The Med School Pulse

Welcome back! In part 1 of our discussion on important factors to consider when choosing where you should apply to medical school, we reviewed some of the most commonly considered ones; location, career aspirations, and cost.  Today, we’re going to review two additional factors, curriculum and fit.  Curriculum and fit are two aspects of a medical school that most students do begin to consider or perhaps even fully understand before starting the interview process, but they can be just as important as the previous three we discussed.

Curriculum:

Medical school basic science curricula, across the board, are a lot more …

If you’re like most pre-medical students, you’ve felt lost at some point on your path towards becoming a physician. Whether it’s been when choosing your courses for the next two years, putting together a plan for the MCAT, or figuring out how to get letters of recommendation, the path to medical school is filled with twists and turns that can easily be frustrating if you don’t understand how the system works. In their frustration, many students turn to peers, to friends who have already been accepted, and to online forums like the Student Doctor Network to get their …

by Sam Asgarian, Kaplan Elite MCAT Instructor

When it comes to the medical school application process, there are generally two types of techniques: the “machine gunner,” and the “sniper”. The former is an applicant who just starts applying to as many schools as possible, hoping to get at least one “hit”; the latter is a student who selects the right schools based on fit and targets them specifically. Although both techniques have their own merits, the sniper is usually more successful – and most often happier – than the machine gunner, because they find the programs that mesh with their …

By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

You thrive on deadlines. Fueled by coffee, with just hours remaining until your 20 page paper on “Medieval Jousts as a Foreshadowing Device in Early 17th Century French Literature” is due, you are intensely focused, pounding away full speed at the keyboard. While you can pull this off with a paper in school, this last minute approach is definitely not recommended for med school applications. The reason: rolling admissions.

With rolling admissions, the schools do not wait until all of the applications are in to review them; they review them as they come in. Following committee …

By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

After months of chasing down transcripts, filling out applications and checking to make sure that your letters of recommendation were finally sent, you are ready to hear something – anything, back from the schools. News could arrive as early as the coming weeks since some schools begin notifying applicants about invitations to interview in early to mid-August.  If you submitted your primary and secondary applications early in the cycle, you could be hearing some news within the next month. If you don’t, don’t panic; it is still just the start of the season and schools can …

By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

With June underway, most applicants are deep into working on the primary application. While some applicants have submitted their applications already, many are still busy perfecting their personal statements, entering each course meticulously from their transcripts and finalizing their list of schools, all with the aim of submitting as early in the cycle as possible. You may not have even thought beyond that wonderful day when the application is safely in the hands of AMCAS. However, although a break is certainly in order after weeks or months of work on the primary application, don’t …

By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

The interview day tour is exciting. Walking the halls of the medical school, you really start envisioning yourself as a med student, short white coat swishing behind you (okay, so the short coats don’t “swish” the way the long ones the doctors wear do, but it’s a start.) The med student tour guide points out the anatomy lab, the library, and of course, the hospital cafeteria, encouraging the group to ask questions all the while. You figure you should ask a question and are about to go for it – when another applicant pipes up and …

By Carleen Eaton, M.D.

“We spent forty-five minutes talking about fly-fishing!” Sound like a med school interview?  When I hear from applicants that the interview digressed into a discussion of basketball, ballet or bird-watching, the next thing they usually say is: “I didn’t get to tell the interviewer about ___” (fill in the blank: my idea for a cure for AIDS,  my poster presentation on gastroenteritis in chinchillas…you get the idea).  Knowing your stuff is absolutely necessary, but don’t be surprised if the topics don’t stick to “typical” interview fare. If the interview is going in a different direction, …