Medical School Admissions

Med School Admissions are probably the #1 "I'm thinking ahead about my schooling" conversation I have with my high school students. I don't get quite so many thinking ahead to law school or even ahead to their MBA -- and that's probably good. Even if a student doesn't end up changing their mind between high school and college about being a doctor or a lawyer or a whatever else, the answer across the board to the question "What can I do to get into a good ________ school after college?" must always begin with "Do well in college."

When people ask, "How can I maximize my chances of getting into a good medical school?" or "How can I maximize my chances of becoming a doctor?" (two different if overlapping questions) I answer from over a decade of helping students get into medical school and with a solid track record of their actually becoming doctors.

What high school students always want to know is what to major in -- or, rather, they assume that bio is the right answer and are surprised to learn otherwise. If I had a nickel for every student who assumed they could only get into medical school studying bio, I'd need a really big coin jar. With the understanding that pre-meds still have to take their pre-reqs for medical school, you can major in anything you want. This table is a useful reference. While the vast majority of students who apply to medical school did study the biological sciences, you'll see that students who studied the humanities or social sciences often match or exceed their numbers.

If students don't gain any major advantage by studying bio (except in the one section of the MCAT, which is offset elsewhere), why do it? After all, it makes you more identical to other med school applicants, as the table linked above shows -- having studied something else would make you more interesting and distinguishable.

Pretty much the only reason to study bio ahead of going to medical school, beyond the pre-reqs, is that you really love bio. If that's you, do it. But if something else makes you happy, don't ignore that.

Because another big thing that matters, along with MCAT scores, is your GPA. I genuinely believe students receive better grades when they study things that make them happy, particularly across the four+ year span of college.

It's also no accident, though, that the MCAT now includes sociology and psychology, along with the more traditional biological and physical sciences. The American Association of Medical Colleges, who administers the test, was hearing back from its member institutions that its students needed more breadth in their education, so they began including the psych-soc section of the MCAT for the purposes of mandating/incentivizing broader study. As one doctor I know put it at the time, "They want more people who are actual human beings."

In my experience teaching the MCAT, too, I note that there's a different perspective/skillset that students from other majors bring to the table. I hate to put it this way, but more often than not, the biggest difference I notice between biological sciences majors and, say, social science/humanities majors is that the latter can read. To be clear, the bio majors are literate -- not saying they aren't. I'm saying that sociology majors (for instance), I found infinitely more well practiced at effectively consuming large chunks of text, particularly on a screen, and processing them in a meaningful and organized fashion. And on the MCAT, that matters.

A successful medical school application will include good rec letters and a good essay (subjects for a different day), but the three main things a student needs to focus on in college are their GPA, their MCAT score, and their experience.

Experience means volunteering, shadowing, interning, or otherwise laying hands or eyeballs on the medical field and its practices. In their med school application essays, students need to convey that nothing other than medicine will do for them, and that's a much easier claim to make if you've actually experienced the medical field.

So to my med-school-intending seniors, I say this: Study what makes you happy, study it well, take your pre-reqs, prep properly for your MCAT, and seek out experiences at local hospitals or clinics that show your love for medicine -- regardless of what your major is. And when the nervous patient you need to calm studied Art History, just like you, it'll all feel worth it. ;)