Medical School and the Health Professions
Tips, tricks, and insights to get you from pre-med to post-residency
Tackling a tough concept on the MCAT? Putting together an application for med school? Looking for advice to kickstart or cultivate your career in medicine? You’ve come to the right place! Our bloggers, all of whom are MDs, MD-PhDs, or professionals in their fields, give the best guidance on virtually any topic because they’ve been there themselves.
Most popular articles
Resources
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MD Admissions Calculator
Calculate your chance of admission at different schools based on your science GPA, overall GPA, MCAT score, and ethnicity. While not as accurate or rigid as law school admissions calculators, this tool can give you a useful sense of your own competitiveness. -
Books
The Official Guide to Medical School Admissions (AAMC)
Written and published by the Association of American Medical Colleges, administrators of the MCAT and guardians of the gates, this guide is the only official comprehensive source of information on preparing for and applying to medical school.
The Medical School Admissions Guide: A Harvard MD's Week-By-Week Admissions Handbook
A good breakdown of the complete process, with timelines to help you plan ahead, advice on getting recommendations, and useful information on admissions.
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Websites
An excellent source for official information on all the logistics of applying to med school, as well as postbacs and residencies. Provides useful timelines as well.
A good resource for articles and fora on a multitude of topics impacting medical school applicants. A note of caution: like all online fora, take everything on here with a considerable grain of salt. Also, it can be anxiety-provoking, because people will post admission statistics and acceptances.
Comprehensive listing of premedical post-baccalaureate programs
Do you need to complete your premedical requirements after graduating from college? Do you need to boost your science grades to be a competitive applicant to medical schools? Check out this listing of programs to complete premedical course requirements or boost your GPA.
Johns Hopkins Premedical Advice
This website is written by Johns Hopkins University. It gives the most comprehensive overview of what to expect during interview, waitlist, decision time.
If you have specific questions you need answered that are not available on AAMC or school websites, you should consult the SDN. The website has innumerable forums. If you have a question, odds are someone has already asked it and many people have responded. Warning: these are informational forums. Do not get too caught up in what individual students say about their essays, grades, interviews and acceptances. Just because you read it on SDN does not mean it is true. Use these forums with caution.
Medical School Admission Requirements™ (MSAR®) for U.S. and Canada
This data base subscription, made by the AAMC, provides accurate, official data on US and Canadian medical schools and BS/MD programs, including selection factors, such as MCAT and GPA data, required premedical coursework, medical school class profiles, research opportunities, and more.
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Articles
6 Things that Admissions Officers Hate
Long article detailing six common mistake applicants make in interviews.
Top Ten Things to Know About Financing Your Medical Education
From Brown Medical School, this is not just a great guide to financial planning, but also contains links to financial aid search engines, service-connected scholarships, and loan repayment programs. Recommended.