Why Is the Medicine Shelf So Hard and What Can You Do to Be Ready?
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...
What Kinds of Questions Are on the MCAT? Types & Sample Questions
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...
What to Focus on In Your Pre-Med Research Position
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...
How Doing Well on Shelf Exams Will Improve Your Step 2 CK Score
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...
Writing A Medical School Personal Statement
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...
Foreign Countries Where the USMLE is Accepted
Did you know that the USMLE is accepted as an equivalent to the national medical exam in a few other countries such as the UAE, Israel, Ireland, and more!
Writing Your Medical School Letter of Intent: a Guide
It’s Spring! The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and you’re finishing up your medical school interviews. You’re in the home stretch! At the end lies your dream medical school. You (hopefully) have many schools to choose from. However, these schools have many applicants to choose from. How do...
Understanding the Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program (SOAP)
The Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program, or SOAP, is the process by which unmatched or partially matched medical students can apply for residency matching spots left unfilled following the NRMP match. SOAPing is the dreaded outcome of the match. I will never forget the grief and anxiety I felt after...
USMLE Step 1 Pass/Fail: Impact on Students
2024 Update: This blog was originally posted on April 19, 2022. In 2024, an additional subheading was added to reevaluate the advice given within the context of the 2024 USMLE Step 1 landscape. One of the hottest topics among medical education learning specialists (MELS) is the behavior, motivation, and...
What Questions Do They Ask in a Residency Interview?
You hit submit on your ERAS application and realize you’re finally a post-ERAS M4 – nothing can hurt you now. That is, until the residency interview invitations start to roll in (sometimes just 24 hours later!). So, what questions do they ask in a residency interview anyway? And how can...