No Premed Advisor, What to do?

[Noel Bender]

Hey all,
So I am an incoming junior/freshmen undergrad (finished gen eds before graduating high school) at a local public due to personal finances. This university has 18000+ students and their premed adviser knows absolutely nothing. This "premed adviser" is also the nursing school adviser, pre-dental adviser, and pre law school adviser (???) and everything she advises could be learned from reading an about.com article. Have a good GPA, score well on the MCAT, try to get into research, yadayadayada. I get the feeling that she could really care less about me or my success. There's no premed club or organization and I'm basically left to figure things out for myself. I really wish I could have the support, mentorship, and advise of someone who actually knew what they're talking about. I want to know how to package myself, how to best spend my university years, what not to do, etc. but there doesn't seem to be anyone who can help at this university. What can I do? Do independent premed advisers for hire exist out there? Can I mooch off a neighboring college and use their adviser? I live fifteen minutes from Rhodes college which I heard has awesome premed advising. Is it worth seeing if I could pay for one of their advisers to advice me or something? Any ideas? Am I destined to just make SDN my life? I don't want to risk ruining my med school dream because of my ignorance and poor advice.

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[Chillbo Baggins]

Dude, just read SDN!

 

[pacman2018]

Dude, just read SDN!

This. Most pre-med advisors are like yours. You already have a leg up that you know about SDN. Even if you went to a different school with a better advisor, I'd listen to the people on here first. The only problem might be if you need a committee letter from your school...

 

[Noel Bender]

Haha, I know, and I do, but SDN has a million opinions for everything and sometimes it's nice to have someone advise you for your particular situation. With SDN I start wanting to fit a million things into my schedule at once and I need someone to tell me to slow down, calm down, be normal, and just do xyz...not the entire alphabet.

 

[Noel Bender]

@pacman2018 committee letter? What is it and why do I need my "adviser" for it? I was hoping to just ignore her the next four years.

 

[Got Heem]

Most pre-meds will report similar feelings on their pre-med advisors. It's very rare that these advisors actually applied to medical school, which makes it difficult for them to empathize with and lead the students they've been assigned to. However, they can be useful at times, so don't completely give up on them.

There are independent advisors - some on this website even. I'm not sure what they actually call their job title, but there are definitely people that are willing to read your entire application and give constructive criticism... usually for a high price tag.

As far as getting advising from another school, that's very unlikely. I know at my school you had to enter your student ID to receive any kind of advising.

Personally, I think the most cost-efficient thing to do is make use of the endless amount of free advising here on this website. There are at least 3 admission committee members here that are very active and very willing to help even the most neurotic and naive of pre-med students. The only caveat is that you'll have to navigate through a lot of useless and misinformed posts, but those are typically easy to pick out.

Also, some free advice: if your username is your actual name, I would make a new account ASAP.

 

[Person0715]

If you are smart enough to get into med school, you are smart enough to learn about the process on your own. A good pre-med advisor is just icing on the cake. There are tons of resources out there about the med school process. IMO, SDN is the best place to learn about the process. Make sure you filter the crap out though.

 

[Noel Bender]

"The only caveat is that you'll have to navigate through a lot of useless and misinformed posts, but those are typically easy to pick out."

This. This is my problem. I soak it all up and kill myself later when my schedule gets a helping of overkill. If I have one weakness it's not being able to prioritize and just do what's necessary. I want to leave no stone un-turned and do everything everyone says, just in case. This is where I need an adviser...just someone to tell me "necessary," or "unnecessary." I suppose I could just bug people on SDN every few days with "yay or nay" questions but I'd rather not.

 

[pacman2018]

@pacman2018 committee letter? What is it and why do I need my "adviser" for it? I was hoping to just ignore her the next four years.

https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/amcas/faqs/147736/amcas_2010_faqs-17.6.html

I don't know how your school is set up or if you technically have a committee (just having an advisor doesn't necessarily mean you do). If you do however, I've heard that some schools question as to why you don't have the letter from them if available. Not speaking from experience on this one though

 

[Noel Bender]

@pacman2018 Thanks, I'll check up on that.

 

[Shazam243]

SDN will give you all the answers. Keep in mind that there're tons of students who have applied to medical school on here (who have succeeded and/or failed to matriculate), lots of medical students (even at universities that you want to apply to), and--to top it all off--you even have people on adcoms on here. If I had to pick having only a premed adviser (w/o committee letter) vs. SDN, I'd probably choose SDN.

The "search" tool is your friend, especially the "advanced search".

Edit: Also, note that a committee letter is not another recommendation letter. It's basically a summary that doesn't really add anything new to your application. If you have a good application (that would earn you a good rating on the committee letter), then you don't really need a summary to say that.

 

[Chillbo Baggins]

"The only caveat is that you'll have to navigate through a lot of useless and misinformed posts, but those are typically easy to pick out."

This. This is my problem. I soak it all up and kill myself later when my schedule gets a helping of overkill. If I have one weakness it's not being able to prioritize and just do what's necessary. I want to leave no stone un-turned and do everything everyone says, just in case. This is where I need an adviser...just someone to tell me "necessary," or "unnecessary." I suppose I could just bug people on SDN every few days with "yay or nay" questions but I'd rather not.

This is where you need to use discernment. Yes, there are a lot of opinions, but you should be able to figure out which ones come from successful people and see a pattern to them.

You can search SDN nearly 24/7 for almost any question you may have; an advisor may not be as welcoming to questions every couple days.

 

[OrgasmicChemistry]

Have a good GPA, score well on the MCAT, try to get into research, yadayadayada.

Those are the main things. I also had a bad advisor. One thing they failed to mention is that the application requires number of hours spent doing whatever activity you're listing. I could have had far more shadowing time (easily 300+ hours) if I had known that, but I wasn't aware that the hours would be listed. So I shadowed a few physicians a few times, and figured I would be able to check that box off. I don't know how much that hurt me, but I think that for my application I would have looked a lot better with a lot more shadowing.

I think AMCAS should issue guidelines on hour requirements for shadowing, volunteering, and research. I think people should aim for something like this by the time they submit their AMCAS:

100+ hours shadowing
100+ hours volunteering in a clinical environment
300+ hours research, preferably with posters/awards, and ideally a publication
Additional volunteering and what-not as you can fit it in.

 

[kyamh]

SDN has a pretty bad reputation at my school but I have been very pleasantly surprised by this community - which is why I want to contribute. There are a few issues that are next to impossible to have a calm and balanced conversation on this site: race, international trips, wanting an MD and not a DO, considering getting an education in the Caribbean.... (no comment about whether the SDN biases are good or bad, just saying that SDN has very strong feelings about what "acceptable" answers to these topics look like).

I would say you are very wrong about not thinking you can get personalized advice on this forum. I have had lots of in depth conversations with applicants over PM who are interested in my experience and in the schools I ended up getting interviews (and rejections ) at. Plenty of users help applicants by reading PSs, doing mock interviews, and posting on the "what are my chances" threads. In general, plenty of people post their specific situations every day. Sure, you will get a lot of different responses but you would get a difference of opinions if you asked 10 pre-med advisors your questions too. It is your job to read everything, figure out whose perspective matches your goals best, and ignore advice that doesn't apply to you. If you are a strong applicant gunning for top schools, you want to pay attention to what current medical students or accepted pre-meds at these top schools have to say. If you are worried about getting into medical school at all then you should probably ignore these superstar applicants since they don't know what it's like to wonder whether you'll be in the 50% who make it in. Someone with a 28 MCAT has different things to prove than someone with a 38 MCAT - it is your job to find the right voices to listen to.

 

[nemo123]

LizzyM, gyngyn, Catalystik, and goro are the only advisors you need...

On top of that, in addition to admitted med school students who read PSes and give their own opinions, there are many other physicians, residents, and current med students who are involved in this process who give their advice on these forums.

 

[lmn]

Read up on SDN, if you really do your reading on here, you can get much more information, with more depth, and more accuracy than most advisers could ever give you. Sure you have to sift through some bad or non-applicable advice, but there is great info if you just dig deep. And I wouldn't worry about the committee letter, if your school has one you can use it, I personally didn't have one at my school and got my LOR's in a fashion I much preferred to the committee letters and I believe it really helped my app rather than hampered it.