some tips for med school applicants
from a soon-to-be grad 🥺
talking to a mentee on the phone recently made me realize the season is starting pretty soon so i thought this would be timely!! also i'm graduating med school this fall so want to write this down before i completely forget what the experience was like / while it's still relevant lol.
this is very informal - i have no qualifications except a) having been through the process myself successfully 4 years ago, b) mentoring, and c) volunteering on my med school's interview committee. take everything w a grain of salt.
I always tell my mentees that there are 3 major things adcoms look for in an application:
will you survive med school? everyone knows it's academically tough. have you proven through your gpa/mcat/general work ethic that you've built a good foundation and you know how to study so you won't fail out? it's harsh, but that's what they're thinking.
do you know what medicine is? sure, there are always a couple people who quit or don't go to residency because they realize this isn't what they wanted, but the goal of the med school is to train doctors. it's better for them if the majority of people they accept are genuinely interested in medicine, and stick with it.
are you a decent human being? i don't think medicine requires extremes of compassion or kindness or empathy - saying that about your own profession is kind of suspect, imo. but adcoms are doing their best (not always succeeding, unfortunately, but doing their best) to find people who aren't sociopaths, who will actually take good care of patients and won't piss off their colleagues.
so, naturally, these 3 things correlate with different parts of the med school application:
will you survive med school? -> this one's pure and simple - meeting the college prereqs + your GPA & MCAT. most schools will cut you some slack and take the higher of the two - someone with a low MCAT but good GPA may just have had a bad day, and someone with a low GPA but good MCAT obviously still learned enough to get by on the test. the further out you are from college, of course, the less your GPA matters (that's also why your MCAT has to be more recent).
do you know what medicine is? -> clinical experience. the only real way to get a glimpse of what a job entails is experiencing it! that's why shadowing is a thing. obviously, you'll have an even clearer idea if you get hands-on experience - not just watching, but actually doing stuff for patients, like being an EMT, scribe, clinical assistant, peer counselor, medical interpreter, hospital volunteer, etc. med schools want to know that you've gotten as close to the doctor job as possible, and you still want to do it. your personal statement allows you to verbally express this in your application, but having experience is what's most important - adcoms won't be impressed if all you know about the profession is through Grey's Anatomy.
are you a decent human being? -> this is obviously the hardest to evaluate. in order of priority, the factors that help schools determine this are a) letters of recommendation, b) activities, and c) essays. why LORs first? because you're less likely to be tooting your own horn there. of course these aren't truly objective, but getting people around you to state their opinion of you is a little more convincing than just you talking about how hardworking and compassionate you are. by activities, i mean - have you participated in activities that show you care about other people? this can overlap with clinical activities, but can also be volunteering at the food bank, raising money for a charity, etc. (they're slightly lower than LORs because adcoms know that resume padding happens.) and, finally, essays. your compassion for humanity should hopefully come through in your personal statement, but...see my thoughts on the actual impact of your personal statement later in this post.
notice i haven't talked about the med school interview yet - mainly because it's february and way too early for people applying in 2022 to think about interviews, but also because interviews are sort of a different beast.
imo, the rest of what makes up your application - research publications, leadership roles, medical missions to Guatemala - is icing on the cake. not having them won't tank your application the way lacking clinical experience or writing about your creepy childhood fascination with a dead squirrel will (true story). the 3 things i talked about aren't sufficient by themselves - but they are essential. everything else, you can pick and choose; imo, the best way to do that is to chase opportunities that are interesting to you and let the cards fall naturally. that way the special sauce in your application - the part that makes you a unique applicant, someone a med school will want to join their class - is truly you, not a resume blueprint.
wait, you mean research isn't essential?! i got into med school with no publications. zero. imo, med schools like seeing research on apps for three reasons: 1) the most important - if you care about being a good doctor, for the rest of your life after med school, you will have to keep up with the latest developments in medical treatment. that means understanding how research works and how to read journal articles. but you certainly don't have to publish to be able to do this! 2) commitment to a research (or, as my school calls them, "deep dive") project can showcase passion, dedication, good work ethic, and (sometimes) academic intelligence. keep in mind, this doesn't have to be bench research - I know med students who have conducted research in archaeology or philosophy, or even written books. 3) med schools love to have students who might make the next big cancer breakthrough - so if that's your jam, it's certainly a boost. but it's not everyone's jam and it doesn't have to be. we need committed small town doctors as much as we need professors who run huge clinical trials. (the caveat to this is that different schools have different priorities - a research powerhouse like johns hopkins is undoubtedly going to appreciate seeing some research on an application. but getting into a medical school will not necessarily be a problem.)
okay, i feel like this turned into a rant about how the sausage gets made in adcom meetings, instead of being practical/helpful for applicants who are stressed about the upcoming cycle. so here's some actual, actionable advice you might want to keep in mind as AMCAS looms:
submit your primary application before july. there's technically no deadline but schools review apps on a rolling basis so the earlier you submit the better your chances. if you submit after july you're lowering your chances by a lot!! i had a friend who submitted in october and while i have no proof of this i think it contributed to their not getting into any schools that cycle :(
give yourself time. i would plan for at least 1 month to write your statement, and 1 month for the rest of the application (the CV part of the application requires like 3 more mini essays) - more if you can swing it. better to finish early than to have june be one long panic attack.
your personal statement doesn't have to be perfect. to adcoms, your personal statement is one of the least important parts of your application. it needs to show you've put in enough thought about this big life decision (main point 2, above), and it needs to not have anything bad/weird (main point 3, above). that's it. in extreme circumstances, a great personal story in a personal statement can help overcome other "issues" in your app (like a lower GPA), but that's about your real experiences - it's not something you can make up by spending 100 hours writing your statement. have at least one person - preferably someone who knows what they're doing, like a faculty or med student mentor - check it over to make sure the topic is on target, and another person read it for typos/grammar errors. if other people want to help, great, but remember, too many opinions may just end up confusing you.
that said, stuck on your personal statement? read examples. the "why medicine" question is a horrible one - it's so broad! for some of us, there was a defining moment, but for a lot of us, it was a gradual process. where do i even start telling the story? that's why reading example personal statements is helpful. i would read multiple - if you only read one you risk having that get stuck in your head and reproducing it, consciously or subconsciously, when you write your own. google "med school personal statement examples" online, or your uni's advising office may have compilations from previous alumni that you can tap into. there are also worksheets online that can help you brainstorm for your own essay, with questions ranging from "list the top 3 experiences that guided you to medicine" or "who are your personal heroes?" use these to help you come up with content, and use the example essays to help get an idea of the form.
apply to a broad range of schools. i know someone who applied to 40 - which is a little extreme, if you ask me, but hey, it worked. if you can afford the fees (there are also financial aid programs), i recommend 15-20 schools to be safe, more if you and your mentors think it's necessary. unlike college, it's hard to predict which schools are going to be "reach" schools and which are "safety" schools, because you can get an interview from the med school ranked #16 by us news and not the one ranked #35 (true story). so consider broadly - public and private schools, schools across the country. whether to apply to DO or caribbean schools depends more on what you're looking for in training, and i'm not experienced with them so won't talk about it here. bottom line: cross the school off your list only if you would rather have to reapply next cycle than go to that school.
i hope this was helpful! happy to answer any asks if you have a specific question :) best of luck to everyone applying this cycle!
