[Presentation video coming SOON! ... until then, please review the advising slides and transcript notes below]
Currently, I am a 1st year medical student at LECOM and a Weber State University graduate.
I am mom of a 9-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback, Major, and a 3-year-old little lady, Justice.
This is my very convoluted pre-medical pathway.
It's a little overwhelming so let's back up and I'll take you through it.
As a pre-medical student, I remember the pressure of feeling like I was on the outside and that my non-linear path would keep me from med school and ultimately becoming a doctor.
But I want you to know that many of us take long and uncertain detours to get here.
Those experiences shape you, they improve your maturity, expand your aptitude for empathy as a clinician, and if nothing else... make for great med school application essays.
Let's get into my undergraduate journey that led me to become a student doctor in the 2021 entering class.
I started studying full-time at Weber State University, at 16-years-young, in the accounting department. I was always good with numbers and accounting was a safe degree.
But coming from a family of meager means, I also felt the pressure to work to provide for myself so I typically held 2-3 jobs and worked anywhere form 40-70 hours/week, on top of full-time classes. I worked in the emergency department at McKay Dee Hospital and for a while in ICU research down at Intermountain Medical Center. I also worked as a CNA in a long term care facility.
That pressure led me to failing an entire semester in 2010.
At this point I was 18 years young and just couldn't keep all of the balls in the air.
I didn't withdraw or drop, I simply stopped going to classes or completing coursework. I was too ashamed to communicate with anyone at the school. So, I earned a full plate of Fs.
While I actually loved school, I knew I needed some time away.
So I moved to California and worked at Sutter health in labor and delivery and then Rideout Health as a business analyst.
After a couple of years and a really positive end to a romantic relationship, I took off to Colorado and worked for SCL Health as an analyst.
While I was doing really well for so young, I started to feel the call of my education again.
Now, because I had earned above a threshold number of credit hours at WSU, I could re-enroll and take advantage of in-state tuition, regardless of my current state of residency.
In 2014 I started with a couple of online courses while I tied up loose ends and by that spring I relocated to Utah to attend Weber full-time again, but this time I dual-majored in Exercise and Sport Science.
Remember that great breakup I mentioned? It was so good, I lost 75 pounds and became an awesome version of myself that led me want to study exercise and diet.
The exercise science major, and realizing that I was already in school for the long-haul, really lit the fire in me to take it a step further. But I didn't quite get up the courage to go pre-med until 2016.
Now I was dual-majoring and adding all of the pre-med recommended courses (that consequently earned me a minor in chemistry).
To be in line with some of my class I decided to apply for graduation and I walked across the stage on 4/27/2018.
That's a picture of my actual cap there with 3 Bs:
"BS" for earning my degree
"Bday" because April 27th is my birthday (I got to walk on my birthday)
"Baby" because I was 12 weeks pregnant with my daughter
Although I had graduated, I still had a few recommended pre-med courses I needed to take, and some that I just wanted to take (can you tell I like school?) So I continued classes over the summer... then into the fall semester.
And knowing that I was due to give birth in late October, I communicated early with all of my professors so that I could try to work ahead as much as possible before then.
I went in for an induction on a Sunday morning, labored 2.5 days, pushed for 4.5 hours before getting a consequent chorio infection, and then having an unplanned C-section.
My daughter was born on a Tuesday. I was released home that Friday. And by Saturday morning I waddled my cinched-up belly up the Davis campus stairs to sit for an exam in the testing center.
Then I continued that semester and another while caring for my daughter and returning to work.
Somewhere in there I took the MCAT, didn't score too hot--498.
But finally in 2019 I decided to submit my med school applications for the graduating class of 2024.
We will get into applications in a bit, but, long story short: the cycle came to a close and I started looking ahead at the next.
As I was preparing the following year's applications, I decided to also look into and apply to some special master's programs (SMPs) after weighing the likelihood that my GPA and MCAT score would get me past primary/secondary application screenings.
The longer you're out of school, the harder succeeding in med school will be. And the more years you spend applying, the less years you get to be a physician.
In 2020 I applied to a handful of medical schools as well as SMPs and was subsequently admitted to LECOMs Master of Medical Sciences 1-year program.
During the program, I performed well enough to interview for the medical school and at the conclusion of those grueling 10 months I was offered a seat in the DO program, in my chosen pathway.
Not depicted in my pre-medical pathway timeline:
I was hospitalized twice for recurrent infections, septic the first, in 2015, I believe.
Then on 9/8/16, my niece who I had raised for several years when she was about 4-7 years old, then a 14-year-old high school cheerleader, committed suicide. It took time, that felt like it had frozen still, for me to feel like I was living on earth and among other people again.
Windy, bumpy, and discontinuous as my journey was, I'm speaking to you today as a student doctor.
Looking back, Weber State has incredible resources if you experience adversities as a student.
Speak to professors for individual course leniency... when my niece left us, I was eventually able to open up to my professors and it was very helpful that some of them shared my experience and were so generous in allowing me to actually create a timeline for catching up on coursework.
Taking an "incomplete" grade is also an option for extra time to complete coursework after the semester's end.
Don't be afraid of that corner office where the counseling services center lives. They are very welcoming of walk-ins and phone calls.
If you just can't escape a blemish on your transcript because... life happens, explore an academic petition. With a little explanation and perhaps some supporting documentation (like from a therapist or physician), you may be able to have some things removed from your official transcript.
On this note, please hesitate to repeat courses. I know I was advised not to do so but of course, sometimes you just gotta learn for yourself.
If no one has told you, AMCAS and AACOMAS average repeat coursework, they do not replace grades like your school does. And over the hundred (or hundreds, in my case) credit hours you will take in undergrad, an average of repeat course grades is not going to move the GPA needle.
Just to put this into perspective, my WSU cumulative GPA = 3.56, contrasted with my undergraduate AMCAS/AACOMAS cumGPA = 3.19.
Let's dive into a bit about the actual med school applications.
If you haven't felt it yet get ready for a roller coaster of emotions.
Once you get to a place where you have a good idea of your hard statistics (your GPA and MCAT score), it's time to start curating your list of schools to apply to.
There are a couple of awesome resources to get you started.
I am so stinking stoked at the updates that the Choose DO Explorer has made recently that allows you to use filters! When I first started researching DO schools, the only resource available was a huge PDF catalog they published every year.
Choose DO is free, you just sign up with your email address and get immediate access.
MSAR for the MD schools is a paid database running $28/1 year or $36/2 years.
(The AAMC fee assistance program includes free 2-year access to MSAR.)
A few things you might compare on these sites when researching potential schools:
GPA
MCAT
Mission/vision
Tuition
Required/recommended coursework
Extracurriculars
Letters of recommendation
Age of students
Residencies matched
Student home states (and in-/out- of state)
Racial/ethnic diversity of class
That last one I mention because I did (and still do) want to attend a diverse medical school. The reason to pay attention to this particular published statistic is that there are some schools whose mission is centered around supporting a particular minority group. If you are part of that group, then you are their bread and butter and should absolutely apply. But if you're not, it might be more of a wasted application in the end. For example, I had wanted to apply to Morehouse based solely on statistics, until I noticed who their target demographic is--the 2020 entering class is 93% black/African American, and I am not.
I encourage you to make a spreadsheet with the data you look up to avoid searching for the same schools repeatedly. Trust me, you will find yourself doing so.
Some value (taken with a grain of salt) can be gleamed from peer impressions on forums like the Student Doctor Network (SDN) & Reddit.
Moving on, let's talk about the money that goes into applying to med school.
I remember having a pre-med meeting where I was told to plan to spend about $10,000 on an application cycle and thinking that was some made-up non-sense.
But is it?
I'm going to compare AMCAS and AACOMAS, I personally also applied to another handful of schools through TMDSAS, where they charge one flat-rate for any number of schools.
The application services charge $170 or $197 for the initial application that covers one program, then an additional $42 or $48 for each med school after that, on AMCAS and AACOMAS respectively.
Let's take a look at my real-world example from my 2019 application cycle.
I applied to 20 MD and 24 DO programs (and the handful in Texas).
Yes, I know, I was a little bonkers. Actually, I had read an article about a student with not-so-stellar stats whose tactic it was to "play the numbers" and apply incredibly broadly, and he got in to school. I figured this made some sense so I chose to do this too and hope that if I threw everything I had at the wall in one cycle, something, somewhere would stick.
Spoiler, y'all already know that was not the outcome.
At the listed costs, my primary applications totaled $2,269.
That's only primary applications.
Please, if you are a poor, or middle-class student, don't pay that!
AAMC has a fee assistance program that opens each year in mid-January and can be awarded 5 times in a lifetime. Benefits of this program include:
MCAT prep products
Reduced mcat registration fee ($325 reduced to $130)
MSAR access for 2 years
AMCAS application to 20 schools for free
AACOMAS offers a fee waiver that covers the initial application fee ($197).
Utilizing both programs, I saved $1,165 on primary applications alone.
Regardless of what the fee award entails, all programs to which I applied waived the secondary/supplemental fees with proof that I had received a primary application assistance/waiver (saving me another ~$1,000-4,000, since most secondary fees are $25-100+).
This is just the cost of applications, so don't forget the added expenses attributed to interviews (attire, travel, room & board, etc.).
Back to our story...
Y'all know that my application cycle didn't turn out, so I went into a graduate program.
These SMPs are typically 1, sometimes 2, -year programs (often within medical schools--MD and DO) that offer a LINKAGE.
The linkage is usually a guaranteed interview or offer of admission to a medical program, awarded by meeting benchmarks while in the master's program.
I want to be clear.
SMPs are hard. That's how they are designed. They are meant to be a taste of medical school. And they should be treated as such.
Think of an SMP like a med school trial--a chance to prove to the school, but also yourself, that you can handle the academic rigor and school-life balance of studying medicine.
If you explore this route, only do it if you're ready to commit. Because attempting an SMP and performing poorly, will probably hurt your chances of getting into med school more than not doing one at all.
The idea is that if you can handle an SMP, you've exhibited capacity to do well in med school... but the opposite is also true.
An SMP is a foot in the door via a linkage agreement.
Schools with these linkages hold seats for students from their graduate programs because they have statistically proven to be strong, successful student doctors.
Also with that in mind, consider that this isn't explicitly disclosed in the number of med school first year seats that general applicants are competing to secure.
I've found that many schools with these programs report 25% of their first year classes come from their SMPs.
I stole this grade translation from Georgetown's website but I just love it.
I just want you to zero in on here that a B grade in their SMP is equivalent to the majority of their first year medical class performance.
I'll say it again--SMPs are hard. And they are a real taste of med school. For many, they are a harsh reality check. But getting through one gives you such an advantage the next year.
If I've piqued your interest, you can click the link to access a spreadsheet I made earlier this academic year that includes stats and linkage agreements for 10 SMPs. Anything included can be clicked to follow directly to where I obtained the information, just in case it changes with time.
This is a great place to start your own list.
Other helpful places to research SMPs 👇👇
AAMC Postbaccalaureate Premedical Programs: https://apps.aamc.org/postbac/
PostBacCas: http://postbaccas.liaisoncas.org/
Student Doctor Network (SDN): https://www.studentdoctor.net/
I thought getting into med school was the hard part... but just getting from an offer of admission to the first day of classes is also an obstacle course so I want to offer a list of some to-dos if you end up relocating and an idea of what those tasks cost me.
First, don't procrastinate to complete your physical, drug screen, and background check.
These tasks take more time than you'll believe and you want to get them in motion early.
As part of your physical, you will likely need vaccine titers and you might end up surprised, like me, that some come back either negative, or unequivocal, so then require re-vaccination and subsequent titers checked another 6-8 weeks later.
The drug screen and background check are pretty painless and quick, but these cost me $140 ($134 background + drug screen; $6 personal driving record).
My relocation expenses included:
$4,000 PODS (8'x8'x8'; 30 days + mileage)
$500 Uhaul trailer (4'x8' cargo trailer)
$330 gas (1,817 miles, 20 mpg, $3.60/gal)
$1,000 hotels (2 nights (3 days) on road; 2 nights in hotel in town)
$100 food
Definitely look for housing ASAP because for an incoming class, hundreds of other students will be doing the same thing at the same time as you.
Many of my peers ended up paying way too much to stay long-term in hotels until they could find vacancies (some up until months into the school year).
Before arriving at school, housing cost me a typical deposit and first month's rent to hold the property: $890 deposit and $890 applied as the first month of rent.
While health insurance didn't really cost me time or money, it's something to afford consideration as you enter medical school. You have several options:
Enroll in a health plan offered by your medical school, which is included in the cost of attendance (COA) and considered part of your tuition statement.
Remain enrolled in a parent's health insurance plan until you are aged 26.
Acquire state Medicaid health insurance (this is what I do because med school means that I have zero income and qualify for being below the poverty level). Medicaid is free and widely accepted, so why not?
If you're taking a vehicle with you to medical school, there are a few things to get lined up. You'll need to update your vehicle registration (this ran me around $110) and you may or may not also need an emissions inspection. You most certainly need to update your vehicle insurance--unfortunately the move increased my insurance premiums by over $600/year. And whether you have a vehicle or not, you probably want to go ahead and get a state ID. Since I do have a car, an updated driver license was essential and that was another $30.
Unique to some of us is childcare. While this wasn't necessarily a relocation expense, it was something that I had to research and battle long and hard leading up to starting school. Finding vacancies for childcare is a real doozy and even getting facilities to communicate with me from a different state was nearly impossible. I was eventually able to find one facility with an opening for my, at the time, 2-year old for $240/week.
Wrapping it up, childcare aside, the one-time costs to just relocate cost me over $8,000.
My advice: get settled & organized as early as possible so that once the school year starts, you can just focus on figuring out med school.
The day finally comes when you will be known as Student Doctor.
My school offers 4 unique learning pathways:
a traditional lecture style (lecture discussion pathway, LDP)
problem based learning (PBL)
directed study (DSP)
3-year accelerated primary care pathway (primary care scholars pathway, PCSP)
I requested a seat in the directed study pathway to allow for greater flexibility in my days, which is really important as a single parent. But also, I study better when I get to choose how I allocate my time.
If I were in a lecture pathway, getting stuck on one minute detail can completely derail my ability to follow anything taught afterward.
By "teaching" myself, I get to spend more time on concepts that are difficult to me and breeze through those that I'm already familiar with.
The first semester of medical school is truly about figuring out how you study... and you do that by mostly figuring out what DOESN'T work.
In my opinion, one of the biggest struggles for students is time management.
Going into my second semester I created this gantt chart of sorts that shows when each of my core courses begins and asterisks indicate exam dates.
This allows me to easily see which courses are in-progress, and therefor warrant some study time, but also to be mindful of which need a little more attention for upcoming assessments.
It's so simple but has helped me greatly and been requested by many of my peers.
As far as how I study in an independent style... I HATE textbooks so I utilize a variety of supplemental resources.
The first is one that I was introduced to during my anatomy courses at my undergraduate institution. It was great then, it's great now, and I've gotten many med students hooked on it.
It's the Visible Body human anatomy atlas app, which I have installed on my phone, iPad, and laptop.
Next up is the Anki app. I also use this on all of my devices but personally prefer it on my computer.
I want to bust the myth that you have to know coding to use it--you don't.
But I'll admit that it doesn't have the prettiest user interface so it does require a bit of a learning curve.
Anki is known for its spaced repetition algorithm that schedules flashcard reviews at a variety of spaced frequencies to maximize memorization.
I use it as a repository of all the things I need to know so that I don't have to go searching 15 different PowerPoints or PDFs to find the one fact that's on the tip of my tongue.
Honestly, YouTube is exploding with Anki tutorials that are a great way to get started.
Osmosis is like the big brother of Khan Academy.
If you've ever enjoyed Khan videos, you'll love Osmosis for med school. In addition to videos, they have PDF "notes," flashcards (with their own spaced repetition system), practice step exam questions, and links to relevant external resources.
Sketchy Medical is another of my favorites.
I was adamant that I was not a visual learner and watching a narrated cartoon sketch was absolutely bogus... until I tried it. Immediately I was sold. It works. They also have great quiz questions.
Then there's what I refer to as the red-headed step children of Sketchy--Pixorize and Picmonic.
I used Pixorize during my SMP to fill in some of the holes in Sketchy's content and it's pretty good. I have no complaints.
I haven't personally used Picmonic but it seems to pop up everywhere so there's gotta be something worth exploring there.
Lastly, I live by the First Aid books!
You probably won't believe me, but they are actually enjoyable reads. Lots of pictures and everything is in a summary or tabular format. Very easy to digest. They really are golden.
And you didn't hear it from me... but if you're savvy in some of the far reaches of the internet, many a med student has found free downloads of these books...
We are reaching the end!
My final thoughts:
Pre-med is hard.
Med school is hard.
I'm sure residency and practice will be hard.
Don't lose yourself along the way.
If you have to, schedule time to do things you enjoy (I'm doing that right now).
For me, one of the great things about being a parent in med school is that, while I have less potential study time compared to most of my peers, I study hard and efficiently BECAUSE I know that I also have to spend quality time with my daughter every day. And in turn, the time I spend with her helps me to return to my schoolwork refreshed and re-energized.
Take that time.
Be present in the things you're doing.
If you're sitting down to study but worrying about other life things so much that you aren't retaining information, then you're not really studying.
Likewise, if I'm spending time with my daughter but I keep pulling out my phone to flip through Anki cards or check on my class chats, I'm not making the sort of memories that I want to make with my daughter. But I'm also not really studying either.
I am a mixed A/B student, and I am more than okay with that. Because I'm a competent student doctor and I think I'm a pretty good mother.
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