Session 63

Our poster today is a former student interested in optometry but is now trying to pursue medicine. A poor MCAT score is holding him back though plus his premed advisor told him he had zero percent chance of getting into medical school due to lack of research experience. Is research really necessary? How else can you improve your application given these circumstances?

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OldPreMeds Question of the Week:

Today’s post is one from Louis Gonzalez.

"I am 27 years old. I have put off going to medical school for the last five years due to personal and family reasons. I’ve been taking care of my sister who developed a form of psychosis back in the spring of 2013 and I was my grandmother’s caretaker during her fatal bout with liver cancer in 2014.

I was trying for optometry school but after shadowing several optometrists, I just don’t think that it was the correct field for me. I graduated in 2011 with a 3.4 science GPA and a 3.7 accumulative GPA. I, at this time, only have 450 hours of volunteering and three years worth of science tutoring biology, microbiology, chemistry and organic chemistry.

Tutoring at the local community college near my home, I can’t travel that far due to my sister’s health. I did have shadowing experience but the doctor I shadowed back in 2011 doesn’t have an office in this state anymore. I know I’ll have to start shadowing and taking my MCAT. I got 23 on the 2012 MCAT, but what else should I do to prepare my application? I’m taking my MCAT in mid-August. So is it a good idea to get letters of recommendation right now and apply late? Or wait until next year and ask those professors in early 2018 to write letters of recommendation?

Also, is research necessary? I went back to talk to an advisor at my university about applying to medical school in December, but she told me that I had a 0% chance of getting into medical school at this point due to my lack of research. Overall,any advice would be most helpful."

Here are my insights: [03:15] Zero Percent Chance and Research Experience

First of all, as much as I love premed advisors, I just have to disagree with "0% chance" of getting into medical school because zero percent chance is never the answer.

Anyway, do you have to have research? No. It’s a tricky thing because when you’re applying to medical schools and you’re looking at the MSAR and the College Information Book, you'd see various breakdowns of students that were accepted including what percentage of them had research. And it’s a large majority. But the bottom line is that you do not have to have research.

If you’re interested in research, great and go seek it out. I highly recommend you go and get research because it’s interesting and just to see if you might like it or not. It's very easy just like any other experience of shadowing or getting clinical experience.You could either do laboratory research or clinical research wherein you’re helping a physician do some data analysis on their patients. Again, you don’t have to have research but I would recommend you get it or at least "dip your toes" in it for a little bit to see if you like it.

[04:45] Older Prereqs and Preparing for the MCAT

Your GPA scores, volunteering experience, and science tutoring are great. Your prerequisites are a little bit older (take a listen to OPM 62) but it's probably still okay. I recommend you check in with each of the schools you're interested in applying to just to make sure they're okay with having some older prereqs.

Just as I talked about last week, you got a 23 on the MCAT so it may help you on the new MCAT to take some more courses to help solidify your knowledge of the sciences that are going to be tested on the MCAT. But it comes down to you just not understanding what the MCAT is all about. For this reason, I would highly recommend looking into a Next Step Test Prep or another one-on-one tutoring company. If you decide to go with Next Step Test Prep, use the code MSHQ to save some money on their tutoring programs. You really need to understand how to take the MCAT to do well on it.

[06:02] Application Timeline & Letters of Recommendation

If you plan to apply this year (2017) and take the test in August, I would recommend that you don't apply this year. August is too late to apply this year. It’s not a 0% chance but I would never recommend to anybody that’s applying in 2017 to take the MCAT in August of 2017 because your application is not going to be complete until a month after that. By that time, you’re several months behind and most medical schools are going to have the people they want to interview already lined up and ready to go. They're just waiting for those last few really top notch applications to come through before the deadline, which is usually at the end of October. So if you have to take the MCAT in August or mid-August, I would delay applying until 2018.

Regarding letters of recommendation, start asking for them around February and have your letter writers submit their letters for 2018, applying in June of 2018.

[07:22] Shadowing and Clinical Experience

Look into some more shadowing and more clinical experience since admissions committees want to see sustained engagement in the medical field. While you had a volunteering a while ago, you didn't mention what type of volunteering it is so I'm going to assume it's not medically related. Get some clinical experience being around patients just to make sure this is really what you want to do.

Lastly, I'm glad that you pointed out that you decided not to apply for optometry after shadowing optometrists. This is the very reason medical schools want to see some shadowing experience from students in order to get that same feel and that gut feeling whether to go for it or not.

Links:

The Short Coat Podcast

MedEd Media Network

MSAR

College Information Book

OPM 62: What Should I Focus on With Old Prereqs and ECs?

Next Step Test Prep (Use the code MSHQ to save some money on their tutoring programs.)