Which is the best year to start help for Med School admission prep, any suggestions for a counselor that worked for anyone please PM. Thanks
Honestly? Before your child commits to taking any dual-enrollment classes in high school. Seriously. High school students don’t realize that the B in AP Bio or Calc BC in a dual-enrollment class that they took in 10th grade will adversely affect their med school applications, because it is included by med schools in the calculation of the student’s overall GPA, whereas the low AP score will not.
The student must be positioned to begin, the summer before college starts, relevant research and publications in a lab that churns out a ton of papers (no matter the quality - what counts is the number of hours spent and the number of publications), volunteer work - the more selfless and the more underserved the population, the better, and clinical work - again, the quality of such is not necessarily relevant, so thousands of hours of lowest level work in a nursing home is better than hundreds of hours as a scribe in a leading teaching hospital’s ED, even though the applicant would learn far more in the latter.
If applicants don’t want to take two or more gap years after college, they need to hit the ground running even the summer before college, and certainly in the first semester of freshman year. In addition, they need to know which classes at their particular college will satisfy the pre-reqs for med school. There is often a confusing hodge-podge of many different science classes on different tracks, not all of which will fulfill pre-reqs. Then they need to know which have decent teachers who might actually help them to learn the material. Only the students at that particular college will know about the quality of the classes. A pre-med advisor at the college will know which classes fulfill the requirements, but there’s usually also a posting describing this, put out by the college for pre-meds.
Mostly, all of this is found out word of mouth, from students at their particular college who are a year or two ahead of them on the path. The quality and accessibility to pre-med advising at colleges varies widely. Some colleges don’t even really allow access to a pre-med advisor until the spring of junior year, by which time, of course, it’s way too late. And the student must always keep in mind that premed committees may be ranking the applicants from their school in their committee letters to the med schools. In addition to compiling that perfect record for application, the student needs to charm the premed committee rep into giving them the highest rating. That “informational” meeting, or mock interview supposedly to prepare the student for interviews with med schools, in reality serves the committee’s purpose in ranking the applicant, then reported in the cover letter. Anything less than a perfect, top channel ranking by a committee which knows virtually nothing about the student can torpedo the student’s applications.
In addition to networking with upperclassmen at their college, a lot of valuable information can be found online in the premed section of the website Student Doctor Network, from other students who have recently gone through the process.
While the parent can help with the knowledge that creating anything less than a 4.0 college transcript in high school must be avoided for potential pre-meds, once the person is in college it is really on them to do all of this. The fact is that most pre-meds wind up stepping off the pre-med track. Compiling the record necessary nowadays to get into med school is so difficult that really, if the person is not completely self-motivated to do it, they should not be doing it. The pot of gold at the end of the med school rainbow has gotten much smaller relative to the cost and effort involved, so much so that only people who desperately want to practice medicine should be planning on med school now.
So, the short answer is, don’t bother trying to find an outside paid med school admissions counselor. It’s probably too late, probably not useful, and all the info that the student might need is available on SDN. Besides, if the student is not motivated to find all this out for themselves, they’re not motivated enough to get through the incredibly difficult and stressful process necessary to get in. For those in high school, the big take-home message is watch out with dual enrollment classes - less than perfect grades in these can come back to bite you in the butt years later when applying to med school.
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Reminder that CC is not a referral service so please only give generic advice. TIA
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I have a few disagreement with the advice in the above post
This simply isn’t true. Activities completed in the summer BEFORE college are generally not included in a med school application unless they are continued into and thru college in the same lab with same research supervisor.
Also quality of publication DO matter, esp for research-intensive med school and Md/PhD programs. Authorship position also matters. A first author on paper published in lesser [non-predatory/pay-to-play] journal is more impactful than a string 4th and 5th authorships (which are often merely acknowledgements for low level, non-key involvement like checking footnote formats or designing graphs. Latter authorships often acknowledge janitorial work.) Academic medical personnel are well aware of this so it does matter.
Lastly, it’s not the massive humber of hours that count, but the quality of the experience and lessons learned. 600 hours washing lab glassware/cleaning animal cages/doing inventory is not impactful or meaningful. 600 hours developing one’s own research project, writing a grant to fund it, appearing before the Use of Human Subjects ethics committee, carrying out the project and writing it up for presentation—that’s impactful.
Most college lab experiences will be somewhere in between.
The student needs to well versed in what the laboratory does, why and how and be able to speak confidently and fluently about the research and their role in the work.
As for when a student should start preparing–it depends on the student, whether they hope/plan to apply to enter med school directly after college graduation (which means applying the end of their junior year) or whether they plan to take one or more gap years (applying immediately after college graduation or a year or more post graduation). The majority of successful med school applicants (~70%) have taken 1-5 gap years to improve their ECs.
Actually, there are no rules about this. A student can start preparing immediately as soon as they have matriculated (enrolled, attending classes full time) or as late as years after graduation.
There are plenty of private advisors who will charge fess into the thousands to prep your student–but there are also free sources of info.
Almost every college will have one or more health professions advisors. The advisors will hold information sessions every fall and spring for students interested in pursuing medical/dental/vet and other healthcare professions. The advisors are also available for individual meetings to help guide students.
College healthcare professions advisors are usually quite knowledgable about the process and will provide assistance. (The HP advising office will write your student’s LOE for their med school application at many colleges so making contact early with them is very good idea.)
AMCAS has a wealth of information about applying to med school, much of it from actual med school admission professionals.
Additionally there are clubs and organization open to pre-meds, including organizations that specifically target applicants from UiM (Underserved in Medicine) groups and the unique issues they face.
These clubs and organization offer a chance for students to network with other pre-meds, med student mentors and med school admission personnel; to attend advising sessions; to get involved in special opportunities to engage in research & other educational activities.
Some student organizations–
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The criteria for URM applicants is different.
A related trap is that medical schools do not like to see repeated courses, and this includes high school dual enrollment courses and AP credit being repeated after the student matriculates to a four year college (repeated courses must be marked as such on the medical school application). But if the high school dual enrollment course or AP course did not fully cover the content of the course at the four year college (which the student can check with the old final exams of the course), then it may be better to repeat for learning sake, leaving a choice between two bad options for pre-med purposes.
Beginning all of these ECs in the summer before freshman year helps one to position themselves for potentially meaningful achievement in these areas.
Responses should focus on the questions asked by the OP, who is asking about his non-URM kid
Medical schools do not expect students to have publications at any level of authorship. Less than 1 in 15 applicants will.
In fact, medical school do not require applicants to have any research whatsoever. It’s in the " nice to have" category. A summer research program such as a REU will provide sufficient research exposure for most students. The purpose of having research exposure is to provide the student with first hand experience with the scientific method and the challenges involved with getting any research experiment to work as expected.
Using MCAT Data in 2024 Medical Student Selection has survey on p.15 of how adcomm view various factors when making admission decisions. Research is of medium importance–on par with with non-clinical/medical paid employment, military service and non-medicine related ECs.
I will also note here that different fields publish at different rates. Some cell-based research labs may publish papers several time in a single year. Other fields may only publish every 3-4 years. You cannot make a blanket statement about the importance of publications because it’s so dependent on the research field. (Also journal review times vary considerably from a few weeks to several months. I’ve even seen it take years for a paper to appear in print due to the length of editorial process. )
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