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I wrote this about a month ago. We have switched our advising system at my university and as an outgoing student who starts medical school this fall, I wanted to leave the new pre-medical students there with some advice. Every freshman who is designated "pre-med" will be given this next year to read. I have edited it a little bit to make it more general (not just for people at my school). I am posting this here for reviews or advice you might have to offer if you have lots of free time and would like to read it. I tried to insert some humor here and there.
This is all the advice you will ever need as a pre-medical student. Each point is not necessarily numbered according to importance.
1. The Role of Advisers (or: Plan your own future, don't let others plan it for you)
"Pre-med advisers" are not necessarily the best source for information or opinions on whether or not you have a chance at being admitted. Some are okay; a few are really good but most are absolutely clueless. Don't let any of them tell you have no shot (especially if you are second semester freshman who didn't serve time in federal prison for robbing banks). I never had this happen to me but I know people who did (at other schools). I consulted with the pre-health professions adviser at my undergraduate institution one or two times. I mostly did my own research and planned my classes by bouncing ideas around with my regular (major) adviser. At some schools, the pre-medical adviser is your sole academic adviser. At school things were different (I was a psychology major so I had a psychology academic adviser with access to the pre-health professions adviser).
In any case, you should look at your schools course catalog and cross-reference it with the requirements listed in the MSAR (https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/requirements/msar/) and the AACOM College Book (http://www.aacom.org/resources/bookstore/cib/Pages/default.aspx). Every school has different (but basically similar) required and recommended courses. I can't even begin to tell you how many kids would complain about taking the wrong chemistry course or taking a difficult math class that no school required (some would say that higher level math courses look really good on an application and maybe they are correct but that doesn't mean a marginal student should take physical chemistry for the sole reason that it might "stand out"). People who did this were usually the type who didn't make it as a pre-medical student and switched to something else because they did not have enough invested in their future to do their own research on something as important as class selection. Make sure you investigate your professors prior to enrolling in their class. There are a number of online resources where you can do this. Just don't go into a class without knowing what to expect unless absolutely necessary. Upper-classmen who took the course with a professor can also be good resources.
Just like you shouldn't blindly accept the class schedule your academic adviser creates for you each semester, you shouldn't accept any of the advice the pre-medical adviser gives you without checking yourself. You should examine the schools you are interested in going to and find the appropriate courses. Don't assume that just because someone has the title "adviser" that they know what they are talking about. There is a good reason why third party medical school admissions consulting companies (i.e. MedEdits) are thriving and it is not because the average university adviser is all that knowledgeable about medical school admissions. If you want to be a lazy sap and just go along with what the adviser says without doing your own research, good luck to ya Johnson.
2. Class and MCAT scheduling (or: Pain first)
The following is the optimal schedule for class and MCAT scheduling. Notice I said optimal (not the absolute requirement). Every student will have to plan according to their own unique circumstances. Situations that necessitate deviation from this schedule should be obvious.
Finish all pre-medical classes by the end of your junior year and take the MCAT BEFORE the summer between junior and senior year (mid-May). In fact, I would even suggest that you finish the core pre-requisite courses by the end of sophomore year if possible. If I could go back and do it all again, I would have taken my basic 200-level biology and inorganic chemistry classes freshman year, physics during the summer between freshman and sophomore year and organic chemistry during sophomore year.
Why do I say this? There are a couple of reasons: first you will have the requirements out of the way and won't have to worry about whether a class will be full when you need to register for it. Second, you will have a solid knowledgebase upon which to begin studying for the MCAT, and you can spend your senior year focused only on interviews and finishing strong in your classes and student organizations (if you are leader of whatever leadership group you have joined, make sure you transition the next group of leaders to the best of your abilities).
You should spend your junior year taking upper-level biology and major requirements (if you aren't a biology major) while studying for the MCAT. Again, make sure to take the MCAT BEFORE the summer between junior and senior year (before the middle of May). Why? Simple: you should have everything you need ready to go to submit your primary AMCAS [American Medical College Application Service application] and/or AACOMAS application (also called the "primary application") on June 1st of the year prior to matriculation. Don't be like me and find yourself in the situation where you have to worry about applications, letters of recommendation, MCAT studying etc. all during your junior year. Even worse would be piling all of that on-top of taking some of the harder pre-requisite courses (organic chemistry, physics, etc.).Your junior year should basically be your busiest year. Even if you follow my advice and finish your pre-reqs during freshman and sophomore year, you should still being doing research, fully engaged in extra-curricular work, MCAT studying and preparing the primary - but more on junior year later.
You should start filling out the primary application on May 1st. There is absolutely no excuse for you to not have this completed and sent for processing later than June 1st (around the time when both services submit it to schools). You may think it is okay to procrastinate on this because do not have your spring semester grades ready or your MCAT score. That is not a valid reason. You can submit both applications with your current transcript and denote the date in which you plan to take the MCAT. Your application can and will still be processed without a fresh set of grades or an MCAT score.
If you are a senior and submit both applications in May prior to receiving your spring semester grades, you will simply have another official transcript sent when they are ready. Get on the office of the registrar at your institution about sending these out. Also make sure you contact other schools you have attended (i.e. community college or another institution) about sending your transcript as well. Even if you retook classes in which you received a poor grade at another school, you must still send all of your transcripts from every college course you ever took. Even if you took a so-called "dual-credit" course in high school at a community college, these grades must also be sent. An official transcript must be mailed from the office of the registrar, you cannot print out a copy from your online student account and mail it yourself. It must bear the seal/signature of the registrar (standard procedure) and must be mailed from your university.
Register for the MCAT as early as possible because spots fill up very quickly and you do not want to have to travel long distances to take the exam on your preferred date. Worse yet would be having to take the exam earlier or later than you want. and/or take the exam earlier/later than you want. You can reschedule your MCAT date for a fee within a certain timeframe (which, if you know you won't be ready by the originally planned date you should also do as soon as possible). The MCAT is offered January through September. You cannot take the exam in October. Some schools won't even accept an MCAT score later than August. Register for the MCAT early and, if necessary, reschedule your originally planned date as early as possible. The MCAT is offered January through September only. Some schools do not accept an MCAT score later than August. This is not an editing error; I am trying to hammer home the point. Do I need to repeat it again? Register for the MCAT as early as possible.
Make sure you start asking for LORs as early as possible. Ask for them at least 3 months before June 1st. I would ask much earlier than this, especially if it's from a professor you took a course with during your freshman or sophomore year (so their memory of you and your work ethic is as current as possible). You want them to be able to write a good letter, not a bad letter or a mediocre letter. Mediocre letters may as well be bad letters. Admissions committees have a lot of letters to review and if you submit something bland, they will go right into the proverbial garbage can.
The people who write your LORs are very important. Common sense is very important in this step. Don't waste your time with a cranky chemistry professor with an axe to grind, even if you did well in his class. This might take a little intuition on your part but that is the nature of the game. The sad part of this step is that you can do everything right and still get a poor letter from someone. It is hard for people to understand why someone would sabotage your efforts to get into medical school because of their own insecurities or mental illness. While this is rare, you have to be cognizant of the possibility because it happens every year. For what it's worth, I hear this happening more with the professors or graduate students in charge of the lab in which you did research. I won't speculate as to why this is but I will say that you need to be careful (and by careful I don't mean paranoid, I mean cautious).
In my opinion, these are the types of LORs you need:
- Three letters from a science faculty member (biology, chemistry, physics – sometimes math will count but I would get three in science first and fourth from a math professor if you believe she will write you a good one).
- At least one letter from a non-science faculty member.
- A letter from your pre-medical adviser.
- A letter from a physician (M.D. or D.O.)
- A letter from your research supervisor
- A letter from your volunteer supervisor (i.e. the hospital volunteer coordinator most familiar with you)
I recognize there may be some debate on a few of the ones I have listed but the science faculty letters are pretty much staples at most medical schools. No you cannot send a letter from your uncle, even if he is a practicing physician and decedent of Benjamin Rush himself. No you cannot send a letter from your Congressman (unless you worked for them or they are relevant in some way to your pre-medical education). Family and political letters are expressly discouraged on the secondary application for most schools so you cannot send them (or you can but they will most likely be ignored and you will look like someone who doesn't read directions – a real good way to get an early rejection letter).
As a general rule, you should try and "spread out" the types of letters you send as much as possible. What I mean by this is that if a school asks for five letters, you should send five letters (the required science letters, one letter from an adviser, one letter from the research supervisor, one letter from the volunteer coordinator, etc.) If a school asks for a minimum of three specific letters with a maximum of six total letters, I would send six. This is just my personal opinion and advice on this might vary from person to person. I just believe that sending the minimum might make you look like you don't have six good letters and I don't get a good feeling when I picture an admissions committee member scanning my application and flipping over the last page once or twice in search of a fourth letter (because they are used to receiving six).
I must note here that some institutions have a pre-medical or pre-health professions "committee" that will submit a composite letter in lieu of a letter from your pre-medical adviser and science faculty. If this is the situation at your undergraduate institution, it is almost always the case that medical schools will require a letter from the committee. There are cases where medical schools will allow you to by-pass this requirement by submitting the individual letters I listed above but that is likely frowned upon (and may even require a written explanation as to why you did not receive a letter from your pre-medical/pre-health committee).
Each school has their own list of requirements so you would do very well indeed to investigate these on your own. Don't assume that every school accepts a letter from a math professor as part of the "science" faculty letter requirement. Don't assume that you can send five letters to each school (some require less, some require more, some prefer less, and some prefer more). The requirements vary from school to school. Do whatever you can to figure this out in advance because you will not find this information in the Letters of Recommendation section of AMCAS or the MSAR (though it has been historically listed in the AACOM College Book). Check the website, e-mail the admissions committee, call the admissions committee, and do a combination of the three just to make absolutely sure you are sending the right letters. Never assume anything.
When you initially ask for LORs, make sure you give your letter writers everything they might need:
a. make out an envelope to AMCAS and/or AACOMAS/Interfolio with a stamp
b. give letter writers a copy of your transcript and a short resume/CV
c. hand them a brief one-page letter clearly noting the deadline you need it by (I would say no later than the first week of May). Explain to them that the letter must be on official University or company letterhead and that they should print, sign and mail the letter along with any other necessary document (i.e. the routing sheets that AMCAS and Interfolio create to go along inside the envelope to match the letter with your application/profile), and thank them (in the same letter) for agreeing to write you one.
Note: Use Interfolio or some other document handling service for your letters. By doing so, you give yourself the ability to send each letter to schools individually from your online "profile." You can read more about how the document service works on their website. Get on this early in your junior year (at the very latest) so you can start building your portfolio of letters early. Save yourself the massive headaches by paying the fee and getting your letters in a place where you can easily send them without hassle. You do not want to be in the position of having to ask your letter writers to mail out ten different copies of their letter to ten different schools. That opens the door to a lot of unintended consequences and in this process that is almost never a good thing. Another benefit of having an Interfolio or document handling service profile is that you receive notification when your letter has been received. Do you really want to keep checking with your letter writers on whether or not they finished and sent your letter? Do you really want to worry about whether or not they sent it to the right address? Sounds like a very dumb idea to me but if you like headaches and unnecessary stress, good luck to you.
On that note, I have reached the part of this section where I will identify the take-away theme. Here it is: Timing is everything. In most cases, a very significant factor in whether or not you will receive an acceptance is based on timing. Just like the early bird gets the worm, the early applicant gets the interviews. Do not screw around and ass/u/me you will be okay applying in September because you have a 4.0. The forums at studentdoctor.net are filled with the laments of rejected applicants who didn't have their acts together when it came to submitting their application and all supplementary materials properly and on-time.
3. Extra-curricular activities (or: Stand-out)
Don't do extra-curricular activities that everyone else is doing (at least do not do those activities exclusively). Everyone will shadow, volunteer at a nursing home, and join the illustrious (but often useless in my opinion) "pre-med" or pre-professional club. Find some way to set yourself apart. I did a whole host of leadership activities. I was the chairman of student government and then the student member to the University Board of Trustees. Being able to say on my application that I sat as a voting member of a board that allocates hundreds of millions of dollars yearly set me up for some interesting interview questions that I know stayed in the minds of the people I interviewed with after I left (not to mention the connections I made as a result of the experience itself). I also did the shadowing, the volunteering, and the pre-professional club (in addition to other things). You don't have to do what I did, but try and be unique.
Aside from getting good grades and a good MCAT score, these are the sub-categories of extra-curricular activities I would engage in:
a. Volunteer (Non-paid) medically related work (i.e. hospital volunteer, student emergency medical services)
b. Volunteer (Non-paid) non-medically related work (i.e. habitat for humanity, alternative spring break, religious volunteer groups)
c. Paid work/employment (even if it's just a summer job)
d. Research (see below)
e. Shadowing (see below)
Make sure you do some sort of research. It could be done in the form of an independent study for which you receive a grade and college credit toward your degree or simply as a volunteer. It should not be done as part of a class unless your school has an honors thesis track where you enroll in a course specifically to learn how to conduct research and submit a thesis for honors distinction at graduation.
I did research in a psychopharmacology lab assisting in 4 different studies, some of which are being prepared for publication right now. Research along with the other extra-curricular endeavors will make you a very well-rounded applicant. I wouldn't go overboard on the research though. Do something that interests you and don't feel pressured to have your own project as you can simply help graduate students or a professor with their investigations. As long as you do a good job and get a good LOR from the Principal Investigator (PI), I believe that is sufficient. I see and hear stories of pre-medical students working tirelessly in the lab to produce something of their own which eventually forces them to sacrifice time in other important areas (i.e. extra-curricular activities and even their own school work). You can do what you want but I'd say it is far more important to be well-rounded than to be a standout in one area alone.
If you have any reason whatsoever to believe that you might apply to D.O. schools, you must shadow and obtain an LOR from a physician with a D.O. because most D.O. schools require such a letter when you submit your secondary application. You should do this even if you seriously doubt your intentions to apply to a D.O. school. As a sophomore, I didn't think I needed to bother shadowing a D.O. because I thought I was that card counting MIT nerd from the Kevin Spacey movie and would ride my way into Harvard with a perfect MCAT score. Good thing the pre-professional group was close with a D.O. pathologist at the local hospital who gave me my first shadowing opportunity (and physician LOR) and really helped me to see that the D.O. route was not only a valid option but a respectable one as well. I say this is a good thing because I didn't exactly get a 45 on the MCAT and my options were a little more limited than I originally thought they would be. In the end I was accepted to my allopathic (M.D.) program of choice but I did apply and interview at a few great D.O. schools where I could have just as easily ended up.
I recognize that finding a D.O. to shadow can be tricky for students living in certain areas of the country as there may not be many D.O.s there. I would start by using the resources of the American Osteopathic Association in locating a D.O. physician to contact about shadowing (http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/find-a-do/Pages/default.aspx).
4. Studying (or: Get good grades and a good MCAT score)
Get help in classes you struggle with. Make sure you study long and hard with a sufficient number of MCAT practice tests. Advice on all of this can be found in other areas but most of it is pretty obvious. Plan your life around keeping distractions to a minimum when necessary.
My junior year was hell. I did research, enrolled in four courses with labs each semester, served as Chairman of the student government, and studied for the MCAT all at the same time. Meanwhile, I was living in a house with four of my close friends and partying three nights a week. I was in a long-term relationship that I kept holding on to even while it was driving me insane. To make the long story short, I didn't do as well in my classes or on my first MCAT as I could have done. In the end, everything worked out and I was accepted to medical school but my poor planning cost me an entire year. Don't let this happen to you. Plan early and intelligently. Prioritize. Your grades and MCAT are more important than other parts of your application.
Are good grades more important than a good MCAT score? I don't know, and don't put yourself in the position of having to ask the question. Get good grades and a good MCAT score. There are definitely cases where unique life experiences (i.e. long-term medical experience) can overcome a subpar transcript but that isn't usually the case. I am not saying this to make you lose hope as I did not have stellar grades or a stellar MCAT score but I did get accepted. There are people who apply every year and gain acceptance with below average statistics but they are not the norm. I would compare these cases to players in the NFL who weren't drafted out of college but successfully tried out and earned a spot on the roster. Sure it happens and sure they often make solid players. But these are rare situations and one you should keep from finding yourself in if possible.
5. Stay out of trouble
This is another obvious tidbit that I don't think I need to expound upon. Stay away from drugs and the people that do them. Don't get caught drinking underage. All of these things you must disclose on an application. If you think you can hide legal trouble on your application you will be in for a very rude awakening.
If you are in doubt about whether or not a speeding ticket must be disclosed, you should print off the exact language listed on the application and bring it to your lawyer (some institutions have a free legal service for students). There are cases where people have had their acceptance rescinded because the background check revealed something they did not disclose. Ignorance is not an excuse. If it says you should list all misdemeanors you have received and you don't know for sure if jay-walking is a misdemeanor, you should check with a legal expert (not your stoner roommate who thinks he is Johnny Cochran because he talked himself out of an arrest for having a bong in his backseat).
Some legal trouble will not be a big deal. Some legal trouble will definitely keep you out of medical school. Common sense, common sense, common sense. Either you have it or you don't. Don't let one momentary lapse in judgment ruin your entire future. How many stories have I heard of otherwise dedicated students with stellar numbers falling short of the finish line because they did something stupid like getting caught in a dorm room their senior year with a bag of weed by one of the campus police officers? Imagine doing everything right and falling on your face for some stupid reason at the end of the tunnel. It will haunt you for a very long time.
6. Not everything is about getting into medical school
The other point I want to make is about perseverance. This path is probably the most difficult path you can take as an undergraduate student. It requires a great deal of sacrifice and dedication. While my friends were out at the bar for $1.00 bottle Wednesdays, I found myself alone in my dark and cold room reading and re-reading a tortuously boring chapter on thermodynamics from my tortuously confusing physics textbook. While my girlfriend was out partying with our friends on the 70 degree day of spring semester, I was in the lab chasing around a rat who hopped out of a Skinner Box.
Obviously I was able to have fun here and there but it was simply not possible for me to do it at every opportunity like many of the people you will meet in college. And everyone is different. Some pre-medical students hardly study and still get a 4.0 while others had to study every single day to barely get an A. Hard work and dedication are the name of this game and you will have to do what is necessary to succeed.
Don't be a gunner or a cheater. These people are the scourge of pre-medical classes (and even medical school and residency). Don't cut down your fellow pre-med because you believe he might destroy the physics exam and send the grading curve into the stratosphere. More often than not, it is the help you give that determines the help you will receive. If you are part of a study group, try and help your classmates out as much as reasonably possible because you never know when you will need them to help you down the road. Don't go changing your answers on a graded scantron because it'll push you into the A range. I've actually heard a story of a girl who did this in her final semester, was caught, and had her acceptance to an Ivy League medical school rescinded as a result. Academic dishonesty is a huge no-no and it will almost definitely haunt you in the application process.
If you are one of those students who really has to work extra hard to keep up in class, you must realize that many of your friends and even family members will not understand this. Try and explain it to them and maybe they will understand. Even if they don't, true friends will always support you even if they can't empathize. Ditch the girlfriend or boyfriend who is making your life difficult (after you have explained to them repeatedly the importance of your education and time management). On the same hand, don't push the important people in your life away. Friends and family will be with you long after you graduate and you will do well to surround yourself with people who are supportive of all the positive aspects of your life, including (but not limited to) your aspirations to become a physician.
Not everyone will make it. Go into your freshman year biology class and take a look at how many kids are calling themselves "pre-med." Many of them will be gone by the end of the semester and half will be gone by the end of freshman year. By the time you get to second semester organic chemistry, there will be only a handful of you left. And that doesn't include the number of people who will actually be successful on the MCAT and get accepted. This ship that you are on will lose a lot of cargo before it reaches the harbor. Don't this is discourage you. In fact, it should only make you even more driven to succeed. And in the end, you may be one of the people who leaves. It could be because the work is too difficult or the sacrifice is too great. It could also be that you are simply interested in something else. There is nothing wrong with that. This path isn't for everyone and that's okay. Unwilling and incapable are two totally separate things, and you should never assume that someone switched paths because they couldn't cut it.
It is important to have a life outside of the library. If you spend your entire college years focused solely on getting into medical school you will regret it. These years should be enjoyable, not a drawn out series of one masochistic exercise after the other. Get your work done first but have some fun. If you do everything you need to do when you need to do it you get to do what you want to do when you want to do it. Okay there are a million quotes you can reference. Just please don't be the person who's life revolves solely around school. When you are spending over 80 hours a week in a hospital as a third year medical student, it will be comforting to at least have some of the memories of the good times you had when you weren't an indentured servant.
This is all the advice you will ever need as a pre-medical student. Each point is not necessarily numbered according to importance.
1. The Role of Advisers (or: Plan your own future, don't let others plan it for you)
"Pre-med advisers" are not necessarily the best source for information or opinions on whether or not you have a chance at being admitted. Some are okay; a few are really good but most are absolutely clueless. Don't let any of them tell you have no shot (especially if you are second semester freshman who didn't serve time in federal prison for robbing banks). I never had this happen to me but I know people who did (at other schools). I consulted with the pre-health professions adviser at my undergraduate institution one or two times. I mostly did my own research and planned my classes by bouncing ideas around with my regular (major) adviser. At some schools, the pre-medical adviser is your sole academic adviser. At school things were different (I was a psychology major so I had a psychology academic adviser with access to the pre-health professions adviser).
In any case, you should look at your schools course catalog and cross-reference it with the requirements listed in the MSAR (https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/requirements/msar/) and the AACOM College Book (http://www.aacom.org/resources/bookstore/cib/Pages/default.aspx). Every school has different (but basically similar) required and recommended courses. I can't even begin to tell you how many kids would complain about taking the wrong chemistry course or taking a difficult math class that no school required (some would say that higher level math courses look really good on an application and maybe they are correct but that doesn't mean a marginal student should take physical chemistry for the sole reason that it might "stand out"). People who did this were usually the type who didn't make it as a pre-medical student and switched to something else because they did not have enough invested in their future to do their own research on something as important as class selection. Make sure you investigate your professors prior to enrolling in their class. There are a number of online resources where you can do this. Just don't go into a class without knowing what to expect unless absolutely necessary. Upper-classmen who took the course with a professor can also be good resources.
Just like you shouldn't blindly accept the class schedule your academic adviser creates for you each semester, you shouldn't accept any of the advice the pre-medical adviser gives you without checking yourself. You should examine the schools you are interested in going to and find the appropriate courses. Don't assume that just because someone has the title "adviser" that they know what they are talking about. There is a good reason why third party medical school admissions consulting companies (i.e. MedEdits) are thriving and it is not because the average university adviser is all that knowledgeable about medical school admissions. If you want to be a lazy sap and just go along with what the adviser says without doing your own research, good luck to ya Johnson.
2. Class and MCAT scheduling (or: Pain first)
The following is the optimal schedule for class and MCAT scheduling. Notice I said optimal (not the absolute requirement). Every student will have to plan according to their own unique circumstances. Situations that necessitate deviation from this schedule should be obvious.
Finish all pre-medical classes by the end of your junior year and take the MCAT BEFORE the summer between junior and senior year (mid-May). In fact, I would even suggest that you finish the core pre-requisite courses by the end of sophomore year if possible. If I could go back and do it all again, I would have taken my basic 200-level biology and inorganic chemistry classes freshman year, physics during the summer between freshman and sophomore year and organic chemistry during sophomore year.
Why do I say this? There are a couple of reasons: first you will have the requirements out of the way and won't have to worry about whether a class will be full when you need to register for it. Second, you will have a solid knowledgebase upon which to begin studying for the MCAT, and you can spend your senior year focused only on interviews and finishing strong in your classes and student organizations (if you are leader of whatever leadership group you have joined, make sure you transition the next group of leaders to the best of your abilities).
You should spend your junior year taking upper-level biology and major requirements (if you aren't a biology major) while studying for the MCAT. Again, make sure to take the MCAT BEFORE the summer between junior and senior year (before the middle of May). Why? Simple: you should have everything you need ready to go to submit your primary AMCAS [American Medical College Application Service application] and/or AACOMAS application (also called the "primary application") on June 1st of the year prior to matriculation. Don't be like me and find yourself in the situation where you have to worry about applications, letters of recommendation, MCAT studying etc. all during your junior year. Even worse would be piling all of that on-top of taking some of the harder pre-requisite courses (organic chemistry, physics, etc.).Your junior year should basically be your busiest year. Even if you follow my advice and finish your pre-reqs during freshman and sophomore year, you should still being doing research, fully engaged in extra-curricular work, MCAT studying and preparing the primary - but more on junior year later.
You should start filling out the primary application on May 1st. There is absolutely no excuse for you to not have this completed and sent for processing later than June 1st (around the time when both services submit it to schools). You may think it is okay to procrastinate on this because do not have your spring semester grades ready or your MCAT score. That is not a valid reason. You can submit both applications with your current transcript and denote the date in which you plan to take the MCAT. Your application can and will still be processed without a fresh set of grades or an MCAT score.
If you are a senior and submit both applications in May prior to receiving your spring semester grades, you will simply have another official transcript sent when they are ready. Get on the office of the registrar at your institution about sending these out. Also make sure you contact other schools you have attended (i.e. community college or another institution) about sending your transcript as well. Even if you retook classes in which you received a poor grade at another school, you must still send all of your transcripts from every college course you ever took. Even if you took a so-called "dual-credit" course in high school at a community college, these grades must also be sent. An official transcript must be mailed from the office of the registrar, you cannot print out a copy from your online student account and mail it yourself. It must bear the seal/signature of the registrar (standard procedure) and must be mailed from your university.
Register for the MCAT as early as possible because spots fill up very quickly and you do not want to have to travel long distances to take the exam on your preferred date. Worse yet would be having to take the exam earlier or later than you want. and/or take the exam earlier/later than you want. You can reschedule your MCAT date for a fee within a certain timeframe (which, if you know you won't be ready by the originally planned date you should also do as soon as possible). The MCAT is offered January through September. You cannot take the exam in October. Some schools won't even accept an MCAT score later than August. Register for the MCAT early and, if necessary, reschedule your originally planned date as early as possible. The MCAT is offered January through September only. Some schools do not accept an MCAT score later than August. This is not an editing error; I am trying to hammer home the point. Do I need to repeat it again? Register for the MCAT as early as possible.
Make sure you start asking for LORs as early as possible. Ask for them at least 3 months before June 1st. I would ask much earlier than this, especially if it's from a professor you took a course with during your freshman or sophomore year (so their memory of you and your work ethic is as current as possible). You want them to be able to write a good letter, not a bad letter or a mediocre letter. Mediocre letters may as well be bad letters. Admissions committees have a lot of letters to review and if you submit something bland, they will go right into the proverbial garbage can.
The people who write your LORs are very important. Common sense is very important in this step. Don't waste your time with a cranky chemistry professor with an axe to grind, even if you did well in his class. This might take a little intuition on your part but that is the nature of the game. The sad part of this step is that you can do everything right and still get a poor letter from someone. It is hard for people to understand why someone would sabotage your efforts to get into medical school because of their own insecurities or mental illness. While this is rare, you have to be cognizant of the possibility because it happens every year. For what it's worth, I hear this happening more with the professors or graduate students in charge of the lab in which you did research. I won't speculate as to why this is but I will say that you need to be careful (and by careful I don't mean paranoid, I mean cautious).
In my opinion, these are the types of LORs you need:
- Three letters from a science faculty member (biology, chemistry, physics – sometimes math will count but I would get three in science first and fourth from a math professor if you believe she will write you a good one).
- At least one letter from a non-science faculty member.
- A letter from your pre-medical adviser.
- A letter from a physician (M.D. or D.O.)
- A letter from your research supervisor
- A letter from your volunteer supervisor (i.e. the hospital volunteer coordinator most familiar with you)
I recognize there may be some debate on a few of the ones I have listed but the science faculty letters are pretty much staples at most medical schools. No you cannot send a letter from your uncle, even if he is a practicing physician and decedent of Benjamin Rush himself. No you cannot send a letter from your Congressman (unless you worked for them or they are relevant in some way to your pre-medical education). Family and political letters are expressly discouraged on the secondary application for most schools so you cannot send them (or you can but they will most likely be ignored and you will look like someone who doesn't read directions – a real good way to get an early rejection letter).
As a general rule, you should try and "spread out" the types of letters you send as much as possible. What I mean by this is that if a school asks for five letters, you should send five letters (the required science letters, one letter from an adviser, one letter from the research supervisor, one letter from the volunteer coordinator, etc.) If a school asks for a minimum of three specific letters with a maximum of six total letters, I would send six. This is just my personal opinion and advice on this might vary from person to person. I just believe that sending the minimum might make you look like you don't have six good letters and I don't get a good feeling when I picture an admissions committee member scanning my application and flipping over the last page once or twice in search of a fourth letter (because they are used to receiving six).
I must note here that some institutions have a pre-medical or pre-health professions "committee" that will submit a composite letter in lieu of a letter from your pre-medical adviser and science faculty. If this is the situation at your undergraduate institution, it is almost always the case that medical schools will require a letter from the committee. There are cases where medical schools will allow you to by-pass this requirement by submitting the individual letters I listed above but that is likely frowned upon (and may even require a written explanation as to why you did not receive a letter from your pre-medical/pre-health committee).
Each school has their own list of requirements so you would do very well indeed to investigate these on your own. Don't assume that every school accepts a letter from a math professor as part of the "science" faculty letter requirement. Don't assume that you can send five letters to each school (some require less, some require more, some prefer less, and some prefer more). The requirements vary from school to school. Do whatever you can to figure this out in advance because you will not find this information in the Letters of Recommendation section of AMCAS or the MSAR (though it has been historically listed in the AACOM College Book). Check the website, e-mail the admissions committee, call the admissions committee, and do a combination of the three just to make absolutely sure you are sending the right letters. Never assume anything.
When you initially ask for LORs, make sure you give your letter writers everything they might need:
a. make out an envelope to AMCAS and/or AACOMAS/Interfolio with a stamp
b. give letter writers a copy of your transcript and a short resume/CV
c. hand them a brief one-page letter clearly noting the deadline you need it by (I would say no later than the first week of May). Explain to them that the letter must be on official University or company letterhead and that they should print, sign and mail the letter along with any other necessary document (i.e. the routing sheets that AMCAS and Interfolio create to go along inside the envelope to match the letter with your application/profile), and thank them (in the same letter) for agreeing to write you one.
Note: Use Interfolio or some other document handling service for your letters. By doing so, you give yourself the ability to send each letter to schools individually from your online "profile." You can read more about how the document service works on their website. Get on this early in your junior year (at the very latest) so you can start building your portfolio of letters early. Save yourself the massive headaches by paying the fee and getting your letters in a place where you can easily send them without hassle. You do not want to be in the position of having to ask your letter writers to mail out ten different copies of their letter to ten different schools. That opens the door to a lot of unintended consequences and in this process that is almost never a good thing. Another benefit of having an Interfolio or document handling service profile is that you receive notification when your letter has been received. Do you really want to keep checking with your letter writers on whether or not they finished and sent your letter? Do you really want to worry about whether or not they sent it to the right address? Sounds like a very dumb idea to me but if you like headaches and unnecessary stress, good luck to you.
On that note, I have reached the part of this section where I will identify the take-away theme. Here it is: Timing is everything. In most cases, a very significant factor in whether or not you will receive an acceptance is based on timing. Just like the early bird gets the worm, the early applicant gets the interviews. Do not screw around and ass/u/me you will be okay applying in September because you have a 4.0. The forums at studentdoctor.net are filled with the laments of rejected applicants who didn't have their acts together when it came to submitting their application and all supplementary materials properly and on-time.
3. Extra-curricular activities (or: Stand-out)
Don't do extra-curricular activities that everyone else is doing (at least do not do those activities exclusively). Everyone will shadow, volunteer at a nursing home, and join the illustrious (but often useless in my opinion) "pre-med" or pre-professional club. Find some way to set yourself apart. I did a whole host of leadership activities. I was the chairman of student government and then the student member to the University Board of Trustees. Being able to say on my application that I sat as a voting member of a board that allocates hundreds of millions of dollars yearly set me up for some interesting interview questions that I know stayed in the minds of the people I interviewed with after I left (not to mention the connections I made as a result of the experience itself). I also did the shadowing, the volunteering, and the pre-professional club (in addition to other things). You don't have to do what I did, but try and be unique.
Aside from getting good grades and a good MCAT score, these are the sub-categories of extra-curricular activities I would engage in:
a. Volunteer (Non-paid) medically related work (i.e. hospital volunteer, student emergency medical services)
b. Volunteer (Non-paid) non-medically related work (i.e. habitat for humanity, alternative spring break, religious volunteer groups)
c. Paid work/employment (even if it's just a summer job)
d. Research (see below)
e. Shadowing (see below)
Make sure you do some sort of research. It could be done in the form of an independent study for which you receive a grade and college credit toward your degree or simply as a volunteer. It should not be done as part of a class unless your school has an honors thesis track where you enroll in a course specifically to learn how to conduct research and submit a thesis for honors distinction at graduation.
I did research in a psychopharmacology lab assisting in 4 different studies, some of which are being prepared for publication right now. Research along with the other extra-curricular endeavors will make you a very well-rounded applicant. I wouldn't go overboard on the research though. Do something that interests you and don't feel pressured to have your own project as you can simply help graduate students or a professor with their investigations. As long as you do a good job and get a good LOR from the Principal Investigator (PI), I believe that is sufficient. I see and hear stories of pre-medical students working tirelessly in the lab to produce something of their own which eventually forces them to sacrifice time in other important areas (i.e. extra-curricular activities and even their own school work). You can do what you want but I'd say it is far more important to be well-rounded than to be a standout in one area alone.
If you have any reason whatsoever to believe that you might apply to D.O. schools, you must shadow and obtain an LOR from a physician with a D.O. because most D.O. schools require such a letter when you submit your secondary application. You should do this even if you seriously doubt your intentions to apply to a D.O. school. As a sophomore, I didn't think I needed to bother shadowing a D.O. because I thought I was that card counting MIT nerd from the Kevin Spacey movie and would ride my way into Harvard with a perfect MCAT score. Good thing the pre-professional group was close with a D.O. pathologist at the local hospital who gave me my first shadowing opportunity (and physician LOR) and really helped me to see that the D.O. route was not only a valid option but a respectable one as well. I say this is a good thing because I didn't exactly get a 45 on the MCAT and my options were a little more limited than I originally thought they would be. In the end I was accepted to my allopathic (M.D.) program of choice but I did apply and interview at a few great D.O. schools where I could have just as easily ended up.
I recognize that finding a D.O. to shadow can be tricky for students living in certain areas of the country as there may not be many D.O.s there. I would start by using the resources of the American Osteopathic Association in locating a D.O. physician to contact about shadowing (http://www.osteopathic.org/osteopathic-health/find-a-do/Pages/default.aspx).
4. Studying (or: Get good grades and a good MCAT score)
Get help in classes you struggle with. Make sure you study long and hard with a sufficient number of MCAT practice tests. Advice on all of this can be found in other areas but most of it is pretty obvious. Plan your life around keeping distractions to a minimum when necessary.
My junior year was hell. I did research, enrolled in four courses with labs each semester, served as Chairman of the student government, and studied for the MCAT all at the same time. Meanwhile, I was living in a house with four of my close friends and partying three nights a week. I was in a long-term relationship that I kept holding on to even while it was driving me insane. To make the long story short, I didn't do as well in my classes or on my first MCAT as I could have done. In the end, everything worked out and I was accepted to medical school but my poor planning cost me an entire year. Don't let this happen to you. Plan early and intelligently. Prioritize. Your grades and MCAT are more important than other parts of your application.
Are good grades more important than a good MCAT score? I don't know, and don't put yourself in the position of having to ask the question. Get good grades and a good MCAT score. There are definitely cases where unique life experiences (i.e. long-term medical experience) can overcome a subpar transcript but that isn't usually the case. I am not saying this to make you lose hope as I did not have stellar grades or a stellar MCAT score but I did get accepted. There are people who apply every year and gain acceptance with below average statistics but they are not the norm. I would compare these cases to players in the NFL who weren't drafted out of college but successfully tried out and earned a spot on the roster. Sure it happens and sure they often make solid players. But these are rare situations and one you should keep from finding yourself in if possible.
5. Stay out of trouble
This is another obvious tidbit that I don't think I need to expound upon. Stay away from drugs and the people that do them. Don't get caught drinking underage. All of these things you must disclose on an application. If you think you can hide legal trouble on your application you will be in for a very rude awakening.
If you are in doubt about whether or not a speeding ticket must be disclosed, you should print off the exact language listed on the application and bring it to your lawyer (some institutions have a free legal service for students). There are cases where people have had their acceptance rescinded because the background check revealed something they did not disclose. Ignorance is not an excuse. If it says you should list all misdemeanors you have received and you don't know for sure if jay-walking is a misdemeanor, you should check with a legal expert (not your stoner roommate who thinks he is Johnny Cochran because he talked himself out of an arrest for having a bong in his backseat).
Some legal trouble will not be a big deal. Some legal trouble will definitely keep you out of medical school. Common sense, common sense, common sense. Either you have it or you don't. Don't let one momentary lapse in judgment ruin your entire future. How many stories have I heard of otherwise dedicated students with stellar numbers falling short of the finish line because they did something stupid like getting caught in a dorm room their senior year with a bag of weed by one of the campus police officers? Imagine doing everything right and falling on your face for some stupid reason at the end of the tunnel. It will haunt you for a very long time.
6. Not everything is about getting into medical school
The other point I want to make is about perseverance. This path is probably the most difficult path you can take as an undergraduate student. It requires a great deal of sacrifice and dedication. While my friends were out at the bar for $1.00 bottle Wednesdays, I found myself alone in my dark and cold room reading and re-reading a tortuously boring chapter on thermodynamics from my tortuously confusing physics textbook. While my girlfriend was out partying with our friends on the 70 degree day of spring semester, I was in the lab chasing around a rat who hopped out of a Skinner Box.
Obviously I was able to have fun here and there but it was simply not possible for me to do it at every opportunity like many of the people you will meet in college. And everyone is different. Some pre-medical students hardly study and still get a 4.0 while others had to study every single day to barely get an A. Hard work and dedication are the name of this game and you will have to do what is necessary to succeed.
Don't be a gunner or a cheater. These people are the scourge of pre-medical classes (and even medical school and residency). Don't cut down your fellow pre-med because you believe he might destroy the physics exam and send the grading curve into the stratosphere. More often than not, it is the help you give that determines the help you will receive. If you are part of a study group, try and help your classmates out as much as reasonably possible because you never know when you will need them to help you down the road. Don't go changing your answers on a graded scantron because it'll push you into the A range. I've actually heard a story of a girl who did this in her final semester, was caught, and had her acceptance to an Ivy League medical school rescinded as a result. Academic dishonesty is a huge no-no and it will almost definitely haunt you in the application process.
If you are one of those students who really has to work extra hard to keep up in class, you must realize that many of your friends and even family members will not understand this. Try and explain it to them and maybe they will understand. Even if they don't, true friends will always support you even if they can't empathize. Ditch the girlfriend or boyfriend who is making your life difficult (after you have explained to them repeatedly the importance of your education and time management). On the same hand, don't push the important people in your life away. Friends and family will be with you long after you graduate and you will do well to surround yourself with people who are supportive of all the positive aspects of your life, including (but not limited to) your aspirations to become a physician.
Not everyone will make it. Go into your freshman year biology class and take a look at how many kids are calling themselves "pre-med." Many of them will be gone by the end of the semester and half will be gone by the end of freshman year. By the time you get to second semester organic chemistry, there will be only a handful of you left. And that doesn't include the number of people who will actually be successful on the MCAT and get accepted. This ship that you are on will lose a lot of cargo before it reaches the harbor. Don't this is discourage you. In fact, it should only make you even more driven to succeed. And in the end, you may be one of the people who leaves. It could be because the work is too difficult or the sacrifice is too great. It could also be that you are simply interested in something else. There is nothing wrong with that. This path isn't for everyone and that's okay. Unwilling and incapable are two totally separate things, and you should never assume that someone switched paths because they couldn't cut it.
It is important to have a life outside of the library. If you spend your entire college years focused solely on getting into medical school you will regret it. These years should be enjoyable, not a drawn out series of one masochistic exercise after the other. Get your work done first but have some fun. If you do everything you need to do when you need to do it you get to do what you want to do when you want to do it. Okay there are a million quotes you can reference. Just please don't be the person who's life revolves solely around school. When you are spending over 80 hours a week in a hospital as a third year medical student, it will be comforting to at least have some of the memories of the good times you had when you weren't an indentured servant.
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