My vision for the most effective, and least stressful, Step 1 study strategy is centered on the principle of balancing new material as you progress through pre-clinical courses while simultaneously maintaining your knowledge of past material in a time-effective way. It sounds simple, but it’s difficult to achieve!

As a person who was practice testing in the 520-521 range with 2-3 weeks left of studying, I was content with my score; however, I had an idea that I could get to the 100 percentile range if I pushed myself and studied smart for the remaining few weeks. With some slight tweaks to my study plan, I was able to comfortably score in the 100th percentile on test day, which exceeded my wildest expectations when I first began studying.

You've made it through differential equations and crushed software development methods while taking organic chemistry "on the side.” Now what? If you're an engineering student interested in medicine, chances are you're wondering how to translate your academic experiences into a killer AMCAS application. Here are some ideas to get started:

You have just been assigned a paper, and you don’t know what you want to write about or where to start. We’ve all been there.

So you’ve received an email inviting you for an MD/PhD interview. First of all – congratulations! You are one step closer to becoming a physician scientist.

If you’ve ever taken a statistics course, you’ve experienced the strange, slightly opaque world of statistical jargon, where colloquial language has highly specific meanings that are easily abused. One of the most famous, most abused statistical terms is the “p-value.” In almost every field of science there’s an ongoing discussion over P-values, and whether the common P-Value Threshold of 0.05 is even reasonable or not. So, what is a P-value, and why is 0.05 such a contentious number?

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”: A seemingly innocent, simple question that you have probably heard from the time you were in kindergarten and every Thanksgiving dinner in the middle of enjoying sweet potatoes and stuffing. Yet, this ten-word, ten syllable inquiry might be a stress-inducing annoyance with an unfathomably complex answer or an opportunity to express a true passion of yours! If you were like me, I changed my answer many times until deciding upon the career that I ultimately chose: astronaut, chocolatier, college chemistry professor (my aspiration as a fifth grader, who had never stepped onto a college campus), nurse, doctor, veterinarian, teacher and finally, dentist. If you respond to this question with “dentist,” you will likely get a reply like, “Why?” or, “Really?” or, “I hate going to the dentist!”

You’ve decided to apply to medical school. Congratulations- that’s a huge step! How do you organize everything you’ve done in the past few years into a couple hundred words on your primary application? My goal is for this post to serve as a comprehensive resource as you organize yourself for a writing marathon this cycle. Take a deep breath- you got this!!

I have interviewed many applicants for admission to the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. I absolutely love it; I’m always so impressed by the applicants and what they have accomplished as well as the energy they bring to the medical school. For most interviewers, including me, the interview is simply a chance to get to know you better and match the person to the application. We aren’t trying to trick you or test your knowledge. While the interview is often the most anxiety provoking part of the application process, it should actually be the easiest! The topic of the interview is you. Who’s a better expert on you than, well, you?

Imagine. You’ve made it through your first semester or two of undergrad and weathered all the storms that come with this transition. And, now you find yourself facing a dreaded academic giant that has stricken fear in the hearts of scores of pre-medical students. A chemistry course unlike any other. If you are anything like most pre-medical students, you probably have or will find yourself asking: Do I really need to know any of this to be a doctor? What does learning about SN1 reactions, molecular orbitals, and Fischer projections have to do with me saving someone’s life!? For those still wondering, yes, the giant I speak of is none other than organic chemistry, otherwise known as orgo. In many respects, this course is considered the “gateway” to the medical profession. If you do well, you get into medical school; if you do poorly, you don’t. For many reason (to be explored in later blog posts) this sentiment is not true. But for a moment, let’s table that discussion.