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Integrated Undergraduate/Medical Doctorate Program

Program Description

The Schreyer Honors College provides ambitious Scholars the opportunity to pursue a simultaneous undergraduate and medical degree. In addition to having outstanding academic records, and well-defined academic and career plans, which include professional or graduate study, these extraordinary students have made unusually accelerated progress in the major and may have an established research record. Neither the fixed time periods traditionally associated with the baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate education, nor the sharp break between undergraduate and advanced study, serve any significant purpose for these students. The pace of their study, the quality of their accomplishments, and their semester-by-semester curricular choices are all better determined by the final academic goal than by partial, short-range objectives.

IUMD status permits Scholars to take on the rigors and challenges of medical education at Penn State, coordinating and combining first year courses in the medical degree program with their baccalaureate studies. Because some credits earned while the Scholar is still an undergraduate may be applied to both degree programs, the time required for completion of integrated undergraduate/graduate studies is normally less than that required to complete separate degree programs. The actual time required is determined by the individual Scholar’s objectives and needs. In no case, however, should the acceleration of work in the major be at the expense of the richest possible undergraduate experience; there must be a balance between the accelerated specialization and a well-rounded general education.

There are several advantages of Integrated Undergraduate/Medical Doctorate status:

• It permits early assurance of admission to medical school.
• It permits coherent planning and integrated advising for collegiate work leading into and through to the medical degree.
• It permits higher levels of research accomplishment for the honors thesis and the Medical School Research (MSR) project.
• While still undergraduates, Scholars with IUMD status benefit from their association with medical students whose level of work and whose intensity of interest and commitment parallel or surpass their own.
• The Scholar will have earlier contact with the rigors of medical education and with College of Medicine faculty and other resources of the College of Medicine.
• Students in the program have the advantage of one less year of tuition.