Tips for Medical School Application This Cycle

Dr. Dale,

I am thinking of applying to medical school this summer. Do you have any advice for me?

RT, Indiana

Dear RT,

Before starting the application process to any professional school, make sure you are ready to apply. You are ready to apply when your application for graduate school is strong enough to meet your goals.  If you are ready that is super. If not, focus on fixing deficiencies first before applying. For example, are you happy with your MCAT  (DAT, GRE…) score?  Are they competitive enough for your situation?  If not remedying this before you apply makes sense.  How many volunteer hours do you have? Most graduate programs publish average numbers of volunteer hours of accepted students.  Community service, especially in a health care setting, shows the graduate school that you have made an informed choice by pursuing a career as a physician or other professional. How do you stack up? Talking to your advisor to make sure you are ready before applying is a good idea. 

So if after reviewing all of your numbers and activities you and your advisor agree that you are ready to apply to medical school, what comes next?  Most schools use rolling admissions which means the school starts accepting applicants or granting interviews once applications are complete. If you apply later in the cycle there will be fewer spots available which significantly lowers your chances of acceptance.  Most health professions schools use rolling admissions so you should plan to apply when applications open. Applying to graduate school is a time consuming process so make sure you allow enough time to finish and submit applications at the earliest opportunity.

Most medical schools subscribe to the centralized application service AMCAS.  Other professional programs like physical therapy (PTCAS) and occupational therapy (OTCAS) have similar centralized application services.  In theory, a centralized application service makes applying easier, since you can apply to multiple schools with one application. What they don’t tell you is that most of the schools that use the centralized application service will require a secondary school specific application; this usually means another essay as well as another fee.  Not all schools subscribe to the centralized application service and if you decide to apply to any of these schools, you have to send everything separately to these schools.  Applying to graduate school is basically a full time job so make sure you plan enough time to accomplish what needs to be done, including secondary application essays, as soon possible in the application cycle. Each year there are 53000 applications for 21300 places in allopathic medical schools.  If you are a well-prepared candidate who applies in a timely manner your chance of acceptance is far greater than the 40% implied by the data, so make sure to apply in a timely manner.

Numbers are very important because they get you in the game, but other things like personal statement and interview will get you accepted.  What do you need to do now?  Start planning for your personal statement and interview. Hopefully, personal statement preparation began as a freshman or sooner.  Your personal statement is your story.  You should reflect about your journey towards a medical career. Why do you want to be a physician (or other health professional)? Make sure your personal statement represents you well, since it will affect whether you progress to the interview stage.  In many cases your interviewers will read your personal statement prior to interviewing you, so you should review it before the interview process. It is often a good strategy to focus your essay around an activity that is very important to you.  If you are applying to an MD/PhD program, tell them about your research and what you learned by doing research.  Don’t tell them you are compassionate.  Convey a story that will allow the reader to conclude this independently.

  An excellent personal statement will take a while to compose.  It should be read and reread both by you as well as other professionals like your advisor.  You need to start working on the essay early in the application process so your story will be ready to meet the rolling admissions deadlines.  Don’t tell me you want to be a physician.  The committee knows that, tell them how you came to that decision and what qualities make you a good candidate.  Don’t tell me you want to help people.  Everyone says that and it is important to stand out from the crowd.  It is your story and the reader should know why you want to enter the profession by reading it. Don’t include too many topics but focus more narrowly on what you want to convey to the admissions committee.  Some possible qualities to convey include your empathy, leadership or your prior experience in health care.  Keep in mind that you need to convince the admissions committee that you are making an informed decision to enter this profession.  You also need to persuade them, by selecting the right experiences, that you have the human qualities that will make you a good physician.

Sometimes people consider using the personal statement to explain problems with their application.  If there is something very unusual in your educational experience, like taking a year off to work in the middle of your education, a short discussion on the topic is reasonable.  If you had a bad semester due to severe hardship of some kind it is acceptable to discuss this, but try to make any explanation as positive as possible. Try not to merely make excuses but tell the admissions committee what you learned from the experience and why you are a better candidate because of it.

Now that you are planning your personal statement, you should think about a different but related topic, how to prepare for an interview.  The interview helps the committee see if the person they see matches up with the paper application they have reviewed.  Preparation for the interview is important particularly for the newer MMI (Multiple Mini Interview) format.  I think interviewing skills can be learned like any other skill but to improve requires practice.  You will never know what scenario will come up in your MMI but if you have practiced the format with other questions, you will perform better.  The medical school interview and how to prepare for it is a big topic for another day, but it is not too soon to think about how you plan to prepare for the interview.  Thanks RT for the question and good luck to you. #medical school #AMCAS #PTCAS #OTCAS #AMCAS personal statement #personal statement # medical school interview #rolling admissions

Sincerely,

Dr. Dale