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Home > Postbaccalaureate > Meet Some of Our Students and Alumni
Meet Some of Our Students and Alumni
Students from all over the country choose Mount Holyoke College’s Postbaccalaureate Prehealth Program for its personalized attention and first-rate academics. The students who enroll in the program are ambitious, self-directed, and focused on their goals. As a result, the program’s alumni can be found enrolled in graduate schools nationwide and pursuing careers in a range of health professions.
Students
Alumni
- Rukmini Velamati, medical student at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Texas
- Hilary Alvarez, medical student at the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota
Noelle Noyes
During her first year at Amherst College, Noelle Noyes considered preparing for veterinary school. After trying out a physics class, she switched her focus to European studies. Upon graduating, Noelle received a German Chancellor Fellowship from the Humboldt Foundation and earned a master’s degree in European studies from the University of Osnabruck. Then, looking for a change from academia, she spent two years doing high-tech strategy consulting. But eventually she grew tired of the 100-hour work weeks and the constant travel.
“I kept thinking, ‘What do I want to do to make me happy for the rest of my life?’ I’d been volunteering at an animal shelter in Boston and decided that I really did want to be a vet,” she says.
Since Noelle had no science courses on her transcript she needed to complete approximately 18 courses required for admission to vet school. In order to get those prerequisites, she applied to the postbaccalaureate programs at Mount Holyoke and a large university. “I chose Mount Holyoke partly because of its new science building,” Noelle says. “I was impressed by the state-of-the-art labs and cross-disciplinary atmosphere.”
After two semesters at Mount Holyoke, she feels she is “doing really well. The professors have been very accessible and so supportive.”
Another perk has been working in biology professor Gary Gillis’s research lab. Even though she arrived at Mount Holyoke not knowing lab techniques or terminology, she says that Gillis was “patient and laid-back. I hope to be starting my own research this year. I’m also discovering that I eventually want to incorporate research into my career.”
Meanwhile, Noelle is working at a local small animal vet clinic and riding with a large animal vet as an intern. She’ll eventually utilize the Five College Consortium to take a few specialized courses, such as animal nutrition. “I’ll take those at UMass, but all the other courses I need are offered at Mount Holyoke. The postbaccalaureate program has been a good fit for me.”
Rukmini Velamati
After graduating from Vassar College with a degree in political science, Rukmini Velamati began researching postbaccalaureate programs to prepare her for medical school. In the end, she found herself choosing between Mount Holyoke College and a university in New York City.
“MHC’s program appealed to me because it was small. I was concerned about getting good letters of recommendation at a bigger school because no one would know who I was,” says Velamati. “Another huge draw was that MHC’s program had a more than 90 percent acceptance rate for medical school.”
What also impressed her was the attention she received throughout the application process. When Velamati first met with Kay Althoff, director of the postbaccalaureate program, Althoff “knew who I was, knew my story, and we talked about my particular chances of getting into medical school. Ultimately, I chose MHC because I wanted that kind of personal interaction.”
Velamati says she got just that. “The faculty was extremely accessible. I’m especially indebted to Professor Sheila Browne and Assistant Professor Megan Nunez of the chemistry department. They were great resources and so helpful while I was studying for the MCAT. It made a huge difference that they really wanted me to succeed.”
She also is grateful to the Career Development Center, which connected her to MHC’s impressive alumnae network. As a result, Velamati spent a semester shadowing Dr. Audrey Guhn, an MHC alumna who is a pediatrician in nearby Springfield. That experience, says Velamati, “was amazing. It cemented my desire to be a physician. And Dr. Guhn wrote one of my recommendations for medical school.”
Now at the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, Velamati describes MHC’s postbaccalaureate studies program as “a great fit.” When she hears classmates discuss their experiences at bigger programs, she feels lucky to have been in such a supportive environment. “I wasn’t hustled through the program,” says Velamati. “Faculty knew who I was and they’d still be there for me now if I needed anything. I know they’re genuinely happy that I’ve done well—and that’s a really nice feeling.”
Hilary Alvarez
At Dartmouth College, Hilary Alvarez majored in philosophy. Her particular interest was applied ethics, especially bioethics, and toward the end of her undergraduate career, she set her sights on medical school.
What drew her to Mount Holyoke College’s postbaccalaureate program was the flexibility it offered. “Some of the other programs that I looked at were concerned about me taking ‘too much’ science my senior year of college, before I started the postbac. Mount Holyoke, on the other hand, was happy to have me come for just the one year of extra courses that I needed,” says Alvarez.
Another feature that attracted her was Mount Holyoke’s small class size. “I felt like I’d often let myself fade into the background in courses at Dartmouth, and thought that small classes would keep me from doing that again.”
Alvarez credits the preparation she received in the postbaccalaureate program with enabling her to receive a full scholarship to the Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota where she’s now a third-year medical student. What made the biggest difference, she says, was “the faculty’s support and excellent teaching.”
She also valued the program’s willingness to work with her on a schedule tailored to her needs. “For example, when I decided that I wanted to apply to Mayo and discovered that biochemistry was a required course, I was allowed to jump into the second course in a sequence without taking the first,” she recalls.
These days, Alvarez is hoping to return to New England and work as a family practice physician. “I can’t recommend the MHC program highly enough,” she says. “I enjoyed living on campus, working with the medical emergency response team, and exploring the Pioneer Valley. The on-campus MCAT course run by Kaplan was small and extremely well-taught. My postbac year was an amazing experience.”
Fiona Somers
Fiona Somers, who has recently been accepted to the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, says that one of the things that appealed to her about Mount Holyoke’s Postbaccalaureate Prehealth Program was MHC’s membership in the Five College Consortium. The consortium makes it possible for students enrolled in one of the five colleges—Mount Holyoke, Amherst, Hampshire, and Smith Colleges, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst—to take courses at any of the others. “The Five College Consortium and the flexibility of Mount Holyoke’s program allowed me to pick up where I left off,” says Fiona, who graduated from Smith College with a major in East Asian studies. “I was able to take the second half of an organic chemistry sequence that I’d begun at Smith with the same professor I had started with. That was a huge help.
“Had it not been for the options that MHC afforded me, I never could have completed my courses in one year,” Fiona says. “The support I received from the program staff was amazing—they were always checking in to make sure I was getting what I needed out of the program. They were quick to respond whenever I had questions or problems.” And, she says, she appreciated how supportive and accessible her professors were.
When she began investigating career and medical school options, Fiona found that the Career Development Center’s extensive resources and staff were “incredibly helpful.” She’s currently working for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s Primary Care Information Project. “We make electronic health record (EHR) systems affordable for doctors who work with medically disadvantaged patients, so that they have access to patients’ complete medical histories and can provide well-informed care,” she says. “I evaluate the program’s progress by surveying patients and physicians to see what’s working and what needs improvement. The lack of preventive care access for underserved populations was what drew me to medicine in the first place, so I feel very lucky to be working on a project that so closely matches my interests.
For Fiona, Mount Holyoke’s Postbaccalaureate Prehealth Program turned what once seemed an unlikely goal—a career in public health—into reality. Students who want to prepare for a medical career would be hard-pressed, she says, “to find a more supportive environment in which to take on a new challenge.”
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