The Med School Pulse

by Patrick Boyle, Kaplan Elite MCAT Instructor

How many of you have been in a lecture hall of over three hundred people? How about in an auditorium with over a thousand people? Now imagine walking into a stadium with 42,880 other people. I would imagine it would be very easy to feel anonymous in a crowd that large. Well, last year 42,880 of your peers applied to medical school. Last week, the new AMCAS application opened and the first applications will be submitted at the beginning of June. Now keeping in mind you are in a “stadium” with roughly 40,000 …

By Patrick Boyle, Kaplan Elite MCAT Teacher

The AMCAS application opens in early May and thus begins another excruciating application process for hopeful premeds across the country. Number after number defines them – AMCAS ID, GPA, MCAT – and the application seemingly becomes a very cold process. Students are characterized by years of undergraduate work in their GPA and the one day exam of the MCAT. But are you really the person that your numbers paint you to be? Do you think you can effectively show your personality through statistics alone?

Absolutely not! While many students look at the personal …

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 …