Pre-PreMed

By Mark Loehrke
Appears in the March 2026 issue.

Naperville program gives aspiring medical students an early look into the profession

What do you want to be when you grow up?

It’s an age-old question that tends to yield (in addition to a fair number of shoulder shrugs) a handful of predictable go-to answers from the youngsters to whom it’s posed—one of which is, inevitably, a doctor. It’s a solid, stable choice. But is it realistic?

Unfortunately, very few kids have any realistic idea of what it actually takes to become a doctor—or whether they’re even really interested in medicine as a professions. Some of their regular school classes along the way may help guide the decision, but even these brief forays into biology or chemistry don’t necessarily provide a view into the rigors of an actual medical career.

That’s the gap that Naperville pediatrician Ira Rubin has been trying to fill for more than 20 years with Dr. Rubin’s Mini Medical School (1012 95th St., Naperville), which gives high school students a window into the profession, to help them decide whether the medical field is something they might want to pursue. And it was a personal encounter with the very problem outlined above that inspired Rubin to start his program.

“When my oldest son was in high school, I wanted him to decide on his career before entering college, rather than going in undecided and being on a five- or six-year plan,” he recalls. “He was considering med school, but he wasn’t sure if it was the right path. When I was thinking about medical school, I attended a program called Bio-Careers at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, but I couldn’t find anything like that for my son in the Chicago area. That’s when I decided to create my own.”

While local high schools have career classes that highlight health care and other professional disciplines, Rubin designed his Mini Medical School to take a deeper dive into the nuts and bolts of what it means to be a doctor. For winter classes, which host about 140 students (from about 200 applicants), the six sessions, running three to four hours each, cover everything from anatomy and pathology to orthopedics and surgery (a separate summer class is offered as a one-day, nine-hour intensive immersion program). All classes are taught by Rubin himself, with help from Mini Med grads acting as TAs and an occasional assist from his youngest son, Zachary, who is also a physician.

“The idea is to provide an overview of the typical classical courses offered by a medical school,” Rubin explains. “Day one is basically year one, day two is year two, and days three, four, and five are the clinical rotations. Within each session, we try to offer hands-on experiences, including all the elements of a physical exam, vital signs, knot-tying and suturing, injections, IV insertions, EKG and X-ray analysis, and more.”

Since its founding in 2004, Dr. Rubin estimates that more than 5,000 students have come through his winter and summer programs. The coursework, he says, has changed to keep up with the latest medical advancements but has generally followed the same curriculum across the years (although new programs for elementary and middle school students and a separate dental program have been added). That’s because the goal behind the program remains the same—to give students the information and experiences they need to decide if being a doctor is really what they want to do when they grow up.

“There is nothing more important to me than seeing students succeed,” he says. “By exposing these kids to the field of health care, we’re hoping they’ll be much better prepared for the journey and will be much more successful.”

For more information on programs, visit minimedicalschool.com.

Photos: Dr. Rubin’s Mini Medical School