In my opinion, a lot of pre-medical students (myself included when I was applying) confuse holistic review with this - "I can let my grades or MCAT slip as long as I have other cool stuff on my resume. Who cares about grades and test scores anyway, I'd make a really cool doctor because I've done all this other interesting stuff in my life!! Patients would LOVE for me to be their doctor! I'm smart! My grades just don't show it!"
Let me stop you right there. You are WRONG! NEVER, EVER prioritize your "passions" and "extracurriculars" over grades and test scores if you are truly serious about going to med school. Yes, balance them, but have your priorities straight. The problem is that your grades and test scores are by far the easiest way for someone reading your application to judge you. The numbers are the first thing that people see, and having mediocre or poor numbers puts you behind the ball at the outset. This is because medical schools have to be absolutely sure that you can handle the immense workload. Taking a chance on an "interesting" applicant with lower numbers is not prudent for a medical school, since they invest lots of time and money into your training. Having you dropout would look bad, and it would also be financially disastrous. Thus, do not be under the false assumption that mediocre grades can be made up for with great extracurriculars. The extracurriculars/personal qualities enhance your application and get you to the finish line, but having mediocre stats puts you out of the race from the beginning. Some might argue that grades/mcats are not great predictors of med school performance. I agree, but what else do the adcoms have to go off but these objective things when reading your app?
In general, the way med schools review their apps is this, (some might call this a holistic review, I call it more of a checklist. The holistic review tends to become important only when two applicants are really close in the running, and there is a real dilemma as to who to admit):
1. Do you have solid grades and MCAT scores (i.e scores in the middle 50% of the school's published stats)? CHECK ---> a TON of people get rejected here!!!! they do NOT even make it past this!!!! you do not need a 4.0 and 40MCAT, but the lower your stats are in comparison to the school's average, the lower the likelihood of being interviewed. you tend to get some wiggle room here if you are URM or come from a disadvantaged background, but not as much as people might think.
2. Do you have quality clinical volunteering, shadowing and research experience? CHECK ----> still more people get cut here! many applicants don't meet all these criteria.
3. Do you have STRONG letters of rec? CHECK ---> most people have good letters. these are really hard to judge, since they all basically sound the same (unless your letter is from some nobel laureate, or some other well-known figure, it is tough to use LORs as a metric of comparison). BEWARE!!!! Having an AVERAGE letter is the kiss of death!
4. Well-written, thoughtful essays? CHECK --> in general, adcoms aren't looking for something super profound. something that is just honest and well-written will do. this factor really won't do MUCH overall in terms of getting you in, but having a POORLY written essay WILL hurt you. that being said, if you have something truly remarkable to discuss, it can help get you in, so WRITE IT!!
5. This last one is reserved for something that separates you from the rest. What is that one thing that makes you SO special. Did you play a division I sport? Did you publish a paper in Science? Did you found a non-profit that builds HIV clinics in Kenya? Did you get the Rhodes Scholarship? Did you do something TRULY remarkable in your life ?(and no being president of your fraternity isn't one of them....plenty of people found/lead student groups....that doesn't give you a SPECIAL quality...sorry).
*** #5 is NOT something you NEED to have to get into med school. If you are looking to get into a top 1o school, this is important. Having 1-4 will get you into MANY fantastic schools, and you will become a solid physician.
The problem with categories 2-4 is this: How do you compare applicants? Admittedly it is tough. If one applicant said he was president of his fraternity, and another student said he founded a community service group, it is damn near impossible to say who is the better applicant. Now if one of the applicants has higher numbers, cutting one applicant becomes easy. If both have similar stats, then the process becomes super subjective and you are at the mercy of the whim, personal taste and mood of the person reading your application file (which is NOT a good place to be). Thus, #2-4, and even #5, are very subjective indices of comparison that are unlikely to yield consistent results for applicants.
Additionally, the notion that the people reading your files have the time to give you a FULL AND FAIR review is a load of BS. There are so many applications to read, and so few people reading them (people who I might add are VERY busy), that many times your application won't get a fair read. Can someone really judge you as a person and prospective physician in just five minutes of reading your application file? Hell no! They will use very objective indicators to determine whether or not to interview you. If your grades and MCAT are solid, only THEN do the other things matter. I repeat my previous point -- the EASIEST WAY to judge MD applicants is numbers. I've read plenty of APPs, and the problem is that after 3 hours of reading, they all start to sound the same, and any sane human being will get irritated. Then, as you might imagine, readers begin to rely on factors in your application that are really easy to judge, rather than really getting to know the applicant as a person to make the BEST decision. This is really ****ty, but unfortunately it happens, even to the best of us. This is the one thing that irritates me most, but something I know that is near impossible to change without having an impractical number of volunteers reading MD applications. Any admissions officer or dean who says that their med school does an honest "holistic" review for EVERY person who applies is just lying. I know people have thrown BU around as one such school. Let me tell you that is absolutely false, and I know this from personal experience and having attended the school for undergrad, talking to people on the adcom and even having applied/interviewed there. The admissions dean at BU is a really nice guy and he gives off the impression that they are holistic. But c'mon man, you get 12000 applicants and interview 1000, and then enroll 150? No one there has the time to give 12000 people a holistic review!
All this being said, many people will give anecdotal evidence that what I am saying is wrong. I admit, there are many people who get into medical school with less than stellar stats, but they tend to have other TREMENDOUS aspects to their application, and INSANE obstacles they had to overcome. These people are TRULY special, and in the case of my school, are doing really well in classes right now. However the VAST majority of applicants, are not special enough to make up for a deficit in grades/mcat.
As far as the interview goes, people will say that the interview matters a whole lot. Yes it does, but realize that while only a few people interview you, everyone on the admissions committee has a vote on whether or not you get in. If 10 people are making a decision on your file, and only two of those ten interviewed you, that means the people who interviewed you have to convince the other eight to vote in favor of you. The other eight voting for you have never met you and have nothing to go on but your resume. Very few interviewers are willing to fight hard enough to change an entire adcom's perception of an applicant's academic credentials based on their personal interaction. Moral of the story, the NUMBERS ALWAYS MATTER EVEN AFTER YOU GET THE INTERVIEW!
Now for my final thought. Despite the fact that I've harped incessantly on having good scores and grades, don't let that consume you. Med schools do want real human beings, their flaws and imperfections included. I know many applicants with near perfect grades and 36+ MCATs who receive NO interviews. Thus, it is important to follow your passions, and do what you like, and make these things known to medical schools. My only advice is that you make sure that you prioritize your coursework and grades - make sure they are solid and respectable. Don't obsess over a few Bs here and there, or that rare C, but do maintain your grades and scores to a reasonable degree. If you don't you may not even get a shot to interview and explain how interesting a person you are outside of academic achievements. I see so many interesting applicants who I wish the adcom would interview, but these students get rejected because of low grades/MCAT. I implore you, try not to be one of them!
In any case, I hope this was helpful. You may not agree with everything I've said here, and my experience may not be indicative of what you will go through, but I do feel that what I've written is quite typical. Constructive comments/feedback are appreciated, but please don't hate. I'm not trying to discourage people. I'm just telling it as I've seen it.
Best of luck to everyone applying!
