How Premeds can get into Med School in 2023 (Better Than Reddit)
The Level 1 Gamer has no ambition in his life. He's fine with living in his mom's basement, smoking weed and working as a radio shack cashier for the rest of his life. He feels he should be doing something more but he's never able to. He numbs himself with weed and gaming. He tells himself the Level 100 gamer is a loser but secretly wants to be him.
The Level 100 Gamer is an incredibly ambitious man. He knows he will accomplish great things in his life. He wants to be successful, make money and change the lives of his community. He trusts himself to do the work necessary to succeed at whatever he tries. And some of these gamers decide to become doctors.
I got into multiple US MD schools my senior year of college and interviewed premeds as a 4th year med student.
Wanna know the honest, unfiltered truth of why I went to med school as a 22 year old college student?
I thought the money and status would help me get girls and respect. That’s it. Obviously other things mattered to me too, like connecting with people at their most vulnerable, learning a rare skillset, helping people feel mentally better (this was huge for me). I'm naturally empathetic and warm, but also analytical and scientific - a combination well suited for medicine. But that's my deep, dark, selfish reason. I was good at science, could work when the other premeds messed around, and I get the job done. I fantasized about the exact message I'd post on my Facebook status after I got accepted, or about how the swipes would pour in on Tinder after putting a white coat photo. Look at any "medfluencer" on Ig and you'll see how much they're about themselves (we all are, we just pretend we're not). No doctor or health care professional will ever admit this to you. And its ok. Our dark selfish reasons are why we do things in our core, and evolutionarily helped us survive.
Now I can use the psychiatric skill I’ve developed to give back to you, my boys. But I don’t delude myself. I still have the same dark impulses. I just choose to channel them for good.
Btw, being a doctor doesn't do shit for women or respect from people our age. So if that's your only reason I'd probably stop now. You still gotta be hot and cool for those things - but that's a separate post.
If you're reading this, you're a young man who wants to be successful.
You might be brown like me. Your parents may have encouraged you to do it (mine never pushed me into medicine thankfully). You're good at science. You want a high-paying stable income. You may have had your own medical or life experiences (I did). You may not have a strong burning reason (I didn’t). You may even want to become a psychiatrist (I did).
I'm not here to tell you whether you should or shouldn't go to med school (that's another post). I'm here to tell you how to get it done.
I prepared for med school my first day of college. I knew getting excellent grades was non-negotiable. I definitely socialized and partied freshman year cause I wanted that college experience. But I also studied late in the night when my roommates had fallen asleep or Sunday afternoons when everyone was hanging out on the Green. I kept an eye out for opportunities to get involved in. By the end of freshman year, I joined a fraternity, research honors program, habitat for humanity club, and public health project.
Prepare from day 1 bro so you structure your journey for maximum efficiency. I knew too many people who decided late in college or after college. They wasted years of their life doing something else before getting into med school. Remember, every year you're not on the journey you give up a future year of attending salary ($200k+).
Now we’ll discuss everything you need to get in:
Before applying
GPA:
I finished college with a 3.78 GPA. A strong GPA is essential, especially for an MD school. I bet its even more competitive nowadays. This proves to med schools you're likely to handle its rigor. But what's funny is, I remember it feeling like so much work to achieve this. All the late nights in the library, the time away from our friends partying or gaming, the THOUSANDS of hours sitting in class and studying. It felt like a really big deal to achieve that. But then from the other side as a med school interviewer… it's literally a checkbox. Does the applicant pass the threshold or not? That's it. While that can be disheartening, it's actually a good thing. It means that you can prioritize other experiences to make you a better overall candidate.
Note: There's obviously a big difference between a 3.4 and 3.9. But 3.85 vs 3.95: not really.
Getting those grades
Major:
I was a Biology major with Chemistry minor. Literally nothing special for a med school applicant. Just a check box from the interviewer’s perspective. Also getting “honors” doesn’t mean anything from our perspective because its subjective school to school. If you want to pursue an interesting major, go for it. It could be something interesting to talk with ADCOM’s about. For example, one girl in my med school class was an art major, and she made medical anatomy illustrations. Another guy was a business major and wanted to develop hospital and health care systems. You'll just have to creatively explain how it ties to your interest in medicine.
People have asked me what classes they should take. Here's the ones I took
Volunteering:
I volunteered a Saturday at 7 am every month for Habitat for Humanity to help build houses for the community. While this was for my med school application, it was also a lot of fun. We literally got to make houses with power tools. One time I almost slipped off the roof when it was raining (I could’ve died!). But I always had friends from Habitat to do it with, my fraternity brothers often joined - honestly no regrets about this.
But no one in my med school interviews cared about my Habitat experience.
Always building
What they DID care about, was my global health volunteering. I took a public health class a few classmates and I did a project with a local homeless advocacy about how using to a housing first model (giving homeless populations homes first and THEN health care) and identifying the most at-need people (through a Vulnerability Index) resulted in less costs for the system and better health outcomes for the population. It was a year long project, and we presented our findings both to community organizations and in a poster presentation on Research Day and got 2nd place. Now THAT'S something the admissions committee cared about.
ADCOM’s want to see evidence of us helping the less fortunate to show we care. We can do that, AND be strategic of how we do it so it helps us. Why do you think every billionaire has a press conference whenever they donate something big? As premeds we have limited time, so let’s choose volunteer work where we can have a MEASURABLE impact.
Global Health Project
Now this ADCOM’s cared about.
Leadership:
Here’s a story that every single interviewer loved. My senior year I was the Scholarship Chairman for our fraternity chapter (in charge of boosting our chapter GPA). I implemented a weekly study hours system for all of our brothers who had below a 3.0 GPA. We had brothers with above a 3.5 hold supervised study sessions which promoted a “we’re in this together” environment. And we also publicly recognized the brothers who showed up to the most study hours in our weekly chapter meeting. The system worked incredibly well, and we went from 5/6 highest GPA on campus to 2nd.
BUT, if the guys missed study hours, there would be a social sanction - they couldn’t go to the next party or mixer we had. Well, one of my best friends with a 2.5 GPA had missed repeated study hours sessions. So I had to tell him he wasn't allowed to come to our formal (our biggest event) that semester. He got very upset and didn't talk to me for some time. His girlfriend got upset and messaged me a bunch of times asking me to reconsider. I was very tempted to let it slide. But something in the back of my mind knew that if I did, I'd lose all respect from everyone else.
The admissions committee loved that story. I firmly believe passionately sharing how life-changing my fraternity experience was made the difference in me getting in. I was able to show with my leadership our chapter had substantial measurable improvement in our grades. I shared how my interventions changed our chapter culture and made studying fun for guys who never cared about their grades. I shared personal experiences of how I became more social and confident, which directly translates over to patient care.
Joining a fraternity was the best decision of my college life.
With leadership, name positions are meaningless. What we need to show brother, is how the experience helped us serve our community, make an impact, and how it humbled us to grow. That’s because ADCOM’s are looking for doctors who can lead health care teams and make change in medicine.
Research:
The idea of spending all day in a biology lab was what I was most dreading most in my med school journey. Being a pipetting monkey, ugh. But one day in my biology class, my professor announced a new researcher was coming to campus. And this researcher… he worked with lizards doing evolutionary ecology research. I was intrigued. I looked him up, emailed him, he agreed to take me on, and the rest was history. I ended up doing a field study on remote FL islands looking at lizard offspring survival based on inherited traits of their mothers. We actually camped out in the islands for days as part of the research! And by end I got my name put in a paper the lab published. Admissions committees found this super interesting to talk about. And since I was the first undergrad student in his lab, you can bet my letter of recommendation was solid.
In contrast, I had a friend in my year who we always got lunch with every week. But then sometime in our sophomore year, he stopped showing up. Turns out, he worked for this organic chemistry professor who was notorious for pimping students out. My friend literally would slave 40 hours a week unpaid, class grade only, for his lab. The professor was an Indian guy who barely spoke full English, but was respected in the Orgo world. By the end of his time, my friend didn't get a publication, got a shitty letter of recommendation (that the professor submitted LATE), but most important was delayed 2 YEARS in getting accepted to med school wrapping up stuff with his lab.
Our friend stopped making it to weekly Chinese buffets cause he picked the wrong research lab :(
So let's be strategic. Let’s make sure our research is something we can get a publication out of. A tangible result. Make sure the research actually interests you, or you can make it seem interesting. Medicine advances through research, so ADCOM’s very much want people into research to progress the field.
Pro tip: Get your research also approved for class credit. It's usually an easy A (assuming your PI likes you) and its one less actual class you have to take that semester. Look at my transcript and see how many Research classes I took.
Shadowing / Medical Experience:
I shadowed a family med doc for 50 hours. Nothing special. I hear the required experience is a lot more intense now, but I don't know first-hand. I wanted to become a psychiatrist, so why did I shadow a family med doc?
In Alabama there was a push in med school's missions to get students staying in Alabama as primary care physicians. So I knew I'd be better served shadowing a PCP rather than a specialist in trying to get into med school. Understand the slant of the med schools you’re applying to, and tailor accordingly.
Shadowing proves we understand the field and are committed to it. An American med student dropping out of med school is a huge loss for the school, the system, and society.
MCAT
I took the old MCAT. I did not use any fancy overpriced course to study. I studied in the summer between my sophomore and junior year, and took it right before the semester started. Literally just read the Kaplan books every night and took practice questions after going through all the books. If I could do it again, I’d just do practice questions / tests, and fill in knowledge gaps as needed. Some of my peers studied during junior year of college which would not have been fun. I scored 33/45 (90th percentile), which is meaningless now with the new MCAT. I don't know much about it, so won’t comment.
But as a med school interviewer, this is just a checkbox. We ask ourselves, did the candidate pass our school's threshold? If yes and everything else is good, you get invited to interview. The MCAT also demonstrates to ADCOM’s that you can handle a big-ass standardized test like the ones we’ll take in med school and residency.
I took my MCAT summer after sophomore year
Extra / Unique
I co-founded an unofficial Pokemon club where we’d play Pokemon Black/White 2 together. I also like board games and racquetball. I put all these on my application. An interviewer asked me about board games and said she always lost Monopoly with her grandkids. I loved monopoly, so I coached her through the optimal strategy to beat her grandkids (invest in the 2nd row). She was thrilled and said she would try it next time. How do you think she ranked me in the interview.
These are the items that don’t make you a med school robot and separate you from all the other candidates. This is where you show a unique skill, passion, accomplishment or achievement. Make this specific. Can you make this seem interesting? Can you speak passionately about it? For example would you rather chat with the guy who "Studied abroad in Prague and visited every art museum" or the guy who “likes travel?”
Application
When its time to apply, we submit all our experiences onto an online form called the American Medical College Application Service (AMCAS). Here’s what we need in our application:
Experiences
I spent dozens of hours on my application. I combed through each individual line, had the campus writing center assess it numerous times. My mission was to convey each experience clearly, succinctly, indicate what I learned and how I impacted others.
Think about it like a marketer. Our job is to SELL ourselves and present an argument why we're an outstanding candidates to be doctors. ADCOM take gatekeeping very seriously. It's not to indicate every little thing you've done so you don't miss anything. Use your campus' writing center. Get it professionally assessed.
As an applicant, I thought the interviewing committee would go through this with a fine tooth comb and really take the time to understand me and my experience. They want the best for their med school right? Wrong.
As a med school interviewer, I understood. We skim through your application. I might interview 6 other people the same day as you. I can't tell you how many meaningless things I glanced over - like volunteering that one Saturday at the local campus volunteering day. This overshadows your GOOD, impactful experiences!
Other tips:
Don't use fancy words. We're skimming. Keep it simple.
Explain anything that could be unclear. Ex Don’t say "won merit award in 2014" or "won Mr. Alabama" of class year. Explain the requirements, what makes it impressive etc. I don't know if you don't tell me. And I'm NOT looking it up.
I've had premeds ask about their supervisors switching out halfway through, not tracking their hours completely etc. We receive hundreds of applications and read up to 10 each interview day. I promise you - I'm not contacting your supervisors. If something seems off or fishy, we'll either ask you about it in the interview, or throw out your application entirely.
Use mine as a reference. See what I did well, and what I could improve on. Hope this helps you.
Letters of Recommendation
When I was a med school interviewer, there was one letter of recommendation from a premed l’ll never forget. She had a 3.25 GPA, way below average. She went to a religious liberal arts college, and she got a letter from the hospital chaplain (not even a science professor). I don't remember exactly what the letter wrote. But I do remember the tears streaming down my face as I read it. It described how he'd observed her patient interactions and gave specific examples of how gentle and caring she was. He gave stories of how she went above and beyond for the patient. I was shocked to find myself so emotionally moved by this letter. Can you guess if I was excited to meet this candidate?
I had 3 letters:
1st from my research PI who I also took evolution class with
2nd from my global health class professor who I did the year-long homelessness project with.
3rd from my Science & Research Honors Program director with whom I was involved in program leadership, class bonding, attended Christmas parties at her house, and took her stats class. I had an extra letter as well in case some schools asked for it.
Notice what’s special about these? Each one I had multiple points of contact and sustained interaction with. They’d seen my outstanding performance in their classes sure, but also on projects important to them OUTSIDE of class. This let them write a much stronger letter than “he got an A in my class, good student.”
This is why preparing since Day 1 matters. We can identify potential letter writers and start cultivating relationships with them. Make these meaningful! View them as mentors, share your journey, have them invest in your success. This means networking is a valuable skill to invest time learning. One good letter can make up for the hundreds or thousands of hours we put into our grades. I always felt bad for the med school applicants who were a few years out of college and had to go BACK to ask professors for letters.
When I was reading letters as an interviewer, one of the funniest things I’d see was when 2 applicants from the same school had the same letter writer and the ONLY THING DIFFERENT in their letters was the applicant’s name. The worst part is since applicants can’t read their letters, they had no idea. Don’t be that applicant.
Personal Statement
I received a ton of compliments on mine from interviewers. Read it and ask yourself why that was.
I was personal. I took the reader through a natural journey. My experiences flowed to tell a cohesive narrative about me going into medicine. This is our chance to tie all our experiences together and wow the interviewer.
As an interviewer - if an experience was important, tell me here. I promise I will not pick up on it in your AMCAS application alone skimming through your application.
Interview
I applied to 11 schools, I received 3 interviews.
When I went into interviews, I could tell which interviewers had read my app. They were very excited to meet me. They asked me questions with enthusiasm about my journey, my personal statement, and my experiences. And I was ready for them. I’d done numerous mock interviews in our career center. I looked up common interview questions and practiced answering them naturally in front of a mirror and with a friend. I gathered a repertoire of stories to illustrate my main points. I knew my application COLD.
If our application is outstanding, the interviewer should feel excited to meet us. They should feel “wow this man is on a mission.” This creates the HALO EFFECT. Where if they like us initially, they view the rest of our behavior in a positive light. This works negatively as well.
But I wasn’t perfect. I originally thought schools just wanted to see if I was a cool, social person they could connect with. So I really focused on building rapport with interviewer. But after conducting interviews on the other side, I was shocked to see they had a checklist! So not only do we need to make a connection with our interviewers, we also must demonstrate leadership, communication, diversity, academic commitment, and whatever else the school values.
Imagine if someone says “I want to go to med school cause it’s a good job”. Vs. "I lost my dad to cancer so I started exploring cancer research and while working with cancer patients I realized that I wanted to be the one treating them, not the one making the cure." Which one are you more likely to accept into your school? Make your journey of getting to med school seem purposeful rather than you just crossing off check boxes. Trust me you will be way more memorable. Figure out how your story is unique.
Here’s a sample write-up I did of a candidate I interviewed (who got in)!
An outstanding interview can save a mediocre application. A bad interview can destroy an outstanding application. Take it seriously.
Post-Interview
Now its all out of your hands, so no point stressing about it. Each school has their own timeline of getting back to you. My school got back in a week. Another school I got into took 2 months. This is because the committee meets periodically, and sends out acceptances in batches. Then there's usually a date you can hold onto multiple acceptances before choosing one. During my time it was May 15. That way you can accept at one school, then if you come off the waitlist somewhere else you can go there.
There’s 3 options that can happen here:
Rejected
I was rejected from the 1/3 schools I interviewed at. But they graciously offered to provide me feedback why the rejected my app - they felt I didn’t have enough strong extracurriculars. I thanked them for the info.
Even if the school doesn’t offer to provide you feedback, we can still request it ourselves. Do this as soon as you’re rejected. This will be valuable in case we need to apply again.
Waitlisted
I wasn’t waitlisted. But many of my classmates were, and they got off the waitlist. One guy in my class didn’t get off until July 15, 2 weeks before school starting cause someone dropped out last minute. It happens. A lot of people get off the waitlist after the deadline to confirm with one school (May 15 for me).
If this happens, don’t lose hope. But start preparing for your post-grad plans nonetheless.
Acceptance
I remember everything about the day I was first accepted (Feb 11, 2015). I got a letter from them at 5 pm in the evening. I didn’t know what it said. I immediately went to my roommate and we opened it together. ACCEPTED! We immediately took a shot together of shitty Popov vodka leftover from a party (we keep it real here). Suddenly all the tension, the waiting, all the long nights, culminated to this moment. I couldn’t stop smiling. Then 2 days later, I got accepted to the other school I interviewed at! I won’t go into details after that… but it was a fun week. :)
I called ADCOM’s to ask what would happen if my grades fell and her exact words were “I won’t tell you what to do, but we don’t take away someone’s acceptance unless they don’t graduate.” After that, I stopped caring about anything except having fun. I made a C in my online psychology class (haha the irony). But that semester was the best time of my LIFE. I went on a week-long road trip visiting the State Capital, the NYC Nintendo Store, the the new jersey chapter fraternity house. We got snowed in at our fraternity brotherhood retreat in a Chattanooga log cabin and survived that weekend on venison one of our hunter brothers had brought. Guys would come over every night to the house to play Smash, and I traveled around the state going to tournaments for fun. I played all the video games I’d put off for months/years. I wouldn’t trade amazing memories for anything.
And that is the journey of my acceptance to med school. Little did I know, the hard work was only just beginning. If it seems daunting, I get it. That’s FOUR YEARS in one post. But if that’s your dream, then who am I to tell you now. Medicine is not perfect. But a patient telling you you’re the best psychiatrist they ever had because no one else ever listened to them and understood them? Then 6 months later with tears streaming down their face telling you their wife isn’t leaving them anymore because your sessions fixed their PTSD rage? That’s priceless.
One last piece of advice bro? Enjoy the F out of college. I still miss those days. I met a ton of people in my med school class who said they had more fun in med school cause they never did anything in college. I felt sorry for them. Don't let that be you. Yes, get your productive shit done bro. But make memories. Mess up. It’s a lot easier to be a dumb 21 y/o than a dumb 31 y/o. As cliche as it sounds, college can be the best 4 years of your life if you make it that.
I’m a psychiatrist who’s mission to help gamers beat their loneliness by becoming a Level 100 Gamer. I specialize in treating Young Men & Gamers with Depression, Anxiety, ADHD and Gaming Addiction. CLICK HERE to book your free consult call.
Remember, real life is the video game.
So let’s level up.
Agam
