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For Alumni Applying to Medical/Dental School

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Penn alumni are welcome to seek advice from pre-health advisors in the same way that current undergraduates are. For contact information and instructions on how to set up an appointment, click on "Connect With Us" on the left.

It is not expected of alumni that they receive an HPAB (Health Professions Advisory Board; "committee") letter from Penn when they apply to medical or dental school in the same way that it is expected of current undergraduates.

Nevertheless, alumni who completed their pre-med/pre-dental requirements at Penn are entitled to receive a letter if they go through the same HPAB process as the undergraduates, which takes place in the spring in the year of application. If you are taking or have taken a post-baccalaureate program that offers a letter, however, you must obtain your committee letter from them, not us. This will in fact make most sense, since that will reflect your most recent work.

Alumni who live close to campus, want a letter written, and are eligible, should go through the HPAB process just as the undergraduates do in the spring before they apply; that means coming to an HPAB applicants' workshop, and following the instructions we give there.

Alumni who are not in Philadelphia do not need to come to a workshop, but they do need to contact a pre-health advisor in order to learn about the process, and then set up Advisor and HPAB Interviews (each a required part of the process). If you are able to come to Penn from out of town, we'd be delighted to meet you in person, and given plenty of notice, we can set up both interviews on the same day in order to make that easier. If you are unable to come to Penn in person, then it is possible to set up interviews via Skype.

Please try to contact us by the end of March if you are interested in having us write an HPAB letter for you. Since the HPAB process takes place in the spring, we are not able to write HPAB letters for any alumni who have not gone through the entire HPAB process before and who contact us after May 15.

For those alumni who did not take their pre-medical/dental requirements at Penn, or contact us after the deadline, we cannot write a full HPAB letter, but we can, if desired, generate a brief "letter of support" that, if you give us permission to check and release your records, will indicate if you are a student in good standing and serve as a cover letter for recommendations you have on file with the Credentials service here in Career Services.