The Honors College and the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine are pleased to offer this exciting opportunity to a small number of incoming freshmen each year. In this sequential BA/MD program, Medical Humanities Scholars design unique interdisciplinary programs that allow them to enhance their study of medicine with other areas of academic interest from the humanities, arts, and social sciences.
Medicine is both art and science. It is the art of understanding humankind in the context of disease — not just recognizing or diagnosing the pathological condition, but seeing how an individual's disease is a product of his or her environment, constitution, and personality. By exploring medicine through the lenses of the historian, the ethicist, the sociologist, the anthropologist, the writer, and the visual artist, students gain insights into the nature of the human condition, human suffering, personhood, and the responsibilities of individuals to one another in sickness and in health. These insights are valuable for both the aspiring clinician and anyone who will someday get sick and seek medical care. The history of medicine, for example, can provide orientation in a discipline that is changing at a dizzying pace — presenting a picture of where medicine has been, how it is evolving, and what promises and challenges its future may hold. The study of bioethics and medical ethics offers a vital reminder that medicine is a social enterprise that must balance cultural values and moral principles with scientific goals. Literature and the visual arts can convey the personal experiences of sickness and healing, revealing the subjective side of clinical care. Sociologists and anthropologists illuminate the ways in which professional and popular cultures interact, alternately clashing with and complimenting one another. Taken together, these disciplines offer both physicians-in-training and healthcare "consumers" an enriched understanding of the dynamic relationships between medicine and the larger social world.
In 2000, the University of Oklahoma Honors College and the College of Medicine created a partnership to further the study of humanities in relation to medicine. Today, at the Honors College there are two programs for students interested in pursuing study in the medical humanities: the Medical Humanities Scholars Program (MHSP) and the Medical Humanities Minor. MHSP students can take advantage of the revised curriculum at the College of Medicine, including electives such as "history of medicine," "literature and medicine," "photography and medicine" and "medicine and spirituality," for second-year students. Likewise, students not in the MHSP who have chosen to complete an MH minor have taken advantage of the Medical Humanities Minor, focusing their studies on topics such as the politics of AIDS vaccine development, the bioethics of cross-cultural medical practice, music therapy, and the history of sports medicine.
*dates are subject to change.
The Medical Humanities Scholars Program application can be accessed through the Honors College application
MHSP Medical Humanities Minor Course Plan PDF
Note: This form is only for medical humanities scholars, students that are minoring in medical humanities and not medical humanities scholars can find their forms under the Medical Humanities Minor tab.
The deadline to apply to the program is January 15, 2025.
We recommend students apply to the university before December 1st in order to receive acceptance and be able to access the Medical Humanities Application.
Provisional acceptance means that a spot is waiting for you at the OU College of Medicine if you achieve an MCAT score and a GPA that are equal to or higher than the average MCAT score and GPA of the previous year's incoming medical school class. Typically, this is an MCAT score of approximately 509 and a science GPA of approximately 3.72.
PLEASE NOTE: You are STRONGLY encouraged to submit your OU application by December 1st. This gives us enough time to process your Honors application and your MHSP application. Applying to OU after 1 December may jeopardize your consideration for the MHSP.
There are no specific non-academic characteristics that are required for consideration or acceptance into the MHSP. In general, however, we look for students with the following attributes:
No preference is given to Oklahoma residents.
No. Please do not include ANY supplemental materials with your MHSP application. In order to keep everyone's application on a level playing field, we will review only the MHSP application itself. We will not examine any supplementary documents such as a resume, letters of support, or a transcript.
Yes. You will need to take the MCAT. See the average MCAT score for the latest entering class above.
Yes. The Medical Humanities Minor, administered through the Honors College, is open to any honors-eligible (3.4 GPA) student enrolled at OU. This way, all high-achieving students at the university may enrich their understanding of the social, cultural, ethical, political, economic, and spiritual dimensions of health, disease, and healing. Through the MH minor, you can enjoy all the curricular components of the MHSP.
On average we receive over 200 applications per year from 30+ states. We invite approximately 20 applicants for online ZOOM interviews.
Of the students invited to interview for the MHSP (approx.20), between 5 and 8 students are accepted into the program.
