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The Pre-Med Dilemma: Part ThreeJun 07 '00 Write an essay on this topic.The second half of your Junior year is the beginning of the end in terms of medical school admissions. This is where the feathers hit the fan and everything that you've learned over the past few years will be put to the ultimate test. The prize? Admission to medical school. By January of your Junior year, you should be really starting to think long and hard about the future after college. You need to make sure that you really want to go through with the medical school admission, and that your motivations for doing so are still pure. If you are confident in your abilities and are still academically competitive (3.5 GPA or higher) at this point, then you will need to begin the final leg of your journey: the MCAT and med school application procedure. VII. Why Medicine? (Part 2) Now is the time to once again dig out the mission statement you wrote way back before you began college. Think back to why you wanted to become a doctor (remembering that "to help people" is still not a valid answer). Specifically, why do YOU want to become a doctor? Do you work well with other people? Did you enjoy the subject material? Are you still willing to invest in another four years of education before you can draw a real paycheck? By the end of your Junior year, you will need to do a lot of soul searching to determine whether the medical profession is truly right for you. Try hard to gain a deeper understanding of yourself, the medical profession, and what your place in the whole thing is. Now is also the time to ask yourself whether you would be better suited as a physician, working with patients and helping them overcome their illnesses; or as a medical researcher, pushing the boudaries of knowledge to allow physicians to be more effective healers. If your decision is to go into medical research, then I highly encourage you to get a Ph.D. degree, either in addition to or in place of the M.D. degree. Medical school trains its students specifically to work with patients as a physician; you will receive very little research experience while in medical school, which may lead to a rather uneasy transition from medical school to the research industry. Conversely, in order to get a Ph.D. degree, you will be encouraged to carry out your own research, publish papers, and present your findings to the scientific community. A career in research will require you to do all these things. Consequently, a Ph.D. is considerably more qualified than someone with just an M.D. degree to work in the research industry. However, if you want to work with patients as a physician, then there is no substitute for the M.D. degree. VIII. The Nightmare Begins: The MCAT Examination If you decide that you would like to follow the physician's path in life, then your next step should be to register to take the Medical College Admissions Test, also known as the MCAT. The MCAT is an all-day (8 to 5, with a one hour lunch break) examination which will cover material from all pre-med course work. It is divided up into four sections (verbal reasoning/reading comprehension, physical sciences, life sciences, and a pair of written essays), each of which will test a specific portion of your knowledge. The first three sections are graded on a scale from 1 to 15, 15 being the highest grade. The writing sample is graded from 'S' (highest) to 'N' (lowest). As mentioned previously, students from various majors will "naturally" do better on certain parts of the test; to be successful, a student must excel at ALL sections of the test. What separates this test from others you might take, such as the SAT or GRE is that the MCAT is designed so that people actually can get perfect scores. And in order to gain a satisfactory grade for admission, you will need to get about 80% of the questions correct. Is that enough pressure for you? Take care, the exam isn't that tough... as long as you're thoroughly prepared for what lies ahead. In terms of studying for the exam, every person will likely tell you to do something different. There are programs for preparing for the MCAT, but many are ridiculously expensive. At the very least, get copies of old MCAT exams to know what kind of questions to expect. Pick up one of the many available books on how to take the MCAT. Work on practice exams, and really pay attention to the time limit they give you to work. The exam as a whole is not that difficult, but it is very long, and you will run out of time if you do not adequately prepare. IX. The Application Procedure: Be the First! Admissions to medical school is a highly political process. There is a distinct set of rules that must be followed to produce any degree of success. Therefore, it is highly important to turn in application materials immediately and PAY ATTENTION TO DEADLINES. The actual admissions process takes the form of a series of "cuts", in which a wide applicant base is narrowed by a series of eliminations into a much smaller number of actual matriculants. From the medical school's perspective, the acceptance process looks like this: any given school has X amount of positions available in a given medical school class. Therefore, they will grant 5X interviews and give out 30X secondary applications (Numbers are for demonstration only. Actual numbers will vary from school to school). Here are the three rounds of medical school acceptance: First round: AMCAS application (all AMCAS schools) Second round: Secondary applications (each school has its own) Third round: Individual school interviews (each school has its own) The fewer positions there are in the next round, the more difficult it becomes to advance. For example, an application has a better chance of passing the cut if there are 30,000 secondary apps available than if there are only 3000. The earlier your application is received, the better your chances of being offered a secondary application or an interview. Therefore, apply early. Mail your AMCAS application on the first day it can be mailed (usually June 1). While I'm on the subject of AMCAS applications, use the electronic (computerized) version of the application whenever possible. While it will not speed up the reception of your application (you still have to send the floppy disk by snail mail), the computer program will not allow you to accidentally leave critical fields blank or make stupid mistakes. Submitting an AMCAS application with mistakes will delay it, and seriously damage your chances of getting secondary applications. A short sidenote: the application process is going to cost you major money. When you take into account the cost of the AMCAS application, which charges by how many schools you apply to, the cost for each secondar application, and the cost of airfare/transportation to go to interviews, you could be talking about some serious money. Be sure to have about two or three thousand saved up by this point, so that you don't end up eating ramen noodles every night for your entire senior year just to maintain your budget. For more information specific to the application and interview process, be sure to check out dtayama's series of articles, which go into more depth than I will here. http://www.epinions.com/educ-review-3F08-66C8815-3923A37B-prod1 X. What Now? (Conclusions) Once your application is submitted, it is imperative that you choose at least three persons to write letters of recommendation for you. Give them plenty of advance notice, since you will want them to mail their letters to the appropriate schools as soon as you receive your secondary applications. Remember that you cannot get an interview without a complete file (including letters of rec), and that the earlier your file is complete, the better your chance of getting an interview. Inevitably, the day will arrive when you will either receive an acceptance or a rejection letter in the mail. If you receive the latter, don't take it too personally. There are still a great many options available to you. The biotech industry is booming right now, and is expected to eclipse the computer industry within the next fifteen years. You can go to graduate school and get a Masters or Ph.D. degree. You can get a teaching job at a local school. You can work in other fields of medicine. And you can always re-apply in future years. Remember that medical school admission is a highly competitive, godless process, and that the most qualified people do not necessarily get offered admission to medical school.  |
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