“…Medical schools generally only extend interviews to students who appear to have the right stuff to succeed. Translation: if you get offered an interview, there is a chair in that school’s first-year medical school class with your name on it. Based on your performance in the interview, you will either claim it or give it away.”
– Quinn Capers IV, MD, FACC, FSCAI
Associate Dean for Admissions,
The Ohio State University College of Medicine
This past Saturday, I got my first interview invitation. The feeling of knowing that at least one medical school doesn’t think I suck at life is incredible. ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE. The pressure’s not off at all, and I realize that, but it feels so rewarding just to know I’ve made it to this stage for at least one school. My interview is going to be on December 11, which is coming right on up (!!!), so I plan to write a post about the whole experience as soon as I can after the interview.
The interview in question is to the Brody School of Medicine at ECU, in Greenville, NC. Their focus is mainly on producing primary care physicians for rural and/or underserved areas of North Carolina. I am still toying with the idea of primary care as a specialty, but at this point, I am feeling slightly more drawn to general surgery or cardiology. Regardless, in spending considerable time working this summer in an area of North Carolina that is extremely low on the socioeconomic totem pole, I was blessed to truly get to know some of the fantastic people who live there without sufficient access to healthcare, and as such, training for practicing in underserved areas is of immense importance to me. I could definitely see myself thriving in this learning environment and contributing significantly to the next entering class as a result of those experiences. (Would you just take a look at these bragging skills, you guys? I am so much better at tasteful self-promotion than I was pre-personal-statement. I suppose that’s an important skill to have in any sort of competitive application process. Med school apps can change a woman.)
The Brody School of Medicine at ECU
This one is extremely exciting to me (not that any of them aren’t, but relatively speaking, this one is super cool), because it’s one of the few school in my home state to which I applied. Also, it’s public. And public school + school that’s in the same state as my legal residence = BEAUTIFUL, BEAUTIFUL CHEAP TUITION. I’m sure I’m not the only one swayed extensively by cheap tuition…a girl’s gotta eat, y’all.
I have high hopes for BSOM, because Greenville is a really great little town that’s only an hour and a half from my parents’ home, and the opportunity to visit my family during med school would be awesome. Their website says they receive 800-900 AMCAS applications per year, almost exclusively from in-state applicants, and they end up extending about 120 offers to fill an 80-person class. I am not completely sure how many applicants they interview per year, but as of November 1, they have interviewed 240 students and extended 20 offers. For the sake of making assumptions, if we say they end up interviewing 300-350 applicants, that means they accept about 35 to 40% of the applicants who accept interview invitations. Regardless, the majority of the class has yet to be filled, so there is hope. If y’all pray, I would greatly appreciate a prayer or two as I go into this interview in a couple of weeks. I will definitely need them!
ANYWAY, update on the rest of my application life (so really, my whole life): I’ve submitted 13 secondaries. I actually can’t believe I’ve written that many essays about myself in such a short time frame; it’s pretty crazy, y’all. It was incredibly hard, time-consuming work, but I’m very proud of my finished products from the past few weeks. I have two applications left to complete; one I had already received, and the other I received today, because I added an extra school to my AMCAS application last week. This means there is only one last lonely school on my list that has yet to send me a secondary. I haven’t heard any news to the contrary, so I assume I haven’t been rejected by that school yet. I cannot wait to be done with this stage of the process.
Artistic rendering of myself and my lovely collection of secondaries (except not really).
Hello again, friends! I promised a more in-depth description of the MCAT study regimen that worked for me, so here it comes. Keep in mind that this is just what worked for me, and it may not be the perfect strategy for everyone. Do what suits your learning style. Pick and choose points to use in your studying, ignore others. BE SMART WITH YOUR TIME. Simple as that.
True Life: this was my bathroom mirror this summer. THE CLOCK DON’T STOP.
In the end, it boils down to taking as many practice tests as you possibly can. The best way to prepare for handling such a strategy-heavy test is to be familiar with its characteristics. The last thing you want is to be surprised by anything about the test at game time.
Know the length of each section. Know how long it takes you to read passages. Know how to pick out pertinent info from these passages. Know how long it usually takes you to pick out that pertinent info. Know how long you want to have leftover at the end of each section to review any questions you may have marked. Budget your time and don’t let the test fluster you. If you do that, you can’t lose. HAPPY STUDYING, FRIENDS!
I know I’m still in the process of applying to medical school, and as yet have not been accepted anywhere, so it’s probably slightly premature for me to be handing out “words of wisdom” to other pre-meds. However, if there is one thing on my application in which I have complete, unwavering confidence, it is the strength of my MCAT score. This post does not exist to brag about said score. If there’s anything I hope to accomplish with this blog, it’s to help even one other kindred soul succeed in trying to become a doctor. And the MCAT is definitely a major stepping stone in that. So, having been through it, I’ll write some things about it.
If you’re reading this and know absolutely nothing about the MCAT, this is what you need to know. It’s required for applying to medical school. It has three sections: (1) Biological Sciences, AKA biology and organic chemistry; (2) Physical Sciences, AKA physics and general chemistry; (3) Verbal Reasoning, AKA exactly what it sounds like. It masquerades as a scientific knowledge test, but it’s not. Don’t get me wrong, you need to have a strong foundation of scientific knowledge in all of those sections I just listed, but the key to the MCAT is not what you know, but how you can manipulate the information you do know in as little time as possible. It’s an endurance test, a strategizing test, and pretty much the bane of existence for pre-meds everywhere…not to be too dramatic.
Chances are you know a person whose desk looks like this. Please don’t be that person. Review books are phenomenal, but you really truly don’t need ALL of them. Promise. Pick a few and stick to them.
I took the MCAT in July of this past summer (2013), which may or may not have been the best time to take it, in context. I took a summer school course to get ahead on finishing one of my majors while also working 50 hours a week across two jobs, commuting, and preparing for this monster of an exam, so it’s safe to say the tensions were running high and the sleep levels low. I would not recommend this setup. However, I tend to produce my best work under high pressure, so the circumstances inspired me to put any energy I had left into exam prep. If that’s you, too, then go for it, but if you require a calm, relatively uninterrupted environment in order to succeed, be sure you have a significant chunk of time (like, we’re talking weeks to months here) in which you can focus all of your attention on preparation.
Truer words have never been spoken.
Unlike many of my fellow pre-meds, I did not enroll in a prep course. I chose to be a self-studier instead. I wish I could give a deep, insightful reason for that choice, but it honestly boils down to the fact that I didn’t feel like paying $2,000+ on prep that I could organize for myself for significantly less money. Simple as that.
The main idea behind prep courses is twofold: first, they briefly review relevant topics in biology, chemistry, and physics; and second, they throw AS MANY PRACTICE QUESTIONS AND PRACTICE TESTS AS THEY POSSIBLY CAN at you in as little time as possible. If you’re enough of a self-starter to put in a comparable level of time dedication on your own, then you can plan your own study curriculum and still have that $2,000+ to spend on other things. Like application fees…or an interview suit…or applications fees…or food for the semester…or application fees…
Enter my study regimen: I’ll highlight these in greater detail in Part 2, but for now, a general overview will suffice. (1) Emulate the prep course strategy as well as possible for as little money as possible. (2) Take a full-length practice MCAT. (3) Take diagnostic subject tests. (4) Review content for all science sections. (4) Find practice questions and do them all. (5) Use flashcards. (6) Take several full-length tests. And that’s it, in a nutshell!
My AMCAS application was verified last Monday. FINALLY. (!!!!!!!) Those were some of the longest five weeks of waiting I’ve ever experienced, and I’m sure it will only get more extreme as this whole process goes on. If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that I have a looooong way to go in the patience department.
But anyway: the good news! Now that my primary is verified and taken care of, the next step is dealing with the sudden influx of secondary applications in my inbox! It’s such an awesome problem to have, and I realize just how fortunate I am to have made it even this far, but that doesn’t stop the prospect from being slightly overwhelming.
How I feel when I look at secondary essay prompts.
Depending on the school, the secondary application has any number of essays with varying degrees of word and character limits. I think the most extensive one I’ve submitted so far had seven essays. SEVEN. I’m skeptical that there’s anything that admissions committee DOESN’T know about my life, after that monster. There has been some overlap in essay topics, so getting to recycle some for different schools has been a major time (and sanity) saver. A couple of them haven’t even had essays at all, leading me to wonder why those schools even have secondary applications. But, I digress. Another topic for another day.
Let me tell you about some APPLICATION FEES, though. These things are pricey. At anywhere between $50 and $150 a pop, my bank account dies a little bit every time I even think about looking at one of these applications. I guess that’s the price of wanting to be a doctor.
Probably how much I’ve spent on application fees thus far.
BUT ANYWAY, my application update: I submitted my primary to 16 schools. I received 14 secondaries, got straight up rejected by one school without being offered a secondary (still not sure why that happened, since my GPA/MCAT were in the upper portion of the ranges that school typically accepts. Oh well), and am currently being screened by one school. It’s progress, y’all.
Getting to the M.D. 