Only students who have "Committed to Enroll" in the AMCAS Choose your Medical School Tool will have access to the assessment.
We believe that critical thinking and problem-solving are essential skills for physicians. Our curriculum is designed to engage students in active learning by delivering content in multiple modalities, such as small groups, team-based learning, labs, and selected lectures where appropriate. Faculty members act as the facilitators of the curriculum and are available to answer questions and offer clarification. But the onus of learning is on YOU.
Consider this quote from Peter Brown's book, Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning:
"Many common study habits and practice routines turn out to be counterproductive. Underlining and highlighting, rereading, cramming, and single-minded repetition of new skills create the illusion of mastery, but gains fade quickly. More complex and durable learning comes from selftesting, introducing certain difficulties in practice, waiting to re-study new material until a little forgetting has set in, and interleaving the practice of one skill or topic with another.”
We strongly encourage you to take the readiness assessments as soon as possible. These assessments are based on MCAT content that is relevant to the SKMC curriculum and the recommended anatomy readings listed below. The result of these assessments will allow you to identify your gaps in knowledge so that you can address them (if necessary) before you arrive at SKMC, thus providing you with a smoother start in medical school. The sooner you complete the assessments the more likely you can act on the result, if necessary. Each assessment is 1-hour long. On average, students who did not take the readiness assessment performed lower in Year 1 of JeffMD than students who did take the readiness assessment.
Readiness Assessment Instructions
1. Login to Canvas using your Campus Key and password.
- See “Campus Key” under Matriculation Requirements here for more information.
2. From your Dashboard click on "JeffMD: Readiness Assessment (2026)."
3. Read the information on the Home page and then click on Assignments to begin.
If you have any technical issues with the assessment in Canvas, please contact jeffmd@jefferson.edu.
SUGGESTED SUMMER READINGS
To enhance your preparation for the medical curriculum, we also recommend that you do some reading that is focused on optimal study habits (almost no undergraduate college seems to teach these), as well as on immunology, histology, and anatomy, which may be less familiar to you:
1. Dunlosky J, Rawson KA, Marsh EJ, Nathan MJ, Willingham DT. Improving Students’ Learning with Effective Learning Techniques: Promising Directions from Cognitive and Educational Psychology. Psychological Science in the Public Interest. 2013;14(1):4-58. doi:10.1177/1529100612453266
Available online here.
Focus on relevant portions of the sections on Elaborative Interrogation, Self-Explanation, Summarization, Highlighting and Underlining, Mnemonics, Rereading, Practice Testing, and Distributed Practice. You will learn that Highlighting and Underlining, Mnemonics, and Rereading take up study time but don’t bring you anything in return.
2. Brown PC, Roediger HL, McDaniel MA. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning. Harvard University Press; 2014. doi:10.4159/9780674419377. Available as an eBook.
This book is a lengthy distillation of the science that is also described in the above review by Dunlosky et al.
You need to read only Dunlosky et al. OR Brown et al.
3. Sompayrac L. How the Immune System Works. 6th ed. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell; 2019. Available as an eBook.
Lecture 1: An Overview.
If you want to read more, Lectures 2-6 of this book are suggested.
4. Dalley II AF, Agur AMR. Clinically Oriented Anatomy. 9th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer; 2023. Available as an eBook.
Chapter 1: Overview and basic concepts.
5. Pawlina W. Histology: A Text and Atlas with Correlated Cell and Molecular Biology. 9th ed. Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer; 2023. Available as an eBook.
Chapter 1: Methods.
Note from Thread Director: Chapter 2: Cell Cytoplasm and Chapter 3: The Cell Nucleus are great reviews of cell structure and function and are highly recommended.