***2019-20 Medical School Applicants and Their Parents***

The verification process is taking time. Next step is to prepare for the Casper test.

My daughter is re-taking the MCAT today, got a couple secondaries yesterday, so I guess the cycle 2 ball has started rolling!

@moonpie goodluck to your daughter!

@moonpie Best of luck to your D this cycle!!

seeking advice: apologies if not the right forum to post but the people at this stage seem the best to provide counsel. My son is starting freshman year this fall and beyond the table stakes of “great gpa, great mcat, research, shadowing, get to know your school’s committee,” what advice would you give to someone laser focused on top 20 med school? Put another way, what do you wish you knew 4 years ago?

First, never focus on top 20 med schools. Focus on getting into ANY med school.

^^^
Perfect advice!

@dpBU23 The kid can focus on one thing - Ensuring a good balance of classes each semester to ensure a high GPA. Outside of that, volunteer, do research (shadowing is not a true activity), prepare for MCAT by working on MCAT type questions while studying a subject for class (not part of teaching or testing normally). Your kid gets to select schools only after having all the credentials and focusing on specific medical schools today puts undue burden on the kid. No one from a top 20 school can charge more as a doctor and there are plenty of researchers and faculty members at top 20 schools who were foreign medical school graduates to say that you cant go into Academia without attending one of them.
One other thing to know about many of the top schools - they allocate a majority of seats to graduates of other top schools. Michigan is one school where this is quite transparent.

@dpBU23 Probably not too helpful but on another well visited forum used by premeds, I’ve seen following description about med school tiers:
Top tier: those that accepted me.
Middle tier: those that interviewed me
Bottom tier: those that rejected me

@dpBU23

Also according to numerous med school adcomm members posting on that *other *site, there are at least 15 schools in the Top 10 and 35 schools in the Top 20.

The point is that USNews rankings are arbitrary and, according to adcomms there, “only of concern to Medical School Deans and neurotic pre-meds”.

great advice. so forget the “top 20” - sufficiently admonished - and it’s a great pro-tip to make MCAT-like questions part of regular studying. anything else that would help beyond the items already stipulated?

@dpBU23
Have your child keep a log book of volunteer hours so they won’t have to rack their brains when they go fill out their AMCAS application. Start dates, number of hours, location, names & contact information for their supervisors.

Also, tell them to attend office hours–not necessarily to get course help, but to establish a personal connection with their professors. (They’ll need LORs from at least 3 professors–2 science and 1 non-science-- to apply. )

Self reflect on why you want to be a doctor. Speak to doctors about the day to day. If you end up being “just a PCP” making 200k per year will you regret having gone through the grueling process? Seriously consider a plan B and a major you like that can be marketable outside of MD. 75% of undergrads that start out premed never apply to med school. 40% of those who do apply don’t get into any med schools.

Actually 60% of those who apply to med school don’t get a single acceptance anywhere.

I see the 60% rejection number and wonder how many went into DO or abroad.

@dpBU23 I applied last cycle and something I found very helpful throughout undergrad was keeping a file on my computer where I would occasionally type up some thoughts/reflections after a memorable/interesting volunteer experience (eg. writing down specific experiences). Sort of like a journal, I suppose. It’s incredible how much you forget your own thoughts, feelings, and memories after some time has passed, especially when you have so much going on. I felt having a written record made application writing SO much easier because I didn’t need to waste time wracking my brain for something specific to talk about or trying to remember what I learned/felt at the time. Additionally, being able to bring up specific examples about your experiences will make your writing and interview responses more impactful and personal.

@icuinNm and @texaspg Thanks!!! She’s “leaving no stone unturned” this time! So far has a 4.0 in her masters program from a medical school she would love to go to. She has 7 secondaries back so far, so that is helping her focus on something (besides gross anatomy, which is her last masters class) waiting on scores!. And @dpBU23 , my middle was one of the 60% who got no admittance 2 years ago. Waitlisted at 2 schools, but no admittance. She did go to a top 20 undergrad, and her science grades suffered greatly the first 2 years. Made several C’s (which were average at her school), and studied 100’s of hours to get those! While she grew, learned and worked her way out of a hole, she still had a low science GPA (3.0). Her MCAT and overall GPA were fine, but not stellar. But ultimately she feels the GPA is what held her back, since many of her peers had lower MCATs and got in. She is not giving up on her dream, and decided a SMP would be the best way to prove her abilities and boost her science GPA. So far that is working. She re-took the MCAT last Saturday, hoping for a few more points. Her big sister is in her last year of medical school, and my middle has NO BLINDERS as to how hard it will be, and the sacrifices she will make. But I will say, she did say her advice to others is “go to your state flagship, get great grades, don’t try for the highly academic route and med school admission, it’s just too risky”. Her core group of friends were 7 girls. All but 1 pre-med. She is the only one who has/is applying to med school. She does NOT want to go to a top 20 Med school, and would be HAPPY, THRILLED and ELATED to go to her state flagship, where she was waitlisted 2 years ago!

folks - really good advice!

@silmaril - my son did this throughout high school and it made putting together the undergrad resume a breeze… i’ll encourage him to keep it up.

@suzyQ7 - i think the major is so important. How many people either opt out or wash out of their pre-med programs and have nothing to do with their major (unless they want to teach - which is certainly honorable but not what most of them plan). I appreciate you all being so responsive to my posting here. good luck to you all and happy 4th to those in the States!

@dpBU23 - the pre-health office of your S college typically will hold an information session for all the wanna-be pre-meds in the Fall, make sure he’ll attend. They will list out the pre-med science classes for his school, ask upper class students which one(s) are known to be the harsh weed-out ones and plan accordingly. NO more than 2 pre-med science classes at the same time because they consume lots of time(they got labs too) and supplement with 2-3 easy classes . No hard science or engineering major because they are typically GPA-killer. DO NOT start MCAT prep until your son is done Biochem (that’s after Gen Chem1/2, Orgo1/2). By the time he finished Biochem, he should know where his sGPA stands - if it is 3.7+ he’s in good shape. Don’t spend too much time on EC’s during school because they consume time, and EC’s can easily be fixed in summers/gap years (but GPA is NOT). Research is optional unless he’s aiming top med schools but he’ll need steller stats (3.8+ GPA and close to 99% MCAT) to start with. If you’re CA residents, the bar is even higher. If you’re TX residents, the bar is actually lower for in-state med schools.

How’s everyone’s kids coping with their secondaries? Mine’s pretty stressed finishing up her master’s and has NO TIME to do it. 6 week condensed gross anatomy course is killing her! 10 more days… then she will finally get a break!