choosing schools

If you’re working ahead (which you should be), you’re probably already pre-writing secondary essays, including the challenging “Why our medical school?” question. We’re here to help with that. Savvy Pre-Med will be publishing a multiple-part series to provide you with a “cheat sheet” for answering “Why our medical school?” in your secondaries and interviews. Our goal is to provide a list of five noteworthy aspects of each medical school program (including links) to help you expedite the process of researching, writing, and formulating interview answers. Today we’re covering all the Texas medical schools!

If you’re working ahead (which you should be), you’re probably already pre-writing secondary essays, including the challenging “Why our medical school?” question. We’re here to help with that. Savvy Pre-Med will be publishing a multiple-part series to provide you with a “cheat sheet” for answering “Why our medical school?” in your secondaries and interviews. Our goal is to provide a list of five noteworthy aspects of each medical school program (including links) to help you expedite the process of researching, writing, and formulating interview answers. Today we’re covering all the California medical schools.

If you’re working ahead (which you should be), you’re probably already pre-writing secondary essays, including the challenging “Why our medical school?” question. We’re here to help with that. Savvy Pre-Med will be publishing a multiple-part series to provide you with a “cheat sheet” for answering “Why our medical school?” in your secondaries and interviews. Our goal is to provide a list of five noteworthy aspects of each medical school program (including links) to help you expedite the process of researching, writing, and formulating interview answers.

Chances are you’ve heard plenty about the best MD (allopathic) medical schools in the country, but DO (osteopathic) medical schools have not been given as much attention. It’s vital to have an understanding of the best DO schools in order to make well-informed decisions when applying and ultimately choosing the perfect school for you. That’s why we have compiled the highest valued DO schools (from our perspective) in order to give you deeper insights into your future education.

Getting accepted into one medical school is a huge accomplishment! However, multiple acceptances can seem like both a blessing and a curse. It’s a “good” problem to have, but there is incredible pressure to make the right decision. One choice will determine the next course of your life: experiences, friends, education, and career opportunities.Therefore, it’s important to make a calculated decision based on your priorities and expectations. There are definitely some significant factors you should keep in mind when analyzing your best option.

Though going internationally for medical school is not for everyone, we at the Savvy Pre-Med have written past articles on whether you should apply internationally and if a Caribbean medical school is a right fit for you. Now we’ve gone a step further to interview current and former Caribbean students (St. George’s University) and ask questions about their experiences to get the inside scoop.

If you look at the data for all applicants and matriculants for California MD medical schools in the 2020-2021 cycle, you’ll find the following statistics: Total applicants: 87,431. Total accepted matriculants: 1,520. Percent accepted: 1.7%. Those numbers are pretty daunting, so it’s wise for in-state and especially out-of-state applicants to diversify their school lists beyond California medical schools. But what do these elite 1.7% of accepted candidates look like? Who are they and what makes them so special?

Beautiful weather, sunny beaches, great food, vibrant culture - who wouldn’t want to spend 4+ years living and training in California? Whether you’re an in-state applicant who’s desperate to say close to home or an out-of-state applicant looking for a new adventure during medical school, the 16 California medical schools draw a lot of attention and receive a bevy of applicants every year. So, how exactly do you get into a California medical school? Well, it’s not that simple of an answer, mainly because the 16 schools are so different. But we’re here to offer a general breakdown of what it takes to get into a California medical school, with relevant data and key information about each institution!

The reputation of a school doesn’t matter as much as one might think, but admittedly, the Ivy League colleges are often better equipped to offer more resources and opportunities for pre-meds. Yet, since seats at elite colleges are limited, thousands of pre-meds must opt to attend elsewhere. And despite not going to an Ivy League school, many pre-meds are successfully admitted to medical school every year. With that being said, we thought it would be useful to assemble a list of the best non-Ivy-League colleges for pre-meds!

The area, state, and school you choose for your undergraduate years could have a significant effect on your eventual medical school destination. With that in mind, we thought it would be an interesting exercise to rank the best colleges for pre-meds in each of the four regions denoted by the U.S. News and World Report: North, South, Midwest, and West. For these lists, we’ll be drawing upon our brand new Best Colleges for Pre-Meds Search Tool!

Soon we’ll be launching our Best Colleges for Pre-Meds Search Tool - organized by liberal arts, national, and regional - with comprehensive rankings based on pre-med advising, class size, popularity, clinical experiences, and prestige. But we don’t want you to simply take our word for it. We wanted to complement our quantitative analysis with some qualitative evidence. That’s right - we’ve polled actual pre-meds to gather firsthand testimonies about their experiences at their various colleges and derive some meaningful takeaways from the trends in their feedback on their institutions. 

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!

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!

Thousands of dollars in application fees; hundreds of hours writing and editing essays; dozens of schools selected to apply to; countless pre-meds all around the country vying for a seat at a medical school program. A seat. Yup, just one. A single acceptance to a medical school is all that is needed to become a doctor. But what happens if the only medical school that accepts you is a brand new school? Should you accept the offer of admission without hesitation or reject it?

When gaining admission into a US medical school feels impossible (or at least unlikely), less competitive applicants often turn to Caribbean or international medical schools to fulfill their dreams. But what are the consequences of choosing this route? Is going to a foreign medical school a viable option? We’re here to answer all your FAQs about Caribbean and international medical schools so that you can make a well-informed decision before pursuing this option!

We’ve worked with hundreds and hundreds of pre-meds, and every year we encounter dozens of reapplicants who ask us to troubleshoot their past applications and help them reset for the future. One of the most common trends in these reapplicants is a poorly constructed medical school list. We thought we’d share an (anonymous) example of one to show you the most common mistakes applicants make with their school list and illustrate how our Savvy Pre-Med Med School Search Tool can help you avoid these issues. 

There are 155 accredited U.S. allopathic medical schools (including those in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean Islands). Adding in accredited Canadian and osteopathic medical schools, for which there are 17 and 38 respectively, yields a whopping total of 210 medical schools. Applying to all these schools would cost an exorbitant amount of money (not to mention time and energy). So, how do you go about carefully picking what medical schools to apply to?

Have you recently interviewed at your dream medical school? Were you just placed on its waitlist? Is interview season over, and you’re still waiting to hear back from your top-choice program? If you answered “yes” to one or more of these questions, it’s likely time for you to write a letter of intent. This letter is quite high-stakes, so you want to get it right! This article will help you write an effective letter of intent that gets noticed and moves the needle.

Selecting medical schools that fit your goals and credentials is one of the most significant decisions during the admissions process. After all, having a well thought out list of medical schools will make a difference between being denied acceptance or becoming a first year at your dream school. So what tools are out there to help you create your list of medical schools? Well, we can tell you this right off the bat: it’s NOT just the MSAR!