Bouve College of Health Sciences
My sister was two years older than me. She was in Bouvé a physical therapy student and she just told me how much she loved it and how different it was from the rest of the majors.
I think it feels a lot more like the classic college experience that I wanted – it’s like a tight-knit community. You know your advisors; your advisors know you. The classes are a little bit smaller, so you get to know the people in your major more.
And then the class content was really what completely killed it for me. The major was just so focused on social aspects of health in addition to all the regular science classes that you have to take pre-health professional program.
And then overall, Bouvé just really ensured that we knew where we were going, that we knew what our plans were, and they really helped us out throughout the course of our entire time here.
Bouvé gave me the opportunity to volunteer in a community with underserved populations. They gave me the chance to join all of these extracurricular organizations, learning the other sides of healthcare, the other sides of what it means to be a healthcare professional. Being able to talk eloquently about that in interviews, or just with connections you have in professional fields and settings.
Every college that I was interviewing with had general chemistry and organic chemistry and all of the “biologies,” but not everyone understood the American healthcare system. Not everyone got community and public health when they were an undergrad. I think it really set me apart from my peers. I think Bouvé intentionally tries to make sure that we’re all well-rounded in that way. I also think that Bouvé does a really good job of building community to the point where you’re motivated by the peers around you because they’re all such successful individuals. They are all applying to these amazing hospitals, really cool government work – they just motivate you to become better and elevate your standards. By the time that you finish interacting with all your classmates, you’re a better person than you were when you came into it. I think Bouvé fosters that kind of environment in a way that not a lot of other schools do.
Boston is the perfect place to be in a pre-health profession. You’re going to get the kind of experience that no one else is going to have. The kind of resume stuff you’ll have is kind of outstanding.
Both of my coops were clinical, but my first one was at Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary. It was very clinical – I had tons of patient interaction. I think that’s what solidified my future goals because I wasn’t sure about what I wanted to do, but then after being on the hospital floor, I knew that I had to end up there somehow.
My second co-op was also clinical. I was at Boston Healthcare for Women, which is an OB-GYN clinic affiliated with Brigham & Women’s hospital. So that was a lot more intense I would say because I was one of two medical assistants with a very, very busy practice. I was seeing anywhere between 30 to 40 patients a day. They were all expecting mothers or there for gynecological visits. It was really interesting. I learned a lot about how that field in medicine works, and I think that’s what I want to go in to, so it was really enlightening.
I’m currently in my third year in a behavioral neuroscience and biophysics lab at Northeastern. It’s not really related to health science in the social aspect of it, but I think it speaks to the integrated nature of health care education. It allowed me to seek out the hard science wet lab experiences, while also allowing me to explore my social justice passions in other ways.
I would choose Bouvé because they really care about you as a person, they will not let you fail. They will help you in any way that they can and they will make sure that you have all of the tools that you need once you are graduating to be successful in whatever field you want to be in.
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