FAQ
Questions pre-meds actually ask.
The Pre-Med Summer Fellowship is a remote, asynchronous health literacy program that focuses on teaching verbal and visual communication skills (digital drawing!) to teach medicine and improve health literacy education.
The Pre-Med Summer Fellowship is open to all undergraduate students in addition to gap year students. For those in the middle of a gap year, or looking for a program to do during the Fall/Winter, you can also check out our Gap-Year Fellowship program.
Absolutely not! In fact, this program is specifically designed for non-artists. We teach digital drawing skills because the learning curve is much quicker. With that being said, it definitely doesn't hurt to have an art background, and we designed the program with the intention that those with previous art skills will also gain super useful skills as well!
Based on the experiences of fellows in previous cohorts, you can expect to spend about 2-3 hours per module, so if you do about one module a week, it comes out to 2-3 hours on a weekly basis. This timeframe also takes into account time spent practicing and reviewing drawings. Since the program is asynchronous, how much time you want to spend practicing your skills is completely up to you — we believe that the best way to improve your skills is by practicing. Like most things in life, you get out what you put in!
Yes! In fact, we actually recommend our Fellows to participate in other medical-related activities over the summer in addition to being a part of the Fellowship. The asynchronous fellowship was designed specifically to allow our Fellows to not only get involved in other opportunities over the summer, but also to provide time to have fun as well! We encourage our Fellows to try to find shadowing opportunities throughout the summer as we have seen the Fellowship enhance their experience in clinical settings, and vice versa.
Skills — you walk away with practical skills in addition to information. In short, you'll get an exposure to different areas of medicine and drawing skills that you'll not only be able to use to be able to study for your courses and exams, but that you'll be able to use to open doors for yourself in clinical and research settings.
It's best to learn these skills as early as possible and you definitely shouldn't wait until you're in medical school to learn them. You can use these skills to help you study for your pre-med classes, draw for research papers, and even draw for patients during shadowing opportunities — the perfect way to give you a competitive edge and to open new opportunities for yourself. And these skills improve exponentially over time!
Yes, the program is completely asynchronous. However, we do offer opportunities to attend several live, optional workshops and trainings over Zoom.
Yes, we provide a certification of completion once the Fellowship ends.
You will need an iPad or a tablet, as well as a stencil to draw with.