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Show Summary

Would you like to apply to Tulane University School of Medicine, but are you concerned about the intense competition for seats? Its Director of Admissions, Dr. Mike Woodson, is our guest today, and he’ll tell you what it takes to get in. Dr. Woodson discusses the unique aspects of Tulane’s medical program, including its focus on healing communities and its integration of nursing students into the curriculum. He emphasizes the importance of self-reflection and authenticity in the application process and advises applicants to stop comparing themselves to others.

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Show Notes

Welcome to the 569th episode of Admissions Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in. Are you ready to apply to your dream medical schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted’s med school admissions quiz can give you a quick reality check. Just go to accepted.com/medquiz, complete the quiz, and you’ll not only get an assessment, but tips on how to actually improve your chances of acceptance. Plus, it’s all free. 

Our special guest today is Dr. Mike Woodson, Director of Admissions at Tulane University’s School of Medicine. Mike earned his bachelor’s at Elon University and an MS in Sport Management from Virginia Commonwealth, and his PhD in Higher Education and Higher Education Administration in 2022 from Liberty University. After working for several years in high school athletics, Dr. Woodson moved into the admissions world at Randolph-Macon College. He then was Assistant Director of Admission at the University of Houston and came to Tulane Medical in 2017 as Assistant Director of Admissions. In 2019, he became the Director of Admissions.

Dr. Woodson, welcome to Admissions Straight Talk. [1:54 ]

Linda, it’s great to be back with you. I’ve heard so many great things on the interview trail about your program and how it’s helped pre-meds along the way. I’ve gotten some great reviews about our episode before, so can’t wait to chat with you again.

Thank you for the wonderful feedback. 

To start, can you give us an overview of Tulane Medical’s program focusing on its more distinctive aspects and elements? [2:11 ]

Sure, Tulane School of Medicine is right in the heart of downtown New Orleans, Louisiana in the south. Our focus is mainly on really helping our community here in New Orleans. Now we have students that come from all over. The mission of our school is healing communities, and that’s what everything about our school is focused on, whether it’s curriculum, whether it’s extracurricular activities, whether it’s research, it’s all focused on healing communities and we’re trying to do that here in the New Orleans community.

It’s interesting that you say you’re focused on healing communities, not individuals. Normally you think about doctors treating individuals, but this is a little bit different focus. [2:55 ]

When we say healing communities, yes, individuals are part of the community, but as a whole, our goal is to really help the community because communities help themselves. It can’t be this big institution that’s talking down to the community, talking to individuals, lecturing communities, lecturing individuals about what they need to do. It has to be a partnership, and so it helps that Tulane is really partnering with the community in the community. Our students are living in the community. Our doctors and faculty are living in the community, so they have a vested interest in this. And so yes, individuals are part of the community, but overall we’re really trying to focus on healing communities.

What’s new at Tulane since we last spoke? It’s almost exactly two years ago. [3:49 ]

I would say there are a couple of new things that we have going on. It doesn’t really pertain per se to the medical school, but it will affect us. In the fall we have a new nursing program that started, and the good thing about that is, once it goes again with our mission of healing communities, but also there’s going to be a lot of curriculum and activities interaction with our med students. So they’re not just learning in a silo, they’re learning yes about the clinical aspects of medicine, the academic, the science stuff about medicine, but they’re also learning how to work together and that’s the main thing, because you hear so many times, especially from people who’ve been or seasoned veterans in the medical force, how sometimes maybe this wall put up between physicians and nurses, and so let’s just try to break that wall down and have them work together, collaborate. If you’re collaborating together in the learning phase, hopefully, they’ll have that collaboration once they get out in the workforce.

So there’ll be nurses and doctors together, maybe PAs and other members of the healthcare team? [4:58 ]

Yes, that is correct. So when we’re doing different exercises, we have our preclinical phase where the early classroom stuff, but within that preclinical side, we do have, we call foundations of medicine. That’s kind of our how to be a doctor kind of classes and where they learn different skills and tests, and those lessons we can see they’re going to be done with our nursing students. Of course, they’re going to learn the exact same thing, patient care and so forth. And so they’re going to be learning stuff together and learning collaboration because in a safer environment, in a learning environment, it’s better to learn those skills now than when you get on the wards your third year. And then you’re dealing with nurses, seasoned nurses. And we just want to make sure everyone not only knows their roles, but also knows how their roles interact together. And so making sure we get that early lesson, early learning and starting first year.

Part of that early learning will probably take place in the simulation center at Tulane. Is that brand new or has it just been developed more in the past few years? [6:02 ]

The sim center has been around for several years now, and it focuses not only just medical school students and their education, but once again, once again, I go back to that healing communities. We have EMS training in there. We have nurses who train in there. Also, we have our residents who train in there. So a lot of different community groups, first responders that are training in our sim center. And so that’s where we envision most of that taking place in that sim center. It’s a place where they’re going to learn their clinical skills in a safe environment because we want to give our students confidence. You don’t want them doing their first test on a live person or doing it on each other. That’s probably even worse. So we want to do it in a safe environment.

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