Advising and Career Development

The Advising and Career Development team is composed of Senior Advisors and Senior Residency Advisors. The primary goal of the team is to support students in developing academic and professional skills and experiences that lead to successful academic progress, specialty selection, and residency match; in a manner that supports their health and wellbeing. To fulfill this goal, advisors meet with students individually and offer a variety of workshops and class meetings regarding the curriculum, academic progress, and career development.

• Students are assigned a Senior Advisor upon matriculation with whom they work throughout their HMSOM career.
• Students are required to meet with their advisor quarterly each year. Advisors also have weekly drop-in office hours and are available for additional meetings as needed.
• The cornerstone of the Advising and Career Development program is the Individualized Learning Plan (ILP). This document is customized for each stage of the curriculum, but consistently prompts students to develop their learning goals via reflection on their academic and career progress, specialty thoughts, Phase 3 Plans, and wellness; and create and track goals for advancing in these areas.
• A Career Development Workshop Series is offered in accordance with the AAMC’s Careers in Medicine model.
• Students work very closely with their advisors during their third year to develop a customized Phase 3 Plan that supports their personal and career goals.
• Advising works closely with the Phase 3 team to create a Phase 3 Plan and review/approval process that best supports student’s advising and career success needs.

Residency Advising:

• The Residency Advising team works with the Senior Advising team to support students in the application to residency, via the Road to Residency program that begins in the first year with Residency 101.
• Students are assigned a Residency Advisor in their third year, based on the specialty they are interested in pursuing. Residency Advisors are experts in the residency application process, data, and systems. Several of the required advising meetings in the third and fourth years are with the Residency Advisor.
• Residency programming continues through the M2 and M3 year and each cohort's application cycle commences with an in-person launch event in April of the M3 year. See the Road to Residency link in the sidebar for more details.

Advising and Career Development also oversees or works with the following programs:

• Specialty Mentoring:
  • Oversees process of matching students with specialty mentors and works with academic departments to ensure capacity.
  • Creates and delivers faculty development to mentors.
• Specialty Interest Group (SIG) Liaison:
  • offers additional support to SIG leaders, beyond the SIG faculty advisor, for content development, procedural guidance, and leadership development.
• Peer Mentoring: participates in training and assists with the application and selection process.