I don’t know which is worse: the imposter syndrome common in undergraduate education or the constant nervousness that overcomes applicants after applying to medical school. As a person that is going through the medical school admissions process, I know that there are a lot of misconceptions about the process. Furthermore, as a person that is the first in my family to attend medical school, I know that there can be a lot of pressure to build your school list and attend the most prestigious program possible.
Although many of these misconceptions are untrue, I wanted to pass along the lessons that I have learned in the past year. These lessons are not just for building a list of schools to apply to or for picking a school in general, but these lessons are applicable throughout the entire admissions process to remind you that you are not alone.
1. the MCAT is hard, but the mcat is important
While this statement is true to a point, the MCAT is not all that important. Everyone wants to make the application process about applicants’ MCAT and GPA stats. I have even had other applicants and mentors that were trying to help me say, “With your stats, I doubt you will get an interview, much less accepted.” While I know that this person said this with my best interests in mind, I applied anyway and received more interviews than I expected.
All of this to say, the MCAT is important, but as long as you get a 500, which is the cutoff score that predicts that medical students should pass their board exams, then you should apply. I can speak from personal experience when I say that I applied broadly, matched my score as best as I could, had a solid GPA to compensate and had several extracurricular activities offset my lower MCAT score. My application was research heavy with several examples of success in that research, a 90th percentile GPA and a 10th percentile MCAT for the accepted applicant data at each specific school that I applied to. Furthermore, I only applied to programs based on the self-diagnosed strengths of my application.
2. Different Programs Have different timelines
Personally, I chose to apply using my strengths and based on what I could see myself doing as a future career, which led me to apply to MD/Ph.D. dual degree programs. The logistics of these programs can be discussed in an article on their own, but the general synopsis is that excellent students with outstanding research capabilities can earn both their Medical Degree and Ph.D. in eight years of training.
This is an important distinction to make because when I began applying for these types of programs, I did not realize that they run on a completely different timeline than a regular MD program. Moreover, I did not realize that a little over half the schools that I applied to did not invite people to interview until December or conduct the interviews until January. Be aware of the interview timeframe because I thought that I was massively behind on interviews when I was actually right on track.
3. the school i thought i wanted was not the school i needed
Let me give you a personal anecdote. The schools that I have interviewed with so far were not places that I thought I would consider as a freshman in undergrad. However, immediately upon receiving an interview, meeting students at an open house and being given more information on the institutions, I became obsessed with the programs. Sometimes what you think you want is not at all what you need.
The way that I overcame this was to keep an open mind throughout the admissions process. Especially before receiving an acceptance, I see nothing wrong with attending each interview offered. In fact, I was actively encouraged by each program that I interviewed with to compare schools to find the best fit!
And with each interview offer, I would attend the informational sessions and ask questions pertinent to my specific circumstances. This experience was my chance to find the right fit for medical school, so I never discounted a school because I didn’t know much about it or I preferred a prestigious name. I gave up on the prestigious name ideal after really thinking about what I needed in a medical school.
There is more to medical school than the name on the diploma at the end of the four years. And to all the overachievers thinking too far into the future: no, I am not talking about your residency match either. I am talking about the people that will surround me during what is arguably the most stressful time in my medical career.
4. you will need patience
Something that I learned throughout the application process is that not all students are on the same roadmap. Not all students will receive interview invites within the first two months of their application being verified. Sometimes interviews will start rolling in during November and December, which is okay. Not all students will receive an acceptance letter within a week of interviewing. Some schools will make you wait a month or two before they send you any update after an interview.
Specifically, I wish that I never looked at the massive Reddit and Student Doctor Network forums as they made me feel like I was behind on the application process. I had to remind myself that I was right on schedule for myself and my application. I learned to take this time to actually work on myself and really reflect on what I want to get out of my medical school experience. I am sure that this mindset will help in the final decision more than I can ever know. Also, every admissions committee member that I have interviewed with has said that they prefer someone that knows what they want out of a program as opposed to not.
5. Knowing my strengths and weaknesses
My application was not flawless. I am a human with a life outside of all my medical school application requirements. Therefore, something on my application inevitably did not meet the high standards of an admissions committee when applying to medical school. And that is okay! Not everyone accepted to medical school has a perfect application. Actually, I am convinced that no one has a perfect medical school application. They just made the most of what they did have.
The key to success that I have found true for myself is knowing my strengths and weaknesses. In each activity section of the application, I was given the opportunity to demonstrate how the activity has made me into a better person that will become a great physician. I applied this same mindset to explaining my lack of clinical exposure, lack of volunteerism and lacking statistics that the admissions committee would see. While I did not completely draw attention to the blemishes of my application, I certainly did not shy away from them if they were specifically addressed in a secondary application or interview. Instead, I reflected on what led to a poor outcome in that particular case and stressed the important lessons that I gained from those experiences.
I am convinced that the medical school admissions process is one big marathon that is designed to make future medical students into better physicians by teaching them patience and the value of taking time to reflect on what they actually want in a career. My number one goal when getting ready to apply to medical school was to take the time that seemed like it was designed to make me overthink all of my life’s decisions to actually improve myself.
I used the application cycle to teach myself about the areas of my life needing improvement, to keep developing healthy outlets for stress that could be used in medical school and to continue working out and implementing the self-care routine steps that I want to have in medical school.
There is a saying, “If you prepare your fields for rain, it will come.” Therefore, I am preparing for the medical school acceptance during this application cycle, and I am sure that it will come.