Salim Gnabode is set to attend Tufts University School of Medicine Photo Courtesy: Salim Gnabode
By Angel Adegbesan
A York Alumnus is excited about being accepted to Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) in Boston. Salim Gnabode, a graduate of York’s class of 2017, decided to attend the university in Fall 2019 after screening five acceptance offers.
Gnabode, who holds a Masters degree in Biomedical Science at Duke University, will also concurrently pursue an MBA in healthcare management at Brandeis University through TUSM.
“I’m really excited,” Gnabode said about his acceptance offers. “I feel like my experience at York and my masters has really prepared me for Med school.”
While at York, Gnabode majored in Mathematics and was the President of the Pre-med club as well as the Vice President of Student Government Association.
Though he started his college life as a Biology major, Gnabode later switched to Mathematics, a favorite course, because he was not successful in most of his Biology classes.
“Getting into med school, you really don’t have to major in biology, you just have to major in something you like and get a good grade,” Gnabode said. “That’s something most people don’t know or they know and just don’t want to do. They just want to do biology and they sometimes mess up their GPA because of it. Your GPA is really important at the end of the day.”
He added “ the math classes were easy for me compared to biology classes. If I could start over, i would have majored in French or something. And, I would have probably gotten an easy A in those classes.”
Gnabode said he decided to pursue a Masters degree before Medical school because he wanted to amass more knowledge in Biology.
“I didn’t really feel confident about my knowledge in biology, and if you want to become a doctor, you really need to be well-knowledged in Biology,” he said. “My long term goal is to become an orthopedic surgeon and to become an orthopedic surgeon, you really have to do well in Medical school so that’s why I really went to do the Masters.”
Gnabode, who was born in Benin, West Africa, has worked hard in pursuit of his goals. He said he hopes to work as an Orthopedic surgeon in urban areas like New York City. But besides this, he hopes to do some things on the side as well.
He hopes to turn his personal blog into a professional health blog in the future. His goal is to be a bridge between healthcare professional’s jargon and the general population.
“The general population don’t read scientific articles so there is like a disconnection,” Gnabode said. “So, if I start blogging and writing in simple terms that everyone can read, maybe they can understand most stuff. I think that is what I will do in the long term — something like giving people advice on what to do.”
Gnabode also wants to create his own start-up business, where he would help create medical devices and survival technologies as well for countries in need.
“I was born in Africa and I know in some places in Africa, some people don’t have clean water or proper sanitation and and so I’m thinking about creating technology that will help people to get those basic things like clean water,” he said. “So, that is something that I want to do on the side.”
Gnabode said the startup idea is one of the reasons why he is getting his MBA. Even though he does not have experimental experience, Gnabode said he has done some helpful research while he was in graduate school.
“I feel like people go into medicine for different reasons,” he said. “If you’re well rounded which is the goal for some people, anything you do,really is kind of important, it separates you from the rest. I feel like everything I have done when I was at York was important in some way.”
