Penn Medicine Summer Program

Last summer, I participated in the Penn Medicine Summer Program for High School Students. It was a virtual program with University of Pennsylvania's Perelman School of Medicine designed for rising high school juniors and seniors. I spent many hours every weekday for 2 weeks being educated and interacting with top doctors, faculty, and TAs at Penn Medicine, such as Dr. Lipschik, a pulmonary critical care physician.

Although it was unfortunately virtual, I still had an incredible experience! They made sure to personally deliver supplies to me, all of which I still have and can still practice on if I want to, including a CPR dummy and fake skin. Over Zoom, we were given live demonstrations and visuals of real hearts, lungs, and other muscles. We also learned how to administer CPR, tie surgical knots, suture using different techniques and on different wounds, perform a biopsy, and much more! Of course, many of these tasks we had to get creative with, such as tying the knots on shoelaces and performing the biopsy on a clementine. However, we still effectively learned the basics of important medical skills. We also got certified in Stop the Bleed, a course that teaches the ability to recognize life-threatening bleeding and intervene correctly.

All of our efforts culminated into a final group project that could be about anything we learned during the program. My group chose to make a presentation about the Disease Olympics in the body of our TA - diseases we learned about competed to infect her. I still keep in contact with my group, TA, and a few of the faculty, so I can only imagine what kind of connections and friendships could be created in the in-person program - which they are aiming to bring back this summer!

In the normal 4-week in-person program, students stay on Penn's campus and experience dorm life. Along with more interactive classes and labs, they'd also get the rare opportunity to observe a live surgery - the best way to decide if medicine is truly for you! Students also make life-long friends during the planned evening activities and weekend trips to other cities of their choice. For all these reasons, I highly recommend applying to this amazing program!