The road to becoming a doctor is a lengthy one, requiring at least seven years of graduate level education and countless study hours.
Jerome Cordova, president of UNM's Premedical Organization, said the application process is only one of the difficult steps a student aspiring for a career in medicine must take.
Cordova said on average only a quarter of the more than 300 applications the School of Medicine receives annually are accepted.
"Outstanding applicants have a sense of real passion for the study of medicine that has been shown through activities and involvement in community," said Roger Radloff, assistant dean at UNM's School of Medicine.
Radloff said requirements for applying to medical school include one year of biology, one year of chemistry, one year of organic chemistry, one year of physics and a semester of biochemistry.
He added that the average GPA of incoming medical students last year was 3.5.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
After they are accepted, students must complete a four-year curriculum consisting of early clinical skills, problem-based and student-centered learning, peer teaching, computer literacy and information management, said Beverly Kloeppel, associate director of the UNM Health Center and a graduate of UNM's School of Medicine.
"The basic medical school curriculum gives the student very large volumes of information that they are faced with incorporating into their already existing base of knowledge," Kloeppel said.
After the initial four years of medical school, students choose among 11 three-year postgraduate residency-training programs.
These programs range from emergency and internal medicine to pediatrics and surgery. During their one-year residency, medical students further their education by working hands-on with actual patients.
Each resident is assigned an attending physician in their respective department to serve as mentor and advocate their preparation to enter the medical field.
According to the School of Medicine's Web site, the residency portion of the education is vital because it ensures the students can meet real-world demands and assures the highest quality of care to the patients they will be treating.
Several of the school's programs developed residency programs to meet the growing medical needs of the state.
The family medical practice program, whose residency program was implemented in1973 in response to a critical need for physicians in the rural areas of the state, has been successful in locating its graduates around New Mexico, Radloff said.
He said 70 percent of the program's graduates are serving the people of New Mexico.
The pediatrics program is also determined to serve in struggling areas. Forty percent of these graduates practice in rural or medically underserved settings, while the rest engage in a variety of post-residency training positions, Radloff said.
According to the school's Web site, beginning doctor salaries range from $35,000 to just over $40,000 a year.
Many of the people who pursue a career in medicine said their choice was not based on the money, but the satisfaction they get from serving the community.
"I love medicine," Kloeppel said. "I would do it over again if I had to. There were times
I wondered if it was worth it, but medicine is a very interesting and rewarding field."
