Career Success Pre-Professional Advising

Welcome, New Boilermakers!

Whether you are newly on campus as a first year student, working remotely but still an active part of our community, transferring here from another campus, or returning to campus from another adventure, we are glad that you are with us. 

We know that the past several years have presented challenges for all of you. They have challenged us as well. The one good thing we can say about the pandemic is that we are all in this together!

Our website has a lot of information gathered on it so that you have 24/7 answers to your questions. We don't intend it to replace talking with one of our advisors, but we do want you to at least have access to information you can trust when you need it.

In this section for new students, we have gathered some basic information that we thought you might need to help with starting the semester right!

This can be a little confusing on Purdue's campus since the terms "pre-professional" and "professional" student are used by other offices on campus in different ways. In our case, we are basically referring to students who are:

  • Pre-Med
  • Pre-Vet
  • Pre-Health (including pre-dental, pre-optometry, pre-occupational therapy, pre-physical therapy, pre-physician assistant, pre-chiropractic medicine, pre-pharmacy, pre-audiology, pre-speech language pathology, pre-genetic counseling, etc).
  • Pre-Law

Pre-Professional students can come from all majors on campus and are often taking required classes (prerequisite courses) for their future application into a professional field program along with courses for their major(s).

You do NOT have to declare yourself as a pre-professional student. If you are working toward one of these fields, you simply are pre-professional and are welcome to use our services.

We do recommend, however, that you tell your academic advisor what your professional goal is so that they can provide you with the best assistance possible.

We're so glad you asked!

  • Watch a short video about the services we offer.
  • Pre-Professional Advising (PPA) is part of the Center for Career Opportunities (CCO) and is located in Young Hall (behind Krannert Hall which is directly across State Street from the Union). Our main office is in 132 Young which is just to your left as you come in the main entrance off of Grant Street.
  • Typically for in-person appointments you would check-in there (132 Young) and someone would send you to the second floor for your appointment with one of us. Currently, we offer virtual appointments, but we will make the best of it and can still help you prepare for your future through virtual appointments!
  • We provide a second and more specialized level of advising beyond what your academic advisor provides. We are members of national organizations for law and health advising and attend conferences for those areas and are trained by admissions professionals at law schools and health care programs and the people who run the application services through which you will eventually apply so that we can provide you information about what schools are looking for, what makes a competitive applicant, and how to apply.
  • Don't know what you would even ask us in an appointment? Here are some ideas!
  • We have 3 advisors--Amy Terstriep, Cristy Gosney, and Cara Hines-Pham. All of us cover all the health and law fields. You are not assigned to one of us so you can see any of us.

 

 

Excellent question and points for using PPA instead of Pre-Professional Advising!

Basically there are 3 ways of staying in-the-know.

  1. Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter. We literally send it, at most, once a month and we don't share our distribution list so you won't be getting a lot of spam email from us or from others who obtained a list from us.
  2. Check-in on the News section of our website on a regular basis. We update it regularly.
  3. We are working on another way for you to get timely information that is field specific. Stay tuned!

During BGR you will probably hear something about BoilerConnect. This is the system used across campus to make appointments with advisors and a number of other offices on campus.

Conveniently, we use this too.

When you go to BoilerConnect, take these steps to schedule your appointment

  1. Select a Care Unit: Career/Pre-Professional Advising
  2. Location: CCO/Pre-Professional Advising
  3. Service:
    • Health/Law Career Exploration
    • Health/Law Personal Statement
    • Health/Law Progress Check-In
    • Health/Law School Application
  4. Advisor Selection: We all advise every field
    • Cristy Gosney, Caralynn (Cara) Hines-Pham, Amy Terstriep
  5. Select Time

Note: It is very helpful for all of the people you will meet with if you fill in the section that tells us the purpose of the meeting. It allows us to do some advance preparation for the meeting. So PLEASE take a moment to type in your reason for making the appointment!

Another Note: You will not be able to schedule a same day appointment. Generally you can find an appointment for the same week other than during the busiest times of the semester. If you are having problems scheduling, please email preprofessional@purdue.edu and we will try to assist you.

 

We recommend that you come in every semester.

  • We want to be sure that you are staying on track with everything that needs to get done. Many of you will be applying for a professional program the summer between your junior and senior year. While it seems far away now, you will be surprised how quickly your junior year, which is application year, sneaks up on you.
  • For your first appointment, we recommend giving yourself time to settle into the semester. Unless you have burning question, start thinking about coming in for an appointment around October.
  • In the meantime, consider signing up for our monthly e-newsletter, explore this website, and you can always email a question to preprofessional@purdue.edu.
  • As we learn about club callouts, we will list them in the Club News section of our website as well.

YES!!! We hear from a lot of students during BGR that they don't think they can go into health or law fields because they are engineering students.

You can!

Actually quite a few of our engineering students do make their way to medical school, law school, veterinary school, physician assistant, physical therapy and other fields. It can be done.

If you are interested, please come see us.

Pre-Professional Ambassadors are current students from various Colleges and majors at Purdue who all share a goal of entering professional school. Meet our Ambassadors and read their advice to pre-professional students.