Alumni group sticks together through medical school

Four alumni who graduated together from SUNY New Paltz’s seven-year dual degree medical program have just completed their first year of medical school, and the four remain as close as ever as they continue on their journeys to becoming doctors.

Ray Min, Samuel Jacob, Sonu Mody, and Akshay Agarwala all graduated from the B.S./D.O. program at SUNY New Paltz in 2013. But blue caps and gowns were quickly replaced by white lab coats, as the foursome began their first year as medical students at the New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine (NYIT-COM) in Old Westbury, N.Y., to receive their Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degrees.

Students in the cooperative three-plus-four-year B.S./D.O. program are admitted to SUNY New Paltz as freshmen, and spend their first three years completing major requirements (such as biology, chemistry, or physics) as well as general education requirements. Pre-D.O. students at SUNY New Paltz participate in the Pre-D.O. Freshman Interest Group and must maintain a cumulative grade point average of 3.5, as well as receive an MCAT score equal to those of the rest of the entering class at NYIT-COM. After their first year in medical school, the students are awarded their B.S. degrees in their majors from SUNY New Paltz, and then go on to receive their D.O. degrees from NYIT-COM after successfully completing four years of medical school.

“Today is the first day of our second pre-clinical year, so we have a lot more to go!” Min wrote in an email to campus in early August. “Samuel, Sonu, Akshay, and I currently do stay in touch and are very close friends. We studied together often throughout our first year.”