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Tonight's conversation—tonight's discussion—is everything we need to know about med school admissions. We have a lot to cover.
So, what are we talking about? What are we learning about? We’ll be speaking about the key steps in the admissions process, what admissions committees are looking for. We’ll be speaking about the personal statement and interview tips, common pitfalls to avoid, and that Q&A that we mentioned.
Hi, everyone. My name is Dr. Bima H. I am a General Surgery resident at UC Irvine (the University of California, Irvine). I essentially did my undergrad, medical school, and now surgery residency at UC Irvine.
I heard that you all are from the Midwest, so I do have some Midwest roots. I was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and spent two years there—actually doing research at the University of Pittsburgh.
Most recently, I just came out of a two-year research fellowship stint, funded by the NIH’s T32 program, from Northwestern. I heard California is a little bit warmer than the Midwest right now, which I’m grateful for, but hopefully I can help you guys out in your medical school journeys.
We’re Inspira Advantage. We are actually a globally recognized admissions consulting and test prep firm, with over 16 years of experience.
We specialize in helping students gain admission to top graduate healthcare programs, including medicine, all with a 98% acceptance rate. We believe in starting early, which is why we offer pre-health advising for college freshmen. Our team really does help students build a tailored academic timeline, including course selection, GPA strategy, finding impactful experiences like shadowing, researching, clinical and non-clinical volunteering, extracurriculars, leadership roles, and so on.
What this does is lay a strong foundation to help differentiate applicants and make them leave a lasting impression. In addition, we have tutors who provide personalized, one-on-one test prep for the MCAT, DAT, and the GRE. We begin with diagnostic tests, then we move into custom study plans, interim progress tracking, and then students typically see a score increase of 15 points on the MCAT.
Our 48-hour and then our 60-hour programs even hold score guarantees of 515 on the MCAT, 21 on the DAT, and 320 on the GRE when it’s said and done.
When it’s time to apply, we have something called an all-inclusive application program, which offers unlimited support for the entire application cycle. This is everything from creating a personalized school list and narrative, to perfecting your personal statement and secondaries with unlimited edits, providing interview prep, scholarship guidance, and waitlist strategy. We are very much by our students’ side until they receive their acceptance.
Really, our goal is clear; it’s very simple: It’s to create the most competitive candidates and applications, ensuring our students shine in this competitive admissions landscape.
If you’d like to learn a little bit more about us or you have additional questions, we want to make sure that this group of individuals knows that we do offer personalized consultations via video, phone, or email. No matter where you are in the process, and even after this webinar, if you have those kinds of questions, we want to make sure that we’re there to support you and assist you along this process, because we know it’s not easy to do it alone.
The med school application process is honestly a bit of a beast to go through. A lot of it is administrative, but it has so many different aspects. There are your numbers, and there’s elucidating why you want to be a doctor, which can be hard sometimes, even though you feel it in your core. All of these things take time.
So, looking at the admissions timeline: The admissions timeline is a marathon. It takes over a year initially, and starts on June 1st, all the way up until essentially the White Coat Ceremony. I’ve heard from my mentees of folks getting off of the waitlist as late as the day before White Coat Ceremony, so it really does take 365 days of the year.
With that being said, even though the application process for the medical schools starts on June 1st, the preparation has to start months and months beforehand. That is usually the biggest costly mistake for most applicants. Just like running a marathon, you’re not going to show up on race day expecting to run 26.2 miles. All of these things take months of preparation beforehand. That goes into deciding when you should take the MCAT for the first time. Most people, on average, take the MCAT twice, so maybe you’d have to account for a second MCAT score to come in.
The biggest barrier is respecting the timeline and how much it really takes to even get to the starting line, let alone cross the finish line.
From the applicant’s standpoint, the application has different phases, but for the med schools, they receive all of your application materials all at once. Usually, the first thing that comes is your transcripts—this accrues from the first day you start your undergrad. Maybe you also got some credits from AP classes in high school, so that counts.
Then, the next is usually your MCAT score, and in the background you’re also preparing your volunteering and experiences, which you’ll highlight in your extracurricular section.
After that—the MCAT is done, and you’re preparing your materials to graduate—you’ll have your primary applications, which open on June 1st. After that come secondaries, which are a specific application for each school that you apply to. Then come the interviews.
Luckily, interviews are really the last stage of the application process that you have control over, because after that, the selection committee gets together and makes their decisions based on your application as a whole and your interview experience.
The important thing to realize is that each step really builds on the previous step in the application process, which means that the earlier you strategize and create a good core and base for yourself, the stronger your application will be. Just like baking a cake, the least important part is probably the icing that you put on last, in terms of the structure. The cake itself needs to stand on its own and be delicious, not crumble once you put the icing on.
Anything that feels rushed or unprepared will definitely show through. What we do here at Inspira is build that strong foundation from the beginning.
The MCAT, as you all probably know, is a big hurdle. I mentioned that the average applicant usually takes the MCAT twice, which already attests to how big of a challenge it can be. The MCAT, like any standardized test, is really a measure of how well you can take the test.
No matter how well you do in your undergrad classes, that may not necessarily translate into a good MCAT score. For those who may not be as familiar, the MCAT demands that you come in with fundamental scientific and social science knowledge, but then it presents you with a paragraph of new information. It is your job to synthesize that new information with your existing knowledge to answer the questions.
There are definitely some stand-alone questions you can answer with just your undergrad knowledge, but what really makes the MCAT such a beast is having to synthesize new information on the fly and incorporate it with your previous training. It’s just like when you’re a doctor: When I see my patients, they come in with different symptoms, and ultimately it’ll be your job in the future to synthesize that information, filter out what’s important and what’s not, and incorporate that into the best treatment option.
Quality study time is definitely going to be important—hours of active learning, practicing the exam format by sitting in full-length exams, and targeting your weaknesses. That’s key in optimizing your MCAT score.
The timing of your test date is also critical. Taking the MCAT too early, before you have a good fundamental base of scientific knowledge, is not great. Taking it too far after your classes might also not be great. You need that balance so you peak at the right time.
GPA and MCAT score can open doors, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get an interview or, let alone, an acceptance. GPA and MCAT scores are often used as a filtering mechanism. Unfortunately, we’d love to give every single person a chance, but reviewing 10,000 applicants can be impossible for a small selection committee.
So those numbers are used to figure out whether you pass a certain threshold. Once you do make it above that threshold, they want to see if, based on your application—first your primary application—you’re someone they’d like to meet.
That’s where you can really shine in sharing your experiences. The med school application process might feel like a checklist, but I truly believe every applicant has a different story to tell and a different set of skills and strengths they bring to the table. At this stage, it’s your job to bring that out, and that’s something we help you do at Inspira.
How do you stand out when you and your peers might have similar experiences? The most important thing is depth over quantity. You’ll have about 12 to 15 slots to enter extracurricular activities in your primary application. Sometimes you may feel pressure to fill them all, but what I tell people is not to feel pressured. If you have four rock-solid involvements that you stuck with for years, that usually looks much stronger than a long list of small involvements for just a few hours here and there.
Taking on leadership positions and building relationships that lead to strong letters of recommendation are key. Both of these telegraph your initiative to the admissions committees.
Don’t force yourself to do things you don’t enjoy, just for the sake of listing them. Schools can see through that. Stick to what you like to do and what you’ve spent time on.
Secondaries are specific applications for each school. They’re looking for people who are passionate about the same sorts of patients and communities they serve. A school in a major urban center might cater to a large homeless population, whereas another school may focus on rural or underserved communities in a different way. Tailor your secondaries so that they reflect the school’s specific missions and values.
Beyond the basic metrics of GPA and MCAT, you can show academic excellence and intellectual curiosity through research. You might not love pipetting in a lab, and that’s okay—there are many types of research, including data science or clinical outcomes research. The goal is to build a skill set where you can interpret and analyze medical research findings once you’re a physician.
Your character and commitment to medicine also show in your personal statement and in your letters of recommendation. You want to pick your letter writers wisely. It’s important to ask them directly if they can provide a strong letter. They should know you not just academically, but personally.
The med school application process is rolling. Most applicants who are accepted apply on the very first day the application opens—June 1st. On that day, the site gets so many uploads it can crash. Then people keep refreshing to be the first one to submit once it’s back up. It sounds ridiculous, but that’s the reality we live in.
Also, your letter writers need time. If you’re submitting on June 1st, they need at least a month to write, plus a week or two to troubleshoot.
Recycling or using generic responses can be risky. Yes, you might apply to 35 or more schools, so you’ll be writing a lot of secondaries. Some topics may overlap, but be careful about copy-paste errors. Accidentally referring to “School of Medicine A” when writing to “School of Medicine B” is grounds for automatic rejection.
Again, focus on quality, not quantity.
One or two low grades is not necessarily a red flag if there’s an upward trend. But consistently low performance or unaddressed behavioral issues will stand out negatively.
Your personal statement, along with extracurriculars and letters of recommendation, truly sets you apart.
Think about the experiences you want to share that explain why you want to become a doctor.
Give specific examples and vivid descriptions of what motivated you, rather than just saying, “I want to be a doctor to help people.” Let the reader see, feel, and smell the environment you were in when you realized medicine is for you.
Show your statement to many people—professors, parents, mentors. Different perspectives help ensure your writing resonates with various backgrounds. Admissions committees are diverse, not just physicians.
After the primary and secondary applications come interviews. That’s really your last piece of control in the process.
It’s a balance. You want to present confidently without coming off as arrogant.
Often, they just want to see who you are as a person and whether they would trust you to take care of patients.
There’s the traditional one-on-one interview, and there’s also the Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) style, which can involve panels, stations, ethical scenarios, group activities, or “teach me something” prompts.
You might get asked, “What’s your biggest weakness?” The best approach is to share a real weakness and talk about how you’ve worked to improve it. Don’t leave it on a negative note.
Before the interview phase, double-check everything for mistakes. Often, you’ll prepare your materials in a Word document, then copy-paste into the application portal. Allow time for formatting or technical quirks.
Again, be as early as possible—literally, June 1st, refreshing if the site crashes.
Q: Do you have to get published to count as research?
A: No. You don’t have to be a co-author or anything like that, though it’s definitely a plus if you contribute enough to be a co-author. But just being involved in a research lab, carrying out experiments, or working with data counts as research.
Q: While constructing personal statements, what advice would you give to students struggling to find a topic?
A: Sometimes the best ideas come when you’re doing something else, like working out or doing chores. Start thinking early so the ideas can flow. I tell mentees to keep a little notebook while they’re volunteering or shadowing. Jot down interesting clinical experiences.
Q: If someone is taking a gap year, do you recommend that they use it for growth and hours, trying different extracurricular activities, continuing some sort of education, research, working clinical hours, or a mix?
A: A mix is generally best. Now that you’re not juggling undergrad classes, you can spread out and explore multiple paths. I actually recommend gap years, because that’s the norm now. The average age in med school is around 24, meaning many people took two years off. It can help you better relate to patients as well.
Q: How would you recommend keeping track of everything while preparing applications?
A: Use some form of cloud-based storage to avoid losing drafts if your laptop crashes. Also, create versions of documents with dates in the file names (year-month-day) so you can track them in chronological order. That way, if you need to go back to an older version, it’s easy.
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