The Top 8 Insider Secrets

The Top 8 Insider Secrets You Need To Know to Get Into Medical School

3 of These are GAME CHANGERS

 

1.    Schools are looking for 8 major things to accept a student

Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly what medical schools want from their applicants? Fortunately, now you will!
The main categories schools look at are the following:

  • Academic performance. No surprises here. This is measured by MCAT and GPA. MCAT has a little more weight than GPA.
  • Community service (includes clinical and non-clinical work). This is where you show that you care about other people. Ideally you’ll show that you care more about other people than yourself. It’s also where you’ll show that you really love medicine.
  • Any research is better than none, but research that produces something is best. This might be a poster or publication. At the biggest level, it might produce a new treatment or discover a new way to diagnose or track disease.
  • A doctor is a leader. A leader of a team of professionals. A leader for his or her patients. You’ll want to show that you have strong leadership skills.
  • Humanism/Compassion. At its core, medicine is about helping people. Compassion and humanism are at the heart of that. You’ll show this mainly through your community service work and your letters of recommendation.
  • Hobbies/Skills. Yes, these do matter! The admissions committee wants to know that you are a real person with real interests. These can often be ice breakers during interviews as well.
  • Letters of Recommendation. This is where some of the qualities like leadership, compassion, integrity, service and research can really shine. There’s also a way to encourage your letter writers to make these shine, which I’ll be sharing with you at a later time!

Now that you know what schools are looking for, how exactly do you show those things?

It’s by getting involved in activities that demonstrate these qualities, doing them for an extended period of time, and being a leader in them.

Then, as you’re writing about them in your AMCAS and personal statement, highlighting these qualities by specific stories.

There’s more detail to it than that, but that’s the basic outline. You’ll get more details in emails to come!

 

2.    You CAN get accepted with a lower than average MCAT and GPA.

When you look at schools, you’ll find their average MCAT and GPA for accepted applicants.

Remember, though, that averages are just that…averages.

That means that there are people getting accepted and levels above and below those numbers.

It also means that people are getting rejected above and below those numbers.

(Don’t worry. I’ll teach you how to make your application stand out so that you can get accepted whether your stats are above or below the schools you’re looking at.)

The rule of 4’s

Here’s the good news. The MCAT and GPA don’t mean everything. But, you do need to be “in the ballpark” of the schools you are applying to. In my research and experience, I’ve found a “Rule of 4’s” that stands true for most medical schools.

If your MCAT is more than 4 points below (5-6 below in the 2015+ MCAT) the school’s average and/or your GPA is more than 0.4 below the school’s average, your chances of being accepted are slim. You can still chance it, but you’ll be around the 10th percentile of accepted students if you get in.

If you are in the ballpark, I’ll help you learn how to make your application stand out so that you can get accepted with a below average MCAT and GPA.

Remember also, even if you’re above the average, academic performance is only 1 of the 8 main things schools look for in an applicant. You’ll need to be good in the other 7 too!

You will know if your MCAT and GPA are too low at some schools when you do not receive a secondary application. The computer screens out applicants who are too low in MCAT and GPA.

The way around the computer

There is a way to bypass the computer and get your application viewed by a real person from the admissions committee. If you mark yourself as a disadvantaged applicant, your application will be screened by a member of the admissions committee.

Now, before you go calling yourself disadvantaged just to get your application reviewed, I’ll give you an idea of who really qualifies for this. We’ll call this person Jane.

Jane grew up in a neighborhood where people were injecting drugs in front of her house. She was raised by a single mother who worked two jobs to keep food on the table. Jane also worked through high school to help pay for rent. Jane had a sick grandmother who Jane helped care for through high school. In college, Jane worked to support herself and frequently went back home to help care for her grandmother and three younger siblings. While in college, Jane’s grandmother died, causing Jane’s mother to have depression. Jane decided to withdraw from classes for one semester to help her family, which explains her leave of absence from school.

What should you take from this story? If your upbringing truly was difficult for financial, social or political reasons (like you were a refugee), go ahead and mark yourself as disadvantaged. If you went to private high school, your parents paid for your college at Stanford, but you had a semester when your turtle was sick and got 2 B’s, don’t mark yourself as disadvantaged. And really don’t mark yourself as disadvantaged just because your GPA or MCAT is low and you think this will be your way around it. The admissions committee will see through this and you will be quickly dropped from consideration.

Here’s the official wording from AMCAS:

Disadvantaged status is self-determined and each medical school has their own policies for how they use this information. This information is voluntary and will not affect the processing of your application. To help determine if you are disadvantaged, click the “How do I know if I should be considered disadvantaged?” link, which displays the following information:

Immediate Family: The Federal Government broadly defines “immediate family” as “spouse, parent, child, sibling, mother or father-in-law, son or daughter-in-law, or sister or brother-in-law, including step and adoptive relationships.”

Underserved: Do you believe, based on your own experiences or the experiences of immediate family and friends that the area in which you grew up was inadequately served by the available health care professionals? Were there enough physicians, nurses, hospitals, clinics, and other health care service providers?

State and Federal Assistance Programs: These programs are specifically defined as “Means-Tested Programs” under which the individual, family, or household income and assets must be below specified thresholds. The sponsoring agencies then provide cash and non-cash assistance to eligible individuals, families, or households. Such programs include welfare benefit programs (federal, state, and local); Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC or ADC); unemployment compensation; General Assistance (GA); food stamps; Supplemental Security Income (SSI); Medicaid; housing assistance; or other federal, state, or local financial assistance programs.

Remember, disadvantaged status still won’t get you into top tier schools if your MCAT is a 20 (495 on 2015+ MCAT) and your GPA is a 2.1. Most schools will want at least a 24 (500) and a 3.0 to show that you can handle the rigors of medical education.

 

3.    You are competing by race

Strangely enough, acceptance to medical school varies significantly based on what race you are.

For example, if you self-identify as white, have a GPA of 3.5 and an MCAT score of 30 (508), your chances of being accepted are 48%.

Here are your chances if you self-identify as a different race with the same MCAT and GPA:

Hispanic, Latino or of Spanish Origin                        75.9%

Black or African American                                             86.9%

Asian                                                                                     40.3%

This was almost unbelievable to me the first time I saw it, but it’s true. You can look up the stats yourself here.

What does this mean?

If you are of mixed race, marking yourself as once race may be more beneficial than the other.

For me, I have Japanese and Caucasian ancestry. I clicked on both in my application, but had I known then what I know now, I would have been better off just clicking Caucasian.

For many reasons it’s not good to lie about your race or ethnicity.

But, if you do have Hispanic, Spanish, Latino, Black, African American, American Indian or Alaska Native heritage, checking those boxes can mean a significantly higher chance of being accepted.

 

4.    The interview matters more than you think

Many medical school applicants will spend time and money on their application or personal statement. But, any preparation for the medical school interview is more of an afterthought.

This is a mistake!

Especially for schools with traditional-style interviews, the interview is probably the most important part of your application. Let me repeat that. At these schools, the interview is probably the most important part of your application.

Often, the person or people who interview you will then go back to the admissions committee meeting and present you to the committee. Depending on your impression on the interviewer(s), this will make or break your acceptance to the school. Your interviewer will likely present you and your application, and then suggest an overall rank.

When we’re in the admissions committee meeting, we almost always follow the recommendation of the person presenting the applicant. Why? Because that person has studied the application the most and/or interacted with the applicant face to face. Your interviewer has the largest impact on how you will be ranked compared to other applicants in this system.

So, then, how do you prepare?

Here are a few tips (I cover them a lot more in my eBook, 10 Steps to Accepted):

  • Have an agenda. You want it to be clear in your mind why the school should choose you. It may be stellar research or a commitment to community service. Whatever it is, it should be backed up by your application. You want about a sentence that sets you apart from other applicants and you want to really impress that on the interviewer throughout.
  • Research medical school questions. You can find lists of these in many places, but the more you practice the better! Here are 100 questions from the University of Colorado. Make sure you practice in each of the big categories: getting to know you, testing your commitment to medicine, current events in medicine, controversial/ethical questions, role playing, “do you have any questions?” and “on the spot” questions. The Student Doctor Network forum is a good source for “on the spot” questions.
  • Practice, practice, practice. It can definitely pay off to invest in interview prep with someone who has been on an admissions committee, like the people at But, any practice is better than no practice. If you can get practice with people who do interviews often, even if they’re not for medical school, they will give you more valuable feedback.

 

5.    Have a reason for everything you put into your application

One of the big mistakes I see is people putting activities into their medical school application without a clear reason why.

For example, often people will put in work experience and just describe what they did. They’ll say “I washed dishes at a restaurant.”

That’s fine to put in, but why would a school want to accept you because of that experience? That’s the question you need to answer with each activity.

Schools are looking for certain character traits when they accept or reject students. These include things like:

  • A love for medicine/helping people through medicine
  • Talent at research (including publications)
  • Leadership ability
  • Compassion

So, when you’re adding an activity, ask yourself “why would the medical school choose me because of this activity?” Then, write your experience description accordingly.

For the dishes activity, maybe you helped someone learn English while you were back washing dishes (compassion) or went from being dishwasher to head dishwasher (leadership). But, no medical school will want you just because you can wash dishes.

 

6.    Be specific

Medical school applicants like to be general about things. They like to say “I like to help people” or “I like research” or “I have leadership experience.”

These are all good things. But, you need to have specific stories to back these things up.

This is true for your medical school application, your personal statement, and your interviews.

Let’s say that you want to show that you are a leader. You could write on your application “I was Vice President of the Chess Club.” In theory that shows leadership. But in reality, it may or may not. You could have been VP of the club, but there were only 2 people and the President was the other person.

Instead, you’ll want to put things like “Increased the group membership from 5 to 20 people.” You’ve probably heard this before. But, you don’t want to stop there. You’ll want to explain how you increased that group attendance.

So, you’ll write something like “When I started, there were only 3 people in the group. I thought that we could increase the number by making chess seem cooler. So we hired models to walk around campus inviting people to sign up for chess club.” Or whatever it was that you did.

This description is much better because it shows that you took action, that you were creative, and that you learned something important (that image matters when you are trying to increase membership).

 

7.    Don’t sweat your major

I get a lot of questions about which major people should choose.

The short (and true) answer is: it doesn’t matter.

As long as you meet all the premed requirements, it just doesn’t matter.

When we discussed applicants on the admissions committee, their major came up rarely and when it did, it was only in passing.

I can tell you that it literally never made a difference in choosing who to accept and who to reject.

So, choose something you like and make sure you meet the premed requirements.

 

8.    Applying early really does matter (and what to do if you don’t have you MCAT score by the opening date)

I often get asked about the timing of the application. It is imperative that you get your application in early. In fact, this is one of the big things we see in re-applicants. They may have had a great application, but sent it in too late.

How early is early? Probably within a week of the application opening. So, if it opens June 1st, you want it in by June 8th.

Keep in mind that it will take between 2 and 6 weeks for AMCAS to “verify” the application. The absolute earliest that schools will be getting your application is about the third week of June. A big batch of applications goes out at this time. To be in that first batch, you want to have your application in during that first week (about) after the application opens.

Remember, medical schools are on a time schedule to fill their class. They will interview around 5-6 applicants for every spot in the class. After interviews, the application goes to committee. After committee, acceptance letters are sent. Acceptance letters start getting sent out around March of the year you will start medical school. Schools send out about as many acceptance letters as they have spots available. Students then have until May 15th to choose one school to be admitted to.

So what does that have to do with applying early? Let’s say you get your application in right on the first day, at the beginning of June. You get your secondary application in right after you get it, say June 30th. You’re invited to interview in October. Your application is reviewed by the committee in January. You are accepted and get your letter(s) on March 15th. Now you’re resting easy, choosing where you want to go.

Now let’s say you waited. You send your application in on September 10th. You get your secondary and send it back in December. You’re invited to interview in March. You are discussed in committee in April. You are good enough to be accepted. Unfortunately, letters have already been sent to enough applicants to fill the spots. Now you are waiting until May 15th, hoping that one of the early applicants doesn’t go to the school you want so you can get off of the wait list and accepted.

Hopefully you understand now why you should get your application in ASAP!

What if I don’t have my MCAT score yet?

It can happen that you do not have your MCAT score or possibly that you haven’t taken your MCAT that first week of June. In this case, you should still submit your application. You can choose one school and add other schools later to your application based on your MCAT score.  Remember, it’s going to take 2-6 weeks for your application to be “verified,” meaning that it hasn’t gone to schools yet.

The latest you would want to take the MCAT would be July, but remember that you will be behind the earlier applicants.

Also, you can submit your application without your MCAT score, though it will not be considered complete. However, once your score is in your application will finish automatically.

 

These will give you a good start to getting into medical school!

Watch for more emails and check out my ebook 10 Steps to Accepted to learn even more about how to get into medical school!