(And the medical school of your choice!) I make no promises, but it worked for me, so I hereby provide my path and advice to those pre-meds out there:

Undergrad
Undergrad is the time for you to explore your interests. Okay– to have fun , and explore your interests. Figure out what you love. And then do that. To some it might be graphic design; for others it might be math. Or volunteering. Or lab research. Or foreign languages. Or acting. Do. What. You. Love.

You’ll notice that I didn’t say “majoring in math,” or “majoring in Biology.” If what you love happens to be a major–great! If it doesn’t–don’t stop doing it! Figure out what it is that keeps you up at night, so excited with thoughts racing that you can’t fall asleep. Figure out what lights up that fire in your eyes: when you’re talking with friends, when is it that you get that thrill in your chest? Talking about religion? Sports? Cooking?

Undergrad should give you a depth of knowledge in one area (your major) and pique your interest in others. Medical schools are looking for the well-rounded applicant who has shown significant commitment and passion to a particular love of his or hers. Medical school is similar–you have to love learning medicine so much that you’re willing to put up with a bunch of crap for 4 years and delay gratification for many more. If you can show someone that you’re passionate and committed to something–you’re already ahead of the curve.

This all being said, of course, you also have to let medical schools know that you know you’ll like medicine. There’s nothing worse than a medical school spending their precious time and resources to figure out who they’d like to admit, and then have one of their students end up hating the practice of medicine. So find some clinical setting in which you can shadow, volunteer, or something where you get to see doctors working. I did a summer internship with a local hospital where half the time I did data entry and half the time I got to shadow doctors in different parts of the hospital.

I think one of the smartest things I did–and best for my application–was drop medicine completely from my potential career list for a time. Sophomore year sucked academically: organic chemistry and physics together for three straight quarters–and it really made me question everything. “Do I really want medicine that bad? Isn’t there something else I could do with my talents?” So I took lots of different courses, to see if I could find anything I liked more. But I always came back to medicine. I figured I could do graphic design as a hobby, program as a hobby, take foreign languages as a hobby–but never medicine as a hobby. How did this strengthen my application? I could honestly say to interviewers that I’d really challenged the idea of becoming a doctor, and that I still wanted it badly. I knew I would love medicine. (And if you find that you don’t love medicine, that’s okay. But you should really find something else to do. Better to find this out now than after you’ve taken out $50,000 a year in loans!)

Try new things in undergrad. While in some ways you want to fit in with other applicants (good scores, good grades, good letters), you want to stand out. What did every single interviewer ask me about during my interviews? Not my research, not the student groups I helped lead–it was the current events radio show I hosted with my two friends. Stand. Out. (More on this later.)

And, not totally related, but it gave me a great deal of perspective and truly changed my life: if your school offers it, do an Alternative Spring Break trip! And if your school doesn’t offer it, look into starting an Alternative Spring Break group at your school!

The MCAT
Sorry to say it, but it’s important. Because schools have thousands of applications to go through, they’ve got to use some method to reject people right off the bat, and it’s usually some funky formula including one’s MCAT score. Doing very well on the MCAT will certainly help your chances at getting into your top school, but just doing well is important, too. In my experience, there’s some vague hazy cut-off below which you won’t get a secondary application or interview at school X, but that cut-off is fairly low. (I wish I could talk numbers, but I don’t know any!) If you do well but not stellar, and this is just how you test, no matter what you do–an otherwise strong application may pull you through. (And a word to you brainiacs out there–if you’re scoring 40s on your MCATs but have no personality or can’t interview or talk to someone for 20 minutes, you in some ways have a tougher time. I’d much rather have a classmate with good MCAT scores who I can interact with that someone with a 42 who can’t express him or herself.)

What to use to study? I took the Kaplan course, which was hella expensive. It certainly kept me on track with my studying, ’cause I didn’t want to get to class and not have reviewed anything yet, but if I could do it over again I would have just tried to buy the study books on eBay or something. I also did craaaazy amounts of practice tests, which my school had on reserve in its library. ( Go, U Northwestern! )

The Application
#1: Have your application ready by the day you’re allowed to start submitting. Have your letters in, your transcript sent, your personal statement ready. Medical schools work on a rolling admissions basis, so the earlier you submit, the faster you get the secondaries. The faster you submit the secondaries, the faster they can review your application and offer you an interview. And once your interview is over, if you’ve done it early, your application will be discussed in more rounds of deciding whether to offer you a spot. (Compare that to the person who submits in October, and your application gets two months’ more of time in committee.) For some of the faster schools (UChicago!), I had interviewed and been accepted by early September–before I’d even received secondaries from some slower schools. (And that first acceptance is the best, ’cause you know you get to be a doctor somewhere .)

The obvious: while you’re doing all this exploring and “doing what you love” stuff that I rambled on about, you’ve also got to be studying. Not just to get good MCATs, but also get good grades. This is likely something to make you learn how to find balance in your life–between your academic life and your social one (I still struggle at this, as most of us probably do).

Extracurriculars: It’s great to see someone with a ton of interests, but try to pare it down as you become an upperclassmen. Again–find what you love, and make a significant contribution to it. Take on a leadership role. Advance the field, or activity, or whatever.

Letters of Recommendation: I can’t remember the recommendations on how many science and non-science letters to get anymore, but follow them. If you fall in love with a class and a professor, and think, “Wow, I really love this topic, the professor seems great, I would really like a letter from this person,” make sure the professor gets a chance to know you. Does that mean kissing up and going to office hours for no reason? No. It means participating in class, making your voice heard, letting the professor know you’re thinking and processing the information in his or her class. When I knew I wanted to ask my Physiology professor for a letter, I made sure to start asking questions that I had during class, or going up after class to ask.

Next, ask and ye shall receive. Don’t just ask someone “for a letter of recommendation.” Ask the person, “Would you feel comfortable writing me a strong letter of recommendation?” or “Do you feel comfortable writing me an excellent letter for my medical school application?” People will tell you if they don’t know you well enough, or if they just don’t think they’d honestly be able to write you a strong one!

Finally, meet with the person if they don’t already know you extensively. A 20 minute private face-to-face, you with resume in hand, where they can get to know you and ask you some questions will make their letter much more personal, warm, and true.

The Personal Statement: The most important thing on your application. I read applications as a 2nd year at Stanford, and it was usually the Personal Statement that either impressed me or bored me the most, and weighed the heaviest on my voting. My tips:

Get the reader’s attention. In the first sentence. I do this with a lot of my non-blogging writing. Picture this scenario when you’re writing: the person reading your application is tired (true). This is either the first or last thing I’m going to do during the day. It’s late at night, I’ve just spent a long night studying, and now I’ve got 5 applications to get through. I’m in bed, with my laptop, my eyes are starting to drift as my parasympathetic (rest’n’digest) system is slowing me down. I’ve only got a reading light on, I’m so sleepy…. but I must… keep… reading… BOOM.

Hit me with your best shot by sentence one. Make me want to know more. Wake! Me! Up!

Have a theme; relate your life and your experiences back to medicine.

Next tip: Every word must matter. I went through a ton of revisions (see left) until I got it tightened up . I asked friends who are good writers to read it and give me their honest feedback until I got to something I liked.

Here’s my own personal statement for your viewing pleasure. ( Update: I’ve included my final draft, as well as two other drafts if anyone cares to see how the thing changed over successive drafts.)

Next time: Secondaries (again with a few samples of my own), the interview, and acceptance! Good luck to all!

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