I interviewed my friend Matt that will be attending medical school this summer and he had some good advice about looking for and applying to medical school.

His biggest emphasis was to not apply until you are ready. If your MCAT score is not good enough, wait and take it again. If you want to do research or volunteer work for a while, take a gap year and improve your resume. Applying to medical school is super expensive in itself so in order to not waste money and time, don’t apply and go to  interviews until you are sure that you are ready.

Second, he talked about the importance of having a broad resume. It is important to have volunteer work under your belt both in medical related locations and places in the community. It is important to have shadowing hours or clinical hours in which you are a setting that is similar to a doctor. It is important to have leadership roles that show that you are someone that people can rely on. It is obviously also important to have good grades and a good MCAT score.

Next, the interview process is difficult but it is also easy to prepare for. Having strong responses to difficult questions will set you apart form other applicants. It is necessary to be able to be both personable and knowledgeable when answering questions.

Lastly, medical school is hard to get into so it is important to apply to places that are realistic to get into based on your resume and apply to a lot of schools because it is common to get more rejection than acceptances. Don’t give up. If it doesn’t work out this year, take another year, get your masters degree, or do something to make an impact and try again.

It was great talking to Matt because there were quite a few more technical things about apply to medical school that I was unaware of but it made me excited to get to that point in my life! I know there are bound to be difficulties along the way but I am ready for the adventure.