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University Park Preview puts potential students in patient care settings

Penn State College of Medicine’s University Park Preview is an unorthodox interview event for a decidedly unconventional medical education program.

The annual admissions and recruiting event for the University Park Curriculum Track engages student applicants in novel team-building activities and multiple-mini dialogues, including one with an actual patient, to help them determine whether the program’s innovative plan of study is right for them, and vice versa.

“The medical student education in the University Park program starts in authentic patient-care settings from the very beginning and results in a different way of learning,” said Jeffrey Wong, associate dean for medical education. “Our curriculum strives to tie the student’s learning to an actual patient’s experience in a fashion that is considerably different than a traditional medical curriculum. Based on the patient care experience, the students have a strong say in what they choose to learn and how that learning will be achieved.”

Ten candidates for the University Park Curriculum Track visited State College March 7 and 8 to participate in the preview event. All candidates had already been accepted to the College Medicine and were interested in discovering whether the program’s unique methods for learning medicine was right for them.  A second preview event is scheduled for April 6.

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