Your medical school application can be like a puzzle. Each piece fits together to form a complete picture of who you are as an applicant. As you prepare those pieces, understanding how medical schools review applications is important. While each has their own admission process, many look for core competencies. The AAMC’s Anatomy of An Applicant aims to help explain and illustrate how applicants demonstrated these core competencies within their applications by interviewing medical students and residents about their paths to medical school and how they completed different parts of their application. Additionally, each student or resident provided advice for aspiring physicians when applying to medical school. Here is what they shared:
What proportion of patients with psoriasis may develop accompanying arthritis?
A 70-year-old female with psoriasis presents with a four-month history of worsening arthralgia. She mentions she has pain and stiffness in her big toes and most of her fingers. On examination, a telescoping finger deformity is seen on her right second digit.
Healthcare In Occupied Palestine: The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund
The challenges of providing healthcare in an occupied territory
Steve Sosebee is the president and CEO of the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. He’s married to Dr. Zeena Salman, a pediatric oncologist working with the PCRF. For 25 years, PCRF has been leading medical missions to help children in the Middle East, helping children get medical treatment abroad, and delivering humanitarian aid. Their recent visit to the Carver College of Medicine gave Short Coats Reem Khodor, Ethan Craig, and Nico Dimenstein a chance to sit down with them to discuss the challenges and realities of working to provide healthcare within the confines of an occupied territory.
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5 Tips for Developing a USMLE Step 1 Study Plan
Step 1 of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (or USMLE) covers all preclinical topics taught in medical school, from DNA replication to the details of disorders like ulcerative colitis and diabetes. Depending on your school’s curriculum, you may take this test anywhere between completion of your preclinical requirements and graduation, with the majority of schools offering a “dedicated” study period in which to review after wrapping up preclinical classes. No matter when you plan to take Step 1, however, one thing is clear: there is a lot to go over, and you probably do not feel like you have enough time to cover everything. Developing a reasonable study plan as you head into your dedicated study period can help reduce Step 1 preparation from an impossible task to one that seems difficult, yet doable. Studying for Step 1 will never be easy, but these five tips can make it more manageable:
8 Ways to Make “Typical Premed” Activities Exceptional
It’s hard to be a pre-med. There are high expectations for the types of experiences you need, the classes you have to take, and the quality of person you become through it all. But for how hard it is to be a pre-med, it’s pretty easy to come off as “typical”.
Here are 8 key activities, experiences, and essay topics that can make you read as a “typical pre-med”, unless you take the following advice:
How would you manage this patient’s reaction?
A 32-year-old female presents with a headache and a rash on her trunk and extremities. She has had unprotected sex with multiple partners over the last two months, but denies any history of sexually transmitted infections. Examination reveals generalized non-tender lymphadenopathy, a diffuse macular rash on her chest and arms, and patchy hair loss. Venereal Disease Research Laboratory (VDRL) and fluorescent treponemal antibody-absorption (FTA-ABS) tests are both positive, and she is given a single dose of penicillin G benzathine intramuscularly. She returns within a few hours with a worsening rash (seen here), myalgia, and a fever.
Routines, Right To Try, and Reviews
What Routines Do Medical Students Find Helpful When Drinking from the Firehose?
Listener Meghan is about to start med school in the fall, and is thinking about what sort of regular habits medical students like Aline Sandouk, Tony Rosenberg, and new co-host Jayden Bowen use to keep them on track. Not only do we look at some routines they use (and debate whether they’re even helpful), but we also have a suggested routine for the new student.
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5 Rules for Protecting Your Family’s Financial Future, Part I
Medical training is a significant investment for both you and your spouse. It’s an investment … Read more
Q&A with Adaira Landry, MD, MEd, Harvard Emergency Medicine Assistant Residency Director
Adaira Landry, MD, MEd, is the Assistant Residency Director for the Harvard Emergency Medicine Residency. … Read more
Another Test Anxiety Killer, Physician Bias, and Suspicious Meat
Her snacks were delicious, but you’ll never guess her secret ingredient. Irisa Mahaparn, Tony Rosenberg, … Read more
What is causing this woman’s recurring abdominal pain?
A 19-year-old female exchange student presents to the emergency department with severe abdominal pain and a swollen right knee. She has had recurrent episodes of abdominal pain for the past 5 years which last 2-3 days before resolving spontaneously. Previous investigations have all failed to identify a cause. She mentions that several family members back home in Turkey have similar symptoms. On examination, she has a temperature of 39.4°C and a heart rate of 125. Her abdomen is diffusely tender with rebound tenderness. A right knee effusion is present, and a raised, tender erythematous lesion on her left lower leg is noted. Laboratory testing reveals an elevated white cell count with a neutrophilic predominance, as well as elevated ESR, CRP, and SAA protein.
What Lies Ahead in the Healthcare Industry
When you applied to medical school, you probably had an excellent answer to the question “why do I want to become a doctor?” If that answer is still valid for you today, when you are ready to embrace healthcare as your career, you should know the road ahead is not always a smooth sailing through a field of roses. There are plenty of challenges ahead, and today we will look at some of them to keep you prepared for the future.
Should You Consider a Long-Distance Relationship In Medical School?
I resisted dating my long-time friend for months after it became obvious that we were … Read more
5 Physical Therapy Settings to Explore Before Applying to PT School
When you’re planning to apply to physical therapy school, you may or may not have an idea of what you’d like to do once you actually become a PT. Sure, there are plenty of articles out there reminding you of what a great profession physical therapy is, and they’re mostly right! But the majority of the media paints the same picture of what a physical therapist is: a smiling, perky young lad or lady, absently stretching a faceless leg.
The reality is that the physical therapy profession is so much more than stretching people’s legs in a generic outpatient orthopedic setting. (Outpatient ortho is what those pictures represent, by the way, but the pics don’t come close to representing the actual excitement of clinic life). A PT can help to improve the functions—and the lives—of everyone from children with developmental disabilities to active older adults. Physical therapists work in schools, adult day care facilities, gyms, and nursing homes, and they treat people with everything from sprained ankles to acute heart conditions.
What treatment should be administered for this patient’s rash? | Figure 1
A 28-year-old woman presents with a one-week history of a slightly raised erythematous lesion on her chest. She has been experiencing fatigue and joint pain since taking a walk through the woods in eastern Massachusetts earlier this month. She is 33-weeks pregnant and is otherwise well. An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) test comes back negative for Lyme antibodies.
Relax or Prepare? Advice for Incoming Med Students
Spoiler alert: don’t “prepare” during the summer before you arrive at medical school. Listener Amanda … Read more
How To Get More CARS Questions Right
One of the questions that we hear most often from students is “How do I get more answers right on MCAT CARS practice passages and in the exam itself?” That’s a critical question because your score depends totally on how many questions you answer correctly in the time allotted. When you look at the methods described in most MCAT CARS practice books, they give you a lot of tips and tricks on how to answer questions. And when you learn these tips and tricks and use them on practice passages, the first thing you notice is that they don’t work very well. You’re still getting a lot of wrong answers.
Why is that? It’s because these methods are anecdotal rather than scientific. Think of it this way: when a patient comes to see you with a serious medical condition, are you going to use tips and tricks to treat her? No, You’re going to use your basic knowledge of medicine combined with your reasoning ability to do a proper diagnosis and treatment.
How Nontraditional Students Benefit Traditional Students
In both high school and college, we get used to our peers being our age. Everyone turns the same age in the same range year after year. This makes it easy for friendships to form based on common interests and just being in the same stage of life. After college, however, most of our paths can diverge in a variety of different ways. Many of my non-preprofessional school friends got jobs and are even buying houses now. Others went straight into medical school, and still others waited a few years and lived out their lives before going back to school to study medicine. I think that is actually one of the most interesting and beautiful parts of medical school: the diversity in age and experience.
Family Strife, Chuck’s Pro-Life, & the Ebola Bureaucracy Knife
Our own Claire Castaneda won first place in the Carver College of Medicine’s Carol A. Bowman Creative Writing Contest for Medical Students, and her piece caught Dave’s eyes and heart. She talks with Aline Sandouk, Melissa Chan, and Tony Rosenberg about the dynamics of family strife and the pressure they can exert to follow one career path over another. Meanwhile, Aline expresses her feelings on being left behind by her original classmates as she continues her MD/PhD studies.
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Dyspnea and abdominal pain—how would you manage this patient?
A 66-year-old male with a history of hypertension presents to the emergency department with dyspnea and sharp abdominal pain radiating to his back. On examination, his blood pressure is 180/120 mm Hg. A CT scan demonstrates the findings seen here and laboratory testing indicates that his renal function is preserved. Which of the following is the most appropriate next step given this patient’s likely diagnosis?