Frequently Asked Questions
This readable, thorough premed handbook should answer your questions.
Here is the short and sweet version: Our students learn mostly in community clinics and other ambulatory-care sites, rather than in a large academic medical center. They learn directly from practicing physicians, rather than from residents or interns. We encourage our students to collaborate with each other as they learn, rather than compete with each other. We focus much attention on primary care. We emphasize the importance of treating the patient with compassion. We make sure our students, whatever discipline they may enter, are completely comfortable working with elder patients. Most important, our mission is to serve the medically underserved. Find more information.
We have six regional campuses: Daytona Beach (northeast Florida), Fort Pierce (southeast), Orlando (central), Pensacola (northwest), Sarasota (southwest) and Tallahassee (north). (Tallahassee’s regional campus is distinct from our main campus.) Our students typically spend Years 3 and 4 in one of these cities and the communities that surround them, learning one on one from community physicians and the patients they see.
We look for bright, compassionate students who are enthusiastic about our mission: to educate and develop exemplary physicians who practice patient-centered health care, advance medical knowledge and respond to community needs, especially through service to elder, rural, minority and other underserved populations.
We reach out to those students in a variety of ways because we need them to fulfill our mission. For example, we know there’s a shortage of primary-care physicians in the Florida Panhandle. One of our best hopes for developing physicians who will want to practice there is to begin with students who grew up there. Likewise, we want our student body to be as diverse as the Florida population we serve, and that kind of diversity happens only with a lot of forethought, planting seeds of opportunity in young people who otherwise might not have considered medical school as a career option.
We offer an M.D., a Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences and an M.S. in Biomedical Sciences. You also might want to look into our Honors Medical Scholars Program.
Yes. The best-known example is Grand Rounds. Nearly every Thursday at noon during the fall and spring semesters, a faculty member, student or guest lectures on topics ranging from cell division to patient-centered care to cross-cultural trips to Panama and countless other examples. You may consult our online calendar for the schedule.
Request information from our Division of Student Affairs at 850-644-0492.
View our Experts & Speakers Guide.
The College of Medicine's address on the main campus of Florida State University is 1115 W. Call St. in Tallahassee. Directions to the College
Call 850-645-8370 or e-mail frontdesk@med.fsu.edu.
Call the College of Medicine at 850-644-1855 or email your question to info@med.fsu.edu