Welcome to the Career Advising Program (CAP) at Tulane SOM!
The information contained in this website is designed to address questions about career goals and developing your pathway in medicine.
Pathways?!
That means that you need to have a plan. Every plan needs a starting point--you need not have a well-fleshed out plan from the get-go. But you do need some kind of plan. The first step in creating a plan is knowing at what you are aiming. What's the goal? The more specific you can be in the goal, the better. Again, you can start broad and refine the goal over time. What do you like? What do you dislike? Some of these questions can only be answered by experiencing different things (like during the clerkship years). But if you were not in medicine, how would you decide what to do? Art? Literature? Law? Theatre? Engineering?
Career planning is an essential, exciting and often anxiety provoking aspect of being a medical student. Tulane University School of Medicine hopes to alleviate that anxiety by providing essential information, resources and career guidance to students throughout all years of medical school. The goal is to help students make educated decisions regarding their careers and to successfully obtain a residency position.
T1 & T2
The general approach to career development through the four years of medical school includes self assessment and career exploration in the first two years (T1 & T2). Since you have not yet had the opportunity to rotate on the clinical services, that degree of experiential self-reflection is not yet available to you. Instead, we suggest some tools produced by Careers in Medicine from the AAMC. These tools are designed to get you thinking.
T3 & T4
Experience the clerkship rotation. Find out what you like and don't like. But more importantly, why do you like something and dislike something else? The why can be more important than what you actually like/dislike. Answering these questions will help in choosing a specialty and navigating the residency application process (ERAS). The resources needed to do so can be found throughout this website. Students can also take advantage of the resources and experience of the Office of Medical Education and Office of Student Affairs and the Tulane Career Advising Program (T-CAPS).
NEW - Match Timeline - Milestones on the Way to Residency
Class of 2025 Residency Prep Book
Kristin Bateman, MD
Department of Medicine
Assistant Professor of Clinical Medicine
T-CAPS Director
Katrina D'Aquin, PhD
Office of Admissions & Student Affairs
Director for Career Advising
