Maëlys Amat moved around a lot growing up, relocating to different areas of France and the United States every two to three years. While this experience made her highly adaptable, it also made her realize she wanted a more stable career. By high school, she knew she wanted to go into medicine. She took pre-medical courses in college, but did not follow your standard pre-med track, instead majoring in Spanish. After graduating, she did AmeriCorps for a year before enrolling in medical school. She chose Drexel because of its location, size, number of resources and diverse student body. Knowing that Philadelphia has a large underserved population, she thought it’d be the perfect fit for her to get a medical education. Maëlys immediately got involved with the Health Outreach Project clinics and helped launch a foot care program to assist patients suffering from diabetes. Maëlys is enrolled in Drexel’s MD/MBA dual degree program, which she says will provide the perfect mix of medicine and business acumen to help her achieve her career goals.

 I'm originally from France. I grew up between France and the U.S., moving every two to three years. I ended up doing high school in Maryland and then went to Wake Forest for college. After that, I did AmeriCorps for a year before coming to medical school.

 Doing some community service growing up, especially in high school, and then going into college, was really what made my decision even easier to go into medicine, and made me sure of my decision. And I think that being able to give back to a community and people very much in need was really rewarding. I think that really made me want to become a doctor, and those are the types of people that I hope to continue working with as a doctor.

 There are a few of us every year who do the MD/MBA. There are a number of reasons why I chose to do this program. I thought that this experience would be a perfect mix of medicine and bringing in a little bit of business background. Many physicians who I met on rotation said that they wished they had done an MBA, and that they really feel like there's a lot of benefit to be had from learning the business side of things.

 There are so many reasons why I chose Drexel. They give us so many opportunities from very early on. The one I'm most familiar with is the HOP clinics. They're our student-run Health Outreach Project clinics. We recently started a foot-care program, which has been really successful. We've been able to provide foot care to patients who otherwise may not have had the opportunity to have foot care. Knowing that our population is severely affected by diabetes, this seemed like the perfect place to do it. We have a vision screening program, where we're able to provide our patients with reading glasses, which is really satisfying for them when they haven't been able to read for maybe several years.

 I think that if you come into school with an open mind as a first year you'll be exposed to a lot of different specialties, a lot of different lifestyles, and you'll really be able to make the most out of the four years that you have here. 

 
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