One of the hardest things that a person can do in medical school is maintain a relationship—but it can be one of the most rewarding things as well. Anybody who tells you that it cannot be done, or that it is a bad idea, they are wrong. A med student is not a robot designed only to study and do well on tests; a med student is a human being, just like the rest of us, and as human beings, we need love and physical connections to other people. So here are 5 ways to maintain a healthy relationship while in med school.

#1 Communication is the key to everything in a relationship
Without communication, med school or no med school, a relationship absolutely will fail. I know that you’ve probably heard this a million times before, from a million people, but it is the absolute truth—if you were to only follow this tip, you greatly increase your chances of success in a relationship. Communication allows partners to identify needs and weak spots in your relationship, and even to talk your way to a solution. This point is especially pertinent to those that are looking to maintain a long distance relationship while in medical school. Skype will become one of your computer’s most used programs if one partner decides to make the commitment to go to med school.

#2 Making plans and sticking to them is extremely important in any relationship
You are going to be busy with classes, lab-work, and eventually residencies, so setting some time aside to spend with your partner might be difficult, but it is definitely do-able. In the case of a long-distance relationship, it is essential. As mentioned above, Skype is an extremely useful tool in a long-distance relationship, and setting aside one hour a night for a Skype date can do wonders. If you aren’t in a long distance relationship, prioritize that you spend a certain amount of time with your partner per week, even if it’s just being around them while they study.

#3 Don’t be afraid to live your own lives
Chances are that you won’t be spending every bit of free time with your partner because there are other relationships in your life as well as in theirs. Guys generally need guy-time, while girls need girl-time—and everybody needs a little “me” time now and then, regardless of gender. This is completely normal. Give your partner space when they need it and take yours when you do too. If you’re long-distance, be understanding if your partner reschedules or decides to skip out on an occasional Skype date (with due forewarning of course).

#4 Never ever underestimate the power of little things
Cards, candy, flowers, these are all horribly generic ways of saying “I love you,” but they are horribly generic for a reason: they work. Of course, you don’t need to spend money to tell your partner that you care. Tap into the things that make your relationship work, such as inside jokes between the two of you, a letter telling them how important they are to you, and maybe a meaningful gift every now and then. Even a text at the beginning of the day telling them that you are thinking about them can go a long way.

#5 Know what it’s worth
Sometimes, the best thing for both partners is to end the relationship. It ends up being healthier, and both partners will become happier for it because they are able to pursue their aspirations. This is definitely not always the case, not even the majority of the time. My opinion is that if you are willing to work through it, you can make your relationship work—the trick is figuring out whether it’s worth it or not. Your time at med school may very well expose some very ugly facets of your relationship with your partner, and it may test your patience with them as well, but I can almost guarantee it will let you know whether or not you want to continue to be with them.

As a final word I want to say that if you and your partner are meant to be, you will be. This isn’t to say that relationships don’t require work, it’s meant to say that your relationship shouldn’t affect your decision to go to or stay in med school. Study up and always remember that relationships are like the human body: they are complex, mysterious at times, and will almost always require a check-up. Don’t neglect giving your relationship the care it needs.

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The idea was supported by Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a former health adviser to President Obama, and a colleague, Victor R. Fuchs. In an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association in March, they said there was “substantial waste” in the nation’s medical education. “Years of training have been added without evidence that they enhance clinical skills or the quality of care,” they wrote. They suggested that the 14 years of college, medical school, residency and fellowship that it now takes to train a subspecialty physician could be reduced by 30 percent, to 10 years.”

MedSchoolCoach couldn’t agree with this more! A lot of the first few years of medical are redundant and then not needed when you actually practice. Specialty training is becoming longer and longer, sometimes with no end in sight. medical students are often left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and are looking towards 10+ year fellowships and residencies before they can make the salary to repay. Shortening medical school would really allow one to focus on their career earlier. In reality much of what you learned in medical school is not applicable in everyday medical practice. The majority of what you will learn is in your current third year of medical school and during residency. A lot of the basic science stuff is important only to a subset of physicians. We hope to see more medical schools move to a three-year curriculum in the future!

See the full NY Times article here
.

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1. Plan early: It is imperative to start planning as early as possible if this is the route you want to take. In the 9th, 10th and 11th grades, you need to be shadowing, volunteering, researching, etc all in order to show direct medical programs you are committed to medicine
2. Really explore medicine: make sure medicine is right for you. Get as much clinical experience as possible. Talk to as many physicians and residents as you can. You will need to show medical schools that you understand medicine and that you really want to do this (after all, not many high schoolers know what they want to major in, much less have a career in).
3. Be organized: applying to these medical school directly from high school will require you to have your letters of recommendations in to multiple schools, have multiple essays ready, use the common application, interview, etc. There are a lot of steps! It’s important to be as organized as possible in going through them.
4. Get help: you won’t be able to do this alone. Get help from someone who has been through the direct BS/MD process before. Pick their brains for what these schools are looking for, how you can separate yourself and how you can secure your acceptance. Older friends are great resources, as are the advisors at MedSchoolCoach.
5. Do really, really well in school: this is a given. You must have near perfect grades in order to be in the conversation for these programs! Make sure you ace your classes.

These are just some tips to get you started, but there are many more things you should consider. Look around to see what MedSchoolCoach can offer you in terms of improving your application both early in the process with our Direct BS/MD Game Planning Sessions and later on with our Complete Package.

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Thursday’s announcement from the University of California, Los Angeles, of a $100 million medical student scholarship fund should inspire all of us to question the fact that medical education in the United States is paid for largely by student debt.

The new merit-based scholarships, established by entertainment executive David Geffen, will cover all educational, living and even some travel expenses for a fifth of next year’s entering medical school class, some 33 students. Mr. Geffen and school officials hope that eventually the school will be able to pay for all medical students and free them from the obligation to take out student loans.

…

The most durable solutions thus far seem to be scholarships made possible by philanthropic donations like Mr. Geffen’s. The University of Central Florida’s new medical school, for example, was able to offer its charter class in 2009, consisting of 40 students, a four-year scholarship that covered tuition and living expenses thanks to several gifts. And the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, established with a $100 million gift from philanthropists Al and Norma Lerner, has been able to educate a small cadre of future physician-scientists while granting all of them scholarships to cover tuition costs.

The full article is at http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/tackling-the-problem-of-medical-student-debt/

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The abstract of the study published in BMJ is as follows:
Background Social networking (SN) has become ubiquitous in modern culture. The potential consequences of revealing personal information through SN websites are not fully understood.

Objective To assess familiarity with, usage of, and attitudes towards, SN websites by admissions offices at US medical schools and residency programmes.

Methods A 26-question survey was distributed in autumn 2009 to 130 US medical school admissions officers and 4926 residency programme directors accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

Results A total of 600 surveys were completed, with 46 (8%) respondents who self-identified as reviewing only medical school applications, 511 (85%) who reported reviewing residency programme applications and 43 (7%) who reported reviewing both. 90/600 (15%) medical schools or programmes maintain profiles on SN websites and 381/600 (64%) respondents reported being somewhat or very familiar with searching individual profiles on SN websites. While a minority of medical schools and residency programmes routinely use SN websites in the selection process (53/600; 9%), more than half of respondents felt that unprofessional information on applicants’ SN websites could compromise their admission into medical school or residency (315/600; 53%).

Conclusions SN websites will affect selection of medical students and residents. Formal guidelines for professional behaviour on SN websites might help applicants avoid unforeseen bias in the selection process.

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Five Tips for Studying for the MCAT

The MCAT is one of the biggest obstacles on your way to getting into medical school. If you have decided to do something as fun and amazing as going to medical school then you need to give yourself the best options available and do your best on the MCAT. The amount of fear and anxiety that come with studying for the MCAT is only comparable to the number of rumors, myths and websites/blogs on the topic. Be careful of what you read and who you talk to. While people may be well-meaning, we are all individuals with our own quirks and strengths — and sometimes the best advice is no advice at all.

Nonetheless, below are five tips that are definitely valuable and appropriate for ANYONE taking the MCAT.  So take a moment to read through each, think about how it applies to you, and be proactive about applying the tip to your best advantage. GOOD LUCK on the MCAT.

1. Take practices tests early and do many of them

Take your first full length practice exam MONTHS ahead of your actual test date – there are many reasons for this. Primarily, you may think you know what the test is like but you will not actually know the feeling of the test until you’ve been through one. Secondly, the MCAT is unlike any test you have ever taken before.  You may actually fare better in some subjects than you anticipate and do worse in others – before you hit the books and try to boost your score make sure you know where you are STARTING. There will be a direct relationship between the number of questions, and better yet full exams, you do and your final test day score. Understand that this does not mean that doing questions solely will prepare you sufficiently for the exam. You should take one full exam at the beginning and then take one periodically (i.e. every couple of days/weeks depending on how long you’re studying for) until you’re closer to actual test day – then you should take tests more frequently. Note that these tests, like the real thing, are quite exhausting and they take time to review. A final note on practice tests – DO NOT GET BOGGED DOWN IN YOUR MCAT SCORES ON PRACTICE TESTS – all practice tests have flaws and biases.  They will not be your true score and it’s hard to predict whether you will score higher or lower on actual test day. Instead of spending hours online trying to figure out how people fared on the real test given such and such score on a certain practice test – just focus on how the test went – how did you feel during? After? Overall did you improve or slide back a little? What were your strengths and weaknesses?

2. Have a concrete study schedule

Developing a schedule, whether it is part of a program you have enrolled in or is self-designed, is vital to success on the MCAT. The act of creating the schedule will help orient you to how much material there is to review and how much time you have to do it – do NOT underestimate the amount of material that can be covered and the fact that truly learning and reviewing material takes time – REAL TIME. Make sure your schedule is two things: 1) Realistic and 2) Flexible.

Unlike the old adage about shooting for the stars – there is indeed a downside to overly optimistic study schedules. If you say you’re going to learn 10 chapters in a day and then only get through three you will feel anxious and upset that you’ve “failed” and yet what you’ve accomplished is realistic for a student in your position. This should not be misinterpreted as setting low standards – instead really take a moment to figure out how many free hours you have in a day and how long studying will take so that you can make a plan that works. That way when you fall short you know something went seriously wrong and when you complete your tasks successfully you can hit the sack that night with a solid sense of accomplishment. Secondly, flexibility is crucial because despite all your precious planning and good intentions, *stuff* happens, and you may need to be able to give yourself more time to study a particularly difficult subject etc. Finally, after you’ve developed a schedule its usefulness will come in handy when small failures to meet deadlines will ostensibly become big holes in your agenda which you will be faced to address PRONTO.

3. Know yourself and adjust accordingly         

The MCAT is an attempt to take individuals with different backgrounds, strengths, and dreams and assign a number to their probability of success in medical school. It’s fairly ridiculous. That being said, it is a necessary evil. Just because the system will treat you as one of many does not mean that you have to treat yourself in a similarly generic way. You have one big asset and it’s that you have been granted almost two decades of intimate knowledge of yourself – NOW USE IT! It’s time to sit down and really think about your high school and college years.

Ask yourself questions like:

• What do I need to study efficiently?
  • Good rest?
  • Coffee or tea?
  • Quiet or busy café?
  • Charged laptop?
  • No internet?
  • Do I work best for 3 hours straight without stop (unlikely) or do I work best with 5 minute stretch breaks every 45 min or do I work best with 15 min coffee breaks every 1.5 hrs?
  • Do I work best in the morning or at night?

Spend some time figuring out what your mind and body need to work optimally and then make sure they get it!

4. Make adjustments as you progress towards test day

As you’ve probably heard many times over – studying for the MCAT is not a sprint, it is a marathon. This concept cannot be underestimated. Make sure you don’t start your marathon too slowly and have to sprint at the end, you’ll hate yourself and be hurting, and make sure you don’t start too fast and then have to watch people pass you while you pant away. Furthermore, if you’re anything like a long distance runner you might find that you can get become quite involved in the moment and sometimes forget where along the long path you actually are.  So, take a moment every once in a while to check in. How far have you come? How much further do you have to go? What does that mean in terms of adjusting your speed or effort? Sometimes you may not see the forest for the trees – so take a moment now and again so that you can save yourself a lot of heartache down the road.

5. Learn from your mistakes AND from your successes

Sometimes the consistency and simplicity of studying from a review book can seem like an ultimate pleasure compared to the triumphs and tribulations of quizzes and tests but do not allow yourself to spend hours reviewing without actually testing what you’ve learned.  In addition to being able to determine whether you’ve actually learned what you set out to learn, you can adjust your learning techniques appropriately. Reviewing your quizzes and tests isn’t straightforward. Just because you got a problem wrong doesn’t mean you need to spend an hour reviewing that topic in your review book and just because you answered a problem correctly doesn’t mean you’ve aced that topic and never have to look back. When you get a problem wrong – take a moment to figure out why: did you misread the question? Did you forget to look at the graph provided? Were you lacking fundamental understanding in a subject matter? If you find that you have gotten MULTIPLE problems wrong in a similar subject matter then spend time reviewing the topic in detail but make sure the effort you spend is proportional the likelihood that you’ll be presented with that question/topic again. On the other side of the coin, just because you got a problem right doesn’t mean you truly understand it – make sure you do by being able to explain why the other answers are wrong.

At the end of the day – make sure you take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep enough and make sure your life outside of school and studying continues to exist. Spend time with friends and family. Have faith that in the end things will be okay if you just put one foot in front of the other and keep going. Now take a deep breath and GET STARTED studying for the MCAT.

Monique Roberts is a student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in her 4th year of medical school.  She earned her A.B. from Princeton University in 2009, graduating with Honors in Political Science.  She’s a Senior Tutor for MyGuru, a provider of in-person and online 1-1 tutoring and test prep. MyGuru provides customized, 1-1 MCAT tutoring through a small team of elite tutors, as well as tutoring for most other standardized tests.  You can get in touch with Monique or MyGuru by emailing info@myguruedge.com

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Direct Medical School Programs

In general, a direct medical school program guarantees a student admission into medical school contingent upon certain criteria, specific to each program. Some programs require that students achieve a certain score on the MCAT (after their second/third year into the program), while others completely waive the MCAT although requiring a certain GPA to be met. Other programs require the MCAT to be taken but do not require any specific score (in other words, they want you to just take the exam but your score does not impact your admission into the affiliated medical school.

Almost one quarter of US Medical schools offer direct medical programs for well-qualified high school students. As mentioned, often times, admission into these programs is more competitive than admission into the top universities.

Some of the schools that offer these direct programs include Northwestern, SUNY Stony Brook, Brown, Rice/Baylor, Drexel and many more. MedSchoolCoach offers a full array of services to help students gain admission into a direct medical school programs. You can learn more about MedSchoolCoach’s combined program admissions here: Combined Undergraduate and Medical School and Direct Medical Programs/

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In general, a combined undergraduate and medical school program guarantees a student admission into medical school contingent upon certain criteria, specific to each program. Some programs require that students achieve a certain score on the MCAT (after their second/third year into the program), while others completely waive the MCAT although requiring a certain GPA to be met. Other programs require the MCAT to be taken but do not require any specific score (in other words, they want you to just take the exam but your score does not impact your admission into the affiliated medical school.

Almost one quarter of US Medical schools offer this combined BS/MD program for well-qualified high school students. As mentioned, often times, admission into these programs is more competitive than admission into the top universities.

Some of the schools that offer these direct programs include Northwestern, SUNY Stony Brook, Brown, Rice/Baylor, Drexel and many more. MedSchoolCoach offers a full array of services to help students gain admission into combined undergraduate and medical school programs. You can learn more about MedSchoolCoach’s combined program admissions at http://www.medschoolcoach.com/bs-md-programs/

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There are several medical school interview questions that you should be prepared for. While we recommend not memorizing answers, because this makes you sound like a robot, it’s important to think about these questions and their answers prior to your interview. Preparing yourself with our list of medical school interview questions and answers can help!

Tell me about yourself?

This is a question that is often the most popular start question. Rather than say what to do, it’s important what to avoid. Don’t give out your grades (saying you graduated “summa cum laude”, saying you got a 38 on the MCAT, etc). These simple statements quickly lead down the wrong path! Instead, focus on your family, your upbringing, etc.

Why medicine?

This question is obviously going to be asked. Saying you want to help people is not enough. MedSchoolCoach recommends that during your medical school interview, you lay out a brief timeline of how you came to the decision you wanted to pursue medicine (don’t simply say I always dreamed of it since I was little). Provide concrete examples and scenarios that have shaped you and made you choose medicine as a career.

Do not be afraid to talk candidly. If you overcame a personal tragedy, or a family member did and this truly led you to medicine, tell us about it. Don’t beat around the bush, unless it is sometime very sensitive. (Beating around the bush means saying your mom suffers from a disease and you were there for her rather than saying your mom suffers from cancer). If there are things that truly lead you to chose medicine as a career, we want to know about them honestly.

Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
This old-school job interview question still pops up from time to time, and can trip up even the most confident job interviewer. We do not expect you to have your entire career mapped out, or even your specialty choice. But, it’s nice to hear whether you are interested in academic medicine (say it, even if you aren’t), research, teaching, etc. Certainly avoid saying you want to be a plastic surgeon doing breast implants all day in LA (doesn’t come across great).

What are your strengths and what are your weaknesses?  How will you improve upon your weaknesses?

Create an honest list of what you think are your strengths or weaknesses and then pinpoint a couple you can remember. Practice your responses so that they sound natural and you are prepared for the question.

An example of a strength would be communication skills: “ I work very well with all kinds of people, and understand that everyone has different perspectives about projects and work tasks – so when I work with others I realize that everyone comes to the table with different priorities and objectives. I keep this in mind when I communicate tasks that need to be accomplished with positive reinforcement and awareness of what others are working on.”

For the weakness, pick one that won’t that is not going to disqualify you being a physician, and then follow up with – this is what really matters – the examples of what you are doing (or have done) to fix your weakness. The most important point here is to show that you learn from your mistakes and your weakness, and you are taking the corrective action to fix the situation – and stress that! For example, if the job does not require public speaking, you can say that your weakness is you are afraid of speaking in front of the public. Then tell the interviewers that you have joined a Toastmaster club or public speech course to overcome the problem. Remind them that when you identify a problem, you actively take actions to correct it, and that is how you do things.

What are the current challenges in current health care and what can we do to improve it?

This question will be asked and you need to have an answer. Read NYTimes articles, the economist, etc and understand the current health care climate and policy so that you can better answer this question on your medical school interview.

Stay tuned! We will soon be posting more medical school interview questions and answers!
Learn More About Interview Preparation Services

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We are constantly asked to recommend the best MCAT preparation books and the best books for a premedical student to have. The truth of the answer is that no one book fits all. Every MCAT preparation book has a slightly different style, so it’s best to see which one fits you best. That said, there are a few staples that a wide variety of students have found helpful, so here we present out picks for MCAT preparation books.

Organic Chemistry Book Recommendations

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