Automating Assistance
New technology ideally leads to improved efficiency, but the path to optimization is sometimes a bumpy ride. Recent efforts to replace outdated software and automate processes in the Eberly College of Science Prehealth Advising office have freed up both time and funds for the office to better support students throughout their time at Penn State.
Housed in the Eberly College of Science, the Prehealth Advising office serves students from all majors, colleges, and campuses across the University who are interested in pursuing health professions, including everything from medicine and dentistry to optometry and pharmacy. The office supports students throughout their Penn State career and walks them through the entire admissions process to medical, dental, and other professional schools, with plenty of check-ins along the way.
As part of the application process, students are often required to provide letters of recommendation from teachers, employers, or others who can speak to their skills and potential, but, in many cases, students are not allowed to submit the letters themselves. For years, the Prehealth Advising office has provided a service for students to help request, store, and send out these letters.
“Many years ago, office staff would receive letters by mail, scan them, put together letter packets by hand, and mail them out,” said Melissa Krajcovic, director of the office. “At some point in the 2010s, the office switched to a third-party system that took over most of this labor. However, that platform cost us between $5,000 and $15,000 each year, which was a big expense for our office and required that we collect a yearly fee from students. This was particularly challenging for students who took a gap year after graduation before applying, who might have a need for us to store letters but fewer resources to pay a recurring fee.”
In addition to the large financial cost, the system had degraded in recent years, so the office turned to then prehealth adviser Marc Counterman, who wondered if automation tools included in the Microsoft 365 suite could meet their needs. He mapped out each step of the process, from a student’s initial request for a letter via an online form, to a faculty member emailing the letter in a specific way, to the storage and mailing out of the letter.
“I had to think through all the basic steps in order to automate it,” he said. “It’s kind of like if you were to ask someone to explain how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and you follow all of their steps. I had to be very specific, and it took a week of testing and adjusting to make sure that everything worked. Now, we’ve successfully been using the system for about two and a half years.”
In that time, student have requested more than 2,800 letters of recommendation via the system. A separate form to check the status of their request—which searches the email account for specific terms— has been used more than 6,000 times. Now, students pay a one-time fee, which covers all aspects of the service with no time limit.
“This has particularly benefitted students who take a gap year, which is between 70 and 80 percent of all of our applicants,” said Counterman, who is now a data analyst for the college. “Now they can request a letter of recommendation during their senior year and not have to worry about what's happening if they move away and they get a job or if they can't keep in contact with a professor.”
The huge savings in cost and time has allowed the office to focus on other ways to better serve their students. For example, they have revamped and restructured on-demand resources available to students. The team recently transferred their resources to a Microsoft SharePoint site, which they said is more intuitive and easier to use. The site contains important forms and timelines for interacting with the office and applying to professional schools, suggestions for how to fund professional school, as well as video recordings. The extra time, they said, has also allowed the office to expand offerings of in-person trainings, which can be recorded for those who cannot attend live, including alumni. They have also refreshed and expanded the available recordings on their SharePoint.
“Because students are able to find answers to many of their questions on the SharePoint, we aren’t answering the same questions over and over and it frees up our time to get to individualized questions that students have in our one-on-one sessions,” Krajcovic said. “We have also expanded our services around the application process. We do a mock application, meet with students to provide individualized feedback on their materials, and even do mock interviews. We now have time to work with students through the entire journey of the application process. Students who go through this process with our office have a 20 percent higher acceptance rate for medical school and even higher rate for dental school than those who do not.”
The extra time and funds also allowed the office to launch the Health Professions Expo, a now annual event that seeks to connect professionals, organizations, and aspiring students interested in the healthcare sector. The Expo, which will be held for the third time in March 2026, allows students to get a better sense of their options and interests by interacting with different programs and attending special interest sessions. Additionally, students get the chance to be put on the radar of schools they will soon be applying to.
Counterman also set up automation to expedite the registration process for the expo. Now, he is working to help the office get in front of potentially interested students sooner in their Penn State career.
“The many technological changes spearheaded by Marc over the last few years have allowed the office to build stronger individualized relationships with students through every phase of their journey at Penn State and the application process,” Krajcovic said.