Admissions: Structured Cohort

Designed for Professionals Interested in a Career in Clinical Health Care

The structured Post-Baccalaureate Health Professions Program at CU Boulder is a highly selective program designed for people who:

Already hold a bachelor’s degree and were strong students in college,
Have a strong history of clinical and non-clinical service to others,
Plan to take all of the undergraduate-level science prerequisites needed for professional school,
Are interested in a full-time, comprehensive, one-year post-baccalaureate program with a summer start date, and
Appreciate a cohort-based learning experience with dedicated mentors and tutors.

This program is characterized by rigorous academics in an accelerated format; a supportive, cohort-based peer group while enrolled in CU Boulder's main campus science courses; exceptional pre-health advising; and dedicated tutors and mentors. From your initial inquiry to your acceptance to professional school, we work hard to understand your individual goals and challenges and to provide you with strategic advice that sets you up for success. We are proud of the success of our program; since rolling out the current version of our program in 2016, 94% of our students who have completed the program and have gone on to apply for the career they had originally selected as their field of interest have been accepted to professional school. Our students regularly earn MCAT scores in the 90-99th percentile after completing our program (median for each of the past four cohorts: 516).

To maintain the outstanding quality of our program, we intentionally limit the size of each cohort to roughly 10 to 20 students per year. To maintain the cohort experience, all students in the program take all of their courses together; we do not allow course substitutions.

Program Features

We offer an extraordinary level of individualized advising and support from mentors and tutors in addition to the resources of the University of Colorado Boulder.

Year after year, our students achieve close to a 100% admission rate to professional school. Moreover, unlike most career-changer post-baccalaureate programs, we offer a close-knit, cohort-based learning experience.

Our students complete 36 credit hours of prerequisite science coursework in one year, starting in June and ending the following May. Those who seek to apply immediately to professional school after completing our program will do so just a few weeks after finishing the program, typically taking the MCAT, DAT, OAT, PCAT, or GRE in June.

The course load is rigorous; most of our students dedicate 40 to 60+ hours per week to their academic work throughout the duration of the program. This program is not appropriate for those who anticipate needing to spend more than ~10 hours per week on work and/or other extracurricular commitments.

Please note that some professional schools require additional prerequisite courses that cannot fit into a one-year program, such as Anatomy and Physiology or, for medical school, Organic Chemistry 2 (which is not required in order to take the MCAT). Our advisors can explain how you can complete these additional prerequisites at CU Boulder (or elsewhere) after the program year ends.

The Post-Baccalaureate Health Professions program is designed to create a cohort experience for our students while they are taking their courses alongside CU Boulder's undergraduate science majors. In addition, cohort members gain access to cohort-specific group and individual tutoring sessions, dedicated program mentors, MCAT prep seminars, expert pre-health advising, and planned social events. Our student culture is one of camaraderie, mutual support, and collaboration.

Students enrolled in the Post-Baccalaureate Health Professions program work closely with our pre-health advisors, who have successfully guided thousands of students through the pre-health preparation and application process. Pre-health advising begins from the time you confirm your seat in our entering cohort and continues until you matriculate into professional school.

Our pre-health advisors will provide you with:

Honest-yet-supportive feedback on your current areas of strength and weakness as a prospective applicant to professional school,
Individualized guidance on how to improve your candidacy,
Resources and options should you encounter a setback on the pre-health path.

In addition to meeting individually with our pre-health advisors, we offer a rich array of pre-health advising workshops and special events throughout the year. We strongly encourage all Post-Baccalaureate students to attend each of these group meetings, which have been thoughtfully designed to prepare you for the professional school application process. Please view the Upcoming Events page for a list of annual events.

Personalized Coaching for Applications and Interviews

Pre-health advising includes individualized coaching on your written application materials for professional school, as well as expert preparation for interviews, including recorded mock interviews with coaching.

We offer group and individual tutoring sessions for Chemistry throughout the program year. In addition, we have individual tutors on staff to assist you with Biology and Physics (at no additional cost to you), as needed.

Program Mentors

A distinguishing feature of our program are our mentors, who are selected from the previous year’s cohort and serve as an invaluable resource to Post-Baccalaureate students. They have successfully navigated the program and are able to offer insights, advice, and encouragement as you progress through the program. Our mentors are on hand to support you individually while also organizing educational and social group events throughout the program year.

Additional Resources

The program provides the following materials to each student who is preparing to apply to medical school, at no additional cost:
- MCAT Preparation Materials:
  - AAMC MCAT Offical Prep Bundle of preparation materials and practice tests
  - Full set of Kaplan subject review books
- A one-year subscription to the AAMC's Medical School Admissions Requirements (MSAR) online database

The MCAT, DAT, and OAT are subject-based examinations that will test your critical thinking skills as applied to the specific subject matter you will learn during your year in the post-baccalaureate program. We believe that the optimal approach to test preparation for career-changer students in a one-year post-baccalaureate program is a two-step process, as follows:

Phase 1: Academic Year
For the one-year duration of the program, we are intentional about supporting our students in their focus on achieving academic mastery in their biology, chemistry, and physics courses. This primary focus on academics is the foundation for earning strong post-baccalaureate grades while also preparing our students for success on the subject matter that will be tested on the MCAT/DAT/OAT/PCAT.
- For context, most of our students in the Post-Baccalaureate Health Professions program report spending an average 40 to 60 hours per week on their academic work throughout the 11-month duration of the program.
- In addition, most of our students devote a total of 10-12 hours per week to their clinical work, research, and/or volunteer interpersonal service activities.
- We strongly encourage our students to commit to a maximum of 65 hours per week to academics and extracurriculars, combined; most of our students report that this is the level of weekly time commitment that feels intense-but-sustainable for a full year, while still offering the time needed for sleep, exercise, good nutrition, hobbies, and time with family and friends, all of which are essential when seeking to achieve a consistently high level of learning and academic performance.

Phase 2: Focused, Full-Time MCAT Prep (self-directed)
Timeline:
- Our academic year ends in early May. After completing spring final exams, our students focus full-time on self-directed MCAT/DAT/OAT/PCAT prep until the end of June. Most students report spending a total of ~300-350 hours of time to dedicated test prep during this 7- to 8-week period (~40 hours per week). As a reference tool, we have posted detailed test prep tips at the bottom of this webpage.
- We advise our pre-medical and pre-dental students to submit their professional school common applications within the first two weeks of June and to take the MCAT/DAT by the end of June. With this approach, our students tailor their school lists to their anticipated test score, as informed by their performance on full-length practice tests as of the end of June.(Pre-optometry and pre-pharmacy students can take an extra month to complete these steps.)

MCAT-Specific Resources We Offer:

We provide each of our pre-medical students with a complete set of Kaplan MCAT Prep subject review books as well as the AAMC MCAT Official Prep Online-Only Bundle of practice questions and practice tests.
For the 2022-2023 cohort, we are offering two MCAT prep groups workshops during the year, plus two individual 60-minute sessions with our MCAT prep tutor. These sessions are intended to provide the following information:
- Providing familiarity with the content, scope, and style of the test.
- Offering specific guidance on high-yield strategies you can utilize during your post-bacc year (such as using Anki in your current coursework, completing weekly CARS practice passages, and taking the AAMC Sample Test over winter break) that will help you prepare for the MCAT without distracting your attention from your primary focus on coursework.
- Providing strategies for test preparation that have worked well for other career-changers who earned very high scores after completing our program and studying for the MCAT on this timeline.
- Offering individualized guidance on developing a personal MCAT prep plan.

In each of the past four years, our Post-Baccalaureate Health Professions cohorts have achieved median MCAT scores of 516 (92%) using this method. (For reference, the median MCAT score for all applicants accepted to MD schools nationwide tends to be around 512-513 (83-86%) each year.)

Click here for a list of medical and dental schools to which our Post-Baccalaureate Health Professions students have been accepted.

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