Pre-Med Opportunities During the Pandemic

Volunteering Opportunities

Volunteering is an integral part of the med school application, not only because it provides you with experience in a medical setting, but also because it shows medical schools that you are passionate about helping others. Here are some hospitals that have volunteering opportunities. Departments include emergency, patient advocacy, inpatient services, ambulatory surgery, and more!

General Hospital Volunteering Opportunities:

1. NYC Health + Hospitals:

2. Jacobi (college students)

3. Lincoln (high school and older)

4. Coney Island (ages 16+)

5. Woodhull (ages 18+)

6. Bellevue

7. Gouverneur (ages 13+)

8. Harlem (ages 16+)

9. Metropolitan

10. Elmhurst (ages 14+)

11. Queens (ages 14+)

12. New York-Presbyterian Hospital (ages 16+)

13. Maimonides Medical Center (high school and older)

14. Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (high school and older)

15. Patient Advocacy Volunteer Program in Emergency Room Services @ NYU (colleges students)

Summer Volunteer Positions:

1. NYC Health + Hospitals/Queens (ages 14+)

2. New York-Presbyterian Summer Volunteering (ages 16+)

Shadowing Opportunities

Shadowing is a great way to get a feel for what it’s like to be a doctor and therefore show yourself and medical schools how interested you are in the field. Some of the best ways to obtain shadowing opportunities are through personally contacting physicians – whether that be your own primary care provider, a family member, or through finding the contact information of physicians associated with academic hospitals. It can also help to focus on less populated/competitive hospitals. Nonetheless, here are a few shadowing programs you can apply to:

1. NYU Langone Rusk Rehabilitation Health Career Opportunity Internships (high school seniors ages 18+, college students, recent college grads)

2. Get a chance to explore a variety of health professions with this internship opportunity where you will be assigned to a single specialty for each of three four-week sessions.

3. Montefiore Health Opportunities Program (high school and college students)

4. This program is open to students from economically or educationally disadvantaged backgrounds and provides educational experiences each summer ranging from one-on-one mentoring by healthcare professionals to shadowing opportunities, and more.

5. Montefiore Undergraduate Shadowing – Mentoring in Medicine (third grade through health professional school)

6. This program pairs healthcare professionals with socioeconomically disadvantaged students from third grade through health professional school, providing them with observational and clinical experiences in the emergency department.

Research Opportunities

Many premeds also get involved in research. Columbia students often volunteer at the Morningside Heights location or CUIMC, but there are plenty of other research opportunities in the New York Metropolitan Area. Most of the opportunities listed below are exclusive to the summer, but you can find year-round research opportunities by personally contacting researchers in various Columbia departments or schools (i.e. biology, chemistry, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, etc) or by contacting researchers at other schools. A guide on searching for research opportunities can be found HERE.

1. Columbia University Department of Psychiatry

   1. Assist the New York State Psychiatric Institute’s researchers by volunteering at the Columbia University Department of Psychiatry.

2. Weill Cornell Medicine Gateways to the Laboratory Summer Program (current college freshman and sophomores)

   1. In addition to other experiences, this program allows participants to work independently on a research project at Weill Cornell Medicine and gives students a taste of the road to becoming a physician-scientist.

3. New York Stem Cell Foundation Internship Program (current high school, college, and grad students 18+ yrs old)

   1. A paid summer internship program where students can apply to be laboratory research interns, automation/software engineering interns, data science/bioinformatics interns, or programs administration interns.

4. NYU Grossman School of Medicine Summer Undergraduate Research Program (incoming college juniors or seniors)

   1. This program offers a payment of $4,000 and provides college students who have completed their sophomore or junior year the opportunity to be matched with a laboratory of interest in their preferred research area.

5. Mount Sinai Summer Undergraduate Research Program for Underrepresented Scholars (underrepresented college students)

   1. SURP4US provides undergraduate students from underrepresented racial or ethnic groups who have strong science backgrounds with hands-on biomedical research experience. Accepted Scholars are matched with a mentor from a laboratory in the Scholar’s desired research area.

6. Feinstein Institutes’ Summer Student Internship Program (current college students)

   1. This program provides current college students with hands-on experience in disease-oriented research by matching interns with research faculty in accordance with their stated institute of interest.

7. Feinstein Institutes’ Summer Visiting Scholar Program (current high school, college, and grad students)

   1. To participate in this program, students reach out directly to a Feinstein faculty member; if the faculty member says yes, they will initiate the student’s onboarding process to become a visiting scholar.