Prerequisites, AMCAS, AACOMAS, Work & Activities
Ryan Kelly
How to Be Pre-med While Still Being Yourself

By: Ryan Kelly

200+ hours of clinical volunteering and shadowing - Check!

200+ hours of service - Check!

At least six months of research - Check!

Elected leadership position - Check!

Do you check off all the typical pre-med boxes? That’s great - they will help ensure that you’re viewed as qualified by the admissions committees.

How to Be Pre-med While Still Being Yourself
Interviewing, Secondaries
Rob Humbracht
Sample CASPer Test Questions: Monty Python Style

By: Rob Humbracht

You may have heard that there's a new test required by a growing list of medical schools: the CASPer. The spread of its use has been fairly fast. A few years ago, it was only required by Tulane and New York Medical College (in the US), and now the list is 20 schools strong and growing.

Sample CASPer Test Questions: Monty Python Style
Secondaries
Ryan Kelly
How to Answer Boston University School of ...

By: Ryan Kelly

Fans of Savvy Pre-med might be familiar with our numerous past guides to secondary essay writing. If not, check them out, post-haste.

Why so much focus on secondaries? Well, we’ve seen students struggle with secondaries year after year, and we recognize their potential to undermine someone’s entire application.

How to Answer Boston University School of Medicine’s Secondary Essays
Start Here
Rob Humbracht
6 Tips Every Freshman Pre-med Needs to Know

By: Rob Humbracht

It's back-to-school time, which means buckets of questions from incoming freshmen about how to kickstart their pre-med careers. We've compiled our Top 6 Tips for helping make sure freshman year is a rousing success. Without further ado ...

6 Tips Every Freshman Pre-med Needs to Know
Secondaries, CASPer
Ryan Kelly
How should you prepare for the CASPer test?

By: Ryan Kelly

The word ‘Casper’ might evoke an image of the personable cartoon ghost from tv and comic books.

But is the CASPer as student-friendly as our beloved ghost?

A timed online test to determine your medical school admission seems frightening, but I’m going to show you why it’s not as bad as it seems.

How should you prepare for the CASPer test?

Application Timeline

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Top 6 Reasons Reapplicants Didn't Get In And What to Do About It

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Top 6 Reasons Reapplicants Didn't Get In And What to Do About It

By: Ryan Kelly

Join the club. If you’ve been rejected from medical school, that makes you normal. 60% of applicants DON’T get in. The people who get in are the unusual ones.

Okay, so maybe that’s not that comforting, but if you’ve been rejected from medical school, you have a choice: you can take this extra year to become a better person and a better applicant.  You can learn from the mistakes of last cycle, really consider whether this is the right career for you, and re-apply with even more confidence that you’ve made the right choice.

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The Real AMCAS Medical School Deadlines

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The Real AMCAS Medical School Deadlines

By: Rob Humbracht

How much does it matter to apply early to medical school? We touched on the idea briefly when we posted this year’s AMCAS application dates, but, because we’re getting down to the wire, I’ve created a video (complete with a Lego pre-med) to show you whether it’s advisable to submit late this cycle.

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Every Question You Have About the AMCAS

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Every Question You Have About the AMCAS

Filling out the AMCAS can be a bit cryptic, leaving pre-meds with many pressing questions. Whether it’s basic info like deadlines, or nuanced questions about specific parts of the application, we’ve got you covered!  

Welcome to our AMCAS FAQ!

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Ruining Your 4-Year Plan: Good Reasons to Wait a Year to Apply to Medical School

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Ruining Your 4-Year Plan: Good Reasons to Wait a Year to Apply to Medical School

By: Ryan Kelly

The last thing you want is to waste a year of your life. Becoming a doctor already requires four years of med school and another four of residency, so unless you want to get a real paycheck before you’re 30, you’d better get a move-on. Right?

We hear this line of reasoning from lots of pre-meds, but it most often comes from parents, who know that the biological clock is ticking. In their eyes, if you want to have kids and have a life, you’d better get through medical school as soon as possible.

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Medical School Application Dates 2018-2019 for AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS

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Medical School Application Dates 2018-2019 for AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS

By: Rob Humbracht

Cross this line, and you’re dead.

During the American Civil War, Henry Wirz, a particularly vicious Confederate general, was convicted and hanged for torturing Yankee prisoners of war. During the trial, it came out that he had drawn a line in the dirt, beyond which any prisoner who crossed would be shot. Some believe this particular act to be the origin of the term “deadline.”

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Medical School Application Dates 2017-2018 for AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS

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Medical School Application Dates 2017-2018 for AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS

By: Rob Humbracht

Pre-meds are Type A. Rather than wait for the application deadlines, they rush to submit their application on the first day each application opens.

Is this crazy? Well, not really. When you apply affects whether you get in.

To help you stay on top of the application dates and deadlines for this cycle, we’ve written a quick guide to all the dates to know so that you can be on the application ball.

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Six Essential Lessons for Getting Into Medical School - Part 2

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Six Essential Lessons for Getting Into Medical School - Part 2

By: Rob Humbracht

Last week, we dove into the first three lessons that successful students can teach us about how to get into medical school.  Let’s continue with our final three lessons:

4.  Discover why doctors are increasingly cynical about a career in medicine.

"Why on earth would you want to be a doctor?  It's not the same profession as when I got into it."  This was a quote from a doctor that one of my students was shadowing, and by the time you apply to med school, you will probably have a similar interaction.  

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Six Essential Lessons for Getting Into Medical School (Part 1)

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Six Essential Lessons for Getting Into Medical School (Part 1)

By: Rob Humbracht

"Nobody gets into medical school these days."  I hear this statement a lot, and I understand where it comes from.  When you see scores of well qualified candidates - brilliant classmates, selfless neighbors, hardworking siblings - apply and get rejected, it's easy to think, "there's no way I can get in."

You can.  The acceptance rate to a US medical school (MD) in 2015 was 41%

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Highly Recommended: Too Much To Do, Not Enough Time

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Highly Recommended: Too Much To Do, Not Enough Time

I’ll never forget a student who once asked - in all seriousness - whether she should try to study more for her MCAT by cutting her sleep from seven hours per night to only four.  With three more hours per night, she reasoned, she could get some quality studying done!  Wasn’t this the solution to her problems?