The 8 Most Common Mistakes Students Make On Their Medical School Applications

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Let’s be honest: it’s really hard to get into medical school. Each medical school receives thousands of applications every year and most schools have less than a hundred spots available. Which means that if you’ve just received the blow of a med school rejection, you are far from alone.
That doesn’t make it any easier or feel any nicer, we know! Especially when med school is a goal you’ve worked hard for, and when it’s just the next step in your long-term goal of becoming a physician. We understand that being rejected can shake your confidence and leave you wondering what went wrong.
That’s where we can help. At Accepted, we’ve worked with thousands of med school applicants, so we know what committees are looking for – and which applicant mistakes can lead to that dreaded rejection. The first step towards crafting a successful reapplication strategy is understanding what went wrong this time: Did you make a mistake in your application strategy? In the content or execution of your application? Were you overly optimistic about your competitiveness?

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Is a Combined Bachelor’s/MD Program Right For You?

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combined bachelor's/md program

By Jessica Friedman

For students who are fully committed to a career in medicine, combined programs – those that grant you acceptance to both undergraduate college and medical school – can be a great option. They allow you to earn a bachelor of arts or science and a medical degree and are called BS/BA-MD programs. Some programs are as long as 8 years (4 years of college and 4 years of medical school), some are 7 years (3 years of college and 4 years of medical school) and a few are 6 years (2 years of college and 4 years of medical school). The more abbreviated programs are especially rigorous since you complete your college degree in a shorter time. Students in these programs often are in school year round.

Before deciding to apply to combined programs, you should understand the plusses and minuses of doing so.

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The Changing Landscape of the Multiple Mini Interview

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The Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) was first adopted by McMaster University in Ontario, Canada at the Michael G. DeGroote, School of Medicine back in the early 2000s. Initially, MMIs were used strictly during the admissions process for medical school.
For starters, depending on the specific program where you interview, your MMI circuit will likely consist of 6 to 12 stations and may include rest stations. There will be as many participants in your interview circuit as there are stations. The instructions for each station are typically posted directly outside of each room and you are given up to two minutes to carefully read the prompt prior to entering the room. At the end of the two minutes, a bell will sound and this is your cue to enter the room. Typically, a bell ringer type method is used to keep track of the time and you will be allocated six to eight minutes for each station before moving on to the next station.

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Finding Clinical Opportunities: Show Up, Ask, and Follow Through!

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I was recently asked to give advice on finding clinical opportunities. Here’s the short version: show up, ask, and follow through! This is an exciting and supportive profession you are entering. Physicians not only remember what it feels like to be in your shoes but they are eager to support you. Part of our responsibility in medicine is to educate and mentor the next generation. This applies to everyone from a first-year medical student all the way to the most seasoned attending.  I’ve had opportunities to tutor my classmates, write for Elsevier, deliver a heart from its pericardium, coordinate a helicopter landing and practice my old fashioned medical skills on the 7th continent all because I have shown up, asked for opportunities, and followed through when given the chance. Here are a few notes on how I approach gaining these clinical opportunities.

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Maximizing Your Predental Experience

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Being a dentist is a lifelong dream for many people. Yet few are able to make this dream a reality. Year by year, the application pool for dental schools has become more competitive, and selection committees have a more difficult time choosing the best candidates. As the number of applicants increase, it has become more vital to stand out from among other applicants. Strategically planning your undergraduate years can significantly increase your chances of acceptance at your dream dental school. Looking back at my experience, this is the advice I would give a friend to maximize the experience and overall results to yield the best outcome.

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Get a Top Score on the MCAT for Less Than $300

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Many MCAT prep companies will try to sell you on the idea that you need to spend thousands and thousands of dollars on a fancy prep course with all its bells and whistles in order to get a top score on the MCAT, but this just isn’t the case. We carefully analyzed the experiences of students that scored above the 95th percentile on the MCAT and looked for patterns in their preparation, and our analysis revealed that the students who performed well weren’t necessarily the students who spent the most money on a prep course. In actuality, top scorers use a variety of low-cost resources. And this actually makes perfect sense. Think about it. Every MCAT prep company has a single (likely slightly inaccurate) perspective regarding the most important concepts to know for the MCAT. By preparing using a variety of materials, you will gain several perspectives on the material, which when combined together provide you with a much more accurate picture of the MCAT.

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Improve Your CARS Reading Speed by Quickly Finding the Main Idea

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The CARS section of the MCAT Exam can be really scary. It’s not that you don’t know how to read. The problem is that you don’t know how to read critically, and that’s a whole different way of analyzing a passage. Trying to decipher a CARS passage with the same skills that you use to read a science text is like trying to play tennis with a golf club. You need different tools, and the first tool you need to help you read faster and have a clear understanding of a passage is a basic knowledge of Rhetoric.

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How To Keep Calm and Succeed on the DAT

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DAT Week

This article originally ran on ASDA’s blog, Mouthing Off, on July 20, 2016.

Is the DAT stressing you out? You’re not alone. Preparing for the DAT is probably the most intimidating part of the dental school application process. But don’t get lost in counting cubes or memorizing reactions! Below are tips on how to succeed at the DAT and stay calm at the same time.

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All in the Family: A Profile of Family Medicine

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Central to the skillset of every physician is the differential diagnosis; this is the process by which new patients are evaluated to establish the most likely diagnosis. Similarly, the first clinical year of medical school is like a differential for each student, except instead of a medical diagnosis, students are seeking to determine which specialty they will choose. This column explores this differential: experiences from each rotation by a current third-year student.
My first day on Family Medicine might be the best depiction of the specialty: my clinical preceptor and I moved between our three clinic rooms, barely able to keep up with the 20+ patients that had appointments. We saw a patient following up on depression with new-onset low back pain; a middle-aged woman with a classic urinary tract infection; a husband and wife geriatric wellness visit; an adult woman with diabetes; a 9-year-old with strep throat; and a few cases of sinus infection to round out the day. By the end, I was exhausted and wondered how I would ever learn everything that my preceptor knew about such a wide variety of disease processes and patients. By the end of the rotation, I was still nowhere near his level or my other professors’ – years of residency and clinical experience still separate us – but had at least developed a sense of how to manage many of the common illnesses, and feel that I have a good understand of the breadth and variety of family medicine.

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Dentistr-e Sports: The Intersection of Dental Training and Video Games

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Originally published in Contour, March 2017, the magazine of the American Student Dental Association. Learn more at ASDAnet.org/contour.
During a state visit in 2011, Barack Obama was greeted by Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who then handed him a video game. “The Witcher 2” was developed in Poland, and Obama explained it as “a great example of Poland’s place in the new global economy.” The list of video games name-dropped by a head of state is, not surprisingly, short. Most media outlets didn’t report on the gesture, but its impact was tremendous in the gaming community.

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Time Away From Formal Academics Can Enhance Application

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take gap year

Whether or not a student should take a “gap year” (or two) often comes up during our conversations with applicants to medical school. Based on MedEdits’ experience working with students, we find that gap years are becoming increasingly common and that this extra time away from formal academics can enhance a student’s candidacy.

The Association of American Medical College’s (AAMC) 2016 Matriculating Student Questionnaire (MSQ) reports that the age of matriculants continues to rise, with 60.6% reporting that more than a year had passed since graduating from college, up from 57.9% in the 2014 MSQ. Matriculation data from colleges of osteopathic medicine show that the average age at matriculation in both 2015 and 2016 was 24.

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A Med Student’s Guide to Becoming a Physician-Scientist

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physician scientist

When medical students start to think about areas of practice to specialize in once they graduate, the area of medical research can sometimes be overlooked in favor of more traditional practice areas such as internal medicine or surgery. However, for some doctors-to-be, the pull towards such research is strong and it is an important part of the healthcare system, as the discoveries that such scientists make can have an impact on techniques used to improve patient care and outcomes.
This article covers the work and scope of physician-scientists as well as educational pathways these professionals pursue in order to undertake their important work.

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Things I Didn't Realize About Medicine Until I Became a Physician

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became a physician

Recently SDN member medinquirer noted that it’s common for premed students to learn about medicine through shadowing, volunteering, working in related fields, etc. But surely, said medinquirer in his post, there are things you don’t realize about medicine until after you become a full-fledged, practicing physician. What are those things? Here are some of them of them, as shared by members of the SDN community:
SurfingDoc:
No one teaches you about billing, prior authorizations, etc. until to have to do them. There is no real “education” in those endeavors, but they are part of the system and a requirement of the job.

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The Undifferentiated Medical Student Podcast: Your Virtual Mentor for Choosing a Specialty

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What is the Undifferentiated Medical Student podcast? Give us an intro.
TUMS is an interview-based podcast about choosing a medical specialty and planning a career in medicine. Many medical students feel lost when it comes to picking a medical specialty and planning their careers (myself included). There are many reasons for this (and some I personally faced):
-they are overwhelmed by the number of options
-they may feel they don’t understand enough medicine yet to start the discussion
-they don’t have a mentor

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