Cheers erupted from Grand Rapids’ DeVos Performance Hall on Sunday as Dean Marsha Rappley welcomed the Class of 2017 – donning their crisp, new white coats – to the MSU College of Human Medicine.
A tradition at the college, the White Coat Ceremony marks the symbolic beginning of the four-year journey into the medical profession. Physicians, including MSU faculty and students’ guests, participated in the ceremony by helping coat the students.
Among the guest physicians was Patricia Brooks of Rochester, who had the ultimate mother experience by coating her two children, Andy and Emily Brooks, both MSU grads.
“It was amazing how it worked out that both Andy and I were accepted to MSU (medical school) at the same time,” Emily said before the ceremony.
The Brooks siblings and their fellow classmates were selected from 6,342 applications for the entering class of 201. Some facts about the Class of 2017:
- This class is made up of 88 men and 113 women.
- The age range is 20 to 39 years old.87 percent of students are from Michigan (175 students).
- About 15 percent of the class came from rural areas.
- 15 percent are minorities, which are designated underserved in medicine.
- 35 percent were assigned disadvantaged status by the Office of Admissions based upon family income or parental level of education.
- 27 hold master’s degrees, and one student brings a previous doctorate.
Of these first-year students, 101 are spending their first two years of medical school on the MSU campus in East Lansing and 100 in Grand Rapids at the Secchia Center.
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