By Laura Ingles
VCU School of Medicine

Yvette Gamor had a feeling about Virginia Commonwealth University from the start. The Suffolk, Virginia, native was in high school when she visited her sister on the Monroe Park Campus during spring break "to see what college life was really like," and immediately loved the environment. She ended up at the University of Virginia for her undergraduate studies, but she always had Richmond and VCU in the back of her mind.

Now, Gamor is an incoming M.D. student with the Class of 2030 at the VCU School of Medicine.

She moved to Richmond in 2024 to begin the School of Medicine's Premedical Graduate Health Sciences Program. The goal was to strengthen her medical school application for her long-time goal of becoming a doctor, and now she's preparing to begin her M1 year on the MCV Campus.

"It felt like all the work I'd been doing culminated into this acceptance, and I couldn't have done that without the CERT program," Gamor said.

Building professional skills

The Premedical Graduate Health Sciences Program, known as CERT, is a one-year graduate-level program for students seeking to enhance their qualifications for admission to competitive professional schools, particularly medical and dental programs.

Students complete rigorous coursework in foundational sciences such as human anatomy, biochemistry, clinical pharmacology and medical physiology, all taught by the same faculty that participate in VCU's medical and dental education. This exposes CERT students to the same teaching styles, exam formats and testing conventions used in professional schools. The program also includes a test prep course for standardized admissions tests like the MCAT and DAT. Upon completion of CERT in two consecutive semesters, students who have a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher and meet standardized test score criteria may be eligible for a guaranteed interview for admission to the VCU School of Medicine's M.D. program or the School of Dentistry's D.D.S program.

According to Scott Ramsey, Ph.D., director of the CERT program and associate professor in the Department of Cellular, Molecular and Genetic Medicine, CERT has evolved to intentionally foster nonacademic skills to set students up for future success. In addition to the foundational science classes, the curriculum also includes a professional skills and readiness course that covers academic advising, interview practice, writing a personal statement and navigating the admissions timeline. Students learn time management and study skills, and both Ramsey and Gamor noted the sense of community that cohorts develop over the course of the year.

"My advice to prospective students is always to think long-term about where you are in the development of your competency set, not just for admission to professional school, but for your career," Ramsey said. "The goal is not just to get into medical or dental school, but to get in, do well, enjoy it and enter a profession where you're truly happy and fulfilled."

A year of growth and confidence

When Gamor's older sister first applied to medical school in 2017, Gamor said she perceived a stigma around the decision to take time between undergraduate and professional school. Now, taking a break after college to better prepare for the next step has become the norm - according to the AAMC's annual Matriculating Student Questionnaire, 72.7% of incoming medical students in 2025 took at least a one-year gap before entering medical school.

For Gamor, who studied biochemistry in college and worked as a lab technician after graduating, the CERT program was an opportunity to fully immerse herself in working toward medical school.

"Even though it was rigorous, and a lot of work, it was a very engaging time in my life," she said. "This was the first time I really got to see all the sciences I'd been learning come together into the human body, and I got to meet a lot of people who were like-minded and focused on the same goal, which just made it more fun."

Gamor graduated from CERT in May 2025, qualified for the guaranteed interview at VCU School of Medicine and applied early decision. The admissions interview was nerve-wracking, she said, but she credits the program with helping her develop not just her scientific and medical knowledge, but her professionalism and overall confidence. When she finally opened her email and saw "Congratulations, we're excited to offer you a spot in the M.D. Class of 2030," Gamor was ecstatic.

"I was at work, and I just remember jumping up and down," she said. "I called my sister, I called my mom, I called my dad - I had literally never heard him cry before that. Everyone was just ecstatic for me, and it felt unreal."

Carmen Sato-Bigbee, Ph.D., an associate professor in the Department of Cellular, Molecular and Genetic Medicine, wrote a letter of support for Gamor's application. Sato-Bigbee described Gamor as "one of the best students I have ever met in the CERT program," and was both unsurprised and proud to learn that she had been accepted into medical school.

"Beyond her demonstrated intellectual capacity, Yvette's interactions with her classmates and teachers indicated that she has outstanding communication skills, compassion and empathy, all human qualities required for being an excellent physician," Sato-Bigbee said. "I feel confident that Yvette will be a most perseverant and exceptional medical student."

Prepared for prevention

Before even starting her first year in medical school, Gamor has her eyes set on a specialty: family medicine. She's known since high school that she wanted to be a doctor, but an experience during undergrad left her with a desire to focus on preventive care. While shadowing an endocrinologist, she met a patient with dangerously high blood sugar levels. This patient had already had her leg amputated due to complications from diabetes, and Gamor was struck by how extreme the situation had become.

"In that moment, I wondered how much she had known about diabetes leading up to that point. Did she know she could end up in a space where they'd have to take her leg?" Gamor said. "It made me want to be able to inform patients and get ahead of things before it gets to that point. I want to work in medicine in a more preventive capacity to help stop things like that from happening if I can."

When Gamor starts her first year in July, she will also be part of VCU's Family Medicine Scholars Training and Admission program, a longitudinal program for medical students intending to be family physicians.

As she awaits the start of this next phase, Gamor said she is feeling nervous, excited, curious - and ready.

"I really tried to take CERT as an opportunity to show not just the admissions committee but myself that I had what it takes to do this," Gamor said. "I do feel prepared for medical school, and I'm excited to start working toward the rest of my life."

This story was originally published on the School of Medicine website.