prehealth

What Do I Wear? Basic Interview Attire for Men

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interview attire for men

Fall is in the air, and you wait patiently as the medical school application cycle continues. Several weeks have passed since you have completed your AMCAS and AACOMAS experience prompts, proof-read your personal statement, entered your transcript grades one “A” after another, and finally mustered up the courage to click that oh-so-final submit button. You eagerly press refresh on your internet browser hoping that just one of the numerous medical schools you applied to will reward you for all your arduous work. “Congratulations, you’re invited!” reads the subject line; you finally receive the email you have been waiting so anxiously to read. You schedule your interview for the next date available and your boundless excitement immediately turns to panic. Will my interview be formal or MMI? Which of my experiences will be brought up? What will I wear to this oh-so-important event? While the former questions may generate some anxiety, choosing your outfit should be an easy, stress-free task.

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Working as a Paramedic to Gain Clinical Experience

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paramedic

Importance of Medical/Healthcare Experience as a Medical School Applicant

Healthcare is a broad field with multiple working parts that all accompany one another. Providers come from all walks of life and contribute a wide range of skills and abilities that each work integrally in order to provide a smooth patient care experience. Everyone that has any patient care responsibility can attest to the hardships—as well as the triumphs—that one faces while working in healthcare.

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Writing That Personal Statement

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surgical specialties

Writing about yourself can be intimidating. Luckily, I’ve got this venue here for practice, but it really can be difficult, especially when it comes to writing to impress someone else, i.e. those on the selection committees of medical schools or residency program directors. It’s important to articulate yourself well and paint a picture of your personality in a way that makes them say, “Yes, I want this person to be in my program”. I recently finished up writing my personal statement for residency programs, so I have a few tips on how to go about this daunting process.

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8 Ways to Make “Typical Premed” Activities Exceptional

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Medical School like

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:

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How To Get More CARS Questions Right

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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.

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Confessions of a Former Mediocre Premed Student

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premed

By Yoo Jung Kim, MD Candidate, Stanford University

Many students start college gung-ho about going into medicine, and many end up falling short of their goals. Their reasons are varied. Some discover new careers that better appeal to their interests; others realize that they can’t stomach the long commitment required in medicine. However, the saddest group of people are those who come to believe that they aren’t cut out for becoming a physician because of their performance in science courses. I was very close in becoming one of them.

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Getting In: The Undergraduate’s Guide to Research Experience

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getting in

Undergraduate students do not need told, again, how important it is to be involved in numerous activities: academics, extracurriculars, employment, research, job shadowing, internships, and social life. Students who are pursuing a career in a science or healthcare field (particularly those with aspirations for graduate school) may find even more intense pressure than their peers. This pressure – to check a box in each “category” above and to succeed at all of them – can be quite overwhelming, especially for students who don’t have any experience in one area or another. One of the most common areas with which students struggle is research. Many prehealth students understand that research should be part of their application, but do not know how to get started, or even what “research experience” means. If this sounds like you, check out Getting In: The Undergraduate’s Guide to Research Experience by David Oppenheimer and Paris Grey.

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5 Ways to Study for the MCAT Using Your Smart Phone

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You can do almost anything with your smart phone these days. You can video call a friend in China, order pizza with the click of a button, and even see in the dark! So, if your smart phone can help you do these and an almost infinitely large number of other things, then why can’t you use it to study for the MCAT? In this article, I am going to show you that you not only can, but should use your smart phone to study for the MCAT. Here are 5 ways that you can start using your iPhone to study for the MCAT right now:

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State Exchange Program Helps Healthcare Students With No In-State School Option

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No available or affordable program for your healthcare profession in your home state? Take heart! Students in Western U.S. states  do  have access to affordable professional degree programs in nearly a dozen healthcare specialties, thanks to the  Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education’s (WICHE)  Professional Student Exchange Program (PSEP).

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The Other Medical School: A Detailed Look at a Podiatric Medical Training

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Hi! My name is Courtney, and I am currently a third year Podiatric Medical student from Indiana, studying in Ohio. I hope that I can help those of you reading this learn a little more about the field of podiatry and what it is like to be a Podiatric Medical student.

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From Engineering to Army Dentistry: An Interview With Army Captain Pamela Cotton, DDS

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Army Pledge

Some people know what they want to do with their lives from an early age. Others, like Army general dentist Captain Pamela Cotton, DDS., take a rather twisty path to get there.
Cotton majored in engineering in college, a far cry from her current profession of dentistry. But the real-life experience of her first career quickly fell short. “I worked for a few years as an engineer, and it was nice, I liked it, but it was still the same as sitting behind a desk. I didn’t get to work with a lot of people,” she explained to SDN last fall at the University of California Davis Pre-Health Conference (UCDPHC). “So I decided to go back to school.”

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