APPLYING TO MEDICAL SCHOOL

SHIVAN PATEL

My Background

-Went to Long Beach City College for two years.

-Transferred to UC Berkeley

-Spent three years at Berkeley

-Worked at California State University, Long Beach as a research associate until December 2014.

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Before AMCAS

• MCAT
• Curriculum Vitae (CV)
• Letters of Recommendation

Before AMCAS:�MCAT

• Should be taken no later than April of the application year.
• Plan to start an MCAT course in the Spring of your application year.
• Studying is very time-intensive, so plan your school/ work schedule accordingly.
• Plan to only take the MCAT once!

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Before AMCAS: CV

• Prepare your curriculum vitae or CV
• Keep your CV up-to-date or at least have it updated by January of your application year.
• This includes your education, work experience, volunteer activities, research, publications, presentations, awards, etc.
• This will also be necessary for getting your letters of recommendation.

Before AMCAS: �Letters of Rec.

• Letters of Recommendation
• Start asking (if you haven't already) no later than February of your application year.
• Invest the time and effort to build a strong relationship with your professors, TAs or GSIs, and bosses over the course of college.
• Schools generally require two science faculty letters and a non-science letter (the latter can usually be from your PI, volunteer organization, physician, or non-science professor.
• Prepare to get at least 4-6 letters.

Before AMCAS

• Letter of recommendation
• There are services to save confidential letters of recommendation so you can easily retrieve one or more copies of a letter when you need to send them to an application service.
• Check the letter service at your university career center.
• Interfolio©,https://www.interfolio.com/

Types of Applications for MD

• Canadian Schools
• OMSAS Medical

Programs in the US.

• AMCAS
• TMDSAS (Texas schools)

Types of Applications, DO

• Do- Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine
• AACOM, More info. At www.aacom.org

Where to Apply?

• Figure out the medical programs you’re interested in…
• EDP
• Regular MD
• MD/PhD
• Dual Degree (MD/MPH, MD/MBA, MD/JD, etc.)

Where to Apply?

• How many schools?
• 10-20 for strong applicants
• 20-30 for average applicants
• >30 for applicants with low MCAT OR low grades

Where to apply

• Resources
• MSAR
• Gives you important metrics and information summarized for each medical school, this is a must have resource.
• Princeton Review 168 Best Medical

Where to apply

• UCI listing on MSAR

Where to Apply

• Check in-state/ out of state favorability ratio.

Where to apply

• MCAT and GPA percentiles

Where to apply

• GPA and MCAT breakdown summary

• Excel File of Medical school data

AMCAS

• Biographical data (schools attended, biographical, coursework/total GPA & science GPA)
• Work/activities
• Personal statement

AMCAS: Activities

• Activities

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• 15 slots for activities.
• 3 will be selected as “most meaningful activities”.
• Your up-to-date CV will be useful for this section.

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AMCAS: Activities

• Write in paragraph form.
• Do not say what you did, SHOW what you did with examples of experiences.

AMCAS: Activities

• Experience descriptions for all activities have a 700 character limit per activity (about 4 tweets).
• Your three most meaningful activities have a 1325 character limit.

AMCAS: Activities

- Medical schools favor activities that show dedication, consistency, and leadership.

• Each activity you list must have a purpose on your application towards showing your preparation for a life in medicine.
• You do not need to fill all 15 activity spots.

AMCAS Section VIII: �Personal Statement

• Give yourself at least a month to draft and re-draft the statement as you will go through about ten drafts.
• 5300 Character limit.
• MD/PhD track requires an additional 3,000 characters for you want to pursue these degrees and a 10,000 character paper on your research experience.
• Should be able to answer the following:
• Why do you want to go into the medical field?
• What motivates you to become a doctor?
• What do you want the admissions committee to know about you as an applicant?

AMCAS Section VIII: �Personal Statement

• Find admissions consultants, admissions counselors, the career center, friends, physicians, English professor, and/or medical students to give you feedback.
• For those of you with the means, please consider a professional essay editing/admissions consultant service to at least review your final draft.
• Some tips include listing your reasons for why you want to be a physician and listing your experiences that pertain to each reason.

AMCAS Section VIII: �Personal Statement

• Tips:
• Do not procrastinate on the statement.
• Take at least a month to work and re-work the statement.
• Do not be too informal.
• Proof-read to eliminate grammatical mistakes!
• Have an English major, a professional writer, or English professor proofread your essay at least once before submitting.

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AMCAS Last steps

• Designate schools to submit your AMCAS application to.
• Prepare to complete a secondary, interview, and make an acceptance to the schools you apply to.
• Do not apply to a school that you may not consider attending.
• First school designation is about $150 and $36 per school after that.

Secondaries

• What to expect
• Prepare to receive and complete secondaries from July-October
• Some are automatically sent from schools (most private schools) and others screen MCAT/GPA for their secondary.
• Schools are increasingly screening as competition is increasing.
• Schools will generally have 3-5 essays.
• “Soft” deadline is two weeks to turn around on secondary, but consider it the hard deadline.

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Secondaries

• How to prepare
• Secondaries are very time consuming! Plan your summer/Fall/winter semester/quarter schedule during your application years accordingly.
• You can save much of the stress by pre-writing secondaries in the Spring before the application opens (June).
• You can use Student Doctor Network to find out secondary prompts.

LIFE HAPPENS!

Resources/References

• AAMC©, www.aamc.org
• The Medical School Admissions Guide; A Harbard MD’s Week-by-Week Admissions Handbook by Dr. Suzanne M. Miller

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