exams for health profession schools is mostly proceeding as expected. As of this writing, some exams (GRE, PA-CAT) have an option to test remotely rather than traveling to a test center. All exams will have some modification - whether to registration, availability, COVID protocols in test centers, etc - as a result of the pandemic. Exam content has not changed.

For the current application cycle, meaning the cycle for those who hope to enter professional school in Fall 2021, some professional schools made changes to how they use entrance exams in their admission process. At this point there is no concrete information on a broad level about how professional schools will use entrance exams in future cycles. We recommend that applicants anticipate a return to a typical process, where entrance exams (when required) must be complete in order for a professional school to consider an application complete and ready for review.

COVID-specific information about entrance exams is on our Resources page.
General information about entrance exams is available on our website and on the entrance exams section of our Resources page (note the pull-down menu at the top with more options).

Different experiences/limited experiences

Nearly everyone is experiencing some changes to, or limitations on, the non-academic experiences that they are able to pursue these days. While acknowledging the stress that can come with this situation, consider it an opportunity to flex your creative muscles and think about the wide variety of ways that you can build qualifications for professional schools. A great starting place can be to look at the core competencies laid out by the Association of American Medical Colleges. While designed for future medical school applicants, this list of competencies is a useful document for students interested in most health professions, as it highlights knowledge and skills rather than specific experiences. If you want to work on building your "service orientation" for example, consider the variety of ways that you can be of service to others within COVID restrictions. Investigate which populations may need more support as a result of COVID impacts and explore how you can help. This document is a great place to explore lots of ideas for safe and available opportunities.

Clinical experience: Experiences in health care settings, interacting directly with patients and/or providers, are harder to come by right now and, depending on your personal health needs or those of people you live with, may not be advisable for the time being. Some of the primary goals in building experience in clinical settings are to explore the profession that you are considering, to be of service to others, and/or to build interpersonal skills by interacting with patients and health care professionals. Right now, consider exploring other ways that you can build these skills:

Conducting informational interviews with clinicians
Attending events that host healthcare professionals as speakers (check out recordings of our fall events here!)
Supporting community members virtually through things like crisis lines, social calls with elders to combat isolation, or providing free tutoring to K-12 students struggling with remote learning
Becoming involved in public health efforts to reduce the spread of COVID and introduce vaccines. Volunteers may be needed on education campaigns (virtual) or testing or vaccination sites (in person). Contact your local department of public health if you're not aware of what is needed in your community.

If you have made earnest efforts to continue to build qualifications, and if you can demonstrate, when you apply, how you successfully built qualifications for professional school, then on their end schools will also understand when the experiences of applicants who were working on their preparations during the pandemic look a little different than those of applicants who entered professional school before this time.

Personal COVID-19 impacts affecting preparations

Many people have been so personally impacted by COVID that some or all of their professional school preparations have needed to temporarily halt, or slow down. This sort of pause is understandable to professional schools - life happens, and you need to take the time to manage personal and family needs in a time of crisis. If you are unsure whether your circumstances in this past year, and immediate future, will require you to apply to professional school later than you originally anticipated, we strongly recommend you make a pre-health advising appointment (use Handshake and select "pre-health" as the appointment type) to discuss the specifics of your situation.

As always, please use the resources on our website, and email me (klipp@mtholyoke.edu) or make a pre-health advising appointment to ask follow up questions and talk over your personal plans.

Take care and be well,

Katie