What is the Hardest Part of Each Year of Medical School?
What is the hardest part of medical school in each of the years? I wish there was a simple answer to this question. I get it every time I meet with pre-med students. Any answer I give will lack the external validity required to be generalized to every school...
Hindsight Advice for Building a Strong Med School Application
Ready for the understatement of the year? Medical school is tough to get into. The Med School application process is no joke. Look, the unfortunate truth is that getting good grades and smoking the MCAT won’t automatically get you one of those coveted medical school acceptances. It’ll help, but...
Becoming a Holistic Applicant: How Collecting “Unfair Advantages” Can Make You a Better Medical School Applicant
You may have heard the term “holistic” being thrown around in the context of medical school admissions, usually in the context of becoming a better, more attractive medical school applicant. I recently participated in a pre-med interest group Q&A where one student remarked: “We keep hearing that we should be...
5 Tried and True Techniques to Prepare for the MCAT
Are you stressing about the MCAT? It’s a beast of a test that covers a veritable mountain of material. You know you need to get started studying…but what is the path to your best score possible? What are the best ways to prepare for the MCAT? If you’re done reading...
Add Value as a Medical Student During Clinical Rotations
I must confess that I did not enjoy my clinical rotations. Well… at least not in the very beginning. This was largely due to my feeling that I was not adding value to my clinical rotation team as a medical student. You see, I had grown accustomed to the objective...
Make Your Medical School Group Study Suck Less
I can’t tell you the number of times during medical school I had to feign diarrhea to get out of a terrible group study session. You have to be intentional in your approach to group study or else you run the risk of wasting a lot of valuable time. The...
Intelligent Questions to Ask in Your Residency Interview
A highlight of my intern year was participating in applicant residency interviews. I won a prize for having the highest interviews-to-match ratio. Feels like a weird flex, I know, but bear with me. I had the task of rating applicants and trying to get a sense of their personality, work...
Answering “Tell Me About Yourself” in Residency Interviews
“Tell me about yourself." A fair request, no doubt. Certainly makes you wonder why you spent countless hours writing and rewriting that blasted personal statement. The truth is that the "Tell me about yourself" question in residency interviews is meant to be more of an ice-breaker and not a deep...
Step 2 CK Minimum Score is Increasing
As of July 1, 2022 the minimum score required to pass the USMLE Step 2 CK exam has increased by 5 points from 209 to 214. Anytime a USMLE exam, including USMLE Step 2 CK, receives a minimum score increase it sends a wave of anxiety out into the medical...