The medical school application cycle lasts for a few months and could go on for up to a year for some students! While applications can be submitted as early as April, waitlisted applicants may not get their acceptance letters till May of the following year. This is a nail-biting, stressful period in most applicants’ lives, usually coinciding with the last year of their undergraduate degree. Students have to keep up their GPA for their fourth year coursework along with trying to meet the regular milestones in their on-going medical school application timelines. And that’s not all! Students also have to prepare for the MCAT exam and build up their extracurricular profile with appropriate clinical experience, research work etc.
With all of this going on, and the fate of their future hanging in the balance, is it any wonder that aspiring medical school students often feel overwhelmed and stressed out during this period of their lives? While for some, this period ends with the joy and relief of finally getting an acceptance letter, others are left exhausted and drained with only rejections to show for their hard work. Either way, the long rigors of the med school application process take their toll on students’ mental health and thus, they are not set up for success in the next phase of their life.
So how can you avoid this? How can you manage to keep up with the many demands on your time and attention while also retaining some amount of sanity and mental peace?
medical school admission, medical school admissions
When we talk about academic admissions strategies, and specifically the role of intrinsic motivation or vocational calling, we’re engaging in a discussion that stretches back to at least the beginning of the 20th century. As the structure and focus of higher education has evolved throughout the modern era, so too have the tools used to determine students’ abilities and fitness for specific types of academic training, and the role of motivation has been a continuous touchstone for these discussions.
Our current array of admissions tools are, as we’ve laid out here repeatedly, imperfect. This is no surprise, nor should our expectation be that we can somehow create a perfect toolkit for student selection. However, we must continually reassess what has worked and what hasn’t, and in our current moment there are a number of near-universally accepted qualitative tools like the personal statement and in-person interview that are, perhaps, in need of some reassessment. In this article, our admissions experts share their experience with the limitations of the medical school admissions tools.
college applications, applicant screening, admission assessment best practices
The college admissions process today is incredibly competitive and every student wants to figure out the perfect combination of activities, skills, and grades that would guarantee them a spot at their dream schools. But the sad thing is, due to the sheer volume of applications and inherent bias in the admissions process, even students with seemingly perfect high school resumes can face rejections. Top colleges such as Ivy League schools receive thousands of applications a year, and a huge number of their applicants are students who are at the top of their respective classes, have spent years cultivating amazing extracurriculars, have great letters of recommendation, and so on. These colleges often have to decide between two equally impressive candidates with all the right achievements, and to make this decision, they need to know more about what makes each applicant unique. In this article, our experts reveal how you can advocate for yourself in a college application while staying true to who you are and your goals!
professional school admissions assessment, applicant screening, admission assessment best practices
Professional school applications present a challenge for most students, as they involve many application components that may require months, or even years, to prepare for. If you want to study to be a doctor, lawyer, dentist, or become a part of any other such profession, a significant investment of time, money, and effort is required on your side before you even get into a program. And yet, there’s some doubt about how fair and unbiased these professional school application processes really are. For example, we recently conducted a medical school admissions study which showed that, in general, medical school admissions practices appear to favor higher income applicants. In fact, many independent studies conducted over the years have pointed out the worrying lack of diversity in professional school programs. In an effort to correct this, many schools have prioritized diversity, equality, and representation and are looking for ways to make their admissions process fair and more equal.
