all right thank you again so much for holding your questions until the very end and for not direct messaging advisors or each other on the call we will have time to address your questions and your insightful inquiries and there will be time for you to interact with in the presentation itself but again we do ask that you will hold all of those questions till the very end of the presentation all right so what on Earth is PSA Public Service Announcement perhaps possibly in the right context but today that stands for professional School advising and this is your One-Stop shop to gain information and resources for your Professional School track of choice we work with eight different Health Professions as well as pre-law and there are various resources and advisors available to help ensure that you are putting your best foot forward and becoming the most competitive applicant that you can possibly be and how do you get in touch with us we have a general email and if you're not sure who your exact advisor is which you may be wondering why has she not introduced herself because we will in just a moment but if you're not certain who your direct advisor is you can email our general email address opsat tamu.edu and for those of you that are looking to engage with us further after this particular Workshop you may be wondering how to schedule an appointment some of you may have logged on through navigate or other online outlets and discovered that you cannot in fact schedule with us and that's because we are developing your interpersonal skills over the phone because a lot of professional schools do businesses via the phone so you give us a holler um you pick up your phone and give us a call and we'll set up a a one-on-one appointment or direct you to group advising so that's the takeaway here you can email us or you can call and schedule an appointment all right I'm going to turn it over to one of my fabulous co-hosts so what does TFA advise we advise Dental law medical nursing occupational therapy Pharmacy Physical Therapy physician assistant or associate in veterinary medicine and we have a put two polls for y'all thank you for your patience well this is exciting um so we just learned something here if you launch a poll early to see if it works you can't launch it live [Laughter] um well thank you all so much for hanging out we do hope that you discovered this Workshop either through the listserv that you signed up for our website or that your friends talk to you and um possibly let you know um or possibly even a student organization or another Outlet there's going to be another one of these polls later y'all what a good time you're doing this one live and then in terms of which profession uh we will we will just leave that a mystery and we are glad that you are here regardless of what track you're on and there's there's a little bit of something here for everyone including jokes and uncomfortable blushing foreign well now's the moment you've all been waiting for who are these fantastic humans that are running this show and running it not as smoothly as they could but again a learning opportunity for all of us I'll turn this over to the director of Professional School advising and then we'll just go around the room and tell you who we are howdy everyone I'm Dr blooms the director of our wonderful office I I do work with Jam as well as PA and pre-vet um and yeah that's what I do so I'll turn it over to Karen buddy Karen Severn and I typically work with the pre-dental pre-nursing and pre-pharmacy students and anybody else who needs a hand free yes I'm Bree Garcia I work with pre-law free OT and pre PT and now I'll hand it back over to my wonderful co-host Rachel howdy all my name is Rachel trimperlik and I work with our pre-medical folks on the call and I have the pleasure of also working very closely we all do um with some support staff that are at home with their families right now um Miss Dion Thomas and Tammy was an aunt and they helped keep us operating to full force and do a lot of things behind the scenes that directly support y'all as well and I will also point out Mr Tony fan and he works primarily with our uh first and second year pre-med and pre-dental and then to bring us on home we'll turn it over to Shea thank you Rachel um howdy y'all my name's Shea I am one of the newest graduate assistants here for professional School advising and I am doing mostly first and second year pre-pa advising so if that's something that you're interested in please shoot me an email and I would be glad to answer any of your questions or if you want to schedule an advising appointment um that'd be great too hmm fantastic and remember to get in touch with any of us you can email or to schedule an appointment like Shay suggested you give us a call all right so what are we doing here so in our office we offer one-on-one advising we have listserv we have TSA videos workshops and networking events our appointments are 30 minutes we have group advising via Zoom the listeners if you didn't have a chance earlier to get on one or weren't already on one you can go to tx.ag forward slash PSA listeners our videos like this one will be added in the next couple weeks at tx.ag forward slash PSA virtual we already have several videos up there right now like our second year informational from the fall as well as several other for specific professions application workshops onto workshops you can sign up for workshops at tx.ag PSA workshops um if you want to attend application workshops that are coming up to stay in the know about what's going on we also have personal statement workshops for health and law interview workshops and in the fall we have our law Caravan you can find out more information about that at tx.ag forward slash law Caravan and come next week I'm skipping ahead next week on Tuesday we have our Echo Healthcare Symposium at tx.ag Health Symposium so you can find out information about that and who will be attending we'll be updating that information and on Monday if you are interested in clinical nutrition PT PA or Prosthetics and Orthotics we have the associate director of associate Dean I apologize for UT Southwestern coming to speak and you can register for that by tomorrow at tx.ag forward slash utsw Reg and you can either come in person or if you can't come in person then you can let us know in the registration and you will be sent the zoom link the student presentation is from 11 45 a.m to 12 45 p.m on Monday thank you for facilitating this great networking opportunity as well as learning opportunity for these particular Health Professions and like Maria alluded to on Tuesday February 21st yes you're right that is Mardi Gras and we're going to celebrate that by giving you all the opportunity to get some 3D quality time with Health Professions so if we've got some pre-law friends on the call your party is going to be in the fall but for our Health Professions folks this is a great opportunity for you as a first year to really get to know these programs and to learn what they're about and to hear directly from the source what it is that they are looking for in their applicants and if this is your first time attending a big event like this some of you may have gone to the career fairs and you've already gotten into the hang of this kind of event but for those of you that may still feel like a fish out of water or this is your no pun intended or this is your first time I'm going to an event like this one of the things that you can do is you can head up to the tables and kind of gather around and get the lay of the land and just hear what questions are being asked and something to do is to find an open-ended question that's not necessarily just knowledge driven that you could look up online ask these individuals because some of them will be the directors of admissions or The deans of Admissions and so they are in charge of the decisions that are made about the cohorts and what you can do is ask them what is the most important thing you wish everyone knew about your program get them happy and excited to tell you about their program and you can even get more pointed and say what would you like to see first-year students doing more of and they can give you really great wisdom and insights and you hear it straight from the source and you'll often find that they confirm what we are putting out there in terms of strategies and resources that we equip you with so it's just really nice to hear that from multiple sources so we are very much looking forward to seeing you next Tuesday from 11 to 3. this is a come and go event and we encourage business casual but you can come as you are and this will be an MSC in the Bethany Court Ballroom so we'll see you there all right this one we can actually launch so give y'all a couple of minutes in terms of your advisor so which of the following advisors have you had the opportunity to meet with your academic advisor a professional School advisor maybe a career advice advisor through your college or the career center or none of these just yet and then the second one which of the following did you if you happen to catch the law Caravan or do you plan to attend we've got our Symposium coming up on Tuesday all right give you all about two more seconds as you can see here that we've got a good chunk of you all have met with your academic advisor some of you all have had the opportunity to get some time with a professional School advisor either in a one-on-one or in group advising some of you have in fact met with your career advisor and some of y'all are looking forward to making that an opportunity well for our pre-law friends we look forward to seeing you in the fall of 2023 and then we'll see y'all on Tuesday and for those of you all that aren't planning to do this just yet we'll keep that in the back of your mind as something that you really can leverage to your advantage moving forward foreign so for my medical and dental friends on the call you may have surrounded yourself with upperclassmen and that can be very helpful for when you are learning about resources and if you hear some of them talk about opesa portal Ops a portal and they're real excited or maybe they're real nervous and you're starting to get a little antsy because angst is contagious just remember you're not quite there yet this will be a critical resource for the year that you're applying and it's a rough draft of your application you get to see it sooner um then the application actually opens and there's opportunities for you to refine that so the only thing that you need to know is if there's some really great upperclassmen that you're hanging out with and they're slipping their Lids about the portal just take a deep breath and know your time will come and we will talk about that more in the fall as well as on the list serve and then for those of you all um on the call that are interested in Jam remember Dr Bloom is our Jam faculty director and this is a really great opportunity it's an early Assurance program Open to Texas residents with certain criteria that they have to to meet and it is essentially a pipeline into the participating Texas medical schools and you have more information there and of course Dr Bloom is a fantastic wealth of knowledge about this program so you can direct those inquiries to her after we're done here all right one of our favorite and most common questions is what should you be working on and yes there are many options and many choices within this particular journey and we'll give you a little bit clearer picture here um and if you would like to stress about these that is entirely up to you but like stress is contagious so is calm and we are going to do what we can to leave you as calm and cool and collected as you can possibly be by the end of the call so what is it that you should be working on for your first year the biggest favor you can do yourself is to really invest in your academics a slow start to school figuring out how to do college that is A-Okay and if you've had a little bit of bumps here and there that is to be expected there is that transition period so take the time to really figure out yourself as a student and what strategies work for you what it's like to take classes and to do well and then you can start building in the rest the rest can come in and be timed well academics those are more more difficult to to do any kind of remediation on um so so start strong there then start building an exposure to your chosen profession all of these whether you're in Health Professions or pre-law these are serving professions and the schools want to see that you love people and that you're willing to invest your time in them outside of just your day-to-day activities but you're willing to take some of that time and give back they want to know what kind of Student Activities and extracurricular extracurriculars you're in a lot of these professionals tend to be leaders in their chosen field and in their communities and their spheres of influence so start developing those skills early you can build in research this is not a requirement despite what your friends in the internet will try to make you believe it's not a requirement but it can be a really great asset and we'll talk about how here in just a little while same thing for work experience we understand that many of you are working through school or that you will choose to work possibly to gain leadership or exposure to the profession there's a lot of different things that work experience experience can bring you again not required but can be helpful and then of course some practice tests or practice admission test type items that may be in the back of your mind and we will take you on a whirlwind Adventure through each one of these facets a little bit deeper so that you know exactly what you should be working on not stressing on yeah no stress itch brain under control all right so if today you had to apply which of these areas that we just went through would be the weakest portion your biggest opportunity for growth if you had to submit an application today all right give you all just a couple more seconds to figure that one out all right so as you can see here it's split across the board I've got a little bit of everything but it does look like exposure to your chosen profession would by and large be a potential weak point at this juncture and we'll share various ways to to reach out and to to gain that exposure so thank you all for being candid and we'll come back at the end of the call and see what that looks like so we're going to take a deeper dive into the academics and focus on upward Trends so if you have had a little bump in the road or a couple bumps you want to focus on bringing those up as much as you can so you can see those upward Trends and when it comes time to apply the admissions officers can see those upward Trends as well you want to maintain between a 3.5 to a 4.0 if at all possible and you want to focus on building positive relationships with your professors principal investigators mentors because those are going to come in handy later on as well those are the people that can talk about the kind of person you are within your academics as well as just overall later on when it comes to letters of recommendation than when we touch on that and the major myth the truth is professional schools love all majors so it doesn't matter if you change your major or you add a minor or minors or a certificate or certificates that will not better your chances for law or Health Professions there's a lot more factors involved like the things that Rachel had already mentioned and we'll cover a little bit more of that so you really need to enjoy the major that you're in um and do the best that you can so you can keep those grades up and your prerequisite courses it's going to depend on The Professional School and sometimes even within the profession that you're interested in the differences within the professional schools are are going to change so you can't just go oh well I'm mad so it's all going to be exactly the same or I'm OT or I'm PT or dent and as I'm just sticking with these you've got to look at the schools so while you're relatively young you want to start doing that research and that's where the healthcare Symposium is really great for that because you can talk to people you can get a feel for how are the people at this school are they nice are they friendly now because this is when they're going to be the nicest to you when they're trying to get you to come to their school so ask those questions see how the upperclassmen are talking to people see what they have to say about things because they've done a little bit more research than you have and help you get on your road to figuring that out check regularly about the prerequisite courses because things can change especially if you're starting now you're not going to be applying for a couple of years so you want to look and see see what can change and then some Majors that you're in are going to have Purex built in so it makes a little bit easier for you you're not gonna have to do as much searching whereas others depending on what majors you chose you may have to do a little bit more digging and work with your academic advisor to figure out how to fit things in because your academic advisor is the one helping you get on the roads of graduation so they're going to help you figure out how to fit those those prerequisites in so that you're still getting to graduation while getting on the road to getting ready for professional school as well and then think about that semester course load when you're first starting out maybe that first semester you didn't take as many hours because you wanted to get that strong Foundation but you want to get to the 16 18 hours especially if you're in the finances because when it comes time to get to Professional School it's going to be more like 18 to 20 or more hours of Sciences that you're doing so you want to get closer to that so the schools can see that you can handle that kind of load that doesn't mean like pile it all on at once but get closer to that and work with your academic advisors to see how do I fit all this stuff in so that I don't overload myself but I get to the point where I can show the professional schools that I can handle this and then the lovely apib credits when you're looking at those make sure that you're checking to see if your Professional School will accept those AP and IB credits not all the schools will accept everything so you want to check with each school and see what they're saying and sometimes the different schools won't accept like I said between the different professions so you want to check on that sometimes your major won't accept certain things so you want to check with your academic advisor as well as your pre-professional advisor before you're accepting some of those things thank you very much for sharing Bree okay let's take a look at this here poll this is going to be one that may this one's not gonna launch so we are going to roll through this so Bree if you will walk us through the joys of Q drop and maybe some grades that don't look as great and I'm uncomfortable about them um and how to navigate a potential major change right so keep in mind that the Q drop deadline is going to be Tuesday April 18th by 5 PM so you want to speak with your Professional School advisor ahead of time not wait until April 17th or April 18th at 4 30. um you want to talk to them ahead of time and see is this something that I really should be q-dropping as well as talking to your academic advisor because your academic advisor is the one who actually goes through the Q drop process with you um and you want to make sure you're not pushing your graduation deadline behind we hear a lot of times that people will come to us and be like oh my gosh I'm making a b b as in boy not b as in dog and making a b this is the first time I've ever made a B in my life I should just Q drop all these B's I'm making right not necessarily A B is not the end of the world it's not gonna it's not gonna end your chances of going to professional school but you want to look at everything and see what's going on what grades you've made in the past and and talk through that um but we see so many people panic with that b and think oh my gosh I've got to start dropping things you only have a certain number of cue drops you don't want to drop everything your first or second semester when you may need that later on um not cursing you or anything but you may need it you may actually really need it later on because something comes on later down the road if you make a c or lower in a prereq course for your profession should you retake the course most of the time yes but not always it really just depends on the profession what school you're looking at and how all your other grades are going and that's where your pre-professional advisor comes in to help talk you talk you through that because if you have A's all the time then it you may not but it really just depends on the profession you're looking at how competitive things are how things have been looking in in the different Cycles uh coming up to that we also can't predict the future the next cycle could be a lot more competitive so we're going to talk you through what it looks like for you right now we're talking to a big group so we can only say in general this is how things look but individually when we're able to look at your individual grades talk to you about your specific profession or maybe two professions you're looking at trying to decide right now um we're going to give you the pros and cons of that and ultimately it's your decision you're the adult I know you don't like to think like that but you're the adult this is your future you've got to make that decision and then have you or do you plan to change your major that may come into play as well and you're going to have to talk to your academic advisor and see okay if I Q drop how does that affect things do I need the Q drop because I can't change my major if I get too many hours and things like that um these are all things that people don't necessarily think about but some Majors you can't change once you hit a certain threshold and if you've accepted too many AP ID credits those hours go towards that hour threshold that you may not be able to change a major if you really need to change a major and then exposure to the profession the one that a lot of y'all were talking about that you feel like you need that's where shadowing volunteering interning those kind of things come into play um a lot of the times you need to Shadow volunteer within the profession that you were interested in that's a lot of the times they want hours within that profession so while you can volunteer and do a lot of other things in other Healthcare areas or um that usually you have to in those um then you can have that extra extra and put that in your application most of the time you need specific hours in certain areas in the profession that you're interested in and that's what's the most important um you usually want to look in your hometown because that's where it's going to be easier I say usually some people come from very small towns so it may be harder to get it in your in your hometown than it is in Bryan College Station but you've got to remember that in Brian College Station we have a medical school a pharmacy school a nursing school so all of those students are out there interning and doing things and then you've got a large University of undergrads who are trying to find shadowing in their professions so you've got to be understanding that you're not all going to be able to get everything you need in Bryan College Station and plus we have people that their Hometown is Brian College Station so you've got to figure everything out and start asking questions and reaching out find an Aggie is a great resource to reach out to Aggies all across the world um and you can start with spring break coming up you can start reaching out to people in your hometown saying hey I may have time somebody may have already planned your spring break so you don't have time but those of y'all that haven't planned your spring break you can reach out and say hey I'm going to be home over spring break and reach out to those people it's basically like Google for Aggies you can type in your town or a town close here the city close to yours and what you're interested in and it'll tell you all the Aggies that that are in that field um that have updated their information you can go to your student organizations in the areas that you're interested in some professions still allow virtual shadowing even if they won't count it it can still help you decide is this something I'm interested in before you start doing a whole bunch of shadowing in in a certain area and then realize oh this is not what I want I'm actually interested in something else and then you also want to keep track of your hours a lot of the professions want hours listed some are specific in in having you turn them in when it comes time to apply so you want to look at that information and see what's required and we have that on our what do I need to be working on to hand out that Rachel talked about earlier and additional resources we have our volunteer sheet on the and the short link is on the handout that you'll have to follow along this so I don't have to read out every shortly from now on since we're kind of going through this I want to give you all some time to ask questions at the end a m also has a website for for Aggies to find opportunities in the Bryan College Station area for volunteering not only do we have um the law Caravan which we put on but lsac or law school admissions Council has digital forums that you can attend virtually and then don't forget the echo Healthcare Symposium that's coming up on Tuesday that you can attend and talk to a lot of people in person not only the schools but upperclassmen will be there that are volunteering that you can ask them questions and they are happy to help you because they've been where you are and they remembered when they didn't ask questions so they want to help you so that you aren't stuck like they they potentially were um and next one and volunteer through your student orgs that's going to be the best thing talking to upperclassmen because remember these are going to be your co-workers eventually a lot of times people forget that your upperclassmen they're so focused on looking at the old people like us like your advisors and and people that are out in the field they're like oh well hey let's look through the seasoned people that that can help us and they forget that your upperclassmen have been volunteering and shadowing and doing things and they're they're going to get a professional school before you do so remember to talk to them as well and keep in touch with them and back to grades grades always come Verso when you're doing everything else grades always come first so don't say oh well should I study for my test or should I go do something with my student org um you've gotta gotta find that balance but remember the grades you can't come back from that if those Start Tumbling Down you can always you can always network with with those upperclassmen and if you have to find that balance or you can find a study group with them because they've been through that stuff and asked them for help and then as another part of the holistic review so the things that Bree has been walking us through the metrics all the way through student orgs and community service so it's all part of holistic review but like she said grades come first and another thing that is going to be very important um is leadership because we can all lead from where we're at sometimes it's informal sometimes it's formalized so keep in mind that leader leadership is it's one of those almost abstract type things like what does it mean does it mean a title potentially but really it's the influence and the impact that you have over a group of folks that you're working with when y'all are working towards a common goal and so what that can what you can start looking for is not necessarily how many people are following you or doing what you say but like how many people have you developed how many people have you left an impact on what are you doing to leave your mark here at a m and in your community Through Your involvement through some of the things that Bree has suggested already this evening and then another facet of the holistic review and some things that you can consider working on is research now this is not going to necessarily be the golden ticket into the Chocolate Factory or in this case Professional School however keep in mind that Texan m is a tier one research institution and there is world class research going on here and while this is not required this can certainly enhance your application as well as your experience because you're not going to necessarily have another time where you have as much time that you could invest in research if you so choose to go this route it can really enrich your own experience it can teach you a lot about problem solving and critical thinking and what to do when things go wrong and how to collaborate and how to present in front of peers and colleagues and to receive that constructive feedback that we are constantly needing to get better so check it out don't just write it off that it may not be for you and if this is something you're really passionate about again remember Bree talked about balance and that's not just between your grades and your community service that's all of it and then of course work experience mentioned that some of you may be working through school some of you may elect to work and some of you may not work and that's all of those options are fine just understand that in work that there are responsibilities and you develop these interpersonal skills that every one of these professional schools are looking for this is a place for you to develop leadership collaboration communication not problem solving and navigating conflict and conflict resolution and learning about how to work with a diverse group of individuals and not just necessarily that folks don't necessarily look like you but that they are bringing a diverse set of experiences to the table diversity is a broad term and work as well as all of these opportunities that we've presented tonight can really enhance and expand that definition for you all right now it's time to go back to the beginning when we first learned that polls might have odd quirks to them but now that we've gone through the things that you need to be working on you gave an idea of what that growth area might be but now that you've heard that which specific area do you need to gain more experience in to be more competitive for your program of choice and then if not an application now but if you had to request a letter of evaluation today who could write you a positive letter of evaluation that should be coming your way now so in reflecting it's what you said earlier still true does that change thinking about your time here on campus is there anyone that could write you a letter maybe a supervisor or an advisor a mentor in your chosen field maybe more than one of those options or maybe none of those options that are presented but you know somebody that could um but maybe some of those main pieces like a professor or an advisor maybe just not yet all right give you a couple of seconds to nail down your answers all right so as you can see exposure to the field uh has become more of a Forefront winner and Bree gave y'all a lot of really great resources to start hitting the ground running with with gaining that so if you know this is your growth area and this one takes a lot of time get started now so you're not scrambling in your sophomore junior or senior years depending on your application cycle and then in terms of letters I'm glad to see that some of you all have some professors or advisors that would be willing to advocate for you as well as mentors and if you are one of those lucky ones that has more than one congrats to the rest of you that could only find one move yourself into that more than one of those options and then for those of you in the nun category there is time to start building those intentional connections one thing to ward off re should I go back to my high school teachers to ask for letters of recommendation is that is that a good move no that is not a good idea okay all right I just thought I'd thought I'd ask I really liked them for the most part foreign decision or early Assurance right for you this is going to vary by your profession so it's going to be important for you to start researching and speak with an advisor about this as soon as possible not all professions have early decision and early Assurance or early Assurance it just depends and you're going to want to look at the terms and requirements and the pros and cons for you it really is a personal decision then just to kind of wrap it up before we get into some q a we have thrown a lot at you today and we don't expect it all to to stick tonight this is just a good place to get your feet wet and the beautiful thing about resources and links is that you can always refer back to them it's not necessarily about memorizing all the information it's knowing about where you can access that information and there is more specific tailored information for each one of the professions listed here on our website as well as the various resources that were discussed today so keep these handy you've got that presentation handout and this will help you to navigate a plethora of tools to utilize and begin leveraging to your advantage and then we are always looking for ways to improve I am fully ready for you all to tell me to not launch polls early I I receive that I understand it but also tell us the other things that we need to be doing better to serve y'all as well as tell us what we we're doing well and what you want to see more of moving forward so we'll leave this up for a little while and we'll we'll open it up to q a a couple of things to keep in mind the chat if you do chat that thank you for not direct messaging folks those will get missed we will do our best to verbalize answers to those but we'll have um Karen helping us kind of roll through some of those questions and for those of y'all that are feeling uh fairly courageous today we would love to hear your voices live just raise your hand and we will call on y'all and and get some some questions answered but I am going to go ahead and stop sharing and stop recording