Are You Doing Everything You Should Be as a Premed?

how do you know if you're ready to apply to medical school or how do you know if you're on the right track what's up guys dr. Ryan gray with another episode of pre-med TV and today I want to walk you through the process my thought process when it comes to talking to students wondering what their chances are of applying to medical school this year or wondering if they are on the right track now a lot of students reach out to me through DM on Instagram on Twitter Facebook reddit sdn so many places and they asked me this question am I on the right track am i doing everything right now I'm gonna walk you through my thought process to really help you go through the same thought process and ask yourself am i doing things right am I on the right track when am I going to be ready to apply to medical school is it this year is it next year is it never let's talk about that right now don't forget to subscribe and hit that bell to be notified of more great videos coming out here on pre med TV I'm excited to really talk about what we're gonna talk about today but I'm more excited to talk about a lot of the thought process that goes into what I do I'm packaging all of that and we're creating mapped if you go to map comm that's ma PPD the e was too expensive ahem a PPD comm and sign up to be notified when that comes out Maps comm is a new technology platform that I'm hoping will completely level the playing field for every student so let's go ahead and jump into the conversations that I have with students the first place I start is a general interview question right tell me about yourself I want to know who they are and what is motivating them just in their life not necessarily medicine yes I'm not asking that question yeah I want to know just who they are right off the bat and that conversation will give me a lot of information about what drives them what motivates them what makes them tick it's the same reason why medical school admissions committee members and interviewers ask that question on your interview day they want to see what comes to the top of your minds when you were discussing yourself so I just start with a basic thing so as you're doing this exercise at home you can just say like right out on a piece of paper or type on the computer just a little bit about yourself and see where that leads you is it leading you down I'm this major on this year I do this research I've done these extracurriculars or does it lead you more down the path of just who you are and what you enjoy doing in your life that's the the path that I like more because it leads to more conversations so that's just a general place that I start next I really want to find out what their motivations are for going to medical school now sometimes I've read a personal statement at this point sometimes I don't have anything I want to hear out of their own mouth why they want to be a physician and this is really important because when you've been doing this long enough you start to pick up clues as to whether or not this is the path that they are choosing for themselves or that they are choosing for someone else now not that long ago I had a conversation with a student a young female and she after a long discussion reading her personal statement there was just something missing in her personal statement something missing just talking to her and so we kept on talking and the end of the conversation led to her being in tears really just understanding that she didn't want to be a physician this was not her dream and I asked her I said if you could be anything right now what would it be and she said a vet so I said have fun go be a vet that's amazing I'm glad you figured that out so you stopped wasting money down this pre-med path and you can go down the vet path unfortunately still very expensive path but still was her dream those were her passions not medicine she was following medicine for someone else so you have to really make sure that you're doing this for yourself not for money not for fame not for stature there are so many other things in life that you can be doing for all of those things outside of medicine where you don't have to go into a ton of debt to become one a ton of heartache to become one and a ton of hard work to become one so make sure you're doing this for the right reasons now obviously one of the two biggest factors in determining whether or not you're ready to apply to medical school is the MCAT the MCAT and your GPA are two huge factors to determine if you are ready to apply to medical school now a lot of you would say well GPA and MCAT will tell you if you can be a doctor and that's completely false your GPA and MCAT right now as I'm talking to you what your GPA and MCAT are right now can't dictate if you can become a doctor where you can go from here is what will dictate if and when you can go to medical school so I have the conversation about the MCAT have you taken it yet when are you planning on taking it if you're retaking it what went wrong the first time what are you doing differently now and I have really hard conversations with students that if they say look I I took it and I really wasn't prepared I didn't really know what was involved with the MCAT I just took it I didn't take any practice tests I just read a book I was a good student so I thought I would do well I ended up with a four and I mean so I say okay now you know that the MCAT is different what are you doing now to make sure you don't repeat the prior mistakes how many practice tests are you planning on taking are you reading a difference at a book so you're reading the same set of books are you planning on doing a course those things don't dictate your success right it's the planning and execution of that plan that dictate your success whether you're planning on self studying in a group using a course whatever that may be but I want to hear the plan from the student and if a student says well you know what I I was gonna start studying right now cuz I'm planning on taking it in in March but I just haven't started yet because of this and that and this and that and I'm also taking classes and I'm worried about my grades then I say okay you don't have to take the MCAT right now you can delay the MCAT yes it'll push off your application but it may be a better option for you and so we go through those options those questions that line of thinking where are you now with the MCAT when are you planning on taking it have you taken it before what's different this time those are really important questions for yourself if you've taken it what are you doing differently prove you wrong right the the first test that you took if you're a retailer the first test that you took prove yourself wrong that that is not who you are that you are better than that score MCAT and GPA are very important for medical school they have to be up to a certain level to get in right they have to be up to a certain level to be reviewed they have to be up to a certain level to be invited for an interview I always talk about you have to be good enough and that's what I mean you have to be good enough to get to that next level so we have that discussion about the MCAT and sometimes those are hard discussions too people aren't willing to put it in the time people can't put it in the time so many things that can go wrong with the MCAT do and people are potentially considering pushing back the MCAT or saying you know what the MCAT is not my deal I don't want to take it I'm gonna go different path and I was actually very similar to that I took the MCAT once I applied I didn't get in that first time and I said to myself if I don't give in this second time I don't know if I'm gonna be a doctor because MCAT I hated it and luckily I got in the second time so I didn't have to to worry about that so the next big thing obviously is the GPA your GPA and MCAT are used to determine your academic capabilities of getting through Medical School of passing your boards the first time you take them of doing well in your residency tests that you're going to have to take yes the tests don't stop once you graduate Medical School unfortunately so the medical schools need to make sure that you are academically capable you are quote-unquote smart enough to to get through Medical School that is the point of GPA and MCAT screening and cut-offs and whatever else you want to call it the medical schools need to make sure that you are going to get through Medical School that's the whole point of medical school to get you through to become a physician and so we talked about GPA and they'll say well I have a 3.2 I say okay well I don't know what that means is it a 4.0 4.0 2.0 3.5 whatever that math works out to be I don't know I have the students go to what's my GPA com it's a calculator for free on my website again that's what's my GPA comm and they fill it out and we're excited mapped will have a fancier calculator it'll have a lot of built-in bells and whistles that'll make tracking your grades and courses in GPA so much better and it will also give you some of this feedback built in to the software again that's mapped comm without the e so you have them go to what's my GPA comm they send me the screenshots or the actual website itself so I can see their trends if their student who has struggled like guests on my podcast I chat on my podcast episode 230 of the pre-med years if you go to pre-med years comm / 2 3 0 chatez was a student at BYU for undergrad he didn't do very well he was a postback student at NY Terre at BYU he didn't do very well he finally realized why he wasn't doing well and it wasn't because he wasn't destined to be a physician he's in medical school right now earning all kinds of awards and scholarships because he's awesome he didn't do well in Grad because he was supporting a family he didn't do well in post bacc because he was supporting his family he was working and trying to be a student it wasn't until he had the hard conversations with his family and with his wife that he realized that he needed to step away from making money to focus on being a student his family went on different social services to be able to live to sustain their their family and he proved that he was a good student he just needed the time to dedicate to being a student now a lot of you are lucky your you're younger you don't have families you don't have any obligations maybe you're getting some support from your family whatever your situation may be whether you're 4.0 student or 2.0 student the student really at the end of the day needs to prove that they can be a good student and Chad was able to do that finally in an SMP where he was able to take out loans pay for the master's program and not worry about working and supporting his family at the same time and because of his success in the SMP and his his work on the MCAT oh did I forget to tell you he was also rejected from Caribbean medical schools which usually never happens but yeah he was rejected from the Caribbean medical schools but ultimately he was accepted I believe to to do schools and do schools because they are usually very forgiving about past mistakes and past performance and they looked at his most recent stuff and said hey like you are the type of person we want and as I mentioned he's doing amazing in school he's winning awards winning scholarships I see his picture all the time on social media celebrating something new that is happening to him his prior performance didn't dictate whether or not he was going to be a good medical school his prior performance did not dictate whether or not he was going to be a good physician whether or not he was going to be a good medical student and that's why I completely disagree when an advisor will tell a student like Chad to not go to medical school that they can't go to medical he just needed the time and space to figure it out and prove that he would be a good student he wanted to be a physician let him prove it another students atone yay whoo I had on the podcast not that long ago episode 370 of the pre-med years almost the exact same as Chad was working and supporting herself through all of her schooling could never prove that she was a good student she had so many other obligations and it wasn't until she did a master's where she had loans to pay for school and to help support her and put a roof over her head this she was able to prove that she is a good student and now she's a medical student at an MD school I believe in Connecticut I believe so episode 370 go check it out just really I go down this path of ok where are you are you struggling with your GPA do you have a negative trend are you all over the place have you had some missteps have you had some life events that have screwed things up where are we now I can't answer whether or not you can get in a medical school especially if you're starting off on the wrong foot but where can we get to if this is what you really want this is the work that you're going to have to put in and those are the conversations that I have with students I then work through the other basics right what are your extracurriculars do you have clinical experience do you have shadowing do you have research do you have any volunteering and remember a lot of a lot of students get confused with clinical experience clinical experience can be paid or volunteering it doesn't have to be volunteering clinical it can be anything so if you're an EMT if you're a nurse that's great there are some schools that still like volunteering kind of separately like habitat or the soup kitchen stuff like that non-medical non-clinical volunteering but we'll go down that list what does that look like not only in total hours but in recency as well so as you're evaluating yourself right we've evaluated just kind of who you are we've evaluated your MCAT score your plans to get a good MCAT score we've evaluated your GPA now let's look at your extracurricular so write down shadowing write down clinical experience write down and those are separate write shadowing is not clinical experience write down research write down volunteering write down leadership those are all things that you should be thinking about when it comes to making yourself not only well-rounded as an individual but really painting a picture of who you are when it comes to applying the medical school I don't want you to think of these as checkboxes I don't care what you're doing to fulfill some of those categories I just care that you're doing something that you enjoy that you're passionate about that you're following because you want to do it not because you're trying to check off a box right if you're proving trying to prove to yourself and prove to medical schools that you want to be a physician something would tell me that you would put yourself around physicians because hey I want to be a doctor I love the hospital I love that environment I love being in the clinic whatever that may be and that was a big thing missing from my application was really a lot of that experience when I was in school a long time ago I really didn't understand those differences I had a bad pre-med advisor who told me not to apply to medical school for other reasons outside of grades and an MCAT score but I so so I was navigating this process myself and I didn't understand the importance of clinical experience the importance of shadowing I just like many of you said hey I've always wanted to be a doctor I'm going to be an amazing doctor because I'm awesome so you should accept me that's what a lot of applications to medical school look like and ultimately at the end of the day you need to prove to yourself you need to prove to the medical schools that this is what you want and you do that through your activity list you can show a lot about who you are in your activities telling those stories we talked about in a recent video about how to write those extracurriculars but you can really focus on who you are painting that picture so let's start with clinical experience have you put yourself around patients now there are lots of questions what is clinical experience is a pharmacy tech clinical experience is this clinical experience is that clinical and at the end of the day a million of you are gonna ask and and ultimately at the end of the day the answer is what did you do I can't tell you if it's clinical experience or not just based on the title what did you do and how did it impact you so if you were around patients if you were interacting them in something more than an administrative way like a student who tried to say that registering patients in the emergency room was clinical experience I said no that's more like front desk experience in a clinic that's admin that's not clinical experience it's great experience but it's not clinical so you have to ask yourself what am i doing am i interacting with patients in a more than administrative way and maybe a little bit more clinical way doesn't mean you're the one suturing you're the one putting on a cast it doesn't have to be that side of it a long time ago I think it was at John Hopkins addcom member said if you're close enough to smell the patient that's clinical experience right and there's always some caveats to that same thing with shadowing what are you doing with shadowing both clinical experiences shadowing are important clinical experience more than shadowing is important because you are actually doing more through clinical experience than shadowing historically kind of classically shadowing is a very passive experience so I want you to be more active it doesn't mean you check off a box and you get your 50 hours of shadowing and call it good I was just reviewing an application recently and a student said I'm really concerned about my 50 hours of shadowing that's all I have especially with Kovac going on I can't get any more I said well 50 hours is probably fine and then I find out that the 50 hours was four years ago and then I'm like oh maybe that's that's a little bit more of a red flag really ultimately there's nothing to do about it right now because of co-head and everything else so let's apply and hope that schools are okay with that recency and consistency are very important when showing that this is what you want to do now it doesn't mean you're consistent in doing the same thing right if you're an EMT and you really hate being an MT you did it just to check off that box you're like I can't stand this alright go and find something else to do I'm not telling you that you have to be stuck in something that you don't like doing but find something else hopefully clinically related or shadowing or whatever and that doesn't mean 20 hours a week it means five hours a month right that's consistent and hopefully recent as you do it over a long period of time now obviously with COBIT and everything else people are going to have gaps in their experiences there's no issue with that schools obviously understand that that is happening and that the applications this year next year for a few years are gonna look a little weird with this gap in the middle don't worry about that but ultimately what I don't want you to do and I was talking to some students at a conference a couple of years ago and they said oh dr. gray we have this plan where we're gonna bang through our shadowing this summer we're gonna get like a hundred hours of shadowing and then move on so that we can then focus on the next thing right and they're treating it like a checklist and the medical schools can see that the reviewers can see that and they'll go this student may be a great student but is treating this whole process like a checklist and I am concerned that they don't know what they're getting themselves into other than checking off a bunch of boxes and those types of students may have a hard time getting in a Medical School and you'll see it when you look at the WMC data they're great students stat-wise who aren't getting into medical school and i guarantee you a lot of those students likely are doing checklists I talked to a student 3.9 GPA 519 MCAT score no interview invites nothing her personal statement read completely boring she had no idea what being a doctor was like she had no shadowing no clinical experience she wasn't invited for an interview I'm telling you it is more than stats so we go through this process right shadowing clinical experience not just total hours but recency and consistency any research if they don't have research great not a huge problem there are so many schools out there that will accept you without research they just want to see your curiosity level see where you are inquisitive in your nature and there are plenty of other opportunities to show that if you don't have research if you want to try research great go try it if you don't like it you don't have to do it I did a little bit in college I liked what I was doing I tried some other research that I didn't like doing I stopped that but I ultimately liked what I ended up doing for a little bit of time we talk about other volunteering right are you are you doing going to the soup kitchen are you going to habitat on weekends what are you doing for other volunteering so we go through all of that and I really use all of that and I want to make a picture at some point really showing that you have to have all of these key components of being a really good medical student for everything to work it shows that you're well-rounded it shows that you know what you're getting yourself into it shows that you've exposed yourself and that you like everything that you're getting yourself into it shows you're good human being willing to sacrifice some weekends to go build some homes for people in need those are all very good traits right especially right now you see it we're in the middle of this pandemic and doctors are being called to volunteer their time to go to these epicenters and work to volunteer doctors are getting their pay cuts doctors are being furloughed doctors are being fired and and New York City is saying hey come volunteer in our city we need you doctors are very historically treated as very selfless people they are expected to give a lot of themselves now I don't agree with all of that kind of thinking but a lot of it I do agree with and it's a very trying career that requires a lot of sacrifice and so medical schools want to see that you're willing to make that sacrifice not only for the future but also for medical school and residency they want to make sure that you're going to sacrifice your Friday night out with your Bros so that you can go and study and hopefully do well on your tests and then I round out the conversation really just with a general idea of what they're hoping to accomplish where do they want to go are they a 3.0 student with a 502 MCAT score and they're like I want to go to Harvard I want to go to Duke I want to go to Yale and I whoa whoa whoa whoa right if you really want to go to those schools great but let's have a more honest and serious conversation right those are amazing medical schools that are competitive for everyone they're looking for really top-tier people top tier students what is in your application that makes you think they will want you and so we work through it and maybe there is something in their application where I say okay your stats are lower but they may really want you so let's let's give it a shot but we really work through where they state residents are they applying to out-of-state schools are they public are they private so working through that school isn't getting an idea of what is an honest school list versus what is kind of out there and we talk about do I say are you really specific on your preference and location if you're more location specific then let's look at all the schools MD and do if you're very degree specific which I don't think most students should be but if you're like I I only want to be an MD that's all I want I don't want to be a do I'm great no judgment I don't agree with it but I don't judge you for that and and I talked about why they they want to only be an MD and most of the times because they they don't know anything about dioz but that's that's education that can come elsewhere so we talked about that do a lot of students are only applying do right now because the the do kind of world and philosophy and everything else is kind of going up and so a lot of students are thinking about that as well so we go through that whole process and that's ultimately my process when I talk to a student and really trying to understand where they are at in the process and we look through it and it's very similar to how a medical school will look at your application medical schools a lot of times we'll use a rubric and say okay GPA where are they they get this number of points for their GPA MCAT score okay they get this number of points for an MCAT score extracurriculars diversity of extracurriculars total number of hours recency of hours they get this number of points for their extracurriculars what does their personal statement say they get this number of points right it's a whole process that application or admissions committee rather used to look at your application to determine whether or not they want to invite you for an interview hopefully that was helpful again a lot of what I just discussed is what I do one-on-one with students and I don't like doing one-on-one I love doing one-on-one but I don't like doing one-on-one for a lot of reasons and that's why we're making mapped and and the software you will be able to go in and track all of your hours track your grades track your MCAT scores enter in a ton of stuff and the software will eventually get to a point where it can give you some feedback through the software so you don't have to pay a high price for consultants or an adviser like me or you don't have to go to your advisor your school if you don't like them and that's the first place I recommend you go is to the your school advisor but if you've had bad interactions if they they tell you to have a plan B and go and go do something else cuz you'll never get into medical school because you got that C an org or whatever it may be right mapped comm go sign up to be notified of everything we're doing look so excited for everything we're working on mapped and I hope you come along with us for that journey I hope you have a great week we'll see you next time here on pre-med TV

Channel: Medical School HQ

Views: 19,211

Keywords: premed, pre-med, pre med, med school, medical school, applying to med school, applying to medical school, premed advice, premed tips, premed 101, premed what to do, premed requirements, med school admissions, med school requirements, medical school requirements, how to be premed, ready to apply to med school, med school ready to apply, admissions, med school application, mappd, medical school headquarters, ryan gray, meded media, premed app, premed advisor, premed advising

Id: ThKp_Nsl9Pc

Length: 27min 42sec (1662 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020