About MAPS

The Minor­ity Asso­ci­a­tion of Pre-Health Stu­dents (MAPS) is a pro­gram cre­ated by the Stu­dent National Med­ical Asso­ci­a­tion (SNMA) to offer guid­ance and sup­port to under­grad­u­ate stu­dents inter­ested in pursu­ing a career in med­i­cine. SNMA is an orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to peo­ple of color and under­served com­mu­ni­ties. Through var­i­ous ini­tia­tives, SNMA aims to increase the degree of diver­sity in the med­ical pro­fes­sion by pro­mot­ing lev­els of minor­ity stu­dent recruit­ment, admis­sions, and reten­tion in schools train­ing health­care pro­fes­sion­als. These efforts will work to improve the qual­ity of health­care in under­served com­mu­ni­ties and to increase the num­ber of “clin­i­cally excel­lent, cul­tur­ally com­pe­tent, and socially con­scious physi­cians” (www.snma.org). SNMA mem­bers work with MAPS chap­ters at nearby under­grad­u­ate insti­tu­tions to advise them about the med­ical school appli­ca­tion process, the med­ical school admis­sions test (MCAT), and to serve as men­tors to under­grad­u­ate stu­dents to help them suc­cess­fully matric­u­late into med­ical school.