A real roadmap for the pre-med Wolfpack.

Freshman Year

Welcome to NC State! Starting college is a genuinely difficult transition, even if you were a strong student before this — the pace, the independence, and the sheer size of everything take real time to adjust to. Be patient with yourself.

Focus on figuring out what study techniques actually work for you and getting used to the pacing and rigor of college-level coursework. Start building real relationships with your professors — get to office hours, introduce yourself, ask questions. Those relationships matter more than you'd think, starting now.

This semester should be about finding activities you want to get involved with — music, art, recreational volunteering, clubs — and discovering your interests and what you want to build your story around. You don't need to have it all figured out yet.

This is when you should start reaching out to professors about joining a research lab. Ideally, you'd start either at the end of the semester or that summer and work through from there. If you'd rather pursue clinical hours through an internship instead, that's also sufficient — but my honest best advice is to spend your summer working in some way that boosts your application.

Sophomore Year

Academically, this will likely be one of your most rigorous years — most of what you're taking now are the classic "weed-out" classes. Give coursework the time it needs.

By this point, you should be getting solid, consistent research experience and starting to look into clinical opportunities — whether that's shadowing or pursuing a certification that gets you into an actual clinical setting, like a CNA, phlebotomy, or EMT. Outside of schoolwork, focus on occasional volunteering to keep amassing hours rather than overloading yourself.

Keep building strong connections with professors, and start quietly thinking about who you're considering to write your letters of recommendation.

This is also when you should start playing into the idea of cohesiveness for your application. Medical schools love seeing that you had a few specific areas of interest and actually played on them — for example: you saw someone close to you experience food insecurity → you volunteered at a food bank → you started an initiative like a local food drive to benefit that food bank. Look for that kind of throughline in your own experiences.

Try to do a poster presentation for your research this year, too — NC State runs a spring semester research symposium and a summer research symposium that you can present at!

Junior Year

Your courses this year are also relatively difficult, but by now you've built a strong foundation and can absolutely handle them. The name of the game at this point is balance.

You have to be able to manage MCAT studying (dedicate anywhere from 3–6 months, depending on how much time and effort you can give it) alongside coursework, clinical hours, and volunteering. Research can drop down in time commitment — but do not fully drop out of it, since consistency is key for medical school applications — while academics and the MCAT become forefront.

Do not lose hope. Give yourself time for breaks — burnout is definitely real, and this is often when you need to hit your second wind.

Heads up: if the goal is to apply and matriculate right out of undergrad, you must be ready to apply in May of junior year. This is also the last year of school where you can meaningfully acquire a letter of recommendation for your application.

Take this time to start exploring leadership positions too, either as a TA or within an extracurricular activity you're already part of.

Senior Year

This is the final stretch — keep your head up, there is light at the end of the tunnel!!

By this point, your primary and secondary applications will be finishing up or already submitted. The next steps are to continue doing well academically, balancing research, volunteering, and clinical work in order to keep building your application and proving that you're dedicated.

At this point, you can pursue an extra letter of recommendation if you need one — or, if there are meaningful updates since you applied, send them to the schools you're most interested in, in the form of a "love letter."

Good luck!!

5th Year & Above

If your timeline does not work out perfectly, or you decide it would be best for you to take a gap year while you apply, that is completely normal! I recommend finding a full-time job as a medical assistant, clinical research technician, or field-related work while doing applications!