Five Tips for Staying Healthy and Productive in School

staying healthy and productive

While your dream of getting accepted to medical school probably involves countless nights studying, hundreds of volunteer hours, and a very long application process, taking time for yourself may not always be at the top of your priority list. What many aspiring doctors tend to forget is that taking some time to relax can actually boost your productivity once you get back to work.

Read more

Conquering Organic Chemistry

Organic Chemistry is a hurdle every premed must undertake. For many, it can dissuade you from pursuing your dreams of becoming a physician. This guide is here to prevent that, and instead help you come to terms with the beast commonly referred to as “orgo” or “ochem.”
First and foremost, let’s debunk a couple myths surrounding the subject.

Read more

Managing Anxiety on Test Day

managing anxiety

Taking the MCAT can be a nerve-wracking experience. In fact, many students develop significant test anxiety as a result of the MCAT’s role in the medical school admissions process. If this scenario describes you, here are several tips to help you successfully manage this anxiety:

1. Review difficult details and concepts on your test day
As you study for the MCAT, proactively compile a list of those details and concepts that you consistently struggle to understand. On the morning of your exam, wake up an hour early to review this list. This can help you refresh your memory and begin the MCAT in a much calmer mood.

Read more

Managing Bipolar Disorder in Medical School

Two days before interviewing at the medical school I now attend, I couldn’t get out of bed. At the nadir of my eighth major depressive episode in eight years, I seriously considered whether I could make the trip. Thankfully, I did. And thankfully, six days after that interview I met the psychiatrist who would finally piece together my long and steadily worsening psychiatric history.

I sat in his office, quiet and dulled compared to my spring and summer self, and began recounting my story – the weightiness of my current depression, the semester in college marked by a mere two to four hours of sleep a night (“insomnia” according to my doctor then), and the clockwork nature of my mood changes each year. Within ten minutes, he stopped me mid-sentence and said, almost casually, “You know, you show a lot of signs of bipolar disorder.”

Read more

How Nontraditional Students Can Best Position Themselves When Applying to Med School

A friend of mine studied film in college and subsequently found himself working as a cameraman for a documentary television program about the lives of EMTs and ER physicians. He experienced some very tense situations, and from his work decided that he wanted to do more than document how people received medical care—his desire was to participate in the action of helping others as a doctor.
Unfortunately, his film education was the furthest possible undergrad experience he could have from pre-med. He had no applicable science credits, no anatomy or physiology, and the only shadowing he had done of physicians had been with a camera in hand. In short, his path would be an arduous one, and he was soon going to turn 31.

Read more

Paving the Road to Medical School

The path to becoming a doctor can feel daunting. For those of us that don’t come from a medical family, it can be challenging to navigate what all you need to do to be a competitive candidate. As a third year psychiatry resident looking back on my pre-med days, I realize just how lost-in-the-woods I felt at times trying to figure out how to get where I wanted to go. Here are half a dozen steps you can take to help pave the way to medical school. 

Read more

What Students Should Know About Post-Bac Programs for Career Changers

This two-part series will discuss two types of post-baccalaureate pre-medical programs. This piece will address programs for career-changers, while next month’s post will cover programs designed to enhance one’s GPA and range of science coursework. 
With the number of nontraditional medical school applicants on the rise, many future doctors graduate from college without most or all of the medical school prerequisites under their belt. They embark on a career outside of medicine, and they eventually decide that becoming a physician is the right decision for them. If you are one such prospective medical school applicant, you may be considering a post-baccalaureate pre-medical program, or “post-bac,” in order to complete your prerequisites and to streamline the admissions process. Understanding the details of such programs can be challenging, so why not begin here with these commonly asked questions—and answers—about post-bac programs for career-changers?

Read more

Top 3 Myths about MCAT Scores Busted

As with any high stakes exam, it’s not surprising that there are a number of rumors circulating around the MCAT exam. So we are busting three of the top myths about the MCAT scores and score scale.
Myth #1: The MCAT exam is graded on a curve. 
There is no curve associated with the MCAT exam. Instead, the MCAT exam is scaled and equated so that scores have the same meaning, no matter when you test. What does that mean, you ask? There are many different test forms that are produced for a testing year, any of which you could see on your exam day. The forms of the exam are designed to measure the same basic concepts and skills, but each form contains different sets of questions. While care is taken to make sure that each form is about equivalent in difficulty, one form may be slightly more or less difficult than another. We adjust for these differences in the difficulty of test questions when we convert the number of questions you answer correctly to the MCAT score scale. This ensures that scores have the same meaning across test administrations and testing years.

Read more

The Most Important Lessons I Learned While Applying to Medical School

Applying to medical school is a humbling experience, even if you have a successful application cycle. No matter how great your pre-medical advisor is or how many articles you have read about the process, you are still bound to have a few missteps that will leave you doubting yourself as a potential MD or DO candidate. It has been nearly a year since I submitted my primary AMCAS application, and as I reflect on the application cycle, several moments stand out to me as essential lessons to learn before you begin your own application process:

Read more

Chronicles of Med Student: A Summer to Remember

Chronicles of a Med Student

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to meet some of our incoming first years at a meet and greet event. They came in with wide eyes and big smiles, just waiting to sink their teeth into medical school. Their curiosity always got the best of them, and my classmates and myself were bombarded with questions like “What’s it like?” and “Do you have a life?”. I remember feeling that way one short year ago (and yes, even though our school year is a stretch of eleven months, it does feel short). One of the questions that they should have asked but didn’t is what they should do this summer.

Read more

How to Skillfully—and Successfully—Revise Your AMCAS Personal Statement

revising personal statement

Nowhere else on your medical school application will you have the chance to represent your personality and goals as strongly as you do in your AMCAS personal statement. Your personal statement is one place to which schools will turn to understand who you are separate from your MCAT score and GPA.
For those individuals aiming to submit their primary AMCAS applications in June or early July, revising your personal statement throughout May is essential to crafting an application that represents your unique attributes as a future physician, as well as what you will bring to your medical school class. Use this checklist as you revise to ensure that you are covering all that you must in order to submit a successful personal statement.

Read more

Tips for Writing a Convincing Personal Statement

convincing personal statement

The personal statement is the centerpiece of a medical school application. The space given, which varies from 5300 (AMCAS) to 5000 (TMDSAS) to 4500 (AACOMAS) characters, represents an opportunity to tell your “story” to the medical schools. The prompts in each application are similar:

Read more

Q&A with Physician-Author Dr. Matt McCarthy

Matt McCarthy

Dr. Matt McCarthy is an assistant professor of medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College and an assistant attending physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He graduated from Harvard Medical School and went on to complete his internal medicine residency at Columbia University Medical Center. Before that, Dr. McCarthy graduated from Yale University with a degree in molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and then spent a year in Minor League Baseball. He wrote about his stint in baseball in Odd Man Out: A Year on the Mound with a Minor League Misfit. The Real Doctor Will See You Shortly: A Physician’s First Year is his most recent book, and details the trials and tribulations of internship year. Dr. McCarthy has published in USA Today, Sports Illustrated, The Atlantic, Slate, Reuters, Deadspin, and Stat. I sat down with Dr. McCarthy at an Upper East Side café to pick his brain. This interview has been edited and condensed:

Read more

Exam preparation: More than just studying?

exam preparation

Do you know of a colleague who is extremely good at their job, yet cannot pass the professional exams required to ascend the career ladder? Or an exceptionally bright friend – who seems to fall apart during exam periods? Or do you yourself struggle when it comes to final assessments? I’m sure most of us are familiar with situations like this, as they are a very common occurrence. Failure to pass specialist exams in one’s field is not down to lack of intelligence or an inability to do the job. Rather, it is usually down to inadequate preparation for the examination.

Read more

How to Succeed in Physiology: The Course, Step 1, and Beyond

how to succeed in physiology

Physiology is different! If you’re in the midst of learning physiology, either in a traditional or systems course, you’ve noticed that it feels different from biochemistry and anatomy. There are several reasons. First, the stakes are high, as physiology is inextricably the basis for medicine; learning physiology has long-lasting, downstream consequences for understanding pathophysiology and clinical medicine. And physiology is the underpinning for Step 1, so learning it well in your courses is essential. Second, physiology cannot be memorized (and you’re good memorizers!). Physiology must be understood, and understanding can’t be rushed. You’re learning concepts and principles, rather than isolated facts, and you’re challenged by the hierarchy of concepts, interconnections, and recurring themes. Last and oh so important, you must make peace with graphs, equations, and calculations, since they are the language of physiology. Rather than concede up front that “I don’t do graphs,” it’s best to find a system for translating the mathematical side of physiology into something intuitive that speaks to you!

Read more

5 Steps to a Better CARS Score

Better CARS score

The Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) is one of the most well-known entrance exams in all of higher education. It is known for many things: difficulty, length, bizarre scoring systems, and the breadth of subjects covered – everything from basic human psychology to nucleophilic substitution reactions to electrical circuits to the life cycle of plants are fair game on this test. The test is designed to look for several basic abilities and aptitudes of medical school applicants; among these are problem-solving skills, basic grasp of scientific knowledge, and understanding of human relationships. One aptitude that the MCAT particularly focuses on is the ability to quickly synthesize large amounts of information and data and make decisions based on the conclusions; this skill is extremely valuable for physicians in medical practice, but also important for students to succeed in medical school. This skill is tested on each section of the MCAT, but is also almost the sole skill tested on one section in particular: Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills (CARS), formerly known as Verbal Reasoning.

Read more

Tips to Get the Most from the Medical School Admissions Requirements® (MSAR®)

Medical School Admissions Requirements

Chances are after deciding to become a doctor, you’ve likely heard a lot of opinions about where you should apply to medical school. There is a lot of information out there, which can create the perception that you should look for the “best” school only based on average GPAs and MCAT scores of its applicants. But we know that your success is not measured by scores and academic data alone.
Just as you want a medical school to evaluate you as a whole applicant—considering your experiences, attributes, and interests—you shouldn’t evaluate medical schools based just on the numbers and statistics that represent them. The most important thing to consider is whether the medical school is a good fit for you. But how do you figure that out with so many schools and programs?

Read more