Sydney Regalado '22Medicine (MD)

Name: Sydney Regalado
Graduation Year: 2022
Double Major: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (BMB) and Biology 

Story: Hello everyone, my name is Sydney Regalado! I want to begin by saying that I am so
honored and proud to share my journey to medicine with you. My hope is that
students reading this will be able to take something away from my story and use it
to find their own success, just as I found inspiration from the pre-med applicant
profiles I read several years ago while attending Gustavus. That being said, my story
begins in my hometown Rosemount, Minnesota. Within this small-town community,
I grew up surrounded by family, friends, and neighbors who offered support and
encouragement as I tried to discover what I wanted to do with my life. I thought it
was especially significant that despite growing up in a family full of teachers, my
mother urged me to consider many other careers outside of teaching so I could
choose a career path that was exactly right for me. Throughout this exploration
process, I soon realized that medicine may be my calling, as one of my favorite
places as a child was the doctor’s office.
Though I am now well aware that I may have been one of the only children who
liked visiting the doctor, for me these visits were full of excitement and curiosity.
And my most favorite thing about the doctor’s office was, to state the obvious, my
doctor! She is truly one of the most incredible physicians I have ever met, even to
this day. Because she was the pediatrician on call at the hospital the day I was born,
she watched me progress from a newborn baby to an 18-year-old adult who was so
reluctant to finally leave her pediatrician. Throughout this time, she showed me
what it meant to be a strong and capable woman. After noticing my passion for
medicine, she even encouraged me to seek out a career as a physician and acted as a
mentor to me throughout my undergraduate education. I am excited to provide this
same positivity and encouragement in the lives of my own patients one day, which
has continued to be a major motivating factor throughout my path to medical
school.
Once I started school at Gustavus, I participated in a wide variety of extracurricular
activities that captured my interest including: Women’s Golf Team, Chemistry
Club, TriBeta Biological Honor Society, Biology Teaching Assistant, Biomolecular
Research, Hospice Volunteering, Mayo Clinic Hospital Volunteering, and Gustavus
Women in Leadership. Each of these activities gave me unique opportunities prior to medical school that supplemented the excellent education I received. I also
formed strong connections with the students and faculty in these groups, many of
whom I am still connected with today. In addition, the support and encouragement I
received from everyone at Gustavus, particularly from the pre-health advising team,
prepared me extremely well for the medical school application cycle and played a
major role in my success. All in all, while my journey to medical school involved a
whole lot of hard work and even some failures, as I had to apply two times, I can’t
thank Gustavus enough for all of the positive experiences and I am looking forward to
taking the next step towards being a physician.

Top Five Activities/Experiences: (in no particular order)
1. Gustavus Women’s Golf Team
2. January Interim Pre-Health Career Exploration Opportunity (Shadowing
physicians in various specialities at the Mankato Clinic)
3. Ecumen Hospice Volunteer
4. Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) at the Rosemount Senior Living Facility
5. Medical Scribe/ Lead Scribe at Emergency Physicians Professional
Association (EPPA) in M Health Fairview Emergency Departments

Advice:
1. Participate in activities you are passionate about (even if they are unrelated
to the healthcare field), rather than simply to “check a box” before applying to
medical school. This will greatly improve your college experience, will give you
great talking points for medical school interviews, and will ultimately make you a
more well-rounded applicant.
2. Prioritize your relationships with professors. The small class size of Gustavus
provides you with a remarkable opportunity to get to know your professors and,
more importantly, for them to get to know you. Even though it may be intimidating
to show up to office hours or approach your professor after class, I promise you
won’t regret it. Some of the most interesting conversations I had at Gustavus were
with my professors. They taught me new methods of studying, offered support when
I was struggling with certain topics, and because they knew me so well, were able to
write strong letters of recommendations for my medical school application.
3. Remember that success isn’t always linear. Getting into medical school is
hard and there will undoubtedly be setbacks that arise but with enough hard
work and confidence in yourself you will get there!

Future Plans:
Attending the University of Minnesota Medical School Twin Cities, (interest in pediatrics), start Fall 2024