If you are preparing for your Surgery Shelf, the first and most important piece of advice I can share with you is to start early! Surgery is arguably one of the most demanding and time-consuming rotations you will participate in during your clinical year of medical school, so the earlier...

So, what do residents do when they need to switch programs or specialties for personal reasons? Fortunately, systems and businesses exist to help residents make that transition. 

As a board exam tutor, the first meeting I have with almost any new student involves a discussion of their study schedule and resources. During those sessions, I always ask students which resources they’re planning to use to study for their specific board exam. Most of the time, my students...

There are few Shelf exams more difficult than the family medicine shelf. The unique thing about family medicine is that it covers – in some way – nearly every topic that you’ll see in your clinical year. There are components of pediatrics, OB/GYN, psychiatry, internal medicine, and surgery. Of course,...

One of the most asked questions about tackling the MCAT is how to improve your score and reach your target score. Whether you are in the middle of studying and are not achieving the desired progress or just received a suboptimal score and are considering retaking the exam for a...

With internal medicine having the most applicants for residency positions every year (nearly 27,000 from a total of 51,000 applicants in 2021), it makes sense that clerkship students want to excel on their medicine shelf exam. Additionally, many specialties require an internal medicine intern year before starting the field’s core...

The MCAT examination is designed to test your content knowledge in a variety of science subjects as well as your critical reasoning skills. The MCAT is broken down into four sections: General Chemistry/Organic Chemistry/Physics; General Biology/Biochemistry; Psychology/Sociology and CARS (critical analysis and reasoning skills). In this blog post, we will...

Taking a research position to gain research experience is becoming an increasingly important piece of the application package for pre-med students. Along with volunteer experience and shadowing or clinical exposure, it is now one of those factors that are technically optional (i.e., not a hard requirement) but widely recommended and...

At most medical schools, your grades during your first clinical year of training are primarily determined by evaluations from your preceptors, and your performance on a shelf examination (family medicine, internal medicine, surgery, neurology, pediatrics, OB/GYN, and psychiatry). These grades will be a significant component of your residency application, in...

5300 characters. You have 5300 characters, including punctuation and white spaces, to show a medical school that you are more than the sum of your GPA and MCAT score in your personal statement.   This means that your personal statement for Medical School word count will only be around 300-500...