Dan McLoughlin
Class of 2025
Home city and State: Baltimore, MD
Undergraduate study: College of the Holy Cross, BA Psychology, Neuroscience Minor
Student organizations and affinity groups
- Oncology
- Sports Medicine
- Chicago Youth Program Peer Mentoring
- Feinberg Phase 1a/1b Peer Tutor
- Feinberg Connections
- Buddy Program
- NLVS Tutors
- MD Admissions Tour Guide
- Summer Research Scholars Program (SRSP)
- ECMH Chief
Why did you choose Feinberg?
When I was looking at medical schools, research opportunities were absolutely one of my highest priorities, but I did not want to pursue academic experiences at the expense of my clinical training. I loved that Feinberg integrates its students into both the clinical and research settings early in the curriculum while maintaining a patient-centered focus. I saw starting ECMH and getting into a real clinic early on as a unique opportunity to develop clinical skills and form relationships with patients from the start, and thus far that has definitely held true. Additionally, the opportunities to get involved in research—both in and outside of the framework of AOSC—are extensive, and every student I talked to prior to coming to Feinberg told me how welcoming and inviting the mentors here are. However, the most important reason that I chose Feinberg is that, although Northwestern may be a large research institution (which was appealing), it has a family-like community where its students are both pushed and supported to become the best versions of themselves.
Describe your path to Feinberg
As a teenager, I probably spent more time around the medical community from the patient side than I would have thought. Over the course of my seven years running track in high school and college, two hip surgeries and several stress fractures put me face-to-face with physicians quite a bit, and I found myself asking them a lot of questions about their job and the medical field as a whole, so my path to medicine was partially kickstarted by learning from those who were helping me.
I had also been extensively involved for a decade in bone marrow drives, which aimed at adding individuals to the national registry in order to provide matches for potentially life-saving transplants for leukemia patients. A series of drives called “Join for Joe” were formed in honor (and later in memory) of a good friend of mine who battled leukemia. Joe, and those who supported him (and patients like him) both before and after his death, were absolutely motivators for me to pursue a medical career.
During the school year, I studied psychology in undergrad and did research on reframing sports psychology through a phenomenological lens. I spent my summers as a research assistant in a basic science Neurology lab at Johns Hopkins studying novel therapeutics for ALS and FTD. Realizing that I hoped to combine the more "human" aspect of psychology with the "hard science" that I was working on in lab, these experiences solidified that medicine was the path I hoped to take.
Prior to enrolling at Feinberg, I wanted to "combine" these fields in the working world first, so I spent three years working in Clinical & Translational research in the Termeer Center for Targeted Therapies in the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center. My projects were largely in Phase I clinical trials and various translational projects aimed at understanding genetic drivers of cancer and developing novel, innovative targeted therapies. During my gap years, I was also working as a television play-by-play broadcaster for various collegiate athletic events across New England (especially in ice hockey, soccer and baseball/softball) and continuing to run Join for Joe bone marrow drives in Boston.
Topics I can discuss with Feinberg students:
- Life in Chicago
- ECMH
- AOSC
- Student Wellness
- Academic Support (studying, learning)
- Campus Life
- Student Organizations, Affinity Groups
