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Each year, a core of highly motivated Hamilton students can be found taking steps toward a career in healthcare. What are our pre-health students doing this summer? How did they land their internships, and what have they learned? And how does it all fit into what they envision for their futures?

Some 159 students were honored with academic prizes and scholarships, and faculty were recognized for receiving teaching awards and dean’s scholarly achievement prizes, at Hamilton’s annual Class & Charter Day convocation on May 9. Earning special recognition were Ryan Smolarsky ’23, who received the James Soper Merrill Prize, and Eleanor “Ellie” Sangree ’24, who was awarded the Fillius Drown Scholarship.

As an art history major on the pre-med track, Miriam Lerner ’24 believes that college is a time to explore your passions — even if they differ from your career goals. She has taken advantage of the open curriculum and at the same time, her interest in medicine has grown through her biology research at Hamilton. That research led her to a summer internship at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Sophia Ficarro ’22 will enroll at SUNY Upstate Medical University after graduation. She talks here about how her experiences at Hamilton prepared her for this path.

Pre-health professions tracks are known for their rigorous requirements and demanding workloads that often result in perpetually sleep-deprived students. And although these associations may, to varying degrees, be accurate, the challenges undergraduates face while pursuing a pre-health track are certainly better faced together.

Shaq Levy ’20 likens his new job as a medical scribe at CityMD, an urgent care walk-in center in Manhattan, to speed dating. “Each patient comes in, you build a rapport with them, get their medical history, the reason they are coming in today, and ask more questions about their complaint,” Levy said.

“‘They Understand What You’re Going Through’: Experientially Similar Others, Anticipatory Stress, and Depressive Symptoms,” by Assistant Professor of Sociology Matthew Grace, was recently published in the journal Society and Mental Health.

The phone rings at 1 a.m., and Serena Persaud ’20 is ready for action. She's one of the state-certified student EMTs who keep the College community safe while gaining valuable experience for a future career.

Nothing could have prepared Vince Sorrentino ’20 for what it was like to work in a hospital: grumpy patients, serious wound care, and lots of bodily fluids. It was an up close and personal look at hospital work for a student on the job—one of seven Hamilton students participating in a summer program with SUNY Upstate Medical University.

Rather than spend the first week of spring break basking in the sun on a beach, four pre-health Hamilton students elected to shadow family medicine program residents at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Utica, N.Y.