Self-care

How to See Yourself Like Admissions Officers Do

Uncover how to see yourself as admissions officers do with our enlightening guide. Embark on a journey of self-discovery, blending quirky insights with actionable steps for genuine self-awareness. Perfect for aspiring students and seekers of personal growth, this piece promises to not just polish your application but also pave the path to true success. Dive in to transform your perception and your future.

The One Factor That (Almost) All Failed Applicants Have in Common

Do you want to get into your dream school? Then you need to avoid the biggest mistake that most applicants make: failing to see themselves clearly. In this article, you’ll learn why self-perception is so important and how to improve it with some simple strategies. You’ll also hear from an expert consultant who has helped hundreds of applicants get into their best schools. Don’t miss this chance to boost your self-awareness and your chances of getting in. Read more now!

Networking 101- How to Network Without Selling Your Soul

Do you want to network like a pro, without feeling like a sleazy salesperson? In this article, you’ll discover how to connect with people authentically, kindly, and strategically. You’ll learn how to change your mindset, practice meditation, network for your future self, and use online tools to find and contact potential contacts. You’ll also get to practice your skills with an AI bot that can give you feedback and advice. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn how to network without selling your soul.

Admissions Tips from Famous Actors' Auditions

If you want to learn how to ace your college or job applications and interviews, you should check out our new blog post, where we share six tips from famous actors who went above and beyond to land their dream roles. From showing, not telling, to making a bold move, to consulting an expert, these tips will help you impress your interviewers and get accepted to your dream school or company. Don’t miss this chance to learn from the best and boost your chances of success. Click here to read the full article and get ready to shine.

From Biceps to Box Office: The (Unofficial) Schwarzenegger Guide to Crushing College

What can you learn from Arnold Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder, actor, and politician? In this article, you’ll discover five life strategies inspired by his remarkable journey, from total immersion to schmäh. Whether you want to pump up your muscles, your career, or your confidence, you’ll find some valuable tips to upgrade your programming and become the hero of your own story

Are You Red, Blue, or Purple? What Your Personality Color Says About Your Feedback Style

Feedback is a crucial part of your personal and professional growth, but not all feedback is created equal. In this article, Ryan Kelly shows you how to identify your personality color and use it to receive constructive criticism. He also gives you tips on how to avoid ineffective criticism and find the best sources of advice.

Newsletter: Back to School 9/2023

Back-to-school is a time of excitement and anxiety for both parents and students. How can you make the most of this new academic year? In this article, you will find some tips and tricks to help you get a strong start to the semester and embrace the challenges and opportunities of going back to school.

How to Reframe Your Past and Change Your Future as a Pre-Med

Why is it that some pre-meds can deal with bad grades while others seem doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past? A lot of it has to do with the tactic of re-framing - the ability to tame self-doubt and re-tell the stories of your past to better affect the present.

The 5 Best New Year's Resolutions for Pre-Meds

New year, new YOU, right? We all know that New Year’s resolutions are only as useful as one’s ability to actually follow through on them, but now is as good a time as ever to develop new habits and plans that will increase your chances of acceptance into medical school. Whether you’re five months or five years from applying, we believe this list will give you some valuable targets and inspiration to make the most of the new year.

Right and Wrong Ways to Use Social Media as a Medical School Applicant

As a pre-med, you must take your social media presence seriously. Better to be safe than sorry. Just imagine the embarrassment and regret you’d feel if your unsavory posts on Facebook or Instagram were the reason you were rejected. My goal in this article is to provide tips on the right and wrong ways to use social media as a medical school applicant, to ensure that your internet presence plays to your advantage and not the other way around.

25 Tips on How to Study in Medical School

How should you study in medical school? In a basic sense, we all learn the same. We must understand the material and then see it over and over again. In college, due to the low volume of learning, a pre-med can get away with all sorts of weaknesses. On the other hand, the best pre-med students might not have to alter their study methods at all for medical school.To be a good student, the intangibles are required: work ethic, dedication, and self-confidence. However, in medical school, almost everyone has those qualities. The filtering process of college has removed most who lacked these intangibles. At this point in medical school, it comes down to having the best study methods.

8 Can't Miss Books, Blogs, Podcasts, and TikToks for Pre-Meds

While the pre-med journey is certainly tenuous and competitive, it is crucial to ensure that your precious downtime is spent wisely. Worry not; we have you covered! Here are some recommended books, podcasts, TikToks, and blogs for you to continue preparing for your future as a healthcare professional.

5 Tips for Finding Valuable Pre-Med Mentors

The pre-med track is long and arduous; it is also a path that can look vastly different for different individuals. Having a mentor can be an immense help on this rocky road while also providing an important support system in one’s life. The only problem? It often feels as though mentors can only be found through previous connections. And for those of us with few connections in the pre-med world, obtaining counsel can seem like a far away dream. However, this does not always need to hold true. There are so many ways one can go about finding a mentor, and we can often find these gurus in the least likely places. 

Hot Takes on Self-care from Actual Medical Students (an Interview)

How can you take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself? We believe pouring from an empty cup has been a problem in healthcare for far too long. Achieving proper self-care is a challenging yet crucial goal for pre-meds and physicians, especially since medical students have 15-30% higher depression rates than the overall US population.On August 2nd, 2021, we posted an article regarding the state of self-care in pre-med and med students. We interviewed three medical students (from pre-clinical and clinical years) and asked them everything you’d want to know about their self-care journey in medical school. With the start of a new busy semester, it’s the perfect time for you to add self-care onto your to-do list, incorporate it into your daily routine, and make it a habit.

Debunking Trendy Pre-Med Study Tips: How Helpful Are They?

For pre-med students, scrolling through social media seems to be the easiest way to gain mentorship and find answers to their questions. One of my biggest questions centers around the best ways to improve your studying to boost your GPA, especially when trying to ace daunting subjects such as organic chemistry. Instead of telling you how you should be studying, I decided to dive deeper into a few trendy study methods I have been exploring myself through social media. Read on to hear my advice about the most and least effective popular study tips!

Pre-Med Self-care is in Jeopardy, but It's Not Too Late!

The pre-med years are infamous for their high stress and burnout rates: the striving for straight A’s and 528s on the MCAT, the anxiety of meeting a gazillion deadlines, accumulating shadowing hours, working on those extracurriculars, and much more! As you can probably already imagine, you will encounter many more stressful situations in your journey from medical school to residency and so forth. If not addressed promptly, these elevated stress levels can lead to burnout and empathy erosion over time. Thus, it can be helpful to home in on those stress-management strategies right NOW and give yourself a head start. We’ve collected some statistics to give you a better view of the level of stress medical students endure throughout their journey, and the habits some of them have adopted to deal with the high-stress environment of medical school. 

Introducing the Best Colleges for Pre-Meds Search Tool

We’ve received ample praise and positive feedback for our Savvy Pre-Med Medical Search Tool, and we wanted to emulate the same useful resource for younger pre-med hopefuls who are choosing their undergraduate institution. So, without further ado, we’d like to introduce our Best Colleges for Pre-Meds Search Tool!

Every Question You Have About the Best Colleges for Pre-Meds

We’re on the verge of releasing our Best Colleges for Pre-Meds Search Tool! So stay tuned for that sometime this month. However, first, we wanted to answer some of the many questions we’ve received about our Best Colleges for Pre-Meds lists and the data behind them. We’re all about transparency here!

How to Pay for Medical School Without Going Broke

Most advice steers you towards loans. Loans. Loans. More loans. Would you like a side of loans with your medical education? Or are you willing to donate a kidney? It's much harder to find resources that solely focus on loan-free ways of paying for medical school. While we recognize that graduating from a medical school with zero debt cannot be the case for everyone, we believe that all students have the potential to graduate with a manageable amount of debt. Here's a list of ways to help you pay for medical school without going broke!

8 Student Testimonies About How They Paid for Medical School

How will you pay off the overwhelming amount of tuition and fees in medical school? Should you take out loans? Which ones? What about scholarships? Can you negotiate with medical schools? What are the do’s and don’ts of medical school financial aid? You’re not alone in this difficult journey. Here are 8 testimonies from a diverse set of students to help you avoid mistakes and give you a baseline of advice.

Top 5 Helpful Podcasts for Pre-meds

As a pre-med student, your time is precious. You’re writing your secondary essays, practicing your virtual interview skills for AAMC’s VITA, preparing for the CASPer, studying hard for mid-terms, planning your path to med school, and stressing about whether you're good enough to make it in the end. How in the world will you have time to find the information you need to succeed in this application process? The answer: podcasts. Whether you’re studying, driving, or exercising, podcasts allow you to multitask. What better way to kill two birds with one stone? With podcast popularity on the rise, podcasts offer endless options and topics, including the medical school application process, medical education, and medicine. Out of the 700,000 active podcasts, which are most helpful for pre-meds?

How to Make Your Pre-med 4-Year Plan

We’re not saying that you need to be hyper-obsessive and plan out every little detail, and we’re not saying that you can’t change your mind or take time to explore. BUT getting into medical schools is HARD, and the competition is STEEP, so careful planning will be crucial to your success. And it’s not just about planning in general. You’ve probably heard the phrase “work smarter, not harder.” The same idea applies here. We want to help you “plan smarter” by offering you tips and insights that will give you a strategic advantage.

Why is It So Damn Hard to Get into Medical School?

We’re facing a shortage of doctors in the United States, anywhere between 40 and 100,000 by the year 2030. And yet, getting into medical school is harder than ever. What gives?

How to Reset Your Biological Clock and Circadian Rhythms for the New MCAT Test Times

With recent changes to the MCAT start times to 6:30am, 12:15pm, and 6:00pm each day, some people may find that adjusting their biological clock has been added to the test-day preparation list. Good news - we have some tricks that will make adjusting your sleep much easier.

How to Talk to Your Parents About Applying to Medical School

When we Googled “how to talk to parents,” the results were all over the map. Some were quite serious: depression, dating, moving out, etc. What we didn’t find was how to talk to your parents about applying to medical school. In our experience, this task can range from laidback to very stressful, depending on the pre-med, family, and numerous factors like income or culture. Regardless of where you fall on that spectrum, we have some helpful tips to prepare you for this pivotal conversation in your pre-med journey.

Updates: Medical School Admissions 2020-2021

UPDATES 8/27/20:‍ Medical School Applications Have Gone Up 14% Over This Time Last Year. Click here to read more about this development!

50 Activities for Your Pre-med College Bucket List

50 Activities for Your Pre-med College Bucket List

5 Bold Coronavirus Predictions: What Will Happen to Med School Admissions in 2020?

5 Bold Coronavirus Predictions: What Will Happen to Med School Admissions in 2020?

Quiz: Should You Hire a Medical School Admissions Consultant?

Quiz: Should You Hire a Medical School Admissions Consultant?

5 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Medical School Admissions Consultant

5 Questions to Ask Before Choosing a Medical School Admissions Consultant

The Art of Small Talk: 40 Questions for the Pre-med Conversationalist

The Art of Small Talk: 40 Questions for the Pre-med Conversationalist

Five Types of Med School Gap Years, Ranked Best to Worst

Five Types of Med School Gap Years, Ranked Best to Worst

Which Face Would You Choose As Your Doctor

I want you to take a look at these three faces and tell me whom you’d choose to be your doctor, based on appearance alone:

Great Ways to Screw Up Your First Impression in Your Medical School Interviews

Making a good first impression at your medical school interview is vital, but it’s only half the battle! Just like physicians with their patients, you not only have to instill confidence and trust right away, but maintain those feelings throughout the conversation.

How to Change a Culture That's Killing Young Doctors

This article contains sensitive material, so read at your discretion. If you or someone you know is struggling with mental health or suicidal thoughts, call this free 24/7 hotline. National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255

Parents, Your Straight-A Pre-Med Wants to Die

Parents, picture this:Your child - the star of the family - has finally made it into medical school, realizing a lifelong dream. Along the way, he got straight A's, volunteered long hours in the community, aced the MCAT and even had a little fun along the way. He’s every parent’s dream.

One Surprising Habit to Improve Your Self-Discipline

People tend to view their strengths and weaknesses as unchangeable - certain superpowers or fatal flaws that are hardwired into their genes and personality.

Overcoming Pre-Med Stress Through Mindfulness

If you’re not goal-oriented, you’ll never get into medical school. Unless you have vision and dedication to this future end, you won’t have the focus to do everything you must to become a doctor.

10 Expert Tips for Dealing with Interview Anxiety

Even if you’re one of the rare pre-meds who isn’t fazed by interview anxiety (well la dee da!), you can go from a good interview to a great interview by using our tips below.

The Most Underrated Quality of Successful Pre-meds

Pre-meds have to be successful to get into medical school: successful at school, on the MCAT, and outside the classroom. The idea of failing might seem foreign or taboo, so resilience is something that pre-meds don’t always realize, or admit, that they need.

The Zen Valedictorian, Decreasing Your Stress without Decreasing Your Ambition

When people hear the word ‘valedictorian,’ they might think of a hustling overachiever who participates in every possible organization or activity. Others might picture the opposite--the highly gifted coaster who gets by on nothing but his or her natural ability.

Highly Recommended: When Winning Friends Goes Wrong

In the last edition of Highly Recommended, you learned about Dale Carnegie’s famous best-seller, How to Win Friends and Influence People (1936), which encourages certain attitudes and behaviors for achieving social aptitude.But does Carnegie’s advice hold up in the modern era? And if it does, are his steps to winning friends and influencing people even plausible?

Highly Recommended: A recipe for Unhappy Pre-Meds

Coping with Admissions Anxiety - Strategy #3

Coping with Admissions Anxiety - Strategy #2

Coping with Admissions Anxiety - Strategy #1