Every year Binghamton University seniors face graduation with unnerving anxieties over the next step in their lives ‘ a career. But when Ilana Price received her bachelor’s degree in psychobiology more than three years ago, she knew exactly what the next four years of her life would consist of: medical school.

Price, a Binghamton alumna from the class of 2004, took a different (yet popular) route for pre-health students here at BU.

Now Price is a third year medical student at the State University of New York Upstate Medical University, where she applied to the Early Assurance Program ‘ a binding contract that allows applicants to apply at the end of sophomore year, and, if accepted, exempts the student from taking the Medical College Admission Test.

‘The EAP is fabulous and I’d recommend it to anyone,’ said Price.

Price tried to get the most out of her undergraduate years by taking courses in 10 different departments and becoming a teaching assistant for cellular biology. Like many other premed students, Price contacted the pre-health office in her freshman year after declaring her major.

‘They were very helpful in outlining which courses I would need to take and what extracurricular activities medical schools would look at,’ Price said in a written statement.

In addition to meeting with an adviser, students can explore the pre-health corner in the waiting area of Harpur Advising, which contains pamphlets on different medical schools categorized both by state and type of school.

Besides concentrating on her academics, Price participated in diverse extracurriculars, from volunteering at a nursing home to designing a Web site for the Nature Preserve.

‘Above all, what institutions are looking for is a student with diversity,’ Price said. ‘ Schools tend to look at the whole rather than the sum of their parts.’

Pre-health adviser Dr. Thomas Langhorne agreed with Price that outside activities are equally as important as grades.

‘Generally, you’ve got to have threshold numbers [in] test scores for your profession and GPA,’ said Langhorne. ‘And after that they do start looking for other things.’

Langhorne identified ‘two broad categories’ of extracurricular activities, the first being exposure to a student’s chosen profession, while the second involves what a student does outside classwork and internships.

‘Have you done something that allows you to understand the day-to-day life of a practitioner of the profession? And have you also done it long enough that they feel that you’ve got a reasonable cross section of their lifestyle commitments that would allow you to make a reasonable decision?’ he said of profession-related activities.

‘So the second general category is what other interests do you have, and this could be anything,’ Langhorne said.

The professional exposure, extracurricular activities and the GPA of a student weigh heavily on his or her application, and the MCATs are no different.

This year the MCATs have switched from pencil and paper format to an electronic version, and with the change came alterations in the test dates from previous years.

The ideal time to start applications to medical school is in the summer before a student’s senior year, according to Langhorne. Similarly, as the newly computerized format of the MCATs has added a variety of testing dates, more students are choosing to take the exam in June or early July of that summer.

‘I just think folks want to finish the semester and be done with classes and finals and then still have a month to really concentrate on their MCATs,’ said Langhorne.

Although the test dates for 2008 have not yet been announced, Langhorne said he imagined a higher number of dates in the end of June for future years.