Your Attractive AMCAS

Why I am teaching you how to get into medical school

Congratulations! You are about to embark on a rite of passage that will turn out to be very fulfilling in the end. You are following your call to be a physician, one of our nation’s heroes. A very helpful tool to take it to the next step (medical school) will be MedSchoolMentor’s Guide to Getting into Medical School.

I have designed a guide to help you adapt the methods described to your particular situation. Whether you are doing poorly, average, or great, are in a post-baccalaureate program, or are reapplying to medical school, this guide is designed to be adaptable to you. The methods/plans described are designed to help you maximize life’s most precious asset, TIME.

Why did I write this?

The first baby boomers will be retiring from work. With an increasingly older population of Americans and new immigrants, the medical industry is going to need a surplus of physicians, nurses, physician assistants, and many other people involved in the healthcare industry. The fact is: society needs more doctors! Not to increase the price of healthcare, but to meet the demand of a higher percentage of senior citizens. If medicine is something you want to turn into a career, this guide is for you.

My goal (and hopefully your goal) is to help you find the path to happiness, because happiness is what we are all after. Isn’t it? It took me a while to realize that I shouldn’t sacrifice enjoying myself in college while being a pre-med. It might take you a while also. However, don’t worry, we’ll get there together.

Maybe you want to be an active part of improving someone else’s life. There are many people out there who will need your help. That is a great goal. There is something nice about being able to console a person who is in pain and afraid of what is to come. Maybe you also want to be comfortable monetarily in life. Medicine can offer that to you. It is nice to be able to know that you can provide a nice income. However, I want you to realize this one important thing. And if you get anything out of this book it is hopefully this….

Before you put yourself in a cave for four years, realize who you are doing this for. You are doing this primarily for you (this should be the biggest reason). Perhaps you are also doing this for your loving family and friends who have supported you along the way and/or your community. Remember who and what you are doing this for, and it will keep you grounded and also will be your motivation. But most importantly, remember not to neglect the ones whose company you love and cherish. Remember to call home often to check in. Maybe make a visit once during the term. It is contact with my friends and family that made college great. Not playing the pre-med game. I will never recall great memories in lecture, but I will recall the jamming sessions I had with my closest friends and the time I spent with my dad before he passed away. Don’t let life pass you by in the process. Heed my guide and hopefully, life will be more enriching than ever.

Time to Put Faith in Yourself

It’s time to put away the excuses. All doubt. All fear. “I’m not smart enough.” And other excuses are really lies you tell yourself that prevent you from succeeding. Why are they lies? Because you and I both know that if you work hard enough, and devote enough time, you will get into medical school. Be careful with what you say to yourself. Because if you keep saying it to yourself, you’re going to start believing it, and next thing you know it starts to become a reality. The power of the words you say to yourself, your family, and friends have a profound control over your destiny.

And this power of your words goes the other way also. You can use the power of words in your favor. If you say you are going to get into medical school enough to yourself and to the ones you love, you will start to believe it. If you think about it enough, your thoughts become something concrete on paper. Your words help you to start developing a plan. Your own individual plan. I created my own plan and it worked. And my plan is here for you as a model. It is my gift to you.

And then your plan becomes action. You didn’t think that it was just a thinking game did you? The reality of it all is that your actions are really manifestations of your thought processes. Things are not always going to come out the way you thought they would. You must adapt to the environment. There are sometimes unfortunate situations that occur so fast that you cannot think your way out of it. There will be situations where a circumstance will happen in which you will be totally out of control. The difference between a successful premed/person and anyone average is how you react to the situation. During my junior year I once overslept two hours into an organic chemistry final, a class where I was doing very well. The professor was not sympathetic and I only had 40 minutes to complete a 3 hour final. I was very angry at the professor for not allowing me extra time. What did I learn from this? Immediately I learned to have two alarms when you need to make something important because in the real world people are often not understanding. I also came to the realization that I needed to adjust my daily plan in accordance with important events. That means that I would not stay up late the night before an important final, even if I was studying for that final. I learned to adjust my studying so that I would never stay up late the night before a final.

I could have thrown in the towel and said the professor was unfair and unreasonable for not allowing me the time my classmates had. I could have thought that this mistake had ruined my opportunity of turning around my grades and not have continued my pre-med path. Instead I chose to learn from the situation and discover a way to learn from my mistake.

Realize that the guide is intended to help you succeed despite the mistakes we sometimes make. I want to help you realize that the most important part of a mistake is how you learn from them. As you can see from my acceptance to many great medical schools, although you commit mistakes every now and then, in the end you can still become a strong applicant to medical schools. However, you must actively use your creative mind to learn from the mistakes you have made. Additionally you must develop the ability to identify the benefits from the lessons learned. The more you do this, the stronger pre-med you will be. So instead of thinking of being the perfect premed with no flaws on your transcript, think of yourself as the perfect learner, the person who learns the positive lesson from every mishap. If you expect mistakes and disasters to be part of the process, the faster you will be to recognize the mistake and learn from it. This will also make you a happier person. The faster you learn from your mistakes, the more prepared you will be for the next challenge.

You are going to develop mental toughness as you navigate this path. And it is rooted in the faith of knowing you will get your dream. I believe faith is a combination of confidence and hope. However, there is something that is original about faith. It is the one feeling you feel in your chest that emanates your knowing that you are going to achieve your goals. And it is this faith that helps fuel all of your actions. None of your actions, going to class, studying for the MCAT, writing your personal statement, will have meaning, unless your chest tells you that your are committing your early twenties (or whatever time in life you are undergoing the pre-med path) to becoming the best damn physician you can be. If you have in your mind that you are not going to be a physician, don’t waste your time going through the process. Your time is too precious to waste studying for the MCAT if you are not serious about it.

You must realize that you are not trying to become a physician. You are a physician who is just taking the steps necessary to become who you truly are. Keep this faith. It will help you during the tough times. It will also help you when you need it, like when you get nervous before the MCAT.

How do I make sense of all of this?

These lessons might not make sense to you as you start out on your path. That’s OK. Reread it again next week. Talk to some upper classmen in the meantime while you read between lessons. Ask about stories of people who have succeeded in the pre-med process. Talk to someone you know who is in medical school. The key is to become a student of the process. The key is to know your options.

If you are doing poorly currently, relax. If this is your freshman or sophomore year, relax. Med schools are big fans of the prodigal daughters/sons. Many understanding admissions committees realize that there is an adjustment period. As long as your grades significantly improve your junior/senior year, you will still have a chance. However, it’s time you wake up and start on your plan.

Who are you to tell me all of this? You are nothing like me and probably never made a mistake at all.

I’m currently a medical student at UCLA who graduated from Stanford in 2002 with honors. However, things weren’t always so bright. I was the kind of student who did well in high school getting by. I had a wakeup call during my first quarter of college physical chemistry. I basically failed my first midterm. But did I decide to drop the class? No. Unfortunately, that would have been the smart thing to do. But I was arrogant, thinking that I could keep up with the class and deliver higher grades than everyone the next midterm and final. Boy was I kidding myself. I did not pass physical chemistry that quarter and committed various other mistakes. This guide entails what I did after these mistakes and what I wish I had done before I committed them.

Please do not use this guide as an excuse to cut corners, devise shortcuts, and be lazy. Med school admissions are very perceptive about this. Instead, use it as a guide to show you the less taken paths (there are many off the trail paths) to make yourself a happier pre-med and a better person.

For some reason, many medical school admissions committees believe that pre-meds are too competitive, to the point that they will cheat or cheat their friends out of an opportunity. Are you one of these people? I doubt it. I believe that this phenomenon is hardly in existence. But if you feel like you have an inkling of this inside you, you are going to have to ask yourself an important question. Do you want to be an honest person when you are done with college or a dishonest one? There will be opportunities that will arise which might put you in a position to test your integrity. The question is will you stand by your values? I know you will because I will give you so many options (as will your mentors) that getting into medical school will be easier to do the honest way than the reverse.

You are well ahead of the game

Now that you have this guide, sit back and relax. You are far ahead of where I was going through the process. Realize that you now have my research and wisdom that I have acquired from many other sources. In addition to that, you will have what you learn along the way.

I’m going to take you through a big ordeal about the complicated game set before pre-meds. I will make it simple though. I will help you find out what you should do and don’t need to do to get into medical school. The principles I learned worked well for me, but when you are reading them, ask yourself how you can apply the options to your situation. This will help you design your game plan. Together we can find out a way how to make your classes, studying, and life more enjoyable.