Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP) application is now open!
November 4, 2022
The Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP) is a free summer program for students to explore their interests in medicine, dentistry, nursing, optometry, pharmacy, physical therapy, public health, and more. The program takes place at our 12 partner institutions and offers students a chance to develop healthcare skills, plan academic journeys, get clinical exposure, and network.
Who is eligible to apply?
All students who meet the Summer Health Professions Education Program eligibility requirements are encouraged to apply. Applicants must meet the following requirements:
- Must be a high school graduate and currently enrolled as a freshman or sophomore in college.
- Applicants should have earned no more than 60 credits when submitting their application.
- Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate credits are not counted.
- Dual enrollment credits are counted.
- Applicants should have earned no more than 60 credits when submitting their application.
- Have a minimum overall college GPA of 2.5.
- Be a U.S. citizen, a permanent resident, or an individual granted deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA) status by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
- Must not have previously participated in the program.
Other factors for consideration include that a student:
- Identifies with a group that is racially/ethnically underrepresented in the health professions;
- Comes from an economically or educationally disadvantaged background; and/or
- Has demonstrated an interest in issues affecting underserved populations.
- Submits a compelling personal statement and a strong letter of recommendation.
Admission Process
Program sites are completely autonomous in their admission decisions. The SHPEP National Program Office (NPO) has established the following admission and acceptance procedures for program sites and applicants.
- The application is marked complete only after all required application materials have been processed by the NPO.
- Designated program sites automatically receive complete applications.
- Admission decisions will be released on March 15, 2023.
- Admission decisions are released on the application dashboard.
- Accepted applicants will confirm their attendance at only one site. All confirmations are final and cannot be changed to another program site for any reason. Regardless of the reason, students who choose to withdraw their confirmation cannot be considered for any other program site for the summer.
- Applicants have up to two business days after their admission decision is released to confirm their acceptance to a program site.
- Please note: The first business day begins on March 15th.
- Applicants who fail to confirm their acceptance after two business days will receive a Withdrawn After Accept admissions decision from the NPO.
- Program sites will begin accepting students from their wait list on March 17, 2023 if space permits. Waitlisted applicants must check their account daily until their status has changed. If status is changed to “Accepted,” applicants have 24 hours to confirm their acceptance or they will be withdrawn from the program.
- Program site coordinator will contact the confirmed applicants with further instructions no later than the end of March.
Application Materials to Submit
Applications will only be reviewed by designated program sites once the National Program Office processes the following materials in accordance with the admissions guidelines:
- The online SHPEP application includes one essay prompt (Personal Statement Guidelines). An AAMC account is required to access the application. Register for an AAMC account if you do not already have one.
- One official transcript from every U.S., U.S. Territorial, or Canadian post-secondary institution attended sent directly by the institution’s registrar’s office. Please review the transcript requirements below for more information.
- One letter of recommendation from a qualified reference. Please review the recommendation requirements below for more information.
You can use the optional Application Checklist to ensure that you have completed all of the required steps to apply.
Once received by the National Program Office, it can take up to 10 business days to process application materials. Please note that each institution has a different processing time for sending transcripts, which could impact the expected delivery time. Applicants should consider each institution’s transcript request processing time and the expected delivery time to Washington, DC, when estimating the total number of days it may take to associate and process transcripts to your application. Applicants are responsible for communicating with their letter writer directly to ensure a letter is submitted in support of their application. As a recommendation from the National Program Office, applicants should ask the letter writer how the letter was submitted.
All application materials must be postmarked/time stamped by the deadline, February 5th, 2023. Transcripts and letters received with a later postmark date will not be processed. Please note that application materials that were postmarked by the deadline will be processed by the National Program Office, even if those materials arrive after the deadline.
For more information, please click here.