Pre-Med
You’ll need these experiences to prove you’ve seen real patients — not just Grey’s Anatomy.
What is clinical experience / shadowing
This part of your brain is basically your “thinking cap,” handling decision-making, planning, and personality.
What is the frontal lobe?
This is the standardized test all pre-meds dread and love equally.
What is the MCAT?
This on-campus group helps pre-meds connect, study, and survive undergrad.
What is the Pre-Med Club?
The powerhouse of the cell, producing ATP.
What is the mitochondria?
You do this to show you actually care about people (and not just your GPA).
What is volunteering?
This “communication highway” connects the left and right hemispheres of the brain — until someone cuts it in a split-brain experiment.
What is the corpus callosum?
One of the four MCAT sections focuses on understanding humans, society, and behavior.
What is Psych/Soc?
You can get help with applications, letters, and advice from this office.
What is the Career Services or Pre-Health Advising Office?
These small molecules speed up chemical reactions without being consumed.
What are enzymes?
You beg your professors for these — preferably before finals week.
What are letters of recommendation?
This brain structure helps you form memories — and no, it’s not shaped like a seahorse for fun.
What is the hippocampus?
This section is basically reading comprehension on steroids, with passages about history, philosophy, or ethics.
What is CARS (Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills)?
This program provides volunteer or research opportunities on campus to boost your med school resume.
What is VAW (Volunteering, Abroad, or Wellbeing programs)?
The molecule that stores genetic information in all living things.
What is DNA?
You write this personal statement masterpiece to convince med schools you love medicine and not chaos.
What is the AMCAS personal statement?
When you touch a hot stove and pull your hand back before realizing it, you can thank this part of your nervous system.
What is the spinal reflex arc?
MCAT prep often involves using this organization’s official practice tests.
What is the AAMC?
UC Merced students can shadow doctors through this kind of partnership.
What is clinical experience or hospital/clinic programs?
The law stating that force equals mass times acceleration.
What is Newton’s Second Law?
This is the often-overlooked but absolutely crucial step where you enter all your grades, experiences, and activities into an online system — and question every life decision while doing it.
What is the AMCAS application?
This neurotransmitter is known as the brain’s “happy chemical” — though it’s not actually responsible for happiness alone.
What is serotonin?
The MCAT tests chemistry, biology, and this “other chem” that smells terrible in lab.
What is organic chemistry?
This campus center supports students in STEM and health careers with tutoring, workshops, and mentorship.
What is the Student Success Center or STEM Mentorship Program?
This type of bond involves sharing electrons between atoms.
What is a covalent bond?