Career Success Pre-Professional Advising

Welcome, New Boilermakers!

Whether you are new on campus as a first year or transfer student or a returning student who is new to Pre-Professional Advising, we are glad that you are with us. 

Our website has a lot of information gathered on it so that you have 24/7 answers to your questions. The website does not replace talking with one of our advisors, but we do want you to at least have access to information you can trust when you need it.

In this section for new-to-us students, we have gathered some basic information that we thought you might need to help with building your pre-professional knowledge base!

What Does Pre-Professional Mean?

This can be a little confusing on Purdue's campus since the terms "pre-professional" and "professional" student are used by other offices on campus in different ways. In our case, we are basically referring to students who are:

  • Pre-Med
  • Pre-Vet
  • Pre-Health (including pre-dental, pre-optometry, pre-occupational therapy, pre-physical therapy, pre-physician assistant, pre-chiropractic medicine, pre-pharmacy, pre-audiology, pre-speech language pathology, pre-genetic counseling, etc).
  • Pre-Law

Pre-Professional students come from all majors on campus and are often taking required classes (prerequisite courses) for their future application into a professional field program along with courses for their major(s).

You do NOT have to declare yourself as a pre-professional student. If you are working toward one of these fields, you simply are pre-professional and are welcome to use our services.

We do recommend, however, that you tell your academic advisor what your professional goal is so that they can provide you with the best assistance possible.

We're so glad you asked!

  • Watch a short video about the services we offer.
  • Pre-Professional Advising (PPA) is part of the Center for Career Opportunities (CCO) and is located in Young Hall (YONG on campus maps). Young is behind the Daniels School of Business which is directly across Mitch Daniels Boulevard from the Union. Our offices are on the second floor of YONG.
  • We typically provide virtual appointments. We do this because much of what you need to learn about are the online resources you will be using as you prepare for professional school. Virtual meetings allow you to save these resources into your own computer. We can meet in person if needed.
  • Really craving the face time? Come see us when we are providing Drop-Ins around campus.
  • Appointments are made through BoilerConnect.
  • We provide a second and more specialized level of advising beyond what your academic advisor provides. We are members of national organizations for law and health advising and attend conferences for those areas and are trained by admissions professionals at law schools and health care programs and the people who run the application services through which you will eventually apply. We can provide you information about what schools are looking for, what makes a competitive applicant, and how to apply.
  • Don't know what you would even ask us in an appointment? Here are some ideas!
  • We have 3 advisors--Amy Terstriep, Cristy Gosney, and Cara Hines-Pham. All of us cover all the health and law fields. You are not assigned to one of us so you can see any of us.
Staying Up-To-Date as a Pre-Professional Student

How should you stay informed as a PPA student? 

Take these steps to stay in-the-know.

  • Sign up for our monthly e-newsletter. We literally send it, at most, once a month and we don't share our distribution list so you won't be getting a lot of spam email from us.
  • Check-in on the News section of our website on a regular basis. We update the Calendar regularly.
  • Follow us on Instagram: @purdueppa
  • Join a club that supports your pre-professional interests (Pre-Law Society, Genetic Counseling Club, Pre-Dental Club, etc)
    • Bonus points for inviting us to speak to your club!
Making an Appointment with PPA

Make appointments with us using BoilerConnect. This is the system used across campus to make appointments with advisors and a number of other offices on campus.

Conveniently, we use this too.

When you go to BoilerConnect, take these steps to schedule your appointment

  1. Select a Care Unit: Career/Pre-Professional Advising
  2. Location: CCO/Pre-Professional Advising
  3. Service:
    • Health/Law Career Exploration
    • Health/Law Personal Statement
    • Health/Law Progress Check-In
    • Health/Law School Application
  4. Advisor Selection: We all advise every field
    • Cristy Gosney, Caralynn (Cara) Hines-Pham, Amy Terstriep
  5. Select Time

Note: It is very helpful for all of the people you will meet with if you fill in the section that tells us the purpose of the meeting. It allows us to do some advance preparation for the meeting. So PLEASE take a moment to type in your reason for making the appointment!

Another Note: You will not be able to schedule a same day appointment. Generally you can find an appointment for the same week other than during the busiest times of the semester. If you are having problems scheduling, please email preprofessional@purdue.edu and we will try to assist you.

 

Frequency of Visits with PPA

We recommend that you come in every semester.

  • We want to be sure that you are staying on track with everything that needs to get done. Many of you will be applying for a professional program the summer between your junior and senior year. While it seems far away now, you will be surprised how quickly your junior year, which is application year, sneaks up on you.
  • For your first appointment, we recommend giving yourself time to settle into the semester. Unless you have a burning question, start thinking about coming in for an appointment around October.
  • In the meantime, consider signing up for our monthly e-newsletter, follow us on Instagram, explore this website, and you can always email a question to preprofessional@purdue.edu.
  • As we learn about club callouts, we will list them in the Club Info section of our website as well.
Engineering Majors & Professional School

We hear from a lot of students during BGR that they don't think they can go into health or law fields because they are engineering students.

You can!

Actually quite a few of our engineering students do make their way to medical school, law school, veterinary school, physician assistant, physical therapy and other fields. It can be done.

If you are interested, please come see us.

Meet our Amazing Ambassadors

Pre-Professional Ambassadors are current students from various Colleges and majors at Purdue who all share a goal of entering professional school. Meet our Ambassadors and read their advice to pre-professional students.

Also check out our YouTube Channel to hear the advice of past and present PPA Ambassadors.

Preparing for Your First Year

Great clip on how to prepare for first year from Duke University professor Aaron Dinin