Summary: <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> If you want to know how much of BU medical school's recent $100 million gift it intends to use for scholarships, or what happens to applications to ensure a genuinely holistic process, or what its associate dean of admissions wants to see in students read on! In this interview, Dr. Kristen Goodell, associate Dean of Admissions at Boston University’s Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine answers all these questions and more.<br> <br> <br> <br> Welcome to the 541st episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Are you ready to apply to your dream medical schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted's <a href="https://www.accepted.com/medical/med-quiz">Med School Admissions Quiz </a>can give you a quick reality check. Complete the quiz, and you'll not only get an assessment, but tips on how to improve your chances of acceptance. Plus, it's all free. <br> <br> <br> <br> DON'T MISS Linda Abraham's 2021 interview with Dr. Kristen Goodall: All About BU School of Medicine, a Social Justice-Minded Med School [Episode 405]. <a href="#podcast">Click here for a full transcript!</a><br> <br> <br> <br> Today's guest, Dr. Kristen Goodell, associate Dean of Admissions at BU's Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine, earned her bachelor's degree at Colby College and her MD at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. She completed her residency in family medicine at Tufts and has been a practicing physician ever since 2007. In addition, from 2012 to 2017, Dr. Goodell served as a Director for Innovation in Medical Education at the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. In 2017, she was appointed Assistant Dean of Admissions at the Boston University School of Medicine and became Associate Dean in 2018. <br> <br> <br> <br> Dr. Goodell, welcome back to Admissions Straight Talk. [1:57]<br> <br> <br> <br> Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.<br> <br> <br> <br> Can you give an overview of Boston University’s Chobanian and Avedisian School of Medicine program focusing on its more distinctive elements? [2:03]<br> <br> <br> <br> Sure. So the most important thing to know about BU School of Medicine is that we are a social justice medical school, and you see our social justice focus come through in many different ways. It is woven into the curriculum quite explicitly. You see it in what our students do with their free time. You see it in the particular areas of expertise of our faculty, and of course it's in the patients that we serve at our primary hospital, which is really on the same campus with the medical school.<br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> <br> Now I normally ask what's new and I will ask what's new, but the obvious thing that's new is the school's name. So why don't we start with that; then you can tell me what else is new in addition to the name. [2:44]<br> <br> <br> <br> Sure. So last year we got a new name for our medical school along with a hundred million dollar gift.<br> <br> <br> <br> That's a big gift. [3:00]<br> <br> <br> <br> Right. And it was a wonderful gift and in my mind, perhaps the most exciting thing about that is that $50 million of it, so half of the gift was specifically earmarked for financial aid. Ever since I have been here, we’ve been really focusing on increasing the amount of scholarship aid that we have available to give students, and the maximum scholarship award has almost doubled just since I've been here. It's gone from $30,000 to $55,000 per year, and that's just only for scholarships and it’s need based. And so that increase has been really remarkable, but now we know that it's going to increase even more. So I think that is amazing. As a private school, we know that our tuition is high. As a school that is in Boston, we know that living expenses here are high.
