Imagine you are the chair of a medical school admissions committee. What would you look for in an applicant?

As a future medical school applicant sitting on the outside, it is probably hard for you to decipher what admissions committees are thinking. Most of the information you get is pretty much “hearsay” from other premeds, who have heard from friends of friends, and friends of family. You might get information from licensed physicians, but often times they are so far removed from the admissions process (e.g. they got into medical school 20 years ago), that their information may just be flat out wrong.

I myself am certainly not on the admissions committee. However as someone admitted to medical school fairly recently, and now with 3 years of medical school under my belt, I have a much better understanding of what it means to be a “doctor”. In addition, if you have read many of my previous blog posts, you know that I like to break down issues in a very objective, logical manner. It’s the same approach I used when applying to scholarships, universities and medical schools, and it’s an approach that I believe works.

So instead of blindly following the information or advice of others, I highly encourage you to stop and think critically about this information, and make your own conjectures about the admissions process. I truly believe if you do this, you can make some fairly accurate assumptions about the admissions process. Admissions committees are composed of smart people – they will think logically about the process, and so you should too.

It’s in going through this process today that I will help you predict what types of applicants medical schools are looking for, and based on that, what you should do to make yourself a better applicant.

So what are medical school admissions committees looking for?

So let’s get back to my original question. Now that I have almost completed my 3rd year of clerkship, I have a much greater understanding of the work involved in being a physician – because clinically, that’s what I’m trying to do every day in the hospital or clinic. And now that I better understand this, I can see what characteristics admissions committees are likely trying to elicit – essentially the traits that answer the question: what makes a good doctor?

Without further adieu, here are the 7 main traits I think admissions committees are looking for in applicants, and what you should do to prove those traits:

1. Intelligence

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Thanks to Gagan, one of our readers, who suggested sharing the following video:

“February 8, 2011 – The deans of four Stanford graduate schools discussed the values of a liberal arts major and how that might impact a student who is interested in applying to professional school. They also talked about how their admission process searches for a diverse range of students with differing experiences.”

NOTE: The medical school part starts at 13:30

Enjoy, and thanks Gagan!

In recent days, Canadian medical schools have begun spreading joy (through interview invites) and crushing dreams (through rejections) among students everywhere. Great for those invited to interviews, but feelings of disappointment, sadness, and sometimes anger for those who received bad news. As we all know, it’s never fun to be rejected for anything.

When you receive a rejection, many thoughts can go through your head, like: What did I do wrong? Was I not good enough? Boy, they really screwed up!

While some of these thoughts can end up leading to something positive (e.g. you work harder for next year’s application cycle), some of them can be quite destructive (e.g. you blame the medical school admissions process solely and spread a lot of negativity).

In perusing the Canadian premed forums this past week, it’s quite clear that all kinds of thoughts formed in response to rejections. In reacting to rejections, I think it helps to stand back and take an objective look at the medical school admissions process.

What happens every year around interview invite time is that students who hear back from medical schools post their “stats” and a status update for their application. For those unfamiliar with I’m talking about, here’s an example:

Rejected! 🙁
4th year applicant
3.91 GPA
PS12/VR14/BS10/WSQ
EC’s: 2 summers of research, started a club, lots of leadership positions, volunteered at a hospital every week
Application: Strong essay and reference letters

There are lots of good applicants with really good “stats” who get rejected from medical schools every year – stellar GPA, strong MCAT, lots of extracurriculars and leadership experience, etc. In their mind, they have put together a pretty darn good application and are shocked when they don’t get an interview – especially when they see other students with similar or even lower “stats” moving on in the admissions process. So what’s going on?

The easy way out would be to blame the admissions committee and say they screwed up. I see this a few times every year and unfortunately this is an unhealthy attitude. It suggests a sense of “entitlement” to the applicant when the reality is that there isn’t one. Understand this: the admissions committee can do whatever the heck they want. It is their process. Their goal isn’t to get you into medical school. Their goal is to create a medical school class that they and the medical school are happy with.

What do we really know about the process? Really, a whole lot of nothing

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Over the past year and a bit, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the medical school admissions process. As you can imagine, a lot of students have the same questions. I figured it would make a lot more sense to just compile these common questions and my answers for everyone to see. Overtime, as we get more questions and write more answers, we will keep adding to the list. Enjoy!

• General
• Undergrad
• MCAT
• Extra-Curriculars / Non-Academic Experiences
• Reference Letters

General

Could you give a general timeline of how the med admissions process went for you?

It’s a pretty basic process, but keep in mind that this won’t be the same for everyone, and there’s no “correct” way.

Summer after 1st year – took MCAT prep course during May to July, then MCAT in August

August to Sept of 3rd year – apply to Ontario medical schools through OMSAS (Google this if you want to learn more, this is the online application service)

January to February of 3rd year – hear back about possible interviews (and rejections)

Late Feb. to Early April of 3rd year – interviews

May 15 of 3rd year – first round offers from medical schools (as well as waitlist and rejections)

What courses would best prepare me for medical school?

The best courses to prepare someone for medical school are anatomy and physiology (and maybe a few other ones, like immunology, genetics, biochemistry, etc.). That being said, these are NOT prerequisite courses for med school. I’m just saying that these types of courses are most relevant to the type of information covered in medical school.

Undergrad

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There is a ton of diversity across Canada (let alone the world) when it comes to medical school admissions processes. The following is what I would do if I ran a medical school. If there are any medical school admissions committees seeking advice, you know how to reach me ;).

GPA / MCAT

I’ve said before that if I were forced to only use one item for selecting candidates, it would be GPA. So there’s no way I could leave it out if I got a chance to re-design the entire process. GPA is useful because it shows a candidate’s academic ability over a fairly long period. Due to the nature of GPA calculations, you need to be consistent to score well. You need to be able to work hard for several years. Qualities like intelligence, work ethic, organizational skills, etc. are highly suggested from a good GPA, and you need those skills to be a good medical student, first and foremost. If you don’t have the ability to learn well and study hard, you won’t be able to acquire the knowledge you need to be a competent doctor. GPA is one of the only ways for students to prove that.

Of course, one of the problems with GPA is that everyone takes different courses from different programs in different institutions. This is where the MCAT comes in, to standardized the process a bit. The MCAT allows us to compare certain abilities of students from many different programs and backgrounds. The drawback to the MCAT is that it only represents a single event, which students study a few months for – which does not tell us much about the student’s ability to be a learner for a much longer period of time. In addition, the material tested on the MCAT and its relevance to medicine are debatable, and it is problematic in the sense that it is organized by someone else and limits the medical school’s ability to control what type of skills should be tested.

As such, I think using both GPA and the MCAT is important. However, I disagree with the strict cutoff method that some medical schools use. It doesn’t make sense to me for someone scoring 14/14/8/T with a 4.0 GPA to not have an interview, while someone with a 10/10/9/Q and 3.7 GPA to be guaranteed one.

I think it makes much more sense to use an algorithm that combines the GPA and MCAT into a single score, and then rank applicants that way for the interview.

Scrap Personal Essays and Autobiographical Sketches

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Disclaimer: We are in no way affiliated with McMaster Medical School nor with anyone involved with the development or implementation of CASPer (Computer-based Assessment for Sampling Personal characteristics). All information in this article is publicly available through a simple Google search. Furthermore, this article provides links to all of those resources, and we encourage you to read them for yourself. The purpose of this article is to simply consolidate publicly available information on an interesting and innovative medical school admissions tool and promote discussion.

Why CASPer?

The assessment of non-cognitive skills is a crucial component of any medical school admissions process, and is usually done through the evaluation of personal essays, autobiographical submissions, and interviews. However, interviews are resource intensive (need interviewers, rooms, etc.) and cannot be done for all applicants. In addition, while all applicants can write personal essays/autobiographical submissions, it is hard to know how much of application is the writing of the applicant or that of outside help.

In recent years, McMaster has performed studies (see here and here) analyzing the effectiveness of its five question Autobiogaphical Submission (ABS) pre-interview tool. These studies have shown the ABS to be limited in both reliability and ability to predict future candidate performance. As a result, they developed a “Computer-based Multiple Sample Evaluation of Noncognitive Skills (CMSENS), which eventually became CASPer. More information about the CMSENS and the original research article can be found here.

CASPer Basics

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