Career Advising Program
The College of Human Medicine Office of Student Affairs and Services invests in students’ professional growth to prepare and send them into rewarding medical careers. Our college has a robust career advising program serving students throughout all four years of medical school and across eight campuses. Our mission is to offer career guidance and assist students in choosing a medical specialty providing meaning, purpose, and passion as a practicing physician.
Educational Focus
Throughout medical school, a student is faced with many career choices and decisions. Our career advising program has integrated a sequence of developmental workshops to help keep students engaged in purposeful career exploration and planning activities as they progress through the Early Clinical Experience (ECE), Middle Clinical Experience (MCE), and Late Clinical Experience (MCE) curriculums. Our career advising curriculum is rooted in the online AAMC Careers in Medicine program providing information and resources about physician career options, choosing a medical specialty, and applying smart to residency.
Medical students participate in rigorous activities including:
- Engaging in self-assessment to understand their work interests and values to help ensure a satisfying specialty choice.
- Exploring options including bi-monthly specialty seminars with physicians in practice and shadowing opportunities to promote awareness of training paths necessary to making well-informed career decisions.
- Learning how leadership, research, community advocacy, clinical experiences, academic and STEP exam performance influence specialty selection, and residency candidate competitiveness.
- Utilizing a systematic data enriched approach in preparing a competitive residency application, obtaining interviews, and ranking strategies to ensure graduate medical education program fit.
Career Advising
The College of Human Medicine has a career advising system of physician trained advisors across our multi-campus institution. These individuals represent various specialties and career pathways including clinical, academic, non-profit/community-based, administrative, research, rural, urban, and military medicine across our training sites. Physician advisors mentor students and help them think about ways they can explore various specialty paths during individual and group mentee meetings or shadowing experiences. They share information about their work including patient populations served, illnesses and conditions treated, different practice environments, work life balance, etc. Our physician advisors also provide individualized guidance to students throughout the career planning process. Physician advisors help students consider ways they can demonstrate specialty interest through research, leadership, community service, advocacy, electives, and clinical experiences in preparation to become a competitive candidate during the residency selection process.
Our faculty fellows, community deans, student program administrators, and Office of Student Affairs and Services also provide additional services to assist students in their career exploratory endeavors, elective selections, specialty decision processes, residency application, and match support.
For more information, please reach out to the Office of Student Affairs and Services, chm.studentaffairs@msu.edu
Residency and Match Information
The National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) is an objective web-based system used to confidentially match applicants and residency programs. This program utilizes what is known as the “R3 System” allowing an applicant to register to match, rank residency programs and obtain results of match outcomes. Students must go to the National Residency Match Program website and complete the registration form online. All applicants must agree to the terms and conditions of the MATCH and pay a registration fee.
Approximately 95% of residency programs use the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP) to fill positions. CHM applicants will apply for positions through the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) and register with the NRMP to match. Most programs participate in the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS), which transmits residency applications to program directors via the Internet. Applicants must register with both NRMP and ERAS to participate in the services of each. Please note: Registering with ERAS does not register applicants with the NRMP nor does registering with the NRMP register applicants for ERAS.