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Getting Started (the Freshman and Sophomore years)
Tell me the Basics
Right then. Now that we’ve scared off the weak, let’s get into the foundational stuff. This part is for Freshman and Sophomore pre-meds; if you’re a non-traditional student (e.g. military veteran, second-career, have ever said “get off my lawn”) then bugger off to the section entitled Non-Trads. You’ve got your own set of problems I’ll discuss, but this bit is for the people who are only now just discovering the joys of waking up drunk next to strangers.
If there’s going to be a time in their life that pre-meds repent (assuming they remember them), it’s almost without exception going to be their early undergrad years. Plunged into a new academic environment in which no one apparently cares if you show up to class, and everyone is drunk, naked, and dancing on a regular basis, it’s fall-on-your-face easy to have a good time and let the grades fall where they may. While this is doubtless a sound plan if you’re say, a philosophy major, it’s absolute murder on a pre-med’s prospects.
If you’re reading this late in your Freshman year or sometime during your Sophomore year and you already have a few party-fueled “C” grades on your transcript, don’t despair. Despite such grades causing frowny faces for some AdComs, most will understand that the first year of college is one of experimentation and will tend to look more leniently on poor grades in your Freshman year than they will on such grades in your Junior and Senior years. So, if you’re going to be a screw-up, earlier is better than later.
Should you have poor grades early on, it’s absolutely vital that you demonstrate improvement. Pulling a few “C” grades early on, followed by “B” and “A” grades as you progress onward is a sign of growing maturity, and will be viewed as such by AdComs. Of course, ideally you want to have good grades all the way through, but a “C” here and there won’t kill you (and shouldn’t make you want to kill yourself).
Does GPA matter?
Of course it does. Your GPA is second only to the many-headed beast called MCAT in the eyes of most medical schools. Medical schools (via AMCAS and AACOMAS, which are application services I’ll talk about later) see your GPA broken down into two numbers: your overall undergraduate GPA (uGPA), which includes everything, and your BCPM GPA, which is your GPA for your Math, Biology, Chemistry, and Physics classes. They do this because they want to make sure that your high uGPA isn’t full of touchy-feely easy-“A” classes masking an abysmal performance in science and math. If touchy-feely classes do it for you, that’s cool, but you need to do well in your science classes too.
Okay, so what classes do I take?
Well, mostly you can take whatever you like, as long as you get a Bachelor’s degree. There are some universally mandatory courses though, which I’ll get to in a moment. We should be very clear here: you can take whatever classes you want. There is no magical degree for medical school, and lunging toward a Biology, Chemistry, or Bio/Chem double-major isn’t going to impress anyone. Now that you’ve read this, don’t act all shocked if you decide to do it anyway and find yourself one of a teeming mass of Bio/Chem double-majors applying for medical school. It certainly won’t hurt you to have such a degree (except that you won’t stand out very much) but it won’t be as earth-shatteringly awesome as you hope, either.
The best advice is for you to take, in addition to the required courses, something that interests you. Me, I like aircraft, so I got a degree in Aeronautics. It was a talking point at interviews and definitely didn’t hurt my application. So if you’re fascinated by Politics, consumed by Philosophy, or delight in the creative arts, then by all means earn a degree in what you enjoy. Medical schools are increasingly looking for well-rounded individuals (i.e. not the pre-med zombie of yore) and more schools are doing the happy dance for non-science majors than ever before. The MCAT and BCPM will prove your scientific chops, so no worries there, and you’ll be an attractive candidate with a proven range of interests. Also consider the idea of mixing it up, such as getting a Chemistry degree with a minor in Philosophy.
What if I’m at a Community College?
The blunt answer is that you need to get into a four-year institution at the first possible opportunity. Sure, you can definitely have some courses from a community college, or even an Associate’s Degree from one, but medical school AdComs tend to get sad faces when prerequisite courses are taken at a two-year school. Don’t freak out, little friends, it’s not the end of the world if you went to Community College for a while (I did) but you’ll need to earn a four-year degree anyway and four-year schools usually have more rigorous science courses (hence the preference by AdComs).
What if I attended a bunch of different schools?
Meh, no worries. It’ll be annoying when you apply, as you’ll have to send a transcript in from every school, but as long as you get a Bachelor’s Degree from some accredited four-year institution, you’ll be fine.
So what are the required courses?
The prerequisite courses for medical schools are identical for a core group of courses, with some schools requiring additional courses. The gold standard for finding out what schools require what courses is a book entitled Medical School Admissions Requirements (MSAR). The MSAR is available at most bookstores (including the online ones) and libraries, and is an awesome resource. Browsing a copy during your early undergrad career is a good idea for planning out your academic schedule, especially if you’re already prancing around telling people you’re going to Hopkins or Stanford (incidentally, stop that). These schools have additional requirements you’ll need to plan for in order to apply.
The basic courses are:
General Chemistry with Lab – Two Semesters
Organic Chemistry with Lab – Two Semesters
General Biology with Lab – Two Semesters
Physics (Algebra- or Calculus-based) – Two Semesters
English – Two Semesters
Mathematics (College Algebra or higher) – Two Semesters
Lots of schools have additional requirements and most recommend (not require!) additional courses. Hopkins, for example, requires two semesters of Calculus, while the University of Colorado requires three semesters of English. Many schools require or recommend Biochemistry, Cell Biology, Information Technology, Genetics, and other such courses. The MSAR is the go-to resource for this information, and you should stick your nose in it anytime you’re planning your courses.
Can I leave all those courses until last?
Yes, but only if you’re an idiot, or if you have absolutely no choice in the matter. Ideally, get right into the sciences your Freshman year, taking General Chemistry and Biology. This will get you nicely prepared to take Organic Chemistry in your Sophomore year. Many science courses, especially Organic Chemistry, are extremely time-consuming and require a lot of effort to ensure an “A”. If you try to cram all of your difficult courses in at the end of your degree, you’ll screw up studying for the MCAT and find yourself exhausted.
If you’re already in your Sophomore year and you’ve avoided taking any science courses so far, jump right in immediately, especially on the Chemistry courses. Don’t dress in sackcloth and smear ashes on your face just yet, but realize that you really need to stay on top of your science courses, because they can bite you if you neglect them. By taking care of your science prerequisites at a steady pace, you’ll put yourself on a nice trajectory to finish everything and be well prepared for your MCAT and Application without burning out in the process.
Nice. So, do you have any other advice for Freshmen/Sophomores?
Of course I do, I’m not just a pretty face here.
The first and most important bit of advice here is to stay healthy. I’m not just talking about physically (although hitting the gym once in a while is definitely a good idea), but also mentally, emotionally, socially, and spiritually healthy. Undergrad is a challenging time in many ways, and it’s going to be harder on you because of your medical aspirations. Studying is important, but make sure you maintain friendships and family ties, keep up on hobbies and sports, and take some time for quiet reflection once in a while. You’ll be healthier for it, and your performance will be better. This stuff is the key to avoiding burnout, so neglect this advice at your peril.
Consider finding a mentor, preferably a pre-med in their senior year or a professor familiar with the pre-med process. Never underestimate the value of having someone who knows what lies ahead on your path, and what pitfalls are along the way. You don’t have time to make every mistake yourself, so learn from the experiences of others! In time, you’ll serve this role for someone else, perhaps.
Look into joining the campus Pre-Med group. Sure, some of the people will so self-absorbed that if they were any more self-centered they’d implode and turn into a black hole, but there will also be some awesome people in there too. It’s likely you’ll find some folks who are at the same point in their education that you are, and perhaps you’ll make some friends to share your undergrad pre-med journey. Such groups are also great places to find mentors, and the meetings will often have speakers or subjects of interest to you.
Develop good academic habits. If you’re struggling in a subject, ask for help. Don’t flail about expecting someone to run to your rescue; you’re a college student now and responsibility for your grades rests entirely on your shoulders. If your school has a tutoring center, use it. If your current study habits aren’t working, examine ways of changing them. Adaptability is vital for academic success.
Finally, keep your eyes on your goal. You’re going to have some rough times ahead, but try to keep it in perspective. Sure, that Chemistry exam is scary, but it beats the crap out of struggling to stay alive in some third-world hellhole.
Welcome
The intent of this guide is, as the title suggests, to help you maintain as much of your sanity as possible as you navigate the path to medical school. Some of you reading this are already be in the process of applying to medical school, while others are still lying on the couch trying to decide if pursuing medicine is a good option. Possibly a few of you are actually in medical school and are reading this when you should be studying some esoteric factoid for the boards. Get back to work!
Regardless of your status, though, one thing is true for everyone reading this: the path ahead of you has been well-trodden by those who have come before. This guide will be broken into a number of sections, with the early parts aimed at new pre-meds, and the later parts focused on information useful to applicants. Cynicism will be aimed at everyone. Everything here has come directly from the experiences, problems, successes, and failures of your fellow travelers who share their hard-won knowledge in the hope of smoothing the path for those who follow.
Good luck to you.
In the Beginning, there was…
…uncertainty. The decision to pursue medicine is a highly personal one, and people’s reasons for doing so vary from the mundane to the spectacularly improbable. For example, some will tell you that it’s something they’ve wanted to do since they were fetus. Holding a tiny hammer in one hand and a stethoscope in the other, they toddled around some third-world country with their parents, building houses and providing top-notch medical care to the local people as a way to pass the time until they could get into medical school. These are the same people who will throw themselves off of a high building at the prospect of getting a “B”. More on those later.
For those of us though who spent our childhood being childish, our desire to pursue medicine likely stems from a complex mixture of our life experiences, intellectual curiosity, compassion, mature introspection, and a predilection for white coats. Television shows featuring stupendously attractive doctors who drive nice cars, have great apartments, and spend their time saving lives in-between torrid love affairs have, of course, absolutely nothing to do with it. I’m glad we got that straight.
The upshot of all this is that your reasons for wanting to go into medicine will be unique to your in some ways and utterly predictable in others. Doubtless you want to “help people,” “make a difference,” and “earn staggering amounts of cash…no, wait, I mean serve others.” Inspired by the suffering of your sick relative, you intend to become a doctor and cure the world.
Annoyingly, these are all excellent reasons for going into medicine that are so clichéd at this point that no one besides your mother will believe a word of it. You’re going to have to dig deeper, and find out what really drives you. What will keep you forging ahead when everything else has run out? When you’re studying while others are partying, when you’re facing at least another decade of education, when you’re so tired you just want to curl up and cry, what will be at the core of you? Don’t frown though; there’s a silver lining! This is excellent practice for your AMCAS application, wherein you’ll bare your soul to a group of people so jaded the air around them has a greenish tinge: the Admissions Committees (AdComs).
While you’re chewing on that, I’ll get started on the concrete stuff.
Okay, after a fairly impressive number of requests, I decided that I’d start writing a guide for confused Pre-Meds and Medical School Applicants. I’m still in the process of writing it, but I thought I’d post sections of it as I went along. There may be some cynicism.
So I took the MCAT a while back and did pretty well. Well enough to get into my top-choice medical school anyway, which I suppose is all that counts. Now, it’s been driven home to me that people love success, and assume that anyone successful must have mounds of useful advice for people who are on a similar path. My friends, you came to the right place.
Now, it’s widely acknowledged the MCAT is, to use a technical academic term, a bit of a bastard. Premeds, hitherto having sailed unmolested through the sea of mediocrity that claims to be our nation’s education system, suddenly find themselves being bent over and used roughly by a test that is living proof of the seething hatred for premeds that dwells in the heart of the medical establishment. Indeed, I have it on good authority that the writing of MCAT questions involves a lot of dubious arcane paraphernalia wielded by people in black robes who cackle more than is probably healthy for well-adjusted citizens. Other theories propound that the MCAT is written by failed applicants, the ink comprised of the blackened husk of their spirits mixed with their bitter tears of rage. Alternatively, I suppose you could say that the MCAT is merely a test designed to bring a measure of standardisation to a group of applicants from diverse academic institutions, and contains difficult but fair questions answerable by the calibre of students expected to attend medical school. Such a wild and unlikely speculation as that, however, is something that I can’t be associated with.
So, here’s my advice for the MCAT: relax.
“But Coldstream,” I hear you cry, “it’s the most important test I’ll ever take before being admitted to medical school. Not to mention that you just scared the crap out of me with all that black-robe ranting”
Yes, yes, the MCAT is important. Many things are important, but none of them should reduce us to the quivering mass of stress, fear, and pure venom that many premeds turn into when faced with the MCAT. Before beginning your study period for the MCAT, you should do a few things. First, take a deep breath, find your mental space that keeps you centred, and then go and get good and drunk. Enjoy being drunk, as it’s just like the moment when you’ve finished the MCAT: you’re staggering, incoherent, surrounded by strangers in much the same condition, and feel slightly ill with the absolute knowledge that tomorrow’s headache will be the worst since you bought that slightly dodgy mushroom from the bloke in the alley.
Lest you think that this entire post is entirely full of mocking analogies, however, permit me to offer a bit more advice.
1) Decide on your learning style. If you’re the sort of person happiest in a classroom full of people, waving your hand to eagerly answer a question posed by a lecturer, then consider a Kaplan or Princeton Review course. Also, smack yourself as hard as you can, as I hate you lot. If, on the other hand, you’re a bitter, cynical recluse with surplus brain-power who prefers to study at your own pace, I cannot highly enough recommend Examkrackers. Despite the criminally stupid name, the material is well-presented and is everything you’ll need to do well. Taking an overpriced class isn’t mandatory, despite what some neurotic premeds will tell you.
2) For the love of whatever improbable deity you believe in, get the 101 Verbal Passages Examkrackers book, even if you’re taking Kaplan or PR. You wouldn’t believe the number of perfectly intelligent premeds who do really well on the Physical and Biological sections, and then completely bugger up the Verbal Reasoning. Friends, if you’re saying to yourself “I had a great score on the SAT/GRE” then you’ll be the one curled into a fetal position on the floor come results day, with my disembodied mocking laughter ringing in your ears. Do you think those black-robed MCAT bastards give a crap if you know what a bunch of words mean? No, they ask questions related to supernaturally boring passage and if, like the ignorant science nerd that you are, you start pecking around the passage for specific words, the fuckers will have an answer waiting for you. Dismiss this advice at your peril! If you don’t believe me, check out some of the profiles on MDapplicants and note that the Verbal scores are…shall we say suspiciously low.
3) Give yourself a bit of time to study. Two months is fine, three perhaps better. Don’t try to cram all of your studying into a couple of weeks. All of those effortless ‘A’s you earned in college while barely studying don’t mean a thing to the MCAT. That thing is hungry and it will eat you if you screw around.
4) Take a practice MCAT at the AAMC website after you’ve been studying for a bit. They have a nice breakdown of where you’re strong and where you’re wobblier than a unicyclist with a razorblade for a seat. When you’re about two weeks out from the MCAT, take another and see if you’re scoring well. Treat it as a real test, which means that your loser friends who are just dying to see that new movie will just have to deal with your voicemail for once. If you get a decent score, do a last bit of studying to fill any last weak points and then call it good. If you screw it all up, wave off and reschedule your MCAT a bit further back.
5) Take at least a few days off before the MCAT to let your brain recover. If you don’t know it by now, you won’t know it. Sure, there’ll be some pasty premed gunner who’ll tell you that he was listening to some MCAT podcast up until the moment that the test administrator ripped the headphones from his ears, but piss on that guy. While he was doing all that useless last minute studying to try to silence the screaming insecurity that churns in his soul, you were out remember what sunshine and sex felt like. Good for you. Now go make the MCAT your bitch.
Much love,
-C.
