Khaliq M.

During college, Khaliq was named to the Dean’s List and received the Illinois Institute of Technology Stem Merit Scholarship and Mathematics Scholarship. While in college, he founded the university's first American Cancer Society chapter and served as Treasurer of its American Medical Student Association chapter. He also spent nearly two years as a research intern at Northwestern's Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center, studying how metformin protects the lungs in acute lung injury. Khaliq’s clinical background includes work as a medical assistant in neurology and as a medical scribe in otolaryngology. He also co-founded BRIDGE, a state-certified health screening initiative that serves mosques across Chicagoland.

Now at the Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine, Khaliq is a Barbato Scholar and Health Professions Scholar. He is also continuing his clinical outcomes research in two places: with Loyola's Department of Otolaryngology–Head and Neck Surgery, and at Northwestern's Comprehensive Transplant Center, where he is a visiting predoctoral fellow studying kidney transplantation.

Khaliq's expertise in CARS stems from years of competitive Lincoln-Douglas debate, where he learned to break down dense arguments, identify hidden assumptions, and reason through unfamiliar material under time pressure. He later judged high school debate competitions, including the Illinois High School Association (IHSA) State Debate Tournament, and has spoken on MCAT preparation and CARS strategy at panels hosted by the University of Illinois Chicago through the Pulse Pathways and Mentorship Student Group. 

Khaliq starts every tutoring relationship with a diagnostic process, using practice exams and regular check-ins to identify each student's content gaps and strategic weaknesses before building a study plan tailored to their goals and timeline. He has taught content-focused crash courses in biology and physics and is comfortable with a wide range of test prep curricula. He believes a strong MCAT performance comes from learning how to think through a passage, not from memorizing tricks, and he aims to help students become confident, independent test-takers who understand why an answer is right. Khaliq's passion for tutoring stems from his own path into medicine. He knows how much the MCAT can feel like a gatekeeper, and he remembers how much the right guidance meant to him. He finds real joy in watching a student's score climb and their confidence grow along with it.