Career Planning -- the first 4 steps

Where do I start?

Being a medical student is the first step to a rewarding career in medicine. The following career planning process will guide you and provide feedback to help you make decisions that are right for you. There are three steps that you need to take now to start the career planning process.

Step 1
It is important to develop your personal profile. Get to know yourself well. A quick way to gather information about your personality is to take a personality inventory. Keep your printed profile in your career folder (Now is the time to start a career folder!).

Step 2
Curious to know which medical speciality might be for you? Answer this short survey which can be found on the Medical Education home page or at MSAT.

Step 3
In applying for residencies every fourth year student will tell you that you need to produce a Curriculum Vitae (CV) or Biosketch. Much of the information needed is the same that you submitted when you applied to medical school. We ask all fourth year students to turn in a Biosketch form to the Office for Student Affairs before Dr. Pearson meets with them to write their Dean's Letter. We encourage you to begin this process of filling out a Biosketch form now. Ideally you can keep this updated when you have things to add to it.

Click on Biosketch form to download the Microsoft Word file to your microcomputer. The file (cv.doc) can be saved to the Windows/Temp directory on your C drive. For MAC users, you may have to use the "Find Function" to see where the file was saved. You will have to open the file (cv.doc) in Word.

Helpful Tip: Zoom to 75% (upper right of toolbar) if you cannot see all of the text between the left and right margins.

Step 4
Become involved in the practice of medicine. Take advantage of every opportunity to see physicians at work in a variety of settings. The UVa Medical Alumni have created two notebooks for you to browse (in the Mulholland Office, across the hall from Student Affairs). Each notebook is organized by specialty area and has contact numbers for physicans who would be willing to talk to you about their field. Volunteer your services on a clinical service you might be interested in. Join a club. Try joining rounds before class or on Saturday morning.

to Career Planning Menu