5+ Lessons About Pre-med and Getting into Medical School: Part 2- We allow what other people say about us to deeply impact us

So, lesson 2 of 5 about premed and getting into medical school is here, and it’s an important one that will serve you well. It’s about not letting others get to you, and although it seems simple, it’s challenging because we are all human.

As I’ve discussed so many times before, on the path of greatness you are going to encounter resistance, haters, naysayers, and others who will try to thwart your efforts with their negative energy or insults.

Perhaps they’re bitter as a result of their own failures, perhaps they just don’t want to see you succeed and are hoping their words discourage you.

How do we respond?

When other people say to you that you can’t do something or when people are criticizing and looking at you and judging you - do you let that affect you? Or let that bring you down? Or let that stop you from getting where you need to go?

How many of you listen to people whom you shouldn’t? For example, you tell your friends that...

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5+ Lessons About Pre-med and Getting into Medical School: Part 1- You are responsible for You

This weekend was absolutely nuts!!!

I was on-call Thursday and Friday and flew to Maryland, put on a 7-hour event on Saturday, then went out for a 5-hour dinner with my students. On Sunday, I went for another 3-hour event in New Jersey and had a 2-hour dinner with my students (apparently the #COGG likes to eat lol).

But, I spent too much time hanging out with my students and missed my return flight. I had to get back first thing Monday morning for my hospital shift, so I ended up having to detour through four different airports just to get back to California. But, it didn’t end there, I ended up flying to Los Angeles. So, then I had to rent a car, and drive almost 2 hours to get to work 30 minutes late.

With all this travel time, I had plenty of time to reflect on the weekend and think about some of the key takeaways from the weekend road trip, and I thought I would share them with you in this 5-part series.

And yes, many of these lessons I got from interacting with you...

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Don't Worry: Learn how to Handle Medical School Rejection

As the winter rolls on, many premeds are rolling into their final semester. But their final exams are the least of their worries. At the top of their mind instead, are their med school applications. While many med schools send out their decisions before the holiday break, others wait until January, February, or even March. Depending on where you’ve applied, you might not hear a peep from admissions offices until well into the spring semester.

 

A large portion—somewhere around 40%—of med school applicants will be accepted into at least one of the schools they applied to. But most will be rejected. Rejection in the highly competitive Type A environment of premed can feel like pit viper poison. But it’s not lethal, and it might actually work out better for you in the long run.

 

If you wind up with only rejections at the end of this application cycle, don’t worry, you’re in good company. One Redditor on R/Premed recently described a...

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Should You Use Anki or Flashcards For MCAT Prep?

I’ve received a bunch of questions about Anki, the popular flashcard app that a lot of students use for studying for exams and for the MCAT.


Last weekend, I actually had a long discussion with one of my students about flashcards and the merits of Anki for MCAT prep. I covered this in my email newsletter last weekend, but I’ll recap it for you here on the blog:

For those of you who are in my course The 5 Pillars of Studying Less & Getting Better Grades, you know how I feel about Anki. For those of you not enrolled, let me fill you in real quick:
  • Anki is an online flashcard software that has some nice little features
  • However, I DO NOT recommend you use them, ESPECIALLY for the MCAT because the temptation to use someone else’s flashcard deck is way too strong
  • 99% of people do not know how to effectively flashcard and think that having 5 million flashcards is something to brag about


In our discussion last weekend, my student and I were laughing as he showed me...

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5 Ground Rules For Selecting A Pre-med Advisor, Coach or Mentor

As Sophocles said, “No enemy is worse than bad advice.” Take a second and write that down, because it is some of the truest words you will ever read, and something that many pre-meds don’t understand.

I see so many students running in a thousand different directions, none of which is getting them closer to medical school, and in the end, they can’t figure out why they never made it. “I did exactly like Dr. A said… Mrs. B told me I would definitely get in if I did X… The dean said all I had to do was improve Y.”

How many of you have friends who have said similar things? The reality is, there are a lot of people out there claiming to be pre-med advisors, but they simply don’t have the expertise to help you.  The wrong advisor could be intentionally, or more commonly, unintentionally leading you to your doom. So, I thought I would take a few minutes and lay out some ground rules for selecting your mentors and...

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How To Deal With Parents Who Don’t Support Your Med School Dreams

Many students feel guilty for going to college while their family is struggling. Making it worse, their family constantly reminds them of how bad they are struggling and how they feel abandoned and like the student doesn’t care about them anymore. Then when the student comes home for the holidays, everyone says “you’ve changed… you talk different, like a braniac… you talk about all this success your having at college, but we are out here working for real… you need to get a job… you need to be here more often… why are you wasting your time in the books?” Anybody ever hear something similar?

 

Everyone’s life is their own, and the best thing you can do for your people is better yourself.

 

A perfect example of unwarranted family pressure comes from a pre-med student I worked with a couple years ago. She was a bright student, but she was sabotaging herself so she was struggling in the classroom. Her...

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Can The MCAT Make-up for A Bad GPA?

It depends, but in some cases, you can be like Aladdin and go from street rat to prince with a little help from the (MCAT) genie! If you’ve spent 4 years goofing around, or you worked hard but couldn’t get the right strategies together to get those A’s, then you might be forced to rummage through the med school garbage for admissions scraps.  Many students think that taking more classes is the key to getting off the streets and into the palace. Not so fast! GPA stands for grade point average, keyword being average.  It took you 4 years to create your current crappy GPA and it’s not going to improve overnight after a few classes.  If you GPA is really bad, it could take 4 years or longer to make it competitive. You might also think that a post-baccalaureate program is a great option, which it can be, but it will cost you upwards of $50,000 and 2 years of your life in most cases.

 

3 Things You NEED To Know About The New MCAT

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A KFC Fry Cook and a Boy Genius Apply to Med School

A KFC Fry Cook and a Boy Genius Apply to Med School …

Ask any doctor or medical professional how they became a doctor, and they’ll tell you a different story every time. Premed programs bring together some of the most interesting and diverse peer groups because people from all across the socioeconomic spectrum hear the call to pursue one of the world’s most noble professions.

Take, for example, Franco Jin. His parents moved to Utah from Argentina when he was 12. By the time he was a senior in high school and all his friends were applying for college, he thought he might be content keeping his job frying chicken at KFC.

“I was pretty happy working at KFC,” Jin told the Salt Lake Tribune. “They would let me eat all the chicken I wanted, no complaints.”

But then he got what many young people need: a gentle push in the right direction. Thanks to a pilot program that connects college students with high school classrooms, he heard about the...

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Can You Have a Life And Get Into Medical School?

Can You Have a Life And Get Into Medical School?

We all know that medical school is expensive and that getting to medical school can be pretty costly too. The average medical student graduates with approximately $200,000 in school debt. That is a hefty sum, but it pales in comparison to the price pre-med and medical students pay in their personal life to become doctors.

Every premed knows this story: You’re in the library, and outside, it’s a sunny day. Out on the campus green, your peers in other departments are soaking it in. And it looks glorious. They’re throwing the frisbee, they’re reading, they’re having a picnic with friends, they’re napping.

And that morning, when you were waking up early to go to the library, they stumbled through the front door with your roommate smelling like perfume and sweat with glitter on their faces. Their lives look fun.

But you can’t have fun with them, because you’re a premed. Becoming a doctor is...

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How to Effectively Promote Yourself in Premed While Avoiding Gunner Status

How to Effectively Promote Yourself in Premed While Avoiding Gunner Status

Practically anyone who’s stumbled in to an O-Chem lecture can pick a gunner out of a lineup. These are the folks that obsess over getting into med school while displaying little to no understanding of human compassion. They constantly discuss academics and consider how every instance of social participation will look on a med school application.

Gunners will do anything to succeed. With applications just about in and interview season rolling around, things can get ugly. A recent Reddit post described one premed student donning their military uniform for an interview.

For those who have served, wearing your uniform during a non-military function is absolutely verboten. This is an instance of a gunner clearly crossing the line. As one ex-military user wrote, “There is literally zero excuse for it … We honor those that died every day by continuing to live and not forgetting. Wearing your dress...

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