Duke University School of Medicine, the East Carolina University Brody School of Medicine, and the University of South Carolina Greenville School of Medicine are to open a new avenue for talented college students from underrepresented populations to enroll and succeed at leading medical schools in the Carolinas.
Bridges to Excellence (BTE) creates a novel partnership among these schools to recruit and support talented underrepresented students who aspire to provide health care in underserved communities.
The ultimate aim of the BTE program is to develop and deliver a comprehensive collaborative program that will increase medical care to underserved communities in the Carolinas, by identifying promising students from these communities and supporting them from college to medical school.
Students selected for the BTE program will earn conditional acceptance to Duke’s Master of Biomedical Sciences (MBS) program and, based upon performance in MBS, earn subsequent conditional acceptance to the ECU Brody or U of SC Greenville Schools of Medicine.
The BTE program will award each student $9,250-$9,500 in scholarship funding to help defray the cost of MBS attendance and will provide longitudinal mentoring support from the senior year of college through medical school. Conditional acceptance to medical school will relieve the considerable financial burden of application fees and interview costs and the anxiety that can accompany the application process.
The BTE program will recruit promising college seniors within North Carolina and South Carolina, especially from historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and other schools’ minority organizations. Preference will be given to students from medically under-served regions in both states who aspire to serve vulnerable populations in the Carolinas.
The BTE program is supported by a grant from The Fullerton Foundation.