Didn’t Get in This Cycle: A Medical School Reapplicant’s Step-by-Step Game Plan

What went wrong during my medical school application process?

Well, this can be difficult for people because we spent so much time perfecting our application in our own eyes and to us, it was perfect. To others, maybe this wasn’t the case. Or, maybe you just needed more of some of the big aspects of the application compared to other applicants.

Let’s talk about the big parts of your application that you need to be strong on:

• MCAT score
• GPA
• Medical Experience or Patient Care Experience
• Research/Scholarly Activity
• Volunteering
• Leadership
• Personal Statement

MCAT Score

Every medical school has a different MCAT score median for their applicants. In fact, they often break it down as an average on their website, the median on AAMC’s MSAR, and as a range. The key here is that you want to be close to this range. MSAR has an option to check the MCAT range and median of all applicants, but more importantly, the MCAT range and median of all accepted students. The accepted students one is what you need to look at. Why? Well, if a 508 applied to a school as seen on the range of all applicants, but the school only accepted a range from 514-518, then the 508 really had a miniscule chance.

The same goes for you. The general rule was to be either above the median accepted MCAT score or not be below 3-4 points of that mark. This way, if your other aspects of the application are above par, you still have a chance. It happens. I got into a school where I was 5-6 points below their median MCAT. It’s not guaranteed, but exceptions happen. If you are below a 507, I would consider potentially retaking your MCAT depending on what schools you are shooting for. The median MCAT for accepted students is roughly a 512.

GPA

GPA advice is generally the same as above. Be near or not far below the accepted student range/median of your given school. Important here is assessing upward or downward trend. An upward trend, maybe where you had a tough first year but killed it after, is best. A downward trend can be concerning to medical schools that you struggled with the tougher, more advanced classes in your degree. The good news is: This is fixable and there are special programs that you can take part in for this. More on that later! Aim for a 3.70 or better here. You can go slightly lower if you have an upward trend. Best is a 4.0, though.

Medical Experience or Patient Care Experience

All schools expect some form of interaction with patients. Whether this is volunteering at hospitals, working as some sort of healthcare worker with patients like a medical assistant, certified nursing assistant, or other similar ones. The bottom line is that they want you to have seen what the field is like, worked under some doctors, and truly love the patient care aspect of the field.

For many people, this can be their kryptonite. You want at least 100 hours of patient care, in my opinion. More is always better here unless you have 1000+. If you have the GPA and MCAT that medical schools look for, but didn’t get in, think about this.

Research/Scholarly Activity

This is being a research assistant in a lab or engaging in some sort of published activity that advances a field’s knowledge. Part of being a physician is reading the science literature and the new findings in your field to then use for your patients. In order to learn what you are reading and looking at, you have to have spent some time in this setting or at least read lots of publications.

Schools don’t necessarily look at this too hard. I think for M.D. programs, this is just a big way to show them that you like science, are inquisitive, and can do scientific design, etc. Doctors are clinicians first, but you’ll see when you get to medical school that research is still hugely important for residency applications. Just do it and get some hours in. Finding a mentor is a first step and then attending conferences and writing publications is the next step. Aim for a conference or two and 100+ hours into it. Everything else is a bonus in my opinion.

Volunteering

Being a physician is all about serving others for the rest of your life. Think about it. Even though you get paid a lot and you have all these material benefits, the actual work is helping those in need or in distress. With the tough hours, grueling training, thousands of flash cards and practice problems, burn out is real. Medical schools worry that students go into the field for the money and prestige etc and these are the students most likely to burn out. Therefore, service is an indirect way of showing that you seek out opportunities to help and serve others. In combination with your medical field experience, it creates a picture that you are a caring, serving individual that may be wanting to do medicine because it’s like what they do in their volunteer time.

This can be helping in shelters for unhoused populations, feeding people in your community, working with dogs, working with kids, tutoring, mentoring, and many other things. Pick your interest.

You need to have this on your application. It really is important from what I’ve been told and in my application experience. I got asked this on every interview. Aim for 50-100 hours minimum. Some schools are “service-oriented” schools and these require hundreds of hours. It varies by school, so don’t apply to service oriented schools if you don’t have any service hours. If your dream school is a service school, think of some things you can do this year to get more hours.

Leadership

This can be anything where you have a formal position within an organization and you work with a team of people. Physicians are the leaders of the care team and ultimately, the final deciders of a patient’s treatment. Because of this, they want to see some leadership experience in your application. If you had no positions, it would be good to get one with president or vice-president being better than treasurer. Anything is better than nothing, though!

Aim for at least 1 position with at least 50-100 hours minimum.

Personal Statement

This is one of the biggest things you can do if you have everything else. If you are the perfect stats and extra-curricular student that didn’t get in anywhere, you should think about this.

I’ve written on how to create a personal statement before, but I’ll briefly go through it here. You want this statement to scream I LOVE PATIENT CARE and also explain why physician over any other health profession. They get that you like science, but why MD over PHD, NP, MA, PA, CNA, RN, etc?

If you read over your statement and you didn’t make it clear that you want to do patient care forever or you absolutely loved the clinical experiences you had, you may want to rewrite it. The same for career choice. It is so, so important you nail this. It’s rare that a personal statement stands out and makes the big difference. However, it can be what sinks you. Avoid flowery language, references to obscure books or people that aren’t common knowledge, and making grammar/spelling mistakes. An average personal statement is okay, just don’t have a bad one.

What went wrong?

So now that we’ve gone over the big aspects of the application, I want you to think about where you hit the mark and where you don’t. Where do you need more hours? More importantly, do you have zero hours/experience in any of these? Is your GPA/MCAT combo at or very close to the median accepted medical school student?

After thinking about this, I want to talk about what we can do to work on this.

Retaking the MCAT

If you need to retake the MCAT, that is ok! Reddit (r/premed or r/mcat) and Student Doctor Network are full of students going through this. Each of these websites I just mentioned have so many resources and testimonies from people who scored very high on MCAT. For me, the key was Anki and UWorld. It’s different for everyone.

Didn’t use Anki? I write about what it is and how to use it here. I also have plenty of resources for the top used anki decks here.

You want to hit the Anki really hard either the Miledown or JackSparrow deck to build your general knowledge. Without it, you may be guessing on things. It’s like the foundation of the house. For psych/sociology, use the Pankow deck.

Uworld is a question bank resource full of questions that most closely match the real thing besides actual AAMC resources. Use UWorld as a learning tool, not just practice. Go through all your wrong answers and think about why you missed it. Did you know it and misunderstood? Didn’t know it? Etc. Make an anki card or write down a bullet point fact that may have helped know the answer and then go over these regularly. A mistake I made was treating Uworld as a test of my knowledge and not really focusing on learning from it. Once I did, my scores grew.

How to improve your GPA for medical school applications:

You can do this on your own as a DYI or as part of a special couple of programs. The first set of programs are called Special Masters Programs (SMP’s). These are put on by certain universities and the HUGE bonus is they often have a benefit for applying to that university’s medical school. Some guarantee acceptance at the program if you maintain a 4.0. Others may guarantee an interview with the school. It’s great as you increase your GPA AND have an increased chance of an acceptance.

The other program is called a post-baccalaureate program. These are essentially graduate school classes you can take in addition to those from your undergrad and will help bring up your overall GPA. They don;t have the above bonuses, but they are structured and have dedicated admin etc to help you succeed. This contrasts sharply to the do it yourself route.

If you take the do it yourself route, this is the most self ddriven and probably the cheapest way. You can take on more independent classes at your undergraduate university or can retake some classes you didn’t do so hot in. The benfit of redoing, say, organic chemistry where you made a C is that the medical schools will see that you went back and did even better on it. You can improve. The downside is that you are not making progress towards a new degree.

You can do a masters program on your own. These are somewhat supported with admin etc, but its up to you to do what you need. You may not have counselors familiar with this process for medical school as you might at a SMP.

This can take a small amount of time or a lot of time. It really depends on your GPA and how much it needs to go up. The bright side is that you can do other extracurriculars while you do this!

Medical Experience for medical school

If you don’t have enough medical hours with patients, don’t worry! I’ve written about getting your first clinical experience, how to use that to build into your next one, and a little about the different types of jobs premeds can have.

Research and Scholarly activity

If you need to get started on research, no problem there. I wrote about what research is in undergraduate settings here. The first step is to find a mentor. You also should understand the difference between basic science, translational science, and clinical science research. Each of these are different, but all valuable for applications. I explain them all here. After this, you want to focus on going to as many conferences as possible, all of which can be done for free. Publications aren’t necessary, but are huge helps. Talk to your mentor when you find one how to be on authorship for the work you do. If you are already in a lab, try to get onto the writing team! An REU or summer research program can be very significant. Read about my experience and how to get into one here.

Volunteering

Volunteer experiences are always easy to get, you just have to set aside the time for it. Pick an interest you have and just call the place or sign up on their website. Pick a weekend day or an hour a day you can give towards it and try to do it for the entire year. I know time can be short, but you need to make a long term commitment to this. Short term stints may appear as if you are trying to make a showing or look good, not that you care. So keep that in mind! I wrote about how to get into a volunteer medical clinic here and it’s a great way to combine medical experience requirements with volunteering time.

Leadership

This one is pretty straight forward. Pick any organization you are already a part of or enjoy and apply for a position. Even better, find one that you enjoy and it’ll be so much easier to succeed. Additionally, if you have any friends in leadership, consider having them mentor you or train you for their job for your next year.

Leadership in a volunteer organization or at a medical treatment center or something similar kills two birds with one stone. Find a position and accomplish something during your year in the position. You don’t want to just sit in a position and get nothing done, then they may think it was for show!

Personal Statement

The best thing I did was have family and friends read my statement. There are things that they may catch that you would’ve never seen. It’s not that you aren’t smart or lack grammar knowledge, it’s that everyone goes blind to some of their writing. Like going noseblind to a room with a smell. You think a sentence makes sense or means one thing, but when a random or different person reads it, it has a whole different meaning. It happened to me and my friends. It happens to everyone!

Give it to as many people as you can and have them critique it. Assess if it screams that you love patient care and an M.D. is what you want over all other things. Not just that, but you understand what makes an MD differ from an NP etc. Counter that “we get why medicine, but why physician not the others” argument.

Some websites have review services you can utilize, but I don’t think its necessary. Your premed advisor may be helpful here as they read many every year. Have current medical students read it too. Take the conglomerate of their notes and critiques and then make changes that will address these. Then, rinse and repeat.

I watched so many Youtube videos of people reading their personal statements and talking about what they wrote about. I read reddit for what people wrote about. You want to have an exact idea of what language and points need to be made. Hopefully this helps!

Overall, look at your next 12 months. You have these guaranteed happenings:

• New AMCAS application end of May
• Whatever extracurriculars you are deficient in
• Potential classes
• Secondary essays and interviews

Go ahead and send your old AMCAS application to trusted mentors and friends to have them critique it. From there, write new versions over the first 2-3 months of your year. You need to start early and it will pay off! The bulk of your schedule will be around your extracurriculars. My best advice is make sure to kill multiple birds (major parts of the application) with one stone. Mix in classes and editing essays throughout your week and then when May comes, begin the new AMCAS.

Notes:

• Keep up with whether you must redo casper, Preview, or Duet.
• Many schools require re-applicant essays. Check online which schools require them and have an essay pre-written for this question.
• Interviews can also lead to rejections. Do some mock interviews this year and get feedback from the interviewer. Faculty and mentors will be happy to!