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.
You may have heard that there’s a “perfect formula” of undergraduate extracurricular activities sought by medical schools. Research experience? Check. Hospital volunteering? Check. A summer internship in a lab or clinical setting? Check.
While these endeavors might demonstrate your interest in and commitment to clinical medicine, the idea of selecting your extracurricular activities solely based upon this perfect formula ignores one key trait that medical school admissions committees are looking for in their applicants: authenticity. As you navigate your pre-medical years, you may be wondering how to cultivate a resume that evidences your investment in medicine but also leaves plenty of room for pursuing your other interests. The key to selecting your extracurriculars is to not treat these two intentions as mutually exclusive—medicine can overlap with your other interests (and vice versa). Check out these suggestions for choosing your undergraduate extracurriculars in a way that will please both you and admissions committees.
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.
Many applicants applying with AMCAS strive to complete and submit their application as quickly as possible. However, an incomplete or incorrect application can cause delays — which may cause you to miss an important deadline. [Here are important dates to be aware of for the 2018-2019 application cycle.] Never fear: We talked to the staff who verify applications, and they shared some quick tips that can help prevent your 2019 AMCAS application from being delayed.
We are taught from a young age (most of us, anyway) not to brag. It is better, we may sometimes hear, to show confidence. Listener Rachel wrote in with a question about the secondary application: how does one confidently talk themselves up without coming across as a braggart? Lucky for Rachel, we have Daniel Schnall from our admissions staff on hand to help Mark Moubarek, Kylie Miller, Aline Sandouk, and Gabe Conley with some great advice about how to sell yourself on your application and also back it up. Don’t want to look like a chump? Dan has your answer, Rachel.
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There are so many paths that people can take to get to medical school. In … Read more
Summer—the season of sun, swimming, relaxing, and traveling. For most people, summer can be the best season of the year and a time to decompress from the demands of normal life. However, most premedical students find themselves in a predicament with regards to summer—do they do something they enjoy or focus on an activity that will help their application to medical school? Depending on who you ask, you will likely get a different answer on how to spend your free time, but after years of advising premedical students, my greatest advice is to do both!
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:
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:
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.
With so many deadlines and moving parts to med school apps, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. In this article, we’ll discuss how to be strategic about when you write what. At the end of this article, we’ll give a sample timeline that you can use. We will focus on the AMCAS app, but a lot of our advice is applicable to other application types as well.
Our motivation for writing this article is that we have too many friends who didn’t get into medical school because they applied late. It’s heartbreaking to find out you didn’t get in because of something so avoidable. We don’t want that to be you.
Yes, we said it, ignore those national rankings! You’ve probably already heard this, and you know deep down it’s good advice. But let’s be honest, it’s easier said than done.
We try to remind students not to put too much emphasis on a school’s average GPA or MCAT scores and instead to look at their mission statements and focus on what matters most to them. Medical schools each have different values and goals, and it’s important to ensure your own interests align with the medical school. Remember, you’ll be spending at least four years there! Whether it’s the school’s commitment to primary care, the research opportunities available, programs or clubs related to your interests, or a particular class size or format that is a good fit for your learning style, it’s always a smart idea to consider a broad range of factors. This worksheet can help you assess different factors for each school you’re considering applying to.
CASPer is an assessment tool that is rapidly gaining popularity across the world. CASPer is … Read more
Whether you are changing careers or deciding late in your college career that medicine is your path, there is no doubt that making that decision can be anxiety-provoking and life changing. The truth is that medical students come in all forms and from every imaginable background—something I didn’t fully realize until beginning medical school myself. Regardless of where you are starting from, it can be a daunting task to ready yourself for the application process when you feel behind from the very beginning.
If you haven’t started already, now is the time to begin writing your AMCAS activities section and your personal statement. Your AMCAS application—or the primary application submitted to allopathic (MD) schools—serves a significant role in the path of applying to medical school. This is where admissions committees will gain an understanding of your academic abilities, extra-curricular activities, and personal strengths. It cannot be stressed enough that the primary application should be taken seriously and ample time should be spent preparing it.
When you receive your score report, you will receive five scores—four scores for each of the multiple-choice sections of the exam and one total score. As you prepare for test day, you may wonder how the AAMC calculates your scores. Or perhaps you’ve heard some theories about how we do it. To help dispel any myths, we’ve answered three of your frequently asked questions about how the MCAT exam is scored.
Studying your butt off for months, suffering through an anxiety-inducing test day, and then waiting … Read more
While most students dream of getting an acceptance letter from just one medical school, others find themselves in the enviable position of having to choose between two or more schools to which they’ve been accepted. If you are deciding between schools, Second Look days can help you determine where you’ll commit. Second Look days are offered by most medical schools, usually after their application cycles are complete and acceptances have been extended to candidates. They are meant to give potential students an idea of what attending that particular school will be like. While many students attend Second Look days with the intention of getting to know potential classmates and to see what the academic environment “feels like,” others may want to head into these days prepared with a few specific questions aimed toward helping them gather the information they need to make a final decision. If you’re getting ready to travel to some potential medical schools this spring, keep these questions in mind:
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.
Many students don’t realize that the residency match should be top of mind when choosing … Read more