It’s hard to prepare for medical school in high school. It’s hard to get accepted to a medical school and even more difficult to succeed and complete medical school. US News studied results from 2016-2017 and reported an annual acceptance rate of 5.8 percent to top-ranked medical schools. Thankfully, at Bob Jones, we have several Career Tech academies, including business, engineering, teaching, culinary, and even one for biomedical sciences, which can give our students a competitive edge later in life.

Sophomore Meghan Hall is currently in the second year of the program. “We do a lot of interesting things, like we solved a murder the first introduction to this class. And by doing that we learned about things like diabetes and some disorders of the heart and disorders of urinary tracts in an interesting way, which helps me start to prepare. It also goes down to a molecular level so in a future position in the medical field I can really get down to the root of a problem.”

Career Tech academies can impact a student’s future. Hall added, “I think it’s definitely beneficial to the future. Like, if I hadn’t taken Biomed, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t know things like the pathway to the heart. Since there’s an internship, you can learn about a lot of disorders and diseases, and it helps you actually be able to go and see these things.” Sophomore David Zuo said, “I think it’s beneficial to the future because it prepares me for it and some of it directly applies to what we’re going to be doing. Like in other classes, you end up doing busy work; it’s not like that here– you do more real stuff.”

Most high schools offer advanced science programs and math, but not many schools, especially in our state, offer programs this beneficial to its students. Anna Mannas, a sophomore who has taken the first level of the class, said, “Biomed benefits me because it helps me explore the medical field of science, which is the type of field I am interested in working. The class is creative and innovative and never ceases to teach me new material through a unique classroom setup.”

The Biomedical academy seems to be a great course to have in high school and offers BJ students a solid foundation for their futures in advanced fields.