Accepting applications for enrollment starting Friday, the UTRGV School of Medicine will now offer a pre-medicine early-assurance program to qualifying high school students in South Texas.
John Krouse, dean of the School of Medicine and executive vice president for Health Affairs, announced Vaqueros MD last Monday in the Performing Arts Complex lobby on the Edinburg campus.
The new program will select up to five or six applicants for admission into the program in Spring 2020 after a “competitive selection process,” according to Krouse.
He said as the medical school class size grows, the number of applicants accepted will increase as well.
“So [students accepted into the program] will be accepted into UTRGV as freshman in 2020, so then when they complete their degree in 2024, they’ll enter the medical school,” Krouse said.
Students in Vaqueros MD will begin their undergraduate career in the Honors College in Fall 2020 and have to complete their bachelors by 2024 to claim their guaranteed seat in the School of Medicine’s entering class of that year.
“We will work very closely with [accepted students],” Krouse said. “They’ll have mentoring, they’ll have advising, and I think with really good, close work with them, they will graduate in four years and [go] into medical school.”
Along with mentoring and advising, the program will also provide an MCAT preparation program, a summer academy and guaranteed admission into the UTRGV School of Medicine.
To be eligible for the program, students must have attended and graduated from a South Texas high school and must enroll at UTRGV as an incoming freshman.
Students also must complete the Vaqueros MD/Honors College application, score in the 90th percentile or higher in either the SAT or ACT, and rank in the top 5% of their high school graduating class, possessing a minimum of 3.8 GPA and a 3.75 GPA of their cumulative science courses.
“I’m just so excited that UTRGV continues to create more opportunities and more pathways for our high school students and for our public schools in the area,” said Dr. Nolan E. Perez, member of the UT System Board of Regents and a gastroenterologist.
Dr. Perez said the program was a great opportunity to create home-grown health professionals for this region that are needed desperately.
“[Vaqueros MD] benefits UTRGV because we’re able to keep our best of the best students here locally,” he said. “Because this region has been a victim of what I call the brain drain, where our best and our brightest graduate high school and then leave.”
Krouse said the program was made to encourage “the best and brightest students” in the Rio Grande Valley to stay and to stop losing students to other schools in Texas. He said the medical school can provide full opportunities for students.
Krouse said it took about a year to put this “comprehensive and innovative” program together by collaborating and speaking with a variety of individuals at UTRGV and in various school districts across the Valley.
First year medical students Sidney Reyes and Saba Suleman said they were excited about the announcement of the program.
Reyes said Vaqueros MD will lessen the stress of going into the field of medicine for students in the program as well as decrease their loans, making them happier going into medical school.
“Thank God this is happening,” she said. “A lot of students will stay here and not have to feel that they have to leave for the opportunities.”
Suleman said she highly recommended the new program since it sets goals for students, allowing them to pursue other passions that can be used to help hone other skills in the community.
“I have a lot of friends that are still growing up in the next generation,” she said. “They’re going to high school right now, and now, they’re really looking forward to this program. I think it’s exciting.”
