Dr. Richard Friedman is a professor of clinical psychiatry and a psychopharmacology clinic director at Weill Cornell Medical College, where he focuses on mood and anxiety disorders. In addition to his research, Dr. Friedman has interests in mental health policy and psychiatric practice, and is a classical pianist and long-distance swimmer. He graduated from Duke University in 1978 with a degree in physics before graduating from Robert Wood Johnson Medical School – University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in 1982. He has written for The New York Times science section since 2002, and recently became a contributing opinion writer in 2015. He has also written for The New England Journal of Medicine, The American Journal of Psychiatry, and The Journal of the American Medical Association. Dr. Friedman graciously agreed to talk with me over the phone. This interview has been edited and condensed.
A Guide to MCAT Preparatory Courses
One of the most pressing issues facing prospective medical students today is the choice of … Read more
Chronicles of Med Student: A Summer to Remember
This past weekend, I had the opportunity to meet some of our incoming first years at a meet and greet event. They came in with wide eyes and big smiles, just waiting to sink their teeth into medical school. Their curiosity always got the best of them, and my classmates and myself were bombarded with questions like “What’s it like?” and “Do you have a life?”. I remember feeling that way one short year ago (and yes, even though our school year is a stretch of eleven months, it does feel short). One of the questions that they should have asked but didn’t is what they should do this summer.
4 Ways to Get Accepted With a Low GPA
The fastest way to not get accepted to med school is to think that your GPA doesn’t matter. It does, in fact, matter quite a lot, as it’s the way medical schools can see how you perform academically. It also serves as an easy way for adcom to compare applicants; it is imperfect, given different grading scales and study paths, but it is something that all students have in common.Not thrilled with your GPA? Worried it might get in the way of your med school acceptance? Here are 4 things you can do NOW to increase your chances of acceptance:
Your Pathway to the White Coat: 7 Tips for Writing Your AMCAS® Personal Comments Essay
The AMCAS application to medical school asks for a lot of information about yourself. It … Read more
How to Skillfully—and Successfully—Revise Your AMCAS Personal Statement
Nowhere else on your medical school application will you have the chance to represent your personality and goals as strongly as you do in your AMCAS personal statement. Your personal statement is one place to which schools will turn to understand who you are separate from your MCAT score and GPA.
For those individuals aiming to submit their primary AMCAS applications in June or early July, revising your personal statement throughout May is essential to crafting an application that represents your unique attributes as a future physician, as well as what you will bring to your medical school class. Use this checklist as you revise to ensure that you are covering all that you must in order to submit a successful personal statement.
Get A Better Letter: An Insider's Guide to Letters of Recommendation
By Michelle Finkel, MD Whether you are a candidate for medical school, residency, fellowship, dental … Read more
Tips for Writing a Convincing Personal Statement
The personal statement is the centerpiece of a medical school application. The space given, which varies from 5300 (AMCAS) to 5000 (TMDSAS) to 4500 (AACOMAS) characters, represents an opportunity to tell your “story” to the medical schools. The prompts in each application are similar:
Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Students With Disabilities in Medical School
Updated December 1, 2021. The article was updated to correct minor grammatical errors and to … Read more
Q&A with Physician-Author Dr. Matt McCarthy
Dr. Matt McCarthy is an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and an assistant attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He graduated from Harvard Medical School and went on to complete his internal medicine residency at Columbia University Medical Center. Before that, Dr. McCarthy graduated from Yale University with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and then spent a year in Minor League Baseball. He wrote about his stint in baseball in Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit. The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician’s First Year is his most recent book, and details the trials and tribulations of internship year. Dr. McCarthy has published in USA Today, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, Slate, Reuters, Deadspin, and Stat. I sat down with Dr. McCarthy at an Upper East Side café to pick his brain. This interview has been edited and condensed:
The MCAT: A History and Current Overview
In 2014, the American Association of Medical Colleges announced that the MCAT 2015 would be … Read more
Q&A With Stephen Aichele, PhD – Quantitative Psychologist
Stephen Aichele, PhD, is a research scientist in Switzerland in University of Geneva’s Psychology & … Read more
Study Like It’s Game Day
Preparing for an exam is the same as preparing for any other major event you might encounter. Just like a football player prepares for Friday night’s game or a pianist practices for their upcoming recital, preparation should be completed just like it is the main event. When preparing for a major exam, set the scene up like it is the day of the test.
First order of business is finding a location that is most conducive to studying for you. This might be a quiet location like the library, a place with background noise like a coffee shop, or your favorite nook on campus. Finding the correct place to study for you is very important for concentration and retention of information. If the location does not provide you with the ability to focus on your studies, then try a new place until you find what works best.
How to use a Pea Plant to Increase your USMLE, COMLEX, and Shelf Exam Scores
Studying for the boards overwhelms most people. The sheer amount of information to know is … Read more
The Top 5 Ways to Improve Your CARS Score Today
For most pre-meds taking the MCAT, the CARS section proves to be one of the biggest obstacles standing between them and admission to the medical school of their dreams. The CARS section is a highly artificial environment, unlike any test you’ve ever taken before. It can be difficult to know where to begin and what steps to take to improve your overall CARS approach. Everyone and their mother seem to have an opinion about how to do well on the CARS section, opinions that often contradict each other as often as they agree. To make matters worse, unlike the other sections of the MCAT which play to the inherent strengths of pre-meds, hardly anyone starts off with a CARS score in range of where they’d like to be on test day. Fear sets in, and the “you’re not going to get in” gremlins starting chanting their mean-spirited slogans; all because of one stinking section.
Minorities and the MCAT
The MCAT looms large on the horizon of many would-be medical students – and there … Read more
The Dangerous Devolution of Physicians into Technicians
Reposted from here with permission. As I sat in my institution’s white coat ceremony this past fall, … Read more
What the Adcom Sees (and Thinks) About Your Multiple MCAT Scores
MCAT History
Back in the olden days (like prior to 2007), the MCAT was only offered a few times a year, and test-takers took the paper exam with a No. 2 pencil. There was also a restriction placed on the number of times you could take the exam in a single year, as well as in your lifetime.
Today, the MCAT is offered 17 times a year with the following limitations on how often an applicant can take it:
– Three times in one year
– Four times in two years
– Seven times in a lifetime
It’s become increasingly common to take the exam, retake it, and then sometimes retake it again before applying to medical school.
5 Study Tips for the USMLE Step 1
1. Set a goal
As the saying goes, “being begin with the end in mind.” Before you begin preparing for the USMLE Step 1, you should consider where you are with your knowledge base and your score, as well as what your goal target score is. To determine where you are starting from, you should take a practice test. Online prediction calculators use your scores on question banks and the USMLE practice test to estimate how you will do on the actual Step 1 exam.
When setting a goal, consider that 192 is currently the minimum passing score for USMLE Step 1, and 229 was the national average in 2014 (the most recent year for which data is available). However, depending on the specialty into which you desire to match, you may have to aim for a significantly higher score. If you’re not sure what specialty you want to pursue, you’ll want to score as high as possible, though you probably want to do that anyway. This is a table summarizing average USMLE Step 1 scores by specialty in the 2014 Match.
Exam preparation: More than just studying?
Do you know of a colleague who is extremely good at their job, yet cannot pass the professional exams required to ascend the career ladder? Or an exceptionally bright friend – who seems to fall apart during exam periods? Or do you yourself struggle when it comes to final assessments? I’m sure most of us are familiar with situations like this, as they are a very common occurrence. Failure to pass specialist exams in one’s field is not down to lack of intelligence or an inability to do the job. Rather, it is usually down to inadequate preparation for the examination.