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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.

Is It Getting Harder to Get into Health Professions Programs?

We're a blog focused on pre-meds, but we have a lot of love for the other health professions programs, too. In fact, our advisors regularly work with all types of applicants, including physician assistants (PAs), physical therapists (PTs), dentists, podiatrists, and optometrists. Our expert team has been gathering data to answer one of the most common questions we receive: "Is it getting harder to get in?" For now, we've focused on the five disciplines listed above (along with med school, of course), compiling our data into handy graphs and determining the verdict about whether it's harder to get in now vs. five years ago.

How to Start Your Career Over as a Doctor as a Non-traditional Applicant

The path to medicine can seem daunting as a non-traditional student. There is no denying that the journey is chock-full of uncertainty and obstacles. We interviewed two non-traditional students (one medical student and one current applicant) about their roads to medicine and how they overcame their challenges. We hope these FAQs will be helpful in your own journey!

Can Community College Students Become Doctors?

Community college is a practical and affordable way to receive your education, but what about the stigma that surrounds it? Is it really true or just a myth? The following FAQs will break down every major concern you may have about community college to help ease your journey to medical school. 

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.

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. 

The Top 10 Best Non-Ivy-League Colleges for Pre-Meds

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 10 Best Colleges for Pre-Meds in Every Region

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!

Real Pre-Meds Rate Their College Experience

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. 

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 do ordinary people get into medical school? (Video)

How do ordinary people get into medical school?

Top 10 Most Underrated Colleges to Be Pre-med

Top 10 Most Overrated Colleges to Be Pre-med

Personal Statement and Essay Prompts 2020: AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS

Looking for a comprehensive index of all required essay prompts for the AMCAS, AACOMAS, and TMDSAS applications? Look no further. Personal statements, short essays, experience descriptions - it’s all covered here.

The Secret Skill That Separates Average Pre-meds from Standout Ones

“People are a hundred times more interested in themselves and their wants and problems than they are in you and your problems.” This excerpt from Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, is not a condemnation of people as self-absorbed jerks. He’s merely pointing out a very important fact about networking - the secret skill that separates average pre-meds from standout ones.

The Savvy Pre-med Comprehensive Guide to the CASPer Test

How did the CASPer test come about, you ask?

6 Tips Every Freshman Pre-med Needs to Know

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:

What Pre-Med Color Are You?

These are pre-meds who followed their non-pre-med passions. They weren't born with these qualities (perhaps except for the fashion model). Instead, they chose to spend their time differently from the blue crayons.

5 Pre-med misconceptions that can cost you

Every kid learns you can’t fold a piece of paper more than seven times. A childhood adage, just like “don’t cross your eyes or they’ll get stuck that way,” and “all girls have cooties.” Everyone knows these ideas. And yet, they’re not true.

How to Avoid the Pre-Med Blues

Sky blue. Robin’s egg blue. Turquoise. Cerulean. Navy. Denim. Teal. Periwinkle. Aquamarine.Some of these Crayola crayons are fancier sounding than others and some hardly seem blue at all (looking at you Periwinkle), but in the end, they’re all blue.

Don't Hurt Your Odds 10/23/17

My friend begins every trip to Vegas at the roulette table, throwing down a chunk of chips on black or red.“Let’s just see what happens,” he says.