Career Advising

Our program is designed to help our students with important decisions about their future and careers. 

Program goals

  • Provide resources for students to explore various specialties and career tracks.
  • Provide resources for students who wish to explore particular specialties or career tracks.
  • Provide information and advice about residency programs and applications, the interview process, and the Match.
  • Encourage and assist students in establishing a dialogue with faculty, staff and administration inside and outside the College of Medicine.
  • Assist students in the transition to residency.

In our program, relationships are facilitated by our relatively small class size, small group-focused teaching, and distributed model for clinical education; all of which allow time and proximity for students and faculty to get to know each other well. Many of our students develop strong mentoring relationships with individual clinical faculty. 

The Career Counseling/Advising program at the College of Medicine includes the following components: 

  • Required large and small group sessions – led by faculty, staff and administration and scheduled at regular intervals across all four years. 
    • Example topics for large group sessions in the first two years include introductions to our program, the AAMC’s Careers in Medicine program, the importance of extracurricular activities in medical school, and ways to prepare for summer activities and for the transition to clinical years.
    • As our students progress through the third and fourth years, the focus of the required large group sessions, and the program as a whole, shifts to individual career advising, preparing for and applying to residency.
  • Voluntary large and small group activities may be led by departments, faculty, staff, and administration. Some of the most successful are led by our students. Examples include sessions developed and led through our Student Interest Groups, many of which are specialty-focused.
  • Individual advising sessions are available across all four years through the Office of Student Affairs. Meetings with a clinical faculty advisor and an associate dean are mandatory in the third and fourth years.
  • Support for the residency application process includes sessions on the preparation of CVs and personal statements. We also offer the opportunity for our fourth-year students to participate in our mock interview process, which includes feedback on performance, and recorded video for student review.
  • Our students have access to online resources through the student intranet. External resources include AAMC's Careers in Medicine, and information provided by the Electronic Residency Application Service and the National Residency Matching Program.

Questions about career advising?

If you have questions regarding career advising or faculty advisers, please contact Dr. Mildred Willy at mj.willy@cmich.edu.