As a Cell and Molecular Biology student, the curriculum and course load means everything. Being able to fulfill requirements for either medical school (if you are on the pre-med track) or graduate school (either that being physical therapy, physician assistant, dentistry, veterinary, or research) should be at the top of your list as a biology student. UC has already been a great help to me and I have just started 3 months ago. I am a part of the CADUCEA pre-medical society and that really ties students interested in the field together; it is led by Sarah Hunter; who is the Senior Academic Advisor for the Pre-professional Advising Center here at UC. For individuals not in the premedical society but still on the pre-med track, there are a lot of other options. 

The best advice I can already give for all students but specifically pre-health students is to appreciate and stay in your Learning Community (LC). Before coming to UC, my academic advisor who is specifically assigned to me in the College of Arts and Sciences prepared a schedule for me. It looked a lot like what I expected it to be: biology, chemistry, chemistry and bio labs, medical humanities, statistics, and ‘LC’. I was so confused as to what LC meant and why I had to take it.

At this point of the year, we have already started creating our schedule for the next semester and LC was still in there. My biggest mistake was thinking that LC would not be necessary (although it is mandatory for all first-year students- both semesters of freshman year). In my LC, we are a group of 20 pre-health students taking 90% of the same classes; and you can imagine how close that gets a group of people. Going to every class together makes being a freshman in a large university pretty comfortable in my opinion.

Researching other universities before choosing UC, none of them mentioned anything about having a group ‘meetup’ embedded in a schedule and in a way UC did not explicitly say so. Take it from me though, LC is what you make of it and when you realize that the people that are with you, they will most likely stay together until graduation. The friends I have now are from my LC, we go everywhere together! When we are in a class together where someone just looks at us and asks how we just automatically know 17 other people there, we tell them it is because we are in the same LC!

Leading each LC is a peer leader, usually a junior or senior on the same track as us currently. My peer leader is Savannah; and she is the most helpful and kind person I can go to with issues regarding schedules, class content, and just questions in general. I guess I did not choose UC because of the LC program set in place, but one reason why I love my experience here so far is because of the strong bond formed between Savannah and the rest of my peers. 

If you are coming from a small high school and are nervous to start at a university of around 44,000 students, it is completely okay to feel that way – trust me. UC wants to help you find the right people. Being in an LC, your community is going to start on the first day of the fall semester.