Three Benilde-St. Margaret’s seniors have been accepted into a seven-year BA-MD program at the University of Minnesota. Sophia Coleman, Joana Dominguez-Lopez, and Maliah Jaiteh are joining a ten-person roster of students studying to get their MDs a year ahead of schedule.

This program is not the only BA-MD program available; others exist at schools such as Case Western University. However, most programs like this are open for anyone to apply to. The University of Minnesota’s is invite-only, meaning that only some students are even welcome to undergo the rigorous application process. “Not every pre-med gets invited to apply in the first place… and then you need a recommendation letter and you also need to write six essays… from there, we have these sessions of interviews… After that we had a two-hour long session with the medical advisors… and then we had some students that are actually in the program talking us through,” senior Joana Dominguez-Lopez said.

Once accepted into the program, students are given the option of two majors: Biology, Society, and the Environment or Human Physiology. Senior Sophie Coleman has chosen to study the latter. “I would start my degree, and I would finish most of it in three years, and then as long as I keep a 3.5 GPA and I get a certain score on my MCAT, I’m admitted straight into the medical school without actually having to apply, and then I’ll finish up my degree during my first year of medical school,” Coleman said.

The program shaves time and money off of medical school, both invaluable to young adults entering the rigorous medical field. “The U of M has some pretty good tuition, and since I would only be going to undergrad for three years, I would save quite a bit of money, and I would likely graduate from the entire thing with little to no debt, so that saves a lot of hassle during my residency. And I’d finish a year earlier than most of the people in my class… so I get to have a jump start,” Coleman said.

The students entering the program have spent years immersed in the medical field, learning what they would like to do with their futures. Of course, the options are still numerous. “I’ve had a lot of experience in the medical field, you know, the Biomed classes, the medical club, I volunteered at North Memorial a lot… pediatrics is a field that I really like… becoming an endocrinologist because I know a lot of people with diabetes and I feel like more research can go into that field… Becoming a gastroenterologist,” Dominguez-Lopez said.

Coleman, Dominguez-Lopez, and Jaiteh all intend to enter the program in the fall of 2021.

Maliah Jaiteh was unavailable for comment.