Standing Out

Standing out in your personal statement is no easy feat, but we have four brainstorming questions and examples that will inspire you to find your hook! This article will help you be memorable, set a positive tone, illustrate your impact, and convey your driving principles and core identities in your medical school personal statement.

Regardless of what you think about the term 'critical thinking,' it has unfortunately become a cliche buzzword in the pre-med world. But like most cliches, there is some truth behind it and its importance in the pre-med path. As with most unavoidable pre-med cliches and buzzwords, the key goal is to “make it your own” through specific illustrations and examples from your own personal experiences. In this article, I will simplify something that’s needlessly complex, explain what ‘critical thinking’ really means to you as a pre-med, and show you how you can effectively demonstrate it to medical schools.

You’ll need to meet all the prerequisites to be considered for admission, but you’ll need to go above and beyond to stand out and ensure your chances of getting in. Since you’ll have to go above and beyond, we want this post to do the same thing. We’ll give you all the requirements, BUT we’ll also provide tips and tricks for separating you from the countless other eligible applicants.

How Do Ordinary People Get into Medical School?

“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.

Pre-meds tend to have a lot of substance. They spend hundreds of hours helping patients in the hospital, countless more volunteering for good causes, and even devote themselves, unpaid, to developing research that benefits humanity.

In my new video, I’m sharing the six tips I use with my pre-med students for writing a better Thank You note. I can’t guarantee that yours will be plastered to the wall of the person you’re thanking, but I promise it will make your thank you notes more sincere.

One of our core philosophies is based on a question that most pre-meds aren’t asking before they apply to medical school.“Why should medical schools accept you? What makes you stand out?”

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:

Being a pre-med is like playing a massive, multiplayer role-playing game (RPG). Similar to characters in RPGs, pre-meds must gain experience, collaborate with others, conquer obstacles, and step into unfamiliar territory.

You’re in competition with thousands of qualified medical school applicants for a limited number of spots, so you have to “sell yourself” to stand out. But you don’t want to come across as pompous, pretentious, or self-righteous. The dreaded “holier than thou” tone that will make admissions officers’ skin crawl.

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.

The dreaded “diversity question.”Each year, as students fill out their secondary applications, they’re bombarded with essay prompts about their “diverse qualities,” “unique insights,” or “unusual life experiences.” Schools will usually ask how these qualities, insights, or experiences will contribute to their campus or environment.

When pre-meds see the word “diverse,” they’re likely to consider race, gender, ethnicity, or class status. Most would never think about where their families stored the ketchup.

Pre-meds need help, and not just psychiatric help (though, let’s be honest, plenty of them do). To get into medical school, pre-meds need the help of influential people: professors, doctors, and even other student-group leaders. Pre-meds are often assertive and competitive people, but that’s not always enough to secure letters of recommendation, internships, or research positions.