Podcasts about oldpremeds podcast

Renee is a former Nurse Educator turned medical student. Always wanting to be a physician, she battled through poor MCAT scores, a failed application and more. Links:https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-228-maintaining-confidence-through-the-grueling-app-process/ (Full Episode Blog Post) http://cramfighter.com/ (Cram Fighter) (Use the Code: PREMED25 to get 25% off any regular-priced plan until May 7, 2017.) https://medicalschoolhq.net/pmy-195-cram-fighter-changing-way-study-mcat/ (The Premed Years Podcast 195: How Cram Fighter is Changing the Way You Study for the MCAT) https://www.medicaid.gov/affordable-care-act (Affordable Care Act) https://www2.ed.gov/programs/21stcclc/ (21st Century Grant program) http://ocs.yale.edu/career-resource/barbara-jordan-health-policy (Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program) http://www.aasld.org/events-professional-development/liver-meeting (The Liver Meeting) https://medicalschoolhq.net/oldpremeds (The OldPreMeds Podcast)

Can we save the planet by switching to a four-day workweek? The author of today's MCAT CARS practice passage thinks so! Follow along and decide for yourself. Links: Full Episode Blog Post http://www.medicalschoolhq.net/jackwestin (Jack Westin) https://medicalschoolhq.net/meded-media/ (Meded Media) https://medicalschoolhq.net/thepremedyears/ (The Premed Years Podcast) https://medicalschoolhq.net/oldpremeds-podcast/ (The OldPreMeds Podcast), Specialty Stories Link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/21/help-the-planet-work-a-four-day-week

Session 96 Today, Dr. Brian Smith, a general surgery program director at UC Irvine, talks about his journey to becoming a surgeon and what he expects from applicants to be competitive in his program. Find out what you can do to be more competitive as an applicant and as a medical student. Please take a listen to all our other podcasts and get the resources you need. For medical students, we have the Board Rounds (with BoardVitals). For the premed students, come check out The Premed Years, OldPreMeds Podcast, and The MCAT Podcast. [01:30] Interest in General Surgery Brian's interest in general surgery started in his first year of medical school. When he started medical school, he wanted to be a family practitioner. He liked the idea of continuity and being able to take care of the whole patient. Very quickly after starting his rotations in the anatomy lab, he realized he had a tremendous love and passion for human anatomy. It was the first time he ever considered surgery. He knew that if he wanted to spend most of his career involved with human anatomy, then surgery would be a excellent way to do so. [03:00] Traits that Lead to Being a Good General Surgeon One of the basic traits of being a good proceduralist is that you like working with your hands as well as diagnosing or treating things. Do you like working with your hands or do you like working with your brain? Once you've answered that question and you've moved down to "working with hands" halfway, then you begin to figure out you're probably down the proceduralist path. Brian's inherent tendency is to enjoy fixing things. He used to enjoy working with his car. He likes tinkering with things. He has always had this inherent joy in taking a problem and giving it a definitive fix. Surgery initially became the clear choice for Brian. But general surgery became his choice when he was sure he needed the variety. He enjoyed the variety that comes with general surgery. [04:50] Risk of Running Out of Patients As Brian puts it, one of the beauties of general surgery is they take care of the whole patient. They take pride in the fact that they're really an internal medicine physician that operates. They're able to manage the entire patient and at the same time be able to operate and fix their derangements. There's a tremendous kinship with either family medicine or internal medicine who serves as the contractor for all of the patient's ailments and really manage them all. That being said, there's a drive or movement in the direction of increasing subspecialization of current trainees. This is a trend that's not going to dramatically change over the near future. But for those people with broad interests and really like to take care of the whole patient, general surgery has that to offer. Brian was concerned that subspecialization would narrow down his knowledge base. And he didn't want to give that up, hence, he chose general surgery. [07:00] The Bread and Butter for General Surgeons The bread and butter in 2019 is dictated by the community in which you serve. If you're a general surgeon in the midwest and there's not a lot of specialists in town, you're more likely to do more than the general surgeon in downtown Los Angeles. By and large, in the urban and suburban environments, the bread and butter for general surgeons is going to consist of gastrointestinal surgery, colons, gall bladders, hernias, endocrine surgery including thyroids, parathyroids, and adrenals. Occasionally, they deal with the liver, spleen, skin (melanoma and skin cancers), and extremity work (soft tissue tumors). [08:20] The Most and Least Liked Things About Being a General Surgeon Brian loves being able to take care of all the patient's needs. He's able to handle almost everything. From an operative perspective, he loves being able to travel all over the body. He rarely does two of the same operation in one day. He's constantly doing something different. And this forces him to keep up with the literature or current advancements in a specific area. It keeps him sharp and interested. And it never gets dull and boring. On the flip side, what Brian likes the least about his specialty is more on the administrative aspects that come with surgery in 2019. There's a lot of time spent charting on the electronic medical record. It's a wonderful thing, in and of itself. But it takes extra time that it becomes a distraction. Now he gets to have less time spent face-to-face with patients. It prevents him from having that human interaction and bonding that makes a good physician-patient relationship. [10:00] The Training Path and Career Trajectory The medical student basically applies for general surgery where they will match into a categorical internship followed by residency. In general surgery, they don't distinguish internship and residency because they're a single continuum. The first year is just the internship. There are six-year programs across the country where they will have one year of mandatory research. These are heavily focused on clinical outcomes research during the year of mandatory research. There are also seven-year programs where there will be two years of mandatory research, most of which is basic science research. The standard five-year programs are focused on training somebody to be clinically confident. A resident may or may not be expected to have some research productivity during that time. You can train in general surgery and go out to practice. Or you can do a one-year fellowship in minimally invasive surgery, bariatrics surgery, thoracic surgery, or spend several years doing cardiac surgery. You may also combine cardio thoracic fellowship. You can go do a year of colorectal fellowship. Or you can do additional training in plastic surgery or a year of breast surgery or endocrine surgery. You can stop after general surgery training and be the generalist, or you can still go down one of 10 or 12 different pathways now – some are ACGME-certified and a few are not. You can get specialized fellowship training in order to be better at a particular subsection of general surgery. Brian did general surgery but he also took one year fellowship in minimally invasive bariatrics surgery. That said, it's not the entire focus of what he does. He still gets to be a general surgeon but he has that specialized niche training which he enjoys several days of the week. [12:45] What They're Looking for in Applicants As previously mentioned, Brian is a program director for a general surgery residency. One of the first things they're looking for is somebody with a broad interest and is eager to learn. These are inherent traits that they need the applicants to bring with them. In terms of the more tangible level, they sort of move in this hierarchy of importance. First, applicants need to be academically qualified. Sadly, the best measure is still USMLE Step 1. Since not everybody has taken Step 2 by the time they apply, they can't use it as diligently as they do Step 1. So do well in Step 1. Ideally, they would then want to see somebody with a good, solid dean's letter. They also look at how they've done on their clinical clerkships, how many courses they've honored, and how they did in surgery. They also look at how the applicants did in their internal medicine rotation. Again, getting back to that kinship with internal medicine, somebody who's broadly interested really likes to take care of the whole patient. To him, this is an appealing characteristic. Then they look closely at letters of recommendation, research background, and personal characteristics, respectively. [14:40] Pass/No Pass for Step 1 Brian loves the idea of Pass/No Pass for Step 1 recognizing that students can have a bad day or they choke on the exam for some reason and they just don't achieve their potential. The magnitude of the high stakes Step 1 is a problem that needs to go away. But that being said, Brian's biggest concern is that we don't have another good surrogate. There's no other good, easily identifiable measure to help determine one's academic qualifications. Program directors need to look at an entire application and not just a Step 1 as a screening score, which many of them do. So he likes the concept of it not being a weeder or screener. But there should be a composite measure of one's academic qualifications. It doesn't mean that if one doesn't do well on the test, that they can't be a fantastic clinician. In fact, Brian says, some of the real gems that he found are not the people that completely knocked Step 1 out of the park. However, they also want to make sure that they did well enough on it so they won't struggle on their in-service exams or passing their written board exam. As a program director, one of his endpoints for students is for them to be able to easily get out and obtain their board certification. So while he likes the concept, he thinks additional surrogates are lacking which can serve as a good marker of academic qualifications. [17:10] Why the Need for Academic Qualifications A good residency program does a phenomenal job of developing clinical skills. But in your average five-year program, a resident who doesn't have a whole lot of book knowledge as a foundation can only continue to excel and do well until you get to the fourth year of residency. In the fourth year, there's so much clinical skill that now starts to rely on a solid foundation of knowledge. So you may be technically good in the operating room, but if you don't have the knowledge foundation to back up those clinical skills, that deficiency starts to get a spotlight on it right around the beginning of your fourth year. If that deficit in knowledge continues in the fifth year, it starts to be an anchor for a good resident. There's a tremendous knowledge base that backs up any clinical superstar. By academically qualified, it means being academically capable of sitting down and synthesizing and getting a tremendous knowledge base in their head. By doing so, they're able to back up their decision making and their instincts they've learned as residents. You should be able to establish that you have the study habits, the intellectual capacity, and capability to pack a lot of information into your brain about a particular specialty. Brian explains that you can train almost anybody as a surgeon. What is a tougher challenge is training a clinical superstar. [21:21] What Makes a Superstar Sub-I A superstar sub-I will oftentimes be almost seamless with an intern. A lot of time in the third year is spent on just learning how to function comfortably in the hospital environment. Then you begin to know how to accomplish patient care on a regular basis. A great sub-I is somebody who is functioning at the level of an intern. These are students that have a lot of charisma and are self-starters. They are able to figure out how to start a new rotation. They can quickly get up to speed with important details and facts. They're able to identify key interactions that need to occur and execute those efficiently. You have to master how to be efficient. A great sub-I reads about their patients and knows their patients backward and forward. A student will never have a better opportunity to solidify in their own mind all the details of the disease process as they will when they have a patient with that disease process. [24:19] What Medical Students Shouldn't Do Brian explains that the fastest way medical students shoot themselves in the foot is when they treat those beneath them with disdain. For instance, the medical student comes into the operating room and talks down to the circulating nurse or disrespectful to the ICU nurse. Nurses that do the same thing over and over for years know what they're doing very well. When medical students fail to recognize the knowledge and the expertise in the rest of the team involved in the patient's care, oftentimes, they shoot themselves in the foot. [25:55] Mistakes Medical Students Make with Their Application If your Step 1 is not a true reflection of what your knowledge and skills are, then study up and take Step 2. Let Step 2 prove that Step 1 was not an accurate reflection of what you're capable of. Somebody with average performance on a sub-I is somebody who's not going to do really well. Failing to recognize that the sub-I really is your audition and treating it as such is such a huge misstep. [27:40] How Important Are Elective Rotations An external rotation is a very easy way to get an interview at that institution. Especially for people with mediocre applications, they need to do external rotations to maximize the likelihood that they're going to perform at a really high level. This increases their chances of getting an interview. Brian encourages their students to do two external rotations and fill the rest of them in at their school of medicine. If your passion is simply based on one rotation you really like and go do general surgery, Brian hopes you have the maturity to recognize that it may mean there are a whole lot more rotations that you're going to go through that might grab you equally. [32:50] The Influence of Great Mentors Mentors have a lot of ability to sway or influence that "organic chemistry" with a specific specialty. If you really have a good mentor, then you'd naturally be drawn towards that specialty. And this is often how people end up deciding where they're going to apply for a residency. There is something very appealing with having really great mentors, particularly when you get the trainees actively involved. Brian pushes people to become content experts in general surgery early on in their residency. And this oftentimes naturally translates to falling in love with it. [34:30] Women in General Surgery Brian explains there are a lot of female general surgery mentors. Regardless of what lifestyle, you need to start with the specialty you love. There's no specialty within medicine that anybody is going to enjoy doing for 30 years if they're not passionate about that particular specialty. Once you have found something you love and enjoy, you can always find a career setting that allows you to balance work and life in a manner that works well for you. Brian has worked with amazing female clinicians who are even technically better than many of their male counterparts. Men and women have equal opportunities in general surgery. That being said, females may be more reluctant to choose a surgical career because they don't necessarily see people having as much of the balance they're looking for. Ultimately, find your passion and get trained in something you love. If doing it gives you the work-life balance that works for you. You will find that opportunity somewhere out there. Brian encourages female students to give general surgery a try. You can have it all. But having it all means doing something you love in the process. Then finally find the balance that works for you. Additionally, one of the beauties about being a specialist or proceduralist as a female is being able to work 2-3 days a week. But you still can make the same amount of money you would make 5 days a week as a primary care physician. This gives you financial liberty. It gives you more options to create the balance of work and life you're looking for. [38:25] Overcoming Bias Against DOs Brian thinks a lot of the bias is now starting to fall by the wayside. It's still important to take USMLE so it's easier for you to be compared to somebody else. Do those external rotations and sub-I's. Have competitive board scores. At the end of the day, a DO with a mediocre Step 1 but was an absolute clinical superstar on their sub-I, is way more appealing than somebody who's got a 265 on Step 1 and just an average sub-I participant from a top medical school. Brian is looking for people who are engaging for him to work with and train over the next five to seven years. They have to be easy to teach and fun to operate with. Be charismatic and be eager to learn. [40:05] Final Words of Wisdom Get out and spend some time shadowing. This is very important early on in the first and second year of medical school. This will give you a genuine flavor for what experience looks like in many of those specialties. On your third year, pay attention to sorting out where you want to be. Do you want to take care of patients with your brain or with your hands? Once you decide you want to become a proceduralist, you want to figure out whether you want to do something surgical or non-surgical with your hands. Ideally, you want to be able to figure these out by springtime of your third year, then you can start your sub-I's in the fall. Start looking for mentors in the specialty. People who figure out what they want to apply for late in their third year are at an inherent disadvantage. So try to sort things out earlier on the third year where your passions lie. Links: Board Rounds BoardVitals The Premed Years OldPreMeds Podcast The MCAT Podcast

Session 01 Hi! I'm Dr. Allison Gray. This is our first episode of the Premed Diaries. We created this podcast, along with the other Med Diaries podcast so physicians and physicians in training could have a place to speak their minds, vent, unload, and hear one another in support and solidarity. The premed journey is not easy and there are many stressors, roadblocks, and frustrations. But there are also incredible joys, like that first time you got to shadow a physician or that first interview offer, or that first acceptance to medical school. Here at Premed Diaries, we want to help you on this journey to avoid and deal with burnout - an ever growing threat and serious problem for our physician community. And as a premed student, it's never too early to start. In each episode, we will hear from a premed student and I'll share some of my thoughts as well. You may also hear from others who have called and left a response for the caller on a previous episode. Today, we will hear from a premed student who is dealing with lots of stress and the feeling of needing to be his best in every endeavor and how this is very emotionally draining. [01:10] Caller #1: Feeling the Stress and Pressure Our student today transitioned out of the military in 2016. He went to a premed school following his transition, which he considers as an enormous blessing in his life, and one of the most convincing factors for him to pursue medicine. Right now, he's been dealing with a lot of stress and pressure. He finds it very difficult to convey to the people in his life that things are high-stakes for him. He is working as a paramedic and since then, things feel high-stakes. He expresses the feelings of pressure to get a 4.0 and do well on the MCAT. Alongside, he's also starting his own podcast. "It's a lot to deal with at once." He is working in the emergency department so he gets cases that affect him from time to time. So going and bouncing back from school being so high-stakes to showing up to work and feeling like he needs to be perfect for the sake of the patients, he sees this as a very emotionally draining process. "I feel like everything hangs on a really delicate balance, too. When I go to class, there's pressure to do the best, to be the best, and you still have to show up to work the next day and take care of patients." Not to mention, he has to take care of his family and dealing with being a former veteran along with all the stuff that goes with that. He admits dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety on almost a daily basis. He's trying to manage all these different things at once. He feels like he never takes a break. Fortunately, listening to The Premed Years Podcast and the OldPreMeds Podcast has been therapeutic for him, which he does on his commute to work and school. He still finds it hard for people in his life to realize this. Although he feels so blessed with the podcast they're starting and with him doing well in school, but that doesn't discount the daily grind that can really get at you. He encourages people out there to segment your time as best as you can and take things one at a time. Just keep going and find a little bit of peace and solitude in what you're doing. It's impactful and important to the people who are affected by it. See the bigger picture and things will pan out. "Everything is hanging in such a delicate balance that you feel like you need extra hands and another brain in order to manage it all." Finally, our caller feels great being able to send out this recording since he was able to get all this off his chest. As his way to manage things, he has had a lot of personal growth on time management and dealing with stress, grief, etc. And he hopes all this would help him carry through to medical school and residency, and hopefully become an attending physician. All the skills he learned as a paramedic, in the military, and during training will all be a driving factor. [08:07] Share Your Thoughts With Us! If you also want to share your thoughts with us, call 1-833-MYDIARY and you also can do so anonymously. We would love to hear what you have to say! [08:42] It's a High-Stakes Game Our caller has touched on so many great things many premeds are struggling with. First, is the high-stakes game of being a premed student. There so many pressures you're all dealing with. You could be looking for someone to shadow with or that you're trying to pay your bills. Or maybe, you're changing your career and you still have to take care of your family. You may be a college student and you're also paying your bills. Many of you could probably relate to this high-stakes feeling. "There are so many stressors out there as a premed and it feels really high-stakes because you feel like you can't really do a crappy job at any of it." [09:40] Family and Friends Not Getting It This is an important thing to recognize and acknowledge. Your family and your friends are your biggest fans and heroes and they're rooting for you. But the reality is that a lot of times, they really can't understand what you're experiencing. This is true as a premed student, and more so as you get into medical school and then eventually becoming a physician. "Your family and your friends are your biggest fans and heroes and they're rooting for you. But the reality is that a lot of times, they really can't understand what you're experiencing." Our caller is already a paramedics so he has experience working with patients and working in a very busy environment. So this already shows him how difficult it is. Seeing patients in life-threatening situations and having to be on is a hard thing to do, regardless of your role in healthcare.  This is really tough. And trying to explain what this is like and articulating it in a way that a family member or a friend can really understand when they don't live in that world is really hard. Fast-forward when you're on the wards. It's very hard for people not working in health care to understand the pressure you're under. These hard situations where patients are dying or dealing with incredibly difficult diagnoses. So try as best as you can to vent and talk to your family and your friends. And if they don't get it, then they don't. Good thing you have peers you're going through things with. And they get it a lot more than others. They may not have the close relationships yet as you do with your family and friends but they do get it. [11:26] Needing to Be Perfect We can never be perfect. Physicians and physicians in training, we hold ourselves to this incredible expectations. We think that we really have to be perfect but the reality is that we are human. Being human means that we make mistakes. It's impossible for us to be 100% all the time. We can really only do the best we can. "The reality is we are humans and being humans means that we do make mistakes." That's something I have really tried to keep in the back of my mind all these years, that I'm doing the very BEST that I can. And as long as I'm doing that, then I feel ethically and morally grounded. That if it's not perfect and I make mistakes along the way, at least I'm doing the best I can. So you have to keep this in your mind as well. [12:50] Use Your Resources and Take a Little Break Listening to resources like podcasts such as The Premed Years Podcast and the OldPreMeds Podcast is HUGE, especially when you're feeling that you don't get a break and that you're doing so many different things. It's really important to find anything that gives you a little bit of a break, even if it's just for 20 minutes. Find a TV show you love or sing really loudly in the car. Listen to a podcast that inspires or encourages you. Go to the gym. It's hard to make time for that but a little bit of that even if it's just for 5-10 minutes can get your mind back on task and give you that encouragement you need to keep going when you're feeling really worn out and spent. So use your resources and lean on other people as you can. If somebody offers to make you a meal, take them up on it. If somebody offers to watch your kids, take them up on it. "Just find a little bit of time, even for 20 minutes to get a breath of fresh air so that it can feel like you're getting at least a tiny break." [14:17] Take Your Time and Growth Coming from Pain With all things in general, it's okay to step back and just focus on one thing at a time. If you have kids, you can't just focus on premed stuff because they need your help or you need to make them dinner. But this is an idea in general, where if you have so many different things you're focusing on, in any one minute, try to just focus on one thing. It can help to just step back. It's a cliche that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, but that's true. There's so much growth you will see as a premed and as a med student. Your capacity to just take on will just expand. It has to. Your body and your brain just adopt as you have to take on more and more. So you grow ever more. This concept that as painful as it might be to grow from that and not letting it stop you is huge. Lastly, encouraging your peers is huge. As what Ryan's mantra is, “collaboration, not competition.” So encourage your peers no matter what phase you're at. [16:10] Get Things Off Your Chest This is why we're here. We want to give you the freedom and encouragement to reach out and call so you can get things off your chest. I'm here to support you and offer some thoughts every week. This is a great way for us to all support one another. [17:00] Respond to Our First Caller Call 1-833-MYDIARY and let us know you're calling in response to this. I will play your response on subsequent episodes. Thank you for joining us on this first episode everyone! As you move through this journey, listen to this podcast along with all out other series. Let's support one another in fighting this very scary and serious problem we have in this world of burnout. Links: Call 1-833-MYDIARY and share your thoughts with us! The Premed Years Podcast OldPreMeds Podcast

Session 74 Dr. Ross Hauser is residency trained in physiatry and has gone on to train in prolotherapy. He talks about what it is and why it's the future! Ross is very passionate about prolotherapy. If you want to learn more about this, visit his website on Caring Medical. Also, check out all the rest of our episodes on MedEd Media Network, including The Premed Years Podcast, The MCAT Podcast, The OldPreMeds Podcast, Ask Dr. Gray: Premed Q&A, and some more coming in the future! [02:05] Interest in Prolotherapy In the last two months of his residency, Ross had an elective rotation which he did with prolotherapist Dr. Hamwell back in 1992. Then he joined the physician in 1993, so he has been a prolotherapist for over 25 years. Ross describes himself as always liking old people. Thinking he was going to be a geriatrician initially, it was during his chronic pain rotation in his physiatry residency that he discovered his love of the mystery of pain. He was told by the physician he rotated with that most structural chronic pain is from joint instability or ligament laxity. And the curative treatment in a lot of people was prolotherapy. So he wanted to go for the cure instead of pain management. [04:15] What is Prolotherapy? The term prolotherapy was originally coined by Dr. Hackett, in short for proliferative therapy. The treatment is designed to cause the proliferation of cells, which make the extracellular matrix made up of ligaments, tendons, cartilages, or whatever you're trying to regenerate. In the Webster's International New Dictionary, prolotherapy is defined as the rehabilitation of an incompetent structure such as a ligament or tendon by the induced proliferation of cells. So if a person has a tendon or ligament tear, you want to proliferate the fibroblasts, the actual cells in the body that make the ligaments or tendons. You want to proliferate those cells so they can then regenerate the ligaments or tendons. Ross goes on to explain that the body's response to an unstable joint is to try itself to limit motion. One of the ways it does is it causes synovitis resulting in a very low level type of inflammation in the joint. Since medical doctors have been trained to very quickly try to get rid of symptoms, that's why treatments have gone more toward a treatment that dissolves the pain quickly. "Medical doctors have been trained to very quickly try to get rid of symptoms, that's why treatments have gone more toward a treatment that dissolves the pain quickly." However, 97% of tendon tear, for instance, occur in a degenerated tendon. Under a microscope, a degenerated tendon has way less cells than a normal tendon. So there's fewer cells to regenerate for a degenerated tendon. So the best curative type treatment for this is prolotherapy. The problem is that beside physiatry, prolotherapy is now becoming one of the standards of care for pain treatment. But in other fields like family practice, a doctor has to get training after residency. But once you get into practice, you get too busy to even get training. Ross hopes medical schools and residency programs recognize that the cause of osteoarthritis or a degenerative disease is ligament laxity or joint instability. Apparently, they have to shift to this paradigm. Otherwise, they won't be able to emphasize prolotherapy. [08:22] PRP vs. Prolotherapy PRP stands for Platelet Rich Plasma. Ross explains the inflammatory cascade where when tissue injures and there's bleeding, platelets rush to the area and change their shape to stop the bleeding. When they do this, they release growth factors. To simulate the way the body heal for a degenerated joint, they take the blood out and centrifuge the blood. They get the plasma out and then you're left with just the platelets, which are then injected into the injured area like the shoulder or lower back. "Platelet rich plasma is one of the more natural solutions we use in prolotherapy to proliferate cells." [09:33] Traits that Lead to Becoming a Good Prolotherapist Ross explains that until that paradigm changes, until we stop trying to resolve symptoms and we start trying to treat the actual structural cause of the pain, which is joint instability, in medicine, we're going to be led astray. We're still going to use pharmaceuticals. "There's no pain that the underlying cause is a drug deficiency. We want to be healers in the truest sense and cure problems instead of covering up the symptoms." If you want to become a good prolotherapist, you've got to commit to it. He says that if you only do a bit of this and that, you're never going to be an expert. If you get the skill set to document the instability and treat it with prolotherapy, then the next visit, you look at the tissue. So if you find something to be true, commit to it. Treat your patients that way and document your results. That means if somebody doesn't come back, you have to call them. So you have to follow up and have to commit. [14:15] Types of Patients and Typical Day The average person they see is a middle age to older age that had a degenerated tendon that the tendon just tore. The more degenerated tendon means there's less and less cells to regenerate. A degenerated tendon is a lot weaker than a normal tendon. So it gets weaker and weaker until it tears. With prolotherapy, they use ultrasound guidance to put the PRP into where the tendon tear is. They're also doing comprehensive prolotherapy into the ligament support of the shoulder. So they're resolving the joint instability and also helping the tear repair. The've also done pubis ligament. Ross explains the more children a woman has, the looser the pubis. And a lot of people think this is a hip or back problem but it's really a loose pubis. What they do is have them put on compression shorts to keep it tight and then they do prolotherapy to tighten the ligament support. Most people also don't realize there's a disc in the pubis. Ross describes this as a strange joint, since you don't typically talk about it in medical school. "100% of them think they know the problem the doctor gave them. But 75% of the time, they're wrong." Ross points out that with ultrasound technology, it can locate all the nerves of the body. It's very easy by history to tell when it's a compressed nerve and what's a joint problem. But with our technology now, they can already tell whether the nerve is swollen or not and measure it. Ultrasound scanners now are so detailed. He can even now see the vagus nerve in the carotid sheath. It's unbelievable what a doctor in their own office can see. Ross would work half a day with patients, like 5 solid hours seeing patients. He would see patients at 8 am. His staff gets the patients going although they review the patients the night before. Some are new, others are follow ups. They try to figure out whether a patient needs a motion scan. In that case, they'd have to numb the musculature in the back of the neck so the muscles can't limit the joint motion. Then they'll do a fluoroscopic evaluation of them moving their neck to see where the instability is. So the first thirty minutes, he'd do emails and by 8:30, he'd begin seeing the patients after the staff had gotten them ready. Then he will start treating people. Whoever gets scanned, his assistant does ultrasound exams. He'll also go over some of the scans with the patients. On average, he'd see 10 patients in a five-hour stretch. The rest of the day, as the editor in chief of the Journal in Prolotherapy, he'd review studies and does his research and writing in the afternoon. He'd have some clinical trials going on with regard to surgical instability and some research projects. He's currently in the middle of a thousand-paged joint instability book as well. Eventually, he hopes this will be the gold standard. [21:46] Taking Calls In private practice where you do procedures on people, Ross believes you should be available after hours for them. In his practice, there are two prolotherapists and another two in their office in Chicago. So there's a total of four prolotherapists and they do calls one month at a time. They're available 24/7. But you could get one call a week, not a lot. And since they do a good job in educating patients what to expect, they get less and less calls. "In private practice, if you do procedures on people, you should be available after hours for them." [23:05] The Training Path Ross thinks some of the best training is in the University of Wisconsin. The Hackett Hemwall Patterson Foundation, named after Dr. Hackett, who was at the University of Medicine for many years. They have a training in October. Ross recommends going to this. Once you go to that four-day training, they have trips all over the globe so they normally have experienced prolotherapist and you get to go to Peru, Latin America, etc. There might be 100 people with 30-40 doctors getting trained and there are charity clinics there. So you have experience prolotherapists working side by side with doctors wanting to learn prolotherapy. "I think mentorship or hands on training is the best training... a cadaver is so much different than a live person." If this is something you're interested in, Ross recommends getting a mentor that's in your area or go to a place overseas and do some mission work. Through the foundation, Ross went to Honduras where he did 150 cases of prolotherapy, which means he did thousands of injections. After two weeks of intensive training and all those patients, he really got to hone his skills. There are also other organizations you can get involved in. Ross is the member of the American Academy of Orthopedic Medicine. They have training there. There's also the Osteopathic Prolotherapy Association. So go to several of these. You  may have to go through some courses. You'd also have to learn ultrasound courses and go through training in Central America or Mexico. You'd want to be training with an experienced prolotherapist by your side. Ross also mentions the neuromuscular residency in osteopathy and in this you'd have to do a bunch of prolotherapy training. If you're going to be a family physician or a physiatrist, Ross recommends you spend your elective time with the prolotherapist like what he did for two months. [27:30] Working with Primary Care and Other Specialties Ross says it's really about primary care physicians understanding the degenerative cascade and that the model of just relieving information that doesn't cure people of pain has to change. As a family physician, you have the obligation to the patient to really understand why a person has an autoimmune disease or why they have chronic pain. He explains that osteoarthritis is a whole organ disease. You've got to address all the causes. "You have to have the skillset of being able to evaluate the whole structure and correct what needs to be corrected and try to cure the person of the problem instead of managing it." Ross stresses that pain management is not working. If you're able to address the cause of the problem instead of the symptoms, you're going to really alter the course of people's lives. Prolotherapists work closely with chiropractors who understand that if they adjust a spine and they can't hold the adjustment, it means there's ligament laxity. To him, the specialty that thinks most like the prolotherapists are chiropractors. In regard to traditional, they'd work with other physiatrists. [33:00] The Analogy of the Door Hinge Ross uses the analogy of prolotherapy to the door hinge. If one of the screws is loose on a door hinge and there's a another screw and you don't take a screw driver and tighten that screw, the other screw is going to loosen too. Once the hinge is loosened, the next hinge is going to get loosened too. That's why somebody has knee pain and eventually they have ankle pain and then hip pain or neck pain progressing up and down the spine. "Joint instability is a progressive disorder. So you can't not do something about it. You have to correct it and the treatment to correct it is prolotherapy." [33:48] What He Wished He Knew and the Most & Least Liked Going into prolotherapy, what he wished he knew is how much people are struggling in their daily lives. He encourages young people going to medicine that you've got to learn about what's going on with your patients. There are so many broken homes. People are struggling as human beings. We are supposed to be in health care. As physicians, we have got to know about care. And what care is you have got to ask your patients about what's going on. And one of the best questions he asks his patients is, what have you been thinking about lately? "People are struggling as human beings. We are supposed to be in health care. As physicians, we have got to know about care. And what care is, is you have got to ask your patients about what's going on." So he wished early on he would have really gotten to know his patients better and he finds this to be so rewarding. What he likes the most about being a prolotherapist is the Christmas card he gets that somebody has been pain-free for ten years. His office is just inundated with gifts and letters from people appreciating them. What he likes the least is the business side of it. The average number of visits to a prolotherapist is 4 so you'd have to explain it to people. They get one visit and they're not better and then a lot of stress comes with that. If you don't help them in just one visit then they just don't return. Hence, the reason it's important to talk to them about what's going on in their lives. When you're in the chronic disease business, things aren't going to get better typically with one visit. The hardest part is when people spend money since prolotherapy is not covered under medicare so people have to spend their own money. So sometimes, they don't come the second time. [38:30] Reception in the Insurance World Ross sees the trend that there's going to be more self-insured companies. And what they're going to cover is stuff like this because it's so much less expensive. It's all 1/10 of the cost when it's all been said and done. Hopefully, Medicare will also review this eventually. So private insurance they cover prolotherapy but for government insurance, it's a non covered procedure. "More and more companies are going to go to this so it's definitely the future. And eventually Medicare will wake up and they'll really review prolotherapy openly." [40:30] Last Words of Wisdom Ultimately if he had to do it all over again, he'd still be a prolotherapist and he's still continually learning stuff which he really loves. He goes on that chronic pain and osteoarthritis are the most disabling of lost years working. So he encourages students to research, is joint instability the cause of that? And if it is, you have got to resolve the joint instability to cure chronic pain. And if you do give it a try in your future practice that you will see that everything he said on this podcast is absolutely correct. Links: MedEd Media Network The Premed Years Podcast The MCAT Podcast The OldPreMeds Podcast Ask Dr. Gray: Premed Q&A Caring Medical American Academy of Orthopedic Medicine Osteopathic Prolotherapy Association

Session 17 One of the most common questions I receive is "What MCAT score do I need if I have a low GPA?" Is there such a thing? That's what we talk about today. Students are under this assumption that there's this global balancing act between the different parts of your application. Or that a great GPA score is going to overcome poor MCAT score. Or a great personal statement and extracurriculars are going to overcome a low GPA and a low MCAT score. Did you know? Our episodes in this podcast are recorded on our Facebook Live done at 3pm Eastern on most weekdays. Check out our Facebook page and like the page to be notified. Also, listen to our other podcasts on MedEd Media. If you’re an old premed, check out The OldPreMeds Podcast. [01:00] One Does Not Boost Up the Other The problem with this kind of mindset is that when schools receive your application, they don't see everything in totality. They don't filter and sort in totality. "Holistic" admissions is the buzzword right now. So when you think about having a low GPA and meeting a certain score to overcome that GPA, it just doesn't work that way. "A low GPA is a low GPA. And an MCAT score, no matter what it is, is your MCAT score. They are two very different parts of your application." They are both number-based. They are similar but an MCAT score tells an admissions committee one thing about you. This tells them how well you take the MCAT as well as the knowledge and foundation of your sciences to do well enough on the MCAT. And your GPA is your whole track record in undergrad. But GPA is so variable at every school. They have different grade inflation and deflation. So the GPA is less valuable to schools a lot of times. "One does not boost up the other. Great MCAT score doesn't help a poor GPA." [02:27] Schools Look at Applications Differently One of the biggest difficulties with admissions is that every school does it differently. One school may look at MCAT only. Canadian schools are very big on this. They look at the CARS section of the MCAT, which is one section on the MCAT. That's what they care about. In the U.S. they look at everything. But every admissions committee is going to care about something differently. So when you think about your application, you can't think of it in terms of raising up to help a poor GPA. Just think of it in terms of you need to do it as well as you can do in everything. You need to shoot for the stars and everything. "Do as well as you can on the MCAT. Don't worry about finding a specific score that is going to help overcome a poor GPA." [03:45] Filtering Applications Some schools may look at GPA as a way to filter applications. Remember, medical schools are getting thousands upon thousands of applications. Some schools got 12,000 applications last year. So they need a way to filter them. So they won't care what your MCAT score is, if your GPA is below a certain number, they're not going to look at your application.Or they may put your application so far down the line that there's almost a zero percent chance you're going to get an interview. On the flip side, they may worry about MCAT score. Your GPA may not be very good but they care about the MCAT score. "You don't know what the school is looking at or looking for. So don't worry." [04:50] Focus on What You Can Control My messages always boils down to, stop worrying about what you can't control. Asking the question what MCAT score do I need to overcome a low GPA is something that's out of your control. Because you don't know that answer. The next time you have a question in your head, first, ask yourself, is it something you can really control? What MCAT score you need to overcome a low GPA is out of your control. What's in your control is doing as well as you can on the MCAT. The question should therefore be, how can I best study and prepare for the MCAT to score as well as I can on MCAT. Don't worry about whether it's going to help your GPA. just do well. And let the rest fall into place. "There are so many moving parts and pieces to the application process... one does not balance the other." Links: MedEd Media Medical School HQ Facebook page The OldPreMeds Podcast

Session 43 Dr. Venkat Gangadharan is a community based Interventional Cardiologist. We discuss his interests in cardiology and his thoughts about the specialty. He also gives his opinions on the latest changes in our healthcare system regarding reimbursement cuts as well as turf wars between specialties. Also, check out all our other podcasts on the MedEd Media Network, including The Premed Years Podcast, The MCAT Podcast, The OldPreMeds Podcast, and The Short Coat Podcast. [01:08] Interest in Cardiology Knowing he wanted to be a cardiologist right on his second year of medical school, Venkat did what he could to figure out. By the time got into residency, his mind changed and considered things like pulmonary critical care or cardiology. Then he got the chance what the cath lab was like and got to see what they do when they treat heart attacks. And he got sold right then. He's the type of guys that likes instant gratification in terms of treating patients. He wants to see them get better right then and there. So he found doing cardiology and interventional cardiology was the way to go. He knew he wanted to do interventional cardiology by his second year of cardiology fellowship. He recalls applying everywhere across the U.S. He thinks it was the toughest thing being one of the several thousands trying to get the same position. He has interviewed in at least ten different places. It was so difficult for him that he finally ended up matching in a program at the last minute. He decided to take it and to him it was the greatest decision ever. "No matter how competitive you are, you're one among several thousands that are trying to get the same position." What he really likes about cardiology is the physiology behind it. Plus, it required some amount of critical thinking and problem solving. But at the end of the day, there were define medications for certain purposes. There are risk factors you know you could treat. And the problems had definitive treatment modality and cure to some extent. Basically, he's fascinated by how the heart works. [04:40] Traits that Lead to Becoming a Good Interventional Cardiologist Venkat cites some traits in order for one to become a good interventional cardiologist such as being dedicated and hardworking. You need to be analytical and be able to think on your feet. In the cath lab and you have a patient's life in your hands, there are probably a million different decisions running through your head. With so many things running through your head, you just have to choose the right one and make sure the patient gets through it no matter what. With heart attacks, for example, the chance of people dying from it is so low nowadays. Everybody has got a chance. Compared to back in the days during the infancy stage of interventional cardiology, there were no facilities to treat people. There was no place to send them. “With the technology we have, there's not one person in the country that should not have the chance to live at the hands of a cardiologist.” That said, you have to be able to think outside the box. You have to be analytical and mechanical. Venkat explains that interventional cardiology is all about physics and the give and go. Additionally, having that adrenaline junkie kind of mentality is an edge. When you're taking an emergency call, you will have to wake up in the middle of the night to have of your faculties all ready to go. Drive to the hospital. Then have all of your fingers ready to go to and adept to put a stent or fix a blood vessel to fix a person's life. You need to love the rush for you to be able to mental faculties to take care of that problem in the wee hours of the night. [07:22] Private Practice versus Academic Setting Venkat explains the reason he chose private practice was being the easiest choice at that time. There are far more private practice physicians at that time than there are academic positions. Second, you have to have a certain mentality and persona to be an academic interventional cardiologist compared to a private practice physician. "I wouldn't say it's money driven per se, but I would say it plays a huge role in the decisions you make when it comes to the job you pick." As a private practice physician, you have the ability to dictate your own life as well as the ability to treat your own patients. You have the ability to learn things at your own speed without having to answer to anyone else but your own practice. These were what Venkat was looking for. [09:07] Types of Patients and  Typical Day in His Life As an interventional cardiologist, Venkat sees everything from valvular heart disease to atherosclerotic vascular diseases. It's truly mind boggling that the amount of coronary disease that is out there and how young a person can be by the time they get affected. Venkat finds it humbling to be doing intervention in a 34-year-old when you're the same age as he is and living the same kind of life he is. For him, this is eye-opening and it makes you realize how life is short and you need to take good care of yourself. So when he things sees on the screen, it makes him think twice. It's surprising to see how bad people's arteries could be at such a young age. As a private practice physician, Venkat says it's tough being just an interventional cardiologist. So he also practices a lot of general cardiology and interventional cardiology, But his mind is always focused on what he can do to fix something. He gets to the hospital around 6 or 6:30 in the morning and do some rounds. If anyone comes in with a heart attack or he's on call, he drops whatever he's doing and go and save that life. Then he goes to the office or clinic and trying to recruit patients to your practice so you can maintain a lifestyle and a career. "It's very rare in private practice to find a position where you just do interventional cardiology." You have to be ready to handle any situation presented to you. Venkat takes emergency calls about three to four times a week. Being a young doctor, his practice is made up of only two interventional cardiologists. He usually gets a call about three times a week. But not all private practice is like this. The larger the private practice, the less call that you're going to take. From a general cardiology perspective, he takes calls once a week and he does one week in the month. Initially, when he started out, it was pretty rough not realizing it was this much work. But Venkat explains that you will get used to it. [12:21] Work-Life Balance Venkat thinks having that work life balance is a million dollar question. Over the past three years, he had thought about what life was like outside of his work and the balance he had between work and his home life. He has a two-year-old son who misses him all day long. There are plenty of days he'd feel bad about coming home late or working as much as he does. But at the end of the day, being a young physician and knowing this is your career, this is the time to make a living. This is the time to earn for your family. After which, you can decide what's going to work for you and where you want to spend your time more. [13:33] The Path to Interventional Cardiology Residency and Fellowship Training Once out of medical school, you decide to make an internal medicine residency. When he was applying, he looked for decent cardiology fellowship knowing it was what he was going to do. The likelihood of you getting into the cardiology fellowship at the residency program you trained at is better than one than you'd get at another place. This is followed by another three years of cardiology fellowship. At this time, you're introduced to cardiac catheterization and different aspects of interventional cardiology. Also around the second year, you also make the decision if you want to become one and start applying to interventional cardiology fellowships. The difference between interventional cardiology fellowship applications and the general cardiology fellowship applications is that many of those programs are paper applications. This means you have to seek them out. Find out what their application process is. Do every step you can and apply. Then follow up several times if they've received your application. "Try to hone in on the programs that you really want to be a part of." Things they would usually look at are your degrees of research you've done during fellowship, your progress in testing during fellowship and training, and where you trained which goes a long way. As to why he thinks matching into interventional cardiology is so competitive, Venkat believes it's one of the more rewarding cardiology fellowships. The number one killer of people in the world is heart attacks. And interventional cardiology is essentially designed to treat those. So the amount of people applying to be an interventional cardiologist are far more than the people applying to be an electrophysiologist or a nuclear cardiologist. And for electrophysiology in particular, the testing is very difficult. It requires someone to be very cerebral and a mentalist to handle that kind of profession. [16:18] Bias towards DOs, Subspecialty Opportunities, and Turf Wars Venkat actually has not seen any bias towards DOs. In his own practice, he has a partner who is a DO. He took a very long way to become what he is today. But he's a successful interventional cardiologist. "At the end of the day, the MD and the DO designation is just a designation. The person you are is the physician that you are." Venkat adds that you can be an MD and be an awesome physician. You can be a DO, and still be an awesome physician. He really doesn't think this has any weight in terms of whether you have a chance of being an interventional cardiologist or not. It's about what you do with the time you spend and the training you spend that makes who you are. In terms of subspecialty opportunities after interventional cardiology, Venkat explains there is a new development in structural heart disease. In the country, there's only a handful of programs that are accredited structural heart disease fellowships. The ACC and the AVIM have yet to recognize a designated fellowship for this. Coronary heart disease is not the only thing that plagues people, Peripheral vascular disease is also what plagues people. So there are specialized fellowships to do a training in endovascular work. Venkat explains that as interventional cardiologists, they're actually an interventional cardiovascular physician. So the vascular aspect of things is largely untapped and majority of that training can be obtained after a fellowship. Venkat also admits having turf wars brewing between cardiovascular and vascular surgery. When it comes to peripheral vascular disease, it's a turf war between a vascular surgeon, an interventional cardiologist, and an interventional radiologist. He adds there are programs out there with long, trusted interventional radiologist to do the procedure or long, trusted vascular surgeon to do the procedure. As interventional cardiologists, they are making the push to take that on themselves. "The breadth of peripheral vascular disease is so poignant in this country. There's opportunities everywhere." But Venkat says that you won't see many private practice interventional radiologist or private practice vascular surgeons doing a lot of endovascular work. Majority of them have some sort of academic affiliation. You will see a lot of private practice interventional cardiologist doing all of that work. [20:10] Working with Primary Care and Other Specialities Venkat wished primary care physicians knew the breadth of disease they see and the complicated nature of disease present in their patients. He really wished they would understand the medications they use to treat these conditions. Unfortunately, Venkat lives in a place where managed care is a strong push in the area. By this. primary care physicians are limited in the medications they can offer their patients. Many of them end up changing the medication he places his patients on. Or they deny the stress test or deny the arterial ultrasound the patient needs to gather some more information for their complaints. It actually blew his mind when he first got there. But that was the reality. And in the three years there now, he still couldn't grasp the idea where primary care physicians are literally dictate a patient's life regardless of the symptoms the have. "I still couldn't grasp this idea where primary care physicians are literally dictate a patient's life regardless of the symptoms the have." Venkat describes it's like the patient has to show up in the hospital to get the real care they deserve. They go to their primary care physician because six times out of ten, they're going to get denied. This is saddening. Venkat says he had to rescue people at death's door when they could have been rescued two years earlier. Other specialties he works the closest with include pulmonary and critical care, infectious disease, and nephrology. [23:28] Special Opportunities Outside Clinical Medicine Venkat explains that the more senior you become as an interventional cardiologist or cardiologist even, the opportunities outside of medicine start to open up. When you're a part of a large hospital system and you have a good relationship with the hospital administration, most of those avenues are open for you. One of his partners is the chief of internal medicine in the hospital as well as the chief of cardiology at the hospital. It's a rotating door when it comes to that position. "Cardiologists are often taken in high regard because we have our fingers in every aspect of things." Other cardiologists have also migrated to other industries. His mentor has left interventional cardiology practice of 45 years and is now engulfed in an industry that promotes one of the products he helped design and bring to market. So you have the opportunity to migrate over to an industry and be a speaker and teach the world about what you do. [24:55] What He Wished He Knew and What He Likes the Most and Least Now knowing what the process is like to get better framed in what he does, he wished he probably should have sought out an extra fellowship at the end of his one year of interventional cardiology. Had he known the amount of opportunities out there, he probably would have given it a better shot. Secondly, although a private practice physician, he wished he had given academic interventional cardiology a strong push at the time he was making the decision for a job. He never knew it was this busy. But he's a young guy so he's pushing through it. What he likes the most about being an interventional cardiologist is doing procedures. He loves working with his hands. He loves the adrenaline rush of fixing a heart attack. For him, waking up at 2 am is not difficult. If he could save a life and they'd walk out the door the next day, alive, he feels he has done his job for the day. "To me, the procedural aspect of this whole profession is what makes the best thing everyday." What he likes the least, on the other hand, is the bureaucratic aspect of it. Running a private practice or trying to develop a career as a private practice physician is very difficult. Unless you have the business know-how or the business acumen, it's difficult to make yourself well-known in the community that has several people just like you. But it does teach you what the business of medicine is like. "One of the things we lack as residents and fellows is that nobody ever told you what the business of medicine is like." Reality is that everything costs money. Everything you do, you need to earn something from it. And you need to be happy doing what you do in a day in and day out basis. So you need to find a place that gives you the opportunity to grow as a physician. But it should also give you the security that you know this job is going to keep you happy for years to come. [28:00] Major Changes Coming in the Field One of the major changes that is likely coming over the next year or two is that CMS is bundling payments when it comes to cardiac procedures and cardiac diagnosis. For instance, myocardial infarction which used to be differentiated in terms of medications and procedures are now going to be bundled under one big heading called myocardial infarction. So the payment you're going to get is going to be far less than what you've gotten in the past. Over the last five years, Venkat explains how the field has been largely affected by the reimbursement and the cut in reimbursement. They've lost almost 40%-50% of what the normal reimbursement would be for a regular procedure. So it's not becoming more cutthroat in their field to do more work, find more patients, and treat more disease since you're not making as much as you used to. This is going to get worse as time goes on, Venkat suspects. Eventually, private practice is likely going to dissipate depending on where you live and hospital-employed physicians and hospital-employed practices are going to predominate in this country. The reason for this is because hospitals are able to negotiate their deals with insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies than a private practice will. So if you want to make a decent living, you might end up becoming a hospital-employed physician.As for Venkat, he's holding up for as long as he could but he's aware that it's just around the corner. "Hospital-employed physicians and hospital-employed practices are going to predominate in this country." [30:40] Reduction in Reimbursements CMS stands for Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Venkat personally thinks it doesn't make sense to reduce the reimbursement. At the end of the day, these procedures are being done by physicians who are taking the time out of their night to stay awake in order to save a person's life. The procedures continue to stay arduous. They don't get any easier. Although there's technology available to treat these conditions, these procedures don't happen in 30 minutes. It takes an hour or as long as four hours. So the work, stress, and the difficulty of your general lifestyle continue to exist and never change. Hence, reducing the reimbursement for these procedures is fostering an idea that medical management is better than risking your own life trying to do something. Venkat has seen a lot of his partners who were interventional cardiologists 30 years back when things were great. It changed the way they practice based on the reimbursement they're getting. He raises this question that, "why would you go and try to do something whether to save a person's life or to be good at what you do, when the government and insurance companies don't feel like it's necessary and don't feel like you should get paid for it?" Venkat thinks this kind of mentality is coming out a lot in newer graduates. The older generation is also catching up to it and realizing they can't make as much as they used to. So it's throwing a big stress in many of these private practice groups. "The idea of newer graduates to think that they're going to get paid like they did 30 years ago, it's never going to happen." Venkat's advice to the younger generation is that if you want to be an interventional cardiologist, you're doing it because you love what you do. Don't do it for the money because it's happening everywhere. [33:22] Final Words of Wisdom If he had to do it all over again, Venkat admits he would still have chosen interventional cardiology - 120%. For students thinking about becoming an interventional cardiologist, Venkat explains that cardiology is a specialty that is going to continue to grow. It will continue to become the most prevalent disease in this entire world. If your heart is in cardiology and you truly believe that you want to help people and the adrenaline rush is what you live for, interventional cardiology is the way to go. You're going to love working with your hands. You're going to love the equipment they use. And it's only getting better. You can do things with heart arteries that people couldn't even fathom 30 years ago. The things your'e going to be doing is just unimaginable. Research keeps happening and happening. So if you love cardiology and you love what you do and you live for excitement, you're not going to be disappointed. [35:02] Last Thoughts Venkat is the first cardiologist on this podcast. I hope to bring you many other subspecialties within cardiology so you can get a great picture of what cardiology looks like for you, possibly in the future. Our goal is to find all these different specialties and talk to them and find out what their job is like. So as you're going through your training, you get a better picture of what life for you will look like. You will hear what physicians like about their specialties and what they don't like about it. This will help guide you on your journey to choosing your specialty. Links: MedEd Media Network

Session 37 This week, we take a deep dive into the match data for dermatology. We cover the Match data from 2016 and 2017 to give you an idea of what you're up against. Dermatology is one of the hardest specialties to match into. Historically, it has been known as the ROAD specialties (Radiology, Orthopedics, Anesthesiology, and Dermatology). "Dermatology is still one of the more competitive residencies to apply to as a medical student." As we dive into this data, it gives you an idea of what you should be thinking about or doing when it comes to starting your journey. Hopefully, this will help you determine how much effort you put into getting the best possible board scores and everything else you need to get into dermatology. Also, check out everything we have at MedEd Media Network including The Premed Years Podcast, OldPreMeds Podcast, and The MCAT Podcast. [01:51] Match Summary As always, all of this data come from the NRMP Main Residency Match Results and Data First off is Table 1 which shows the summary of the match. It starts with PGY-1 positions and Dermatology has 11 programs, 26 positions. Don't freak out since there are actually a lot more dermatology spots offered. Dermatology has a prelim typically a medicine or transitional or surgery year that you do before you start your dermatology residency. As a medical student when you are applying to dermatology, you need to apply typically to a dermatology residency. This starts at PGY-2. Then you apply for a prelim year or an internship year which is your PGY-1 year at either a medicine, surgery or transitional program. So you can't go look at those numbers on Table 1 alone. Instead, go down to the continuation of Table 1 which shows the PGY-2 positions. There you will will see they have 121 programs and 423 positions offered. Looking at this chart across the column, the total number of U.S. Seniors applying out of those 423 spots is 479. So there are more U.S. Seniors than there are spots available. For this purpose, U.S. Seniors for the NRMP refer to students who are in an allopathic/MD medicine program and they're still in school. Now, out of those 479, 81.8% matched into Dermatology. That's a pretty good number and it's one of the higher numbers around. "If you are a DO student or an international medical grad, your chances are already starting off not that great." [05:00] U.S. Seniors, U.S. Grads, Osteopaths, and U.S. IMGs Table 2 shows that out of 423 positions, 415 were filled on the main match. 346 of those 415 were U.S. Seniors, 48 were prior U.S. grads, which means prior MD graduates. These are those that possibly didn't match their first time around and then reapplied. Or maybe they didn't apply to a residency program the first time around because they weren't very competitive. They wanted to do some research. Maybe they really wanted to go to one specific program so they went to do some research in that program, reapplied, and got in. There were 7 osteopathic students which makes up less than 2% of the 415 spots that were filled. It a very low number. Just to give you an idea, let's look at other specialties. Anesthesiology has 1,146 spots, 164 of which were osteopathic students. That's over 14% of Anesthesiology but less than 2% for Dermatology. It's possible there's still some bias tin the Dermatology world for DO's. There were 3 International Medical Graduates or IMGs who are U.S. citizens that went to a foreign or international medical school and 11 were non U.S. Seniors or non U.S. citizens that went to an international medical school. So it's high numbers for U.S. Seniors and good numbers for U.S. grads. Not good numbers for osteopathic students, and terrible numbers for U.S. International Medical Graduates. Lastly, it's pretty bad numbers for non-U.S. citizen international medical graduates. "High numbers for U.S. Seniors and good numbers for U.S. grads. Not good numbers for osteopathic students." [07:20] Growth Trends, Unmatched Applicants, and SOAP Table 3 shows the growth trend of each specialty from 2013 to 2017. Dermatology has been growing and growing with 13.3% in 2013. In 2017, there was a 15.8% year over year growth. There were 399 spots in 2016 and 423 in 2017. There are more and more programs opening up for Dermatology which is good for you if you're interested in Dermatology. "There are more and more programs opening up for Dermatology." Figure 6 looks at unmatched U.S. Seniors and independent applicants ranking all the different specialties. Dermatology ranks up as the second highest for all of the programs with 33.8% total unmatched. The majority of that are the independent applicants. They're outside of the U.S. Seniors and those were 47.3%. Almost half of the applicants were applying independently. Again, these are the IMG's and osteopathic students. I assume the U.S. grads are included here as well. The U.S. Seniors that went unmatched made up 13.8%. At a quick glance, it's the third highest behind Plastic Surgery and Orthopedic Surgery. So Dermatology is very, very competitive. Looking at Table 18 is the SOAP (Supplemental Offer and Acceptance Program) process, for PGY-2 positions, Dermatology had four positions available and all four were filled. [09:48] Ranking, Steps 1 &2, Research, AOA Chart 4 is one of the most telling charts when it comes to residency matching. When you match or apply to match, it depends on what programs you're applying to. A lot depends on how many program you are ranking. It's a big algorithm that matches you to programs. "You submit a rank list. Schools submit a rank list. And the magic happens." The median number of contiguous ranks is eight. This means that student that matched put Dermatology program eight times in a row. Those who did not match was only three. So you have a much lower chance of matching if you are much more selective when it comes to matching. The same goes if you're also being selective with the programs your'e applying to or you're interviewing at. Or you're not a competitive applicant and you didn't interview at a lot of program so could not select a lot of programs to actually match to. A lot of it comes down to how many programs you ranked. It's a numbers game. You apply to more medical schools, your chance goes up. You apply to more residency programs, your chances goes up. The same with fellowship programs. Chart 5 dives into the mean number of different specialties ranked. Typically, if you want Dermatology, apply to Dermatology programs. "If you have a Plan B, you're less likely to succeed in your plan A." There's a lot of psychology research that shows having a plan B decreases the likelihood for your Plan A to succeed. But the data here shows that those who matched in Dermatology applied to a mean number of 2.2 different specialties and those that didn't match is 2.3. So the numbers are not very off. This could be skewed since in dermatology, you have to apply to a categorical or prelim year. I wonder if that data is being included in this. It doesn't mention anything in the graph data, but I wonder if that's the reason the numbers are so high at 2.2. It's much higher than everything else except for radiation oncology. Looking at Table DM1, it gives us all the hard data behind Dermatology. The mean number of contiguous ranks is 8.9 versus 4.2. Mean number of Distinct Specialties was 2.2 versus 2.3. The mean USML Step 1 score was 249 for those that matched and 239 for those that didn't match. The mean Step 2 score is 257 to those that matched and 246 to those that didn't match. Sometimes, Step 2 score isn't really that useful. But the Step 1 score is huge here. The mean number of research experience is 4.7 for those that matched and 3.8 for those that did not match. Mean number of abstracts, presentations, and publications is 11.7. You need to get out there. You need to do your research. "You need a very, very strong Step 1 score and a strong Step 2 score... you need to do your research." AOA  (Alpha Omega Alpha) comprised 2.8% of those that matched. This means they were very successful in their medical school classes early on. Their pre-clinical is 52.8% of those that matched and only 25.8% for those who did not match. Chart DM2 shows those that matched versus those that didn't with the number of contiguous ranks. You can clearly see that those that did not rank a lot of programs did not match. Then as soon as you get past that eight mark, it goes down. And after eight, only six people didn't match. So you have to rank a lot of programs. "You have to be competitive enough to get interviews and to rank a lot of programs." [15:40] Medscape Lifestyle and Medscape Physician Compensation Report The Medscape Lifestyle Report 2017 talks about the lifestyle of a Dermatologist. As to which physicians are the most burnt out, Dermatology is near the bottom at 46%. (See Slide 2)The lowest is Psychiatry at 42%. As to how severe is the burnout, Dermatology is hanging at the top at around 4.3. Highest is 4.6 with Urology. (See Slide 3). Slide 18 shows which physicians are the happiest and Dermatology is number three on the list at 43% happy at work and 74% are happy at home. The Medscape Compensation Report 2017 is the fun part. Highest salary is Orthopedics at $489K a year. Dermatology is number eight on the list at $386K. Below Orthopedics are Plastic Surgery, Cardiology, Urology, Otolaryngology, Radiology, Gastroenterology, and Dermatology. These are the top eight and all of these are procedure-based specialties. (See Slide 4) "The way our healthcare system is set up, those who perform procedures and do surgeries are compensated with more money." Even if what you're interested in is not within these eight, that's okay. You'd still make a good living as a physician. The lowest on this list is pediatrics at $202K. Dermatology pay according to this survey on Slide 5, only went up 1% (See Slide 5). Which physicians feel fairly compensated, Dermatology is the second highest at 65% (See Slide 18). Looking at slide 38, those who would choose medicine is up there at 80% and the highest is 83%. So Dermatologists are happy. They like being a doctor. They would choose it again. Who would choose the same specialty? Slide 39 shows it's Dermatology. They love their jobs. If you want to be a dermatologist, it might be good for you to check out Dermatology. [19:25] Be an Intern I'm looking for an intern. If this is something you're interested, email me at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net. I'm looking for one savvy for social media who can oversee my social media accounts and help me go out and find physicians to interview here on the podcast. It would be a great help to me and we can turn this into an extracurricular for you. We'll figure out a way to make it worth your time in helping this show succeed for every premed student, medical student, and even for residents out there looking for fellowships. In the subject line, kindly place Specialty Stories Intern. And I will get back to you as soon as you can. Links: MedEd Media Network The Premed Years Podcast OldPreMeds Podcast The MCAT Podcast NRMP Main Residency Match Results and Data Charting the Outcomes 2016 Medscape Lifestyle Report 2017 Medscape Compensation Report 2017

Session 69 Taken directly from the OldPreMeds.org forums, today's question comes from Kyle, a student who's not really sure if he's interested in medicine. If you think you’re on the same boat as Kyle then all the more reason you should listen to this episode. This question basically relates a little bit to The Premed Years Session 229, where I spoke with Renee, a 54-year-old medical student. She was actually 53 when she reapplied to medical school. She was a former nurse turned nurse practitioner turned nurse educator and had a very successful career. But at the back of her mind, she has always wanted to be a physician. Through the encouragement of her kids, she actually went back and finally made a leap. Listen to her story about how she took the MCAT five times and had to reapply to medical school but was finally successful and is now a medical student. By the way, we have a new podcast coming up where we will be covering USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX Level 1, the first part of the board exams that you take as a medical student. Stay tuned as it will be out in a couple of weeks. [03:25] OldPreMeds Question of the Week: " I really need some objectivity right now. Up and down academic trend maybe 3.0 Science GPA, maybe a 3.1, graduated with a Allied Health degree, not strong GPA throughout program, finally picked it up final semester of my degree. Prereqs General Biology 1 - 3.7 after retake. General Biology 2 - 3.0. Postback, informal, very slow-paced right now. Chem 1 retake -4.0, Genetic - 4.0, Chem 2 - currently taking.  Here's the deal. I'm just not sure I really want to be a physician. There's a lot that goes into this thinking but fundamentally, I'm not sure I want to do what a doctor does. I've done volunteering, shadowing, etc. I like the science side of it and not really dealing with treating or caring for people. I've gone from pre-nursing, pre-pharm, to premed throughout my academic career and currently in a health profession that is none of those but I'm enjoying my job. Who else out there is struggling with this doubt? But it's not just doubt in my abilities, work ethic, time to do this while working full time. But like I said, fundamentally, I don't think I want that role like I once did. If someone was there before, what brought you back to pursue medicine? You hear that cliche that if you can see yourself doing something other than being a doctor, then don't become a doctor. This has been an ongoing multi-year, multi-seasoned fight and I just don't know if I have what it takes nor if I really want this." [05:07] Here are my thoughts: The short answer is go find something else to do. It's as simple as that. The role of a physician is very much ingrained in patient care. When you say you're not sure you want to do what a doctor does and that you really don't like dealing with treating or caring for people, that right there tells me that you should not be a doctor. And that's is truly okay. I talk about it on The Premed Years Podcast all the time that it is great to realize that you don't want to be a doctor because it's a long, hard, and expensive process. Then in the end, a lot of physicians actually question whether it was all worth it and a lot of physicians do not like being a doctor anymore. So for you to find this out now is great! Go find something else that you love to do. It doesn't even have to be in health care. You've talked about going from pre-nursing to pre-pharm to premed. Get out of medicine altogether and find something else that you really love. [06:35] A Farewell to Being Premed If you're struggling with similar things as Kyle is, I highly recommend you listen to Session 29 of The OldPreMeds Podcast where I read a post from somebody who wrote a farewell letter to being a premed. It's a great post from somebody who realized that it wasn't just what they wanted anymore. And that's okay. Going back to Kyle, congratulations for figuring this out. Go enjoy whatever it is that you're meant to do. Go find it. Links: OldPreMeds.org The Premed Years Podcast Specialty Stories Podcast The Premed Years Podcast Session 229: 54-Year-Old Med Student Overcame 5 MCAT s, Rejection, and More The OldPreMeds Podcast Session 29: A Farewell Letter to Being Premed

Session 65 Our poster today is a working mom who fell into a very common premed trap of trying to compare her stats to those of others students. The problem is, it doesn’t work that way! If you have any questions that you would like answered here on The OldPreMeds Podcast, go to the OldPremeds.org, sign up for an account and join in their collaborative environment. [01:23] OldPreMeds Question of the Week: "First off, I am so happy to have found this site. I found my way here, thanks to The Premed Years Podcast. I am a 29-year-old working mom, I have two young children and who has been in the environmental health and safety industry mainly for manufacturing companies for about six years. I originally applied to medical school in 2008 but I call it a wimpy effort at best. By the time I finished my undergrad, I was not very confident in my dreams or my commitment to four plus additional years in school, and ended up taking my backup plan (Kindly listen to The Premed Years Podcast to know my thoughts on having a backup plan). I got my Master’s in Environmental Talks and immediately started working after graduation. Over the years, the realization that medicine was in fact my dream has become a lot more obvious, but I have never felt like there was a good time to transition. About six months ago, I bit the bullet and signed up to retake the MCAT. I took it January 28th so I’ll be receiving my scores at the end of February. My plan is to apply early for the 2018 cycle. My stats are potentially competitive, 3.9 undergrad GPA and 3.6 graduate, along with a good community service history and participation in undergrad grad research and shadowing. I’m not super confident that I did well on the MCAT and I am trying to gauge the point at which I decide that I will not submit an application. I’m applying to an allopathic program if that makes any difference. Does anyone mind sharing their own stats and/or opinion of a threshold MCAT score for applying?" Here are my insights: [3:10] Trust Yourself, Trust Your Stats It does not matter what other people’s stats are. The only person you're competing against to get into medical school is yourself. You need to trust yourself. You need to trust your stats and know that stats are only part of the application. A 3.9 undergrad GPA is great. A 3.6 graduate GPA is good. An MCAT score is one part of a puzzle for a full application. A 29-year-old working mom will have a great story to tell if she tells it properly. Here’s the biggest part of the application that people miss. You have to tell that story about the nontraditional journey that you have been on that separates you from everybody else. What makes you special? It’s not your MCAT score. But it’s your story, your journey, your path. That’s the story that you need to tell. It doesn’t matter what your MCAT score is. [4:39] Applying to Only One School Might Hurt Your Chances One thing that stood out in this question. This student said that she was applying to an allopathic program. One program. This is a huge mistake. I understand that students, especially nontraditional students, have challenges such as location restrictions. And if you're a working mom, you're married, and your husband has a job and can’t relocate and the kids are firmly integrated in the schools and cannot relocate, then applying to one school is going to be a huge, HUGE risk. If I were that mom, I would then have serious conversations with my husband and with the kids, and clearly explain to them that I may have to move alone for a little while or all of us may have to move and start afresh so I can fulfill my dream of becoming a physician. It is a huge challenge, a huge risk to apply to only one medical school. The average number of applications for MD schools is 14 to 15 as well for DO schools. Assuming most students apply to both MD and DO schools then that would mean applying to thirty schools. [06:27] Applying Broadly and Other Things to Consider It’s a lot of schools. It’s a lot of money. But every school is looking for something different. Every school is looking for a part of the community that they’re trying to build. As a 29-year-old working mom, the student who posted this question may fit in great at one school (regardless of her stats) because of her background as a working mom and her life experience. But it might be a school that’s two states away and this is also something you need to take into account when applying to medical school. As a nontraditional applicant, it’s hard to think about applying broadly when you have a husband, or a wife, or other significant others and kids, and you're thinking about moving them. And so there are lots of things to think about when it comes to that. [07:22] My Final Thoughts Other people’s stats absolutely do not matter. Your 3.9 and 3.6 are not my 3.9 and 3.6 and 510 on the MCAT. If you've got a 510 on the MCAT and we had the same exact stats, it does not matter because your story is different than mine. Stop trying to compare yourself or compare your stats to other students. They don’t compute. There is no correlation between your stats and somebody else’s stats. Just stop it. Links and Other Resources: MedEd Media Network OldPreMeds.org The Premed Years Podcast Next Step Test Prep (Use the code MSHQ to save some money on full-length practice exams, their online courses, and their one-on-one tutoring.) The Premed Years Podcast Session 213: Stop Looking for a Backup Plan, It's Hurting Your Chances

Session 64 We take questions directly from the OldPreMeds.org forum and deliver the answers right here to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: "I'm about to graduate from college this upcoming May and would like to apply to medical schools. I wanted to apply to linkage programs so I can get into medical school without having to take the MCAT. I still have not taken the MCAT. However, I cannot apply to postbac programs because I've taken all the premed courses and have done very well in them. So that eliminates any postbac linkage programs. I know there are tons of linkage programs for undergrad sophomores and juniors but since I'm no longer a sophomore or junior, what other options do I have besides applying to medical school the regular way?" Here are my insights: [02:45] Thinking Outside the Box The MCAT is a beast of its own and that's why you have resources like The MCAT Podcast to help make taking the MCAT easier for you. If you haven't yet, go check it out. It's a podcast I do with Next Step Test Prep, a test prep company that offers one-on-one tutoring as well as 10 full-length practice tests for the new MCAT. They also have a brand new course which they've set out. (Use the code MSHQ to save some money on their products and services). [03:35] Ways to Get Into Medical School There are a couple of ways to get into medical school. First is the traditional route which involves applying at the end of your junior year or beginning of your senior year for entrance the following year. So there's no break between undergrad and medical school except for a summer off. Within that normal route, you will have take the MCAT. [04:03] Early Acceptance Programs Perhaps the more appropriate term to use rather than a linkage program is "early acceptance." For most of these programs you apply during your sophomore or junior year. For some schools, you don't have to take the MCAT. While for others, you still have to take the MCAT provided that you have a minimum score to still be accepted into medical school. My undergrad institution, University of Florida has the Junior Honors Medical Program where you apply as a sophomore and they look at your SAT score and the first couple years of your undergrad classes. I think you have to take the MCAT on that one. [4:53] Programs without MCAT Requirement There are programs out there where you don't have to take the MCAT.  I recently helped a student get into A.T. Still University where they have an early acceptance program and she no longer has to take the MCAT and got her early acceptance. [5:05] What Are the Options for Nontraditional Students? If you're listening to this as a nontraditional student, those options are probably not going to be available for you. Instead, you can look into postbac programs, which are there to help increase your grades if you started off poorly and then you've decided to come back and work harder. These are grade-enhancing programs that allow you to go back and take these prerequisite courses over again. Some of those programs will have linkages to medical schools. There are also Special Master’s Programs that have linkages to medical schools. These are master degree programs to help you improve your grades so you can prove to medical schools that you can handle the curriculum. I really wouldn’t recommend taking it as these programs can be very expensive. Also, in a lot of these programs, you will have to take some classes with the first year medical students. [6:45] Take the MCAT. Take a Prep Course. If you've done well in your classes, there is no reason to avoid taking the MCAT. Bite the bullet. MCAT is a necessary evil. If you've done well in your undergrad classes, that is the number one way to prepare for the MCAT. So go back and relearn that material. Take a prep course such as Next Step Test Prep and use the code MSHQ. Just take the MCAT and you will be fine. Links and Other Resources: OldPreMed.org MedEd Media Network The Premed Years The MCAT Podcast Specialty Stories Podcast Next Step Test Prep (Use the code MSHQ to save money off their offerings.) University of Florida - Junior Honors Medical Program If you're on any social media platform, use #tripod and let people know all about The OldPreMeds Podcast.

Help Ian interview all 120+ specialties by referring him more physicians! Show notes page! Dr. Gray is a former United States Air Force Flight Surgeon who has since retired from the military and clinical practice to pursue his passion for helping med and pre-med students on their journey to and through medical school. Dr. Gray completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Florida in 2002; his medical degree at New York Medical College in 2009; and his intern year at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital in 2010 after which he served 5 years in the Air Force, the first 2 as a flight surgeon and the last 3 as Chief of Aerospace Medicine. Dr. Gray is best known for his podcasts which have combined for over 1.2 million downloads and which include The Premed Years podcast, The OldPreMeds Podcast, The MCAT Podcast, and most recently Specialty Stories, a podcast that features stories of specialists from every field of medicine. Dr. Gray is also the author of The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Interview. Through his book, his podcasts, and his website at medicalschoolhq.net, Dr. Gray has helped thousands of students successfully navigate the path to and through medical school. Dr. Gray lives outside of Boulder, CO with his wife Allison, who is a Neurologist, and their daughter Hannah. Please enjoy with Dr. Ryan Gray!

Session 55 In this episode, Ryan talks about whether or not your chances of getting into medical school will get slimmer if you’re retaking the MCAT for the third time and whether taking a Master’s in a tech science-related course affect your application. Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan again dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where he pulls a question and delivers the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster is 25 years old and working in the industry for the last 2.5 years. He/she is currently studying for a Master's in software engineering and graduating in Spring '18. Despite that, he/she is considering applying for medical school after listening the OldPreMeds podcast. While taking undergrad in electrical engineering, he/she did premed simultaneously for Texas Medical Schools with a 3.6 GPA. Poster applied in 2015 but screened away; taken MCAT twice (1st-27 and 2nd-29). Poster is looking to apply in 2018 and planning to take Kaplan to prep for the MCAT in 2017. Poster is also looking at volunteering and shadowing experiences next year. Poster is close at finishing Master's in software engineering where the company pays for it. Since this is the third time of taking the MCAT, are the chances of getting in slimmer? Is everything riding on the next MCAT score? Here are the insights from Ryan: Your chances of getting to medical school (in terms of the admissions side) have nothing to do with your MCAT score or how many times you take your MCAT score. However, there are some restrictions in how many times you can take the MCAT. 3x in a single testing year 4x during two consecutive periods 7x in a lifetime. For somebody taking it 4-7 times, there's a reason there's a need to take it so many times. How did you prepare for the MCAT the first two times? And why are you doing Kaplan this time? About test prep courses Things being third time taking the test, consider taking Next Step Test Prep because they offer one-on-one tutoring although they also have an online course now. Is everything riding on your next MCAT score? Everything is not riding on your next MCAT score but you should do well on it. Find out why you're not doing well. There should be a reason why and hopefully, Next Step can figure that out for you. Should you be taking any courses or a postbac? No, you have a good GPA. You took the required classes in school. The only question is - do you think you're prepared enough for the MCAT with having your premed classes a number of years ago? Or can you self-study and re-learn the foundational content for the MCAT so you can use that information. The MCAT is not a content-heavy test but it focuses more on critical thinking and analysis. Does completing a Master's in software engineering help or hurt your chances? Software engineering is tech science-related so it doesn't help you or it doesn't necessarily hurt you. It can only hurt you if it takes you concentration away as well as your time for doing other things like shadowing and getting in extracurricular activities and studying for the MCAT. Can you still submit your application in 2017? You have 6 months to apply at the very start of June 2017. Theoretically, you could take the MCAT in June but it's still doable to submit your applications early, get you secondaries back and by the time you submitted those, your MCAT score is back. This will not delay your application but the problem is that you won't know your score when you submit your application. Look at taking the MCAT in June, working with a test prep company up until then and take the practice tests. If you're not doing well in the practice test, then don't apply until next year so you can figure out how to improve. Another key point: Make sure your shadowing and clinical experiences are up-to-date. Medical school want to see that you continue to be involved in medicine throughout this whole time. Major takeaway from this episode: Yes, you have a good shot at getting in but you just need to work on your MCAT score and figure out why you're not doing well on it. Links and Other Resources: Next Step Test Prep - Use the code MSHQ and save some money www.mededmedia.com OldPreMeds.org Leave us a rating and review at www.oldpremeds.org/itunes www.teepublic.com and search for “premed”

Session 54 In this episode, Ryan talks about how you can improve your medical school application where he touches on some points such as postbac courses, clinical experience, and international clinical volunteering. Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan again dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where you can ask questions, get answers, and participate with other students. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster has the following credentials: 3.0 undergrad GPA 3.8 Master's GPA in Health Administration 28 on old MCAT (now studying for a year and hopes to get a 510+ on the new one 3+ years of research experience as a lab technician for a medical school but they have a 3.25 undergrad GPA cutoff 2 shadowing experiences Clinical volunteering with 3-week international trip and 25 hours in emergency department This student is taking some postbac courses this upcoming semester including advanced biochem and advanced genetics and maybe an O chem retake. How can you best utilize my time to improve my application when you work full time and you're planning to apply this upcoming cycle entering 2018 class? Here are the insights from Ryan: Master's degrees don't really have a huge effect on your application especially Health Administration GPA because it's not a "hard sciences." More postbac classes, better undergrad GPA Look into taking more postbac classes to help boost your undergrad GPA. Remember, postbac classes are undergrad GPA courses so they would affect your undergrad GPA. These would be listed separately in the application but they will be combined into your compete undergrad GPA. Shadowing experiences and clinical volunteering Two shadowing experiences wouldn't be a lot unless they are long term. You need a good 25-30 hours of shadowing or a little bit more as a minimum. International trip is okay although a lot of medical schools don't really like international clinical volunteering. It's actually debatable whether it helps your application or not because it's seen as unnecessary. More than your stats Your application is much more than just your stats since it includes everything about you.. Your personal statement is huge as well as your extracurriculars and how you described them. Major takeaway from this episode: Get enough clinical experience. Get a great MCAT score. Think about some more classes to bump up your undergrad GPA. Links and Other Resources: The Premed Years Session 171: Reapplying to Med School - What You Need to Know to Improve OldPreMeds.org

Session 53 In this episode, Ryan talks about a question from a former Air Force medic who is now working towards applying to medical school. Would it suffice if the time since your last clinical experience was almost 2 years ago? Or should you get more? Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan again dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Today's poster is a former Air Force medic and worked as a public health technician while in the Air Force. He was into it for a total of 8 years and is now in college working towards becoming a doctor. His current main focus is earning great GPA and studying for the MCAT. Because he has spent 8 years working in a hospital (close to doctors and working one-on-one on multiple occasions), can this experience be used as a shadowing experience? (He's applying to medical school in 2018 and the last time he would have worked with a doctor would be November 2016) Should more shadowing be done? Here are the insights from Ryan: Medical schools want to see that you have sustained commitment to medicine as a whole. If your last exposure was close to 2 years since, it's going to look bad on your application and they'll wonder why you didn't continue to expose yourself to medicine. Not surrounding yourself with medicine for two years is questionable. Being a military medic or being around military medicine is completely different than it is for civilian medicine in terms of the environment and how things are paid for and done. You would be better served by getting more clinical experience and shadowing more physicians. If you have two years until you're applying, start shadowing once every other week for an hour or two. You don't have to do a ton of stuff. Being a former Air Force medic, you're close to getting your EMT certificate or license to be able to go and get more clinical experience as a civilian. Major takeaway from this episode: All your experience plays a huge role in your application but 2 years is too long ago to not continue to do something now. Links and Other Resources: www.mededmedia.com

Session 48 In today's episode, Ryan sheds light on a question related to getting into a US-based medical school when you previously went to a Caribbean school, failed the first semester, and then dropped out. What are the chances? Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Sign up for an account to join the collaborative community of students. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster applied to medical school after completing an MPH and didn't get into any US medical school. He then decided to forego reapplication and went to a Caribbean medical school; didn't pass the first semester and had to repeat the entire first semester but thinking through, found that they're not in a conducive environment for studying plus residency chances in the US wouldn't be great. So poster bailed and decided to work harder, get smarter, and reapply in the US. Is it worth taking a chance and reapply to medical schools? What else can be done and how can you address the fact that you started medical school and then dropped out? Here are the insights from Ryan and Rich: How MPH is viewed by medical schools: MPH isn't that strong of a masters degree to hold a lot of water for medical schools Why students go to Caribbean medical schools and then eventually decide to drop out: Offshore schools are attractive to students being publicly traded companies. Offshore medical schools have reasonably decent and rigorous medical education programs that people are not prepared for that. Some questions to consider: Is it worth the expense of going through a Special Master's Program (SMP) at this point? Can you take higher level biomedical courses (high level undergraduate or beginning graduate courses) not for the degree but just to show them you can do well? How to discuss your case of dropping out: Getting allured in your desire to be a doctor and not thinking, you rushed in. Then you realized for many reasons that it was not going to be an environment that you were going to do well in and look well for the future. In short, you just have to lay it all out there. Don't try to hide something you can't hide or even try to minimize it. Should you discuss this in your personal statement? Make your medical school application a coherent, concise, and compelling narrative showing your motivation, commitment, and achievement to become a doctor. This is a glaring red flag that you HAVE to discuss in a paragraph in your personal statement on the primary. What are your chances? Your chances are low but that doesn't mean you don't stand any chance. You can't change your past but you have to go with the best you can. So many schools are now giving completely unscreened secondaries so you have more of a chance to develop it and discuss it in words. Advocate for yourself. Build those relationships with people that can open some doors for you. Links and Other Resources: Check out The Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net.

Session 46 This week's question is coming from a 36-year old, single mother of three who is looking to get into medical school. Listen in as Ryan and Rich share their insights into how you can actually evaluate postbac programs. Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster is looking at UCLA postbac program, part of the UCLA Extension School; she said it's the only program that doesn't require a GPA minimum but she's concerned if this is going to hurt her appearance at medical schools because of this. How should a nontraditional student evaluate postbac progams? Here are the insights from Ryan: Evaluate the logistics of your life. A young single student has different concerns than a mom of three. Go to the best school if you can. But if you don't have time logistics to study, you're not going to be successful. So evaluate what you need. The GPA point of interest is not a valid concern. Medical school are not going to worry what GPA you had going into a postbac but they're going to worry about your GPA coming out of the postbac. Some things you need to consider: Is it going to be in the morning or the evening? Is it a full time system or part time? What is the cost? Do you need an advisor? Do you need a prep course for MCAT? Are there any links for this postbac? Does it have any connections with medical school? Does it have any EC coordination? Place for training or research Success rate (Be careful of this.) Find out what their stats and requirements are. (Not having a committee or composite letter from them is a big red flag.) You can do an informal postbac. This means not going through a formal postbac program but rather, you take the courses that you need to improve especially if you have low GPA.At this point, advising for this particular case is very important. There is no MSAR for post bac. There is no standardization. Links and Other Resources: www.mededmedia.com In celebration of The Premed Years podcast, Ryan is holding a contest where you can get a chance to win some one-on-one coaching with Ryan. Simply head over to www.medicalschoolhq.net/contest to join.

Session 43 In this episode, Ryan tackles the issue of a student who is struggling with very low undergrad and postbac GPA scores and a low 2015 MCAT score. Find out what options you could possibly take when facing this kind of situation. Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan again dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster is in need for help and advice for applying to medical school; graduated in 2002 with a very low GPA  (2.01) and have take classes with postbac GPA of 2.7 and Science GPA at 3.3. Overall GPA at 2.37. Because of low undergrad GPA, poster is unable to get premed help from the school where they've taken current postbac courses. Overall Science GPA of 2.7 is because of classes taken while doing research which are graduate level courses taken in order to be able to work in a lab. Not prepared for the classes but needed the job to pay rent and help his soon-to-be wife at that time to pay for physical therapy school. Have worked in basic research labs for 3 years, published 2 papers, and post tier presentations at international conferences. Work experience: clinical research (4 years) and lab assistant at a medical school (anatomy lab and orthopedic surgical training center); MCAT 2015 score of 26 and 3; currently working on physical therapy research and teaching; looking for premed advising help. Here are the insights from Ryan: Figure out why you're not doing well in school. No excuses. What is your struggle? A Science GPA of 2.7 is not going to cut it. An overall GPA of 3.7 is not going to gut it. An MCAT score of 26 is not going to cut it. And it's getting old since most schools are going to stop accepting the old MCAT score. You probably have to take it again. Do some soul searching and figure out where the issue lies. You need to improve your grades if you want to get into medical school. There is no point in doing more postbac classes unless you can do really well and only apply to DO schools to take advantage of grade replacement for GPA calculations. Another possible option is a Special Masters Program (SMP), basically a postbac masters level program that goes into the different category in your application under graduate school courses whereas your postbac classes are still lumped in with your undergrad classes and undergrad GPA. Try to see if there is any Special Masters Program near you and see if they have linkage to medical schools, where if you do well in the SMP, you will have a guaranteed spot in the medical school it's associated with. Your last option is the Caribbean school. Reach out to them and see if your GPA is good enough for them. These schools are for profit institutions and they usually take anybody and everybody. But they might not even accept your low GPA. Major takeaway from this episode: You have a lot of work to do. Your research and clinical experiences are great but they're not going to overcome your GPA or MCAT score. So figure out how to improve those or look at doing something else. Links and Other Resources: OldPreMeds.org

Session 39 In this episode, Ryan tackles a concern raised by an aspiring medical student regarding how shadowing with immediate family or volunteering for a family nonprofit organization will affect your medical school application. Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where he pulls a question to deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Dave is a 30-year old software engineer looking to make a switch to a career in medicine; graduating with a degree in General Studies with GPA of 3.52. He decided 18 months ago to return to school to pursue his dream of providing care and service to the community as a physician. Dave has been taking as many courses at community colleges and almost done with base prerequisite coursework. Taking the MCAT in early 2017 and applying in June 2017 for the 2018 class. Dave is struggling to find time to take all the coursework, plan his study for the MCAT, find volunteering and shadowing opportunities, and fulfill his familial obligations (with his wife and a 5-year old). How are family connections to extracurriculars viewed? He has shadowing his brother who is a practicing DO. He has also volunteered hundreds of hours for a 501-C3 nonprofit organization made up entirely of family members where they help cancer patients and survivors. Is this considered valid volunteering? Will this be an issue? Here are the insights from Ryan: Shadowing family members is not a problem. The problem is in getting a letter of recommendation from the physician you're shadowing. A strong letter of recommendation comes from the physician you're shadowing whom you've built a relationship with over a prolonged period of time. Quality, not quantity. If you can shadow one physician for a long time, build an awesome relationship with that person then they can write you a killer letter of recommendation. A letter of recommendation from your brother probably will not be looked favorably upon because you just can't trust a letter of recommendation from a family member. It's perfectly fine to shadow a brother but if you really want a strong letter of recommendation from a physician, have your brother help you find somebody else to shadow. Your connection with your brother is still very helpful because he can help you find someone else to shadow. If you're volunteering with a nonprofit, it doesn't matter who else is volunteering or working there. The key thing here is the experiences that you talked about with interacting with cancer patients and survivors are what's going to be so powerful as you write about them on your application. Your experiences will be huge here regardless of family ties. Major takeaway from this episode: Find a physician to shadow who can make a strong letter of recommendation for you while volunteering for a nonprofit organization makes a great experience for you regardless of who else is working or volunteering for that organization. Links and Other Resources: www.cramfighter.com The Premed Years Podcast Session 195 features Cram Fighter, a software to help you plan your studies for the MCAT and create a custom schedule for you.

yan Gray, MD, was a physician in the Air Force. He'd planned all along to be an orthopaedic surgeon...but the military had other plans for him: aerospace medicine. Later, when a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis forced him to give up flying, his career plans changed once again, and he decided to set aside the practice of medicine to focus his growing business as the proprietor of MedicalSchoolHQ.net where he advises pre-medical students on their efforts to get into medical school. He's also a podcaster in that vein, as the host of The Premed Years podcast, the OldPreMeds Podcast, and The MCAT Podcast. As Dave, Nicole Morrow, Amy Hansen, Alex Volkmar, and Tony Rosenberg found, not only is Dr. Gray a thoughtful adviser, but he's a lot of fun to talk to. His thoughts on being a non-traditional medical student (he was one himself), the efforts of some schools to create competency- and systems-based curricula instead of exam-based curricula, and the types of students admissions committees are most interested in are definitely worth knowing. And check out Dr. Gray's new book, The Premed Playbook: Guide to the Medical School Interview.

Session 36 In today's episode, Ryan welcomes a question from a student named Matt regarding getting shadowing and clinical experience - how much is enough, what better way to approach a physician, and can you shadow the same physician on a regular basis? Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast as Ryan and Rich pulls a question from the forums over at OldPreMeds.org and delivers the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Matt is a 41-year old student how is extremely excited and nervous about this endeavor; no clinical or shadowing experience; hoping to apply next June and intends to spend the next 8 months shadowing and gaining clinical experience. Will this be sufficient? Or should the application be put off for another year? Matt applied to join the local volunteer rescue squad where he is to commit 35 hours a month; what else can he do to gain clinical exposure? Matt intends to shadow a few physicians across a range of specialties and attempts to spend a bit of time with the ones that feel like the most positive experience. Is there a better approach? Is it appropriate to ask a physician to shadow on a regular basis or is there a point where you are just interrupting his or her job? Here are the insights from Ryan: When you're applying 8 months away from the next application cycle and you don't have any clinical or shadowing experience, yes it is bad. How do you know you want to be a physician without any clinical or shadowing experience? This would be the first red flag to an admissions committee person. Can you get enough clinical and shadowing experience in the next 8 months? Yes, as long as it's quality experience where you hang around enough patients in a clinical setting to know you're okay dealing with sick people. How can you get more clinical experience? Consider being a scribe or any experience where you are close enough to smell the patient. Shadowing experience Shadowing is important to understand what life is like as a physician. You don't need to shadow every specialty out there to see which one you like because that's what medical school is for where you get to rotate different specialties. Your job when shadowing is to only understand what life is like as a physician. Things to consider when shadowing: Setting Physicians working in an academic setting are different than those in an outpatient or community hospital. Try shadowing somebody in an academic hospital setting and somebody in a community hospital setting, as well as in an academic outpatient setting and in a community outpatient setting. Shadowing on a regular basis Yes, you can ask a physician on a regular basis. This is actually great as you're gaining a relationship that you can lean on later for a good letter of recommendation, hopefully. You may interrupt the workflow to some extent but not terribly. If you get a physician that says no, then that's fine and move on to another who says yes. Links and Other Resources: www.mededmedia.com

Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan again dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where he pulls out a question and deliver the answers right on to you. In today’s episode, Ryan answers a question raised by an NP looking into going to medical school and asks about the need for shadowing experience. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster is an NP looking to go back to medical school and become a fully fledged professional. Would want to return to primary care one day as a fully fledged professional on the MD/DO route. As an NP, has worked alongside MD's and DO's in primary care and doing things they do such as patient care. Do you still need to shadow? Is it desirable to still shadow other specialties? Here are the insights from Ryan: The goal of shadowing is to really understand what you're getting yourself into. Shadowing for you may not be required but there is a difference between working as an NP and a physician. Go out and shadow other specialties to be a little bit more well-rounded and understand the fuller picture of what other physicians may do. Shadowing in your case isn't for letters of recommendation but for you to get a bigger picture. Don't necessarily go crazy with your hours. Get maybe 10-40 hours and a couple hours here and there. Links and Other Resources: www.OldPreMeds.org www.themcatpodcast.com

Session 33 The OldPreMeds Podcast started as a collaboration between the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds.org, the site for nontraditional premed and medical students. Currently, Dr. Ryan Gray is the Director of the National Society of Nontraditional Premed and Medical Students and now runs, operates, and publishes OldPreMeds.org which is now part of the Medical School Headquarters. The Medical School Headquarters is also starting a new collaboration with Next Step Test Prep to produce The MCAT Podcast, which has been in the works for several months now. Today, they are sharing with you their very first episode on today's session. The MCAT Podcast is a weekly episode dedicated to the MCAT. Ryan will be mainly talking to Bryan Schnedeker, Next Step Test Prep's MCAT Guru where they discuss the different aspects of the MCAT to help you get a better grip of the MCAT especially being nontraditional students. Go to www.themcatpodcast.com and sign up to be notified when it's going to be on iTunes. What The MCAT Podcast offers: Weekly information all about the MCAT Tips, tricks, and common pitfalls Content to help you break down some of the passages Ways to things about passages How to rule out questions Shorter format (around 10 minutes) Easier to consume John Rood is the Founder and President of Next Step Test Prep which he started in 2009. John has a background in test prep and they started out doing one-on-one tutoring for the professional graduate schools in Chicago until eventually spreading to other cities and going online. In 2013, Bryan Schnedeker joined the company and currently serves as the Vice-President for Next Step's MCAT and Tutoring. Bryan is Next Step's resident MCAT Guru having taught and tutored MCAT students over the past 15 years. About Next Step Test Prep: One-on-one tutoring programs 35,000 students have signed up for different MCAT practice tests and materials Customization is at its core seeking to meet the individual needs of students They have a team of five people working full-time on MCAT content and 15-20 people working part-time on specialized parts of their content. About Ryan Gray: A physician by training (an Air Force flight surgeon for five years) Stumbled into the premed advising world after talking to young airmen in the Air Force about what it's like to go to medical school and coming across a particular website offering very negative and cutthroat information Wanting to create a safe place for people to go and get collaborative information that is not cutthroat and competitive Started the Medical School Headquarters in 2012 Today, Ryan runs the following podcasts: The Premed Years Podcast  - 3 1/2 years old; nominated 2x as a Top Podcast in the Science and Medicine Category; with almost a million downloads The OldPreMeds Podcast Next Step pivoting into providing courses: Going into the course market to put together a course with all the essential resources that any of the other major label courses would have: 12 full-length exams 11 books containing thousands of pages Course priced at $1,300 ($700-$900 less than students would have paid for courses under the legacy pricing system) A Next Step exclusive: Customized study plan tool Diagnostic test followed by a short questionnaire that will allow a generation of a custom unique to you study plan so you're following the best possible prep for your needs Our goals for The MCAT Podcast: Regularly repeating podcast of 5-15 min. mini-lessons on MCAT itself, building study plans, quick reviews, pitfalls and how to avoid them You get a little nugget of MCAT wisdom offering high value to students Links and Other Resources: Go to www.oldpremeds.org/mcatclass and use the coupon code: MCATPOD to save money off their tutoring and 10% off their products www.mcatpodcast.com/subscribe

Session 32 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast are taken directly from the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today's question is about preparing for the medical school interview being a nontraditional student. Ryan lays out some relevant pieces of advice to help students rock the interview come interview day. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster is a nontraditional re-applicant who applied very late in the cycle and had a mediocre MCAT score, being her two biggest hurdles. Since then she has worked to improve on several areas of her application and applied early in this year's cycle. She chose to apply to 12 schools and received an interview to interview at a school in August. How do you prepare for interviews particularly for nontraditional students? Here are the insights from Ryan: Know who you are. Know what your future is going to look like. Check out Episodes 192, 19, and 91 of The Premed Years Podcast to get more tips about the medical school interview process. Diversity is key. What does your nontraditional background bring to your classmates and add to the diversity of the class? Diversity is a huge buzzword these days with holistic admissions processes at medical schools. But you have to be able to tell that story as to why you're diverse. Do a mock interview. Talk with somebody who knows the process. Record yourself (audio or video) to see and hear yourself. Make it as real as possible and go through it so you can watch yourself. Get feedback from the person you're talking with on the answers you gave to see how it sounded like to the interviewer. Links and Other Resources: Session 192 www.medicalschoolhq.net/192 Session 19 www.medicalschoolhq.net/19 Session 91 www.medicalschoolhq.net/91 www.medschoolinterviewbook.com

Session 30 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan again dives into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today, the questions revolves around the interview process and the feedback they received from a physician about the interview process. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Poster had a talk with a neurosurgery resident and gave so much insight into the journey, highlighting the fact that entry to medical school is not a destination. He is in the last year of residency as a chief resident after 18 years of education and residency. Poster shares the resident's insights and the deal breaker is the actual interview where only personality matters subject to the interviewer. Poster wants to ask any other insights into the interview. Here are the insights from Ryan: There are no such things as GPA and MCAT cutoffs. If you got an interview at a medical school, they've taken the leap of faith that your scores are competitive enough to be a student at that school. Once you have your interview and matched up among everybody else that had an interview, your GPA and MCAT still might fall short. If you have a perfect interview against another perfect interview of a student and everything else is equal but the other student has a higher MCAT score or GPA, they might get the spot over you. Go into the interview thinking that the acceptance is yours to lose. You have to be there prepared and ready to go. Over the years, schools have been refining what they use to select students. The AAMC has the core competencies that medical schools look at. Then the medical schools look at your applications, secondaries, interview skills and comparing you to a core competency list which takes some subjectivity out of it. Ryan is releasing an interview book soon on Amazon as well as its print version. Go to www.medschoolinterviewbook.com to sign up and be notified when the book releases or if it's already out. Major takeaway from this episode: Personality is not the only thing that matters and that it is subject to the interview. Personality matters in everything in life and you need to be prepared for that interview. Links and Other Resources: www.medschoolinterviewbook.com

Session 27 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: The poster is a current massage therapist. She is in training for a clinical massage training. Would massage therapy become more accepted and being an alternative modality in the health field, how is this going to be viewed by medical schools? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Massage therapy is a licensed field in most states. A lot of schools that offer it are accredited secondary institutions. Rich doesn't think that most medical schools will think that it will add much to your application. It's not patient contact per se nor is it volunteering. But it's a work experience that you can list. Other experiences you need to get include are volunteering and shadowing. There are massage therapists who work in more clinical settings like nursing homes, some physical therapy practices and osteopathic practices in some hospitals for patients. If you're able to find positions such as these then this may be useful to your medical school application.

Session 22 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan jumps into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where he pulls a question and delivers the answers right on to you. In today's episode, Ryan tackles the topic on taking a postbac or SMP for a 32-year old science major with a lot of credits while having poor numbers. Listen in to learn more about this.  OldPreMeds Question of the Week: The poster is a 32-year old nontraditional premed student; graduated in 2007 with a chemistry/computer science double major; Science GPA with 3.05 and accumulative of 3.13; lots of credits to GPA's. Should they take the basic prerequisite science classes considering the not-so-stellar grades? Formal postbac program would be great but most of them specify that the applicant cannot have more than 50% science grades completed. Here are the insights from Ryan: Two types of postbac programs: Career-changers Where you haven't taken a lot of science courses They don't want you to have any of your sciences done or at least not a lot of them done Record-enhancers You went through school as a science major, knew you wanted to be premed, but you struggled so you need help to enhance your GPA They have specific postbac programs for students like this poster Out of 223 postbac programs, there are 152 record-enhancing programs Are SMP's high risk? SMP's are great because they're usually tied to the medical school and you're taking classes with medical students You are performing for the school to say that you're doing just as well as their medical students and that you're building relationships Caveat: If you do the math to enhance the record with a lot of credits to take more science courses and get straight A's, the GPA is not going to move very much. In this case, consider a special masters program because it will be a separate grade in the application. Links and Other Resources: OldPreMeds.org AAMC List of Postbac Programs - Special Program Focus MedEdMedia.com

Session 19 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. This is a common question for non traditional students who have to juggle time taking care of family, test prep, classes, and so many other things that some of them might even get left out. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Finished undergrad with a double major in English Literature and Spanish Language; decent GPA; struggled in the Science prerequisites; not getting a lot of volunteering and shadowing done. Should you apply with such little experience? Or should you take some time and get the experience you need under your belt before applying? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: A common assumption that the more you do as an undergrad in terms of academia, the better candidate you are - that's not always the case. All your grades for allopathic medical schools will count whether you retake them or not. Medical school want to see: Motivation Commitment Achievement Commitment must be shown through extracurriculars that you've committed to for some time You want to be the strongest applicant on your first application you can be. Not having sufficient volunteering, shadowing, extracurriculars will make you a weaker candidate. Consider taking time until you have those experiences under the belt to become a stronger, more competitive candidate. Shadowing vs. volunteering: Volunteering is when you're doing something for others (clinic, nursing home, geriatric care, etc.) Shadowing is something you do for yourself (following a doctor around) Links and Other Resources: The Premed Years podcast session 171 - Reapplying to Med School - What You Need to Know to Improve The Premed Years podcast session 75 - What Are My Chances of Getting into Med School? If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 18 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today's question is quite interesting as it pertains to busy nontraditional students who may not have time to go to classes and the risk of taking online coursework over the in-campus classes. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Can you use an online degree for medical school? The poster considers doing an online degree as an older nontraditional student. They've email premed consultants and directly to medical schools and thinking about doing a BA online at the University of Florida. Final 30 hours would be online and completing premed coursework at a local campus. Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Some places online courses but most schools do not accept that. MSAR lists which schools will accept or not accept online prerequisites Undergrad institutions providing online courses are putting their name on the course. These schools would argue that their online course is as good as any course that they teach in-campus so in all the transcripts you won't know whether it's an online class or not. Medical schools would like to see whether it's online or not. They may ask a question on your secondary to state if you're taking any online coursework. If you're doing the prerequisites in an actual campus and the rest of the degree online, there still could be some risks to it. It could limit you to what medical schools to apply to It may put you at a competitive disadvantage in the applicant pool Major takeaway from this episode: It is such a time-consuming and expensive process to apply to medical school so you wouldn't want to run such a risk. If taking an online course is a risk worth taking, go for it. Don't rely on one just one medical school to apply to. Do your research. Check out the MSAR or the CIB to arrive at the best decision possible. Links and Other Resources MSAR CIB If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Ryan Gray turned his education and passion into an online business to help premed students succeed! Ryan Gray is a former Flight Surgeon in the United States Air Force. Ryan graduated from the University of Florida (GO GATORS!) with a B.S. in Exercise and Sports Sciences, and received his M.D. from New York Medical College. After graduating from medical school, Ryan completed his internship through a Tufts Medical Center transitional medicine program at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Ryan is the publisher of MedicalSchoolHQ.net and OldPreMeds.org and the podcast host of The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. He is also the Director of the National Society of Nontraditional Premedical and Medical Students. Matt and I take the first hour and a half to talk about a ton of topics that have been burning on my mind this past week! Interview with Dr Ryan Gray May 20th 2 year anniversary charity event  The Temps movie doing so well on its opening week. Ryan Sage interview back on episode 94.  Quality over quantity when it comes to making friends and connections. Bringing networks of people together can move mountains.  Update on #EverythingPaysRent money intake ( over $10,000 received so far)  How do I stay motivated?  Joe you are supposed to slow down, aren't you overwhelmed? Keep a running check list of things that need to be done in the near future and a future list for things that you want to accomplish in the distant future. Break them down to smallest tasks so you don't overwhelm yourself and put them off. Talk about how much money do you have to make before you can compromise yourself. Mike's job has amazing benefits. But it's essentially not enough work to make him fulfilled. Soul sucking. Do we not take advice of pweoplr we know seriously enough? Extremism and how we are forced into having to be extreme or be ignored. Google Play Store now has podcasts! Tony Hawk 2 where are they now? Slick Rick becomes US citizen after 23 years and more to announce Shoot me your questions to Joe@SuperJoePardo.com https://youtu.be/8MV3ULJ5jDg Episode 226

Ryan Gray turned his education and passion into an online business to help premed students succeed! Ryan Gray is a former Flight Surgeon in the United States Air Force. Ryan graduated from the University of Florida (GO GATORS!) with a B.S. in Exercise and Sports Sciences, and received his M.D. from New York Medical College. After graduating from medical school, Ryan completed his internship through a Tufts Medical Center transitional medicine program at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Ryan is the publisher of MedicalSchoolHQ.net and OldPreMeds.org and the podcast host of The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. He is also the Director of the National Society of Nontraditional Premedical and Medical Students. Matt and I take the first hour and a half to talk about a ton of topics that have been burning on my mind this past week! Interview with Dr Ryan Gray May 20th 2 year anniversary charity event  The Temps movie doing so well on its opening week. Ryan Sage interview back on episode 94.  Quality over quantity when it comes to making friends and connections. Bringing networks of people together can move mountains.  Update on #EverythingPaysRent money intake ( over $10,000 received so far)  How do I stay motivated?  Joe you are supposed to slow down, aren't you overwhelmed? Keep a running check list of things that need to be done in the near future and a future list for things that you want to accomplish in the distant future. Break them down to smallest tasks so you don't overwhelm yourself and put them off. Talk about how much money do you have to make before you can compromise yourself. Mike's job has amazing benefits. But it's essentially not enough work to make him fulfilled. Soul sucking. Do we not take advice of pweoplr we know seriously enough? Extremism and how we are forced into having to be extreme or be ignored. Google Play Store now has podcasts! Tony Hawk 2 where are they now? Slick Rick becomes US citizen after 23 years and more to announce Shoot me your questions to Joe@SuperJoePardo.com https://youtu.be/8MV3ULJ5jDg Episode 226

Ryan Gray turned his education and passion into an online business to help premed students succeed! Ryan Gray is a former Flight Surgeon in the United States Air Force. Ryan graduated from the University of Florida (GO GATORS!) with a B.S. in Exercise and Sports Sciences, and received his M.D. from New York Medical College. After graduating from medical school, Ryan completed his internship through a Tufts Medical Center transitional medicine program at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Ryan is the publisher of MedicalSchoolHQ.net and OldPreMeds.org and the podcast host of The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. He is also the Director of the National Society of Nontraditional Premedical and Medical Students. Matt and I take the first hour and a half to talk about a ton of topics that have been burning on my mind this past week! Interview with Dr Ryan Gray May 20th 2 year anniversary charity event  The Temps movie doing so well on its opening week. Ryan Sage interview back on episode 94.  Quality over quantity when it comes to making friends and connections. Bringing networks of people together can move mountains.  Update on #EverythingPaysRent money intake ( over $10,000 received so far)  How do I stay motivated?  Joe you are supposed to slow down, aren't you overwhelmed? Keep a running check list of things that need to be done in the near future and a future list for things that you want to accomplish in the distant future. Break them down to smallest tasks so you don't overwhelm yourself and put them off. Talk about how much money do you have to make before you can compromise yourself. Mike's job has amazing benefits. But it's essentially not enough work to make him fulfilled. Soul sucking. Do we not take advice of pweoplr we know seriously enough? Extremism and how we are forced into having to be extreme or be ignored. Google Play Store now has podcasts! Tony Hawk 2 where are they now? Slick Rick becomes US citizen after 23 years and more to announce Shoot me your questions to Joe@SuperJoePardo.com https://youtu.be/8MV3ULJ5jDg Episode 226

Ryan Gray turned his education and passion into an online business to help premed students succeed! Ryan Gray is a former Flight Surgeon in the United States Air Force. Ryan graduated from the University of Florida (GO GATORS!) with a B.S. in Exercise and Sports Sciences, and received his M.D. from New York Medical College. After graduating from medical school, Ryan completed his internship through a Tufts Medical Center transitional medicine program at Lemuel Shattuck Hospital. Ryan is the publisher of MedicalSchoolHQ.net and OldPreMeds.org and the podcast host of The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. He is also the Director of the National Society of Nontraditional Premedical and Medical Students. Matt and I take the first hour and a half to talk about a ton of topics that have been burning on my mind this past week! Interview with Dr Ryan Gray May 20th 2 year anniversary charity event  The Temps movie doing so well on its opening week. Ryan Sage interview back on episode 94.  Quality over quantity when it comes to making friends and connections. Bringing networks of people together can move mountains.  Update on #EverythingPaysRent money intake ( over $10,000 received so far)  How do I stay motivated?  Joe you are supposed to slow down, aren't you overwhelmed? Keep a running check list of things that need to be done in the near future and a future list for things that you want to accomplish in the distant future. Break them down to smallest tasks so you don't overwhelm yourself and put them off. Talk about how much money do you have to make before you can compromise yourself. Mike's job has amazing benefits. But it's essentially not enough work to make him fulfilled. Soul sucking. Do we not take advice of pweoplr we know seriously enough? Extremism and how we are forced into having to be extreme or be ignored. Google Play Store now has podcasts! Tony Hawk 2 where are they now? Slick Rick becomes US citizen after 23 years and more to announce Shoot me your questions to Joe@SuperJoePardo.com https://youtu.be/8MV3ULJ5jDg Episode 226

Session 17 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today, they cover tips you need to know when making your school list in narrowing down which medical schools to apply to. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: How do you sort through the 150+ medical schools out there and pick the ones that you apply to? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Tips in creating your med school list: Get a copy of the MSAR (Medical School Admissions Requirement) published by AAMC) which summarizes each school of their class, their setup, requirements, and their average GPA and MCAT score. For the osteopathic schools, check the College Information Book to get the same information. Take a realistic look at your grades and see if you're going to fit within the range of the medical schools you're applying to. For nontraditional students consider to increase your overall GPA even though the actual may be a little bit lower. Consider all the schools in your state, both state schools and the private schools. Consider it a part of your normal broad application process. State schools look at the factor of being in-state or out of state. States will look at in-state applicants closer than out of state applicants. Some things you need to consider: Most students apply between 12 and 24 schools. City or more rural Specialty of the school you want to be associated with. Weather Major takeaway from this episode: Pick your schools wisely because it's a big part in the application process and a great deal of money is involved too. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 16 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today, the discussion touches on the secondaries, interviews, the timing, and the process of it all.  OldPreMeds Question of the Week: The poster has completed 9 secondaries and already has 2 scheduled interviews. If the school is not going to offer an interview, do they let you know or do they just leave you hanging? What kind of timeline do most schools work on?  Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: The timeline of the secondary process: AMCAS application (not transmitted to the schools until starting July 1st) Many schools start sending the secondary before your primary application has been processed and transmitted to them AMCAS provides schools (upon request) contact information for applicants for them to be able to send unscreened secondaries to all students who select that school. You get many schools so when the application transmits for the secondary sent unscreened, you get other schools with very minimal screening and very low MCAT and GPA grade cutoff or formula. Virtually all students will be getting a secondary. Most schools will wait until the secondary gets in and then review it After interview, depending on the school, the status may vary according to: Rejection Hold status Leave you hanging Hence, all schools vary in terms of the secondaries so there is no general rule whatsoever. Most schools though, hold most students until later in the cycle when they decide to wait list or reject. If you don't hear about an interview, you may just have to wait to find out. The waiting game can be painful because they won't finalize it until April 30th. Get your applications early so things get reviewed early. However, medical schools may review applications not in a chronological fashion.  Major takeaway from this episode: Each school has their own culture and mission. Many schools will eye much more on the secondaries for soft answers, motivation, commitment, achievement than they do on the primary application. So a lot of schools look at the secondary more intensely than they do the primary. The application can be painful and slow but that is the game. School take in a lot of applications so it may take a long time to get through them all. So stay encouraged and motivated  while you're waiting for the answer (hopefully an interview invite).  Links and Other Resources: If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 15 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Taken directly from the forums over at OldPreMeds.org, Ryan and Rich pick a question and deliver the answers right on to you. For this week, Ryan and Rich discuss about course timing and coursework expiration. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: The poster took coursework 30 years ago and wasn't premed at that time. She retook most of the lower division coursework 7-9 years ago. During the intervening years, she was doing some upper division stuff, studying for the MCAT and taking care of life. Their advisor suggested that the prereqs should be taken within five years of applying to medical school. Is there an expiration for coursework? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: For most school, there is no set expiration for prereqs. In the last couple of years, medical schools would like to see the coursework within 5 years or some evidence of academic achievement during the past 5 years (if you have completed degrees before that) Becoming more complex because the AAMC has changed the MCAT recently adding more content. For prereqs approaching 10 years, consider retaking some of the courses or continue taking the advanced classes. Basic or introductory classes change rapidly. In general, there is no requirement or specific timing on your prereqs. It usually depends on the school you’re applying to. Major takeaway from this episode: Get the definitive answer to go to the medical school that you're interested in applying to and ask them what they think. Links and Other Resources: If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching an MCAT podcast and a medical school-focused podcast so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 14 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. This week, the OPM duo takes on a dual-edged question about taking a post bacc at a community college. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: The poster needs to do some GPA-fixing, working full-time, and making pretty good money so quitting their job is not ideal. However, the only place to take classes in a DIY post bacc is at a community college. Are community college classes going to hurt? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: This depends on the applicant's overall background. In general, community colleges are not going to enhance your application as much as a 4-year school would. The negative impact can be minor to moderate depending on the medical school you're applying to and your background. Community colleges are definitely better than nothing. Take some upper level classes or additional classes at a 4-year school and show them that you can handle the work. If you are previously a non-science major and your first time taking your science classes, this will have less of an impact. Here are some questions to consider: Why are you at a community college now trying to fix your GPA? Were you a liberal arts major and just didn't care to study the romantic languages you were trying to learn? Have you not ever taken any science courses and this is your first time? Or are you just going to the community college because it's "easier" than the sciences courses you already took at your 4-year school you previously were at? Major takeaway from this episode: Everybody is unique so your story matters in the application. Links and Other Resources: If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq

Session 13 Each week, Ryan and Rich directly pull up a question from the forums over at OldPreMeds.org as they deliver the best answers right on to you. If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. This week's topic is on Early Decision, whether it be a wise decision to apply for it and weighing out between its risk and reward. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: The poster is deciding if they should apply for Early Decision in the current city they live and also wanting to apply for the HPSP scholarship. What are the pros and cons? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: What is Early Decision? It is a program by some medical schools typically designed for students who: Are very strong candidates Have a strong geographic connection to the school Make a strong case why they be a good fit for that school When you apply for it, it means you have committed on the AMCAS application to only apply to that school until a decision is made. The risk of early decision: This raises an issue that if the decisions do not come out by October and if you don't get accepted the Early Decision, you have now set yourself back for all the other medical schools to apply to. Major takeaway from this episode: Rich recommends: Do not consider early decision unless you are extremely strong, have extremely good geographic connection to the area, and you are a good fit for that school. How are you a good fit for that school? Specific on the school's mission such as role in medicine, primary care, or some other aspect that you can show that would make you a good fit. Ryan recommends: Do not apply for an early decision because the risk is higher than the reward. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 12 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today, they talk about the impact of grad school on an application. Listen in as they discuss the implications of applying to medical school with an appearance of withdrawals on your grad school transcript.  OldPreMeds Question of the Week: What choices are going to enhance the medical school application or at least minimize the negative impacts given these scenarios: Leaving a semester transcript blank to save money but increase tutoring hours for other things in order to make some money. Finish the semester but with W's on their transcript, there is appearance of quitting and confusion Finish all of it even if it's costly. Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Not having the information before starting grad school is going to affect you. Medical schools generally look at your undergraduate grade GPA for the admissions. Grad school grades, however, do not have a major impact upon acceptance. Hence, having good grades in grad school won't enhance your application with a few exceptions such as: Special Master's Programs Few traditional hardcore science master's usually marketed and listed as special master's  What are Special Master's Programs? They are a form of post bacc that differ than just taking the required classes. They are designed loosely to be an addition year into a medical school semester. In short, they serve as a stepping stone for direct acceptance into medical school. Investigate what the program is going to do for you Investigate the cost Investigate their success or their placement On the other hand, having bad grades or withdrawals have a negative impact on your application, which questions your commitment, motivation, and achievement. The 32-Hour Rule: Some medical schools take the last 32 hours of your coursework (grad school/post bacc coursework) and replacing all of your other coursework GPA-wise. So they calculate your GPA based on those last 32 hours of coursework. Major takeaway from this episode: Look at the entire picture of what your application is going to look like. Don't assume that this one part of your application is going to make your entire application. Take a look at the whole picture of what you're going to look like on paper to an admissions committee. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. OPM Session 03: Your Premed GPA is More than Your Premed GPA Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 11 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today, they discuss about the best resource for studying for the MCAT, what you need to do, and some things you need to consider to find your best resource. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Looking at retaking the MCAT with a 19 on the old exam and trying to avoid going to the Caribbean. What is the most useful resource for studying for the MCAT? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich MCAT used to be a 3-part exam: Biological sciences Physical sciences Verbal Reasoning In 2015, MCAT now covers 4 sections: Chemical and physical foundations for systems Critical analysis and reasoning Biological and biochemical foundations Psychosocial and biologic foundations of behavior What you need to do for the MCAT: Have a preparation plan. The courses you take as an undergrad are not enough preparation, Understand how the exam works. Understand the strategies for reading and answering the questions. Practice, practice, practice. It's not just knowing the content or how to approach the exams, but it's having a head game to take the exam. Don't take the exam until you're ready to do so. Get started with the AAMC exams (the closest thing as the real exam as possible.) Get another set of exams with one of the providers. "How Many Practice MCAT Exams Should I Take?" Rich's rule of thumb is to do 4-6 practice exams under realistic conditions in getting scores you're comfortable with before you take the actual exam. "Which MCAT Prep Company Should I Use?" Look at your finances. It could cost $2,000-$3,000 to take a course. You may self-study (if you have good habits and can be disciplined) and get retail books provided by an MCAT prep companies  such as Kaplan, Examkrackers, Princeton Review. Live classroom or live online? That's your personal preference. Which of the courses of these companies are going to work for you? Kaplan stresses the most amount of strategy to take an exam. Princeton Review is a content-heavy course. Examkrackers offers online and in-classroom classes but there are mixed reviews about their classrooms. Free online resources like the Khan Academy (a few years ago, they hooked up with AAMC to run a contest and funding for people to rate MCAT prep materials for their system) Things to consider here when choosing your resources: Your learning style Your discipline in studying Your financial considerations Understand where you are in the process and how are you going to be able to schedule all these things Major takeaway from this episode Rich personally believes that everyone should be in some sort of formal course (online or classroom). If you're thinking about investing a couple hundred thousand dollars of debt to go to med school, then $2,500 to pay for a prep class is not that expensive. Links and Other Resources Check out AAMC’s MCAT 2015 practice test. Test prep companies: Kaplan Princeton Review Examkrackers Khan Academy If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Go to medicalschoolhq.net/mcat for a ton of great MCAT information. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 10 Every week, we answer your questions here on the OldPreMeds Podcast where Ryan and Rich Levy again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org, pull a question, and deliver the answers right on to you. Today, however, is a fun and unique episode as we re-introduce Rich and get to know him more in-depth… Here are the highlights of the conversation with Rich Levy Rich’s path to the OldPreMeds.org Having the epiphany of wanting to go back to medical school in 2002 Coming across the website for the National Society for Nontraditional Premedical and Medical Students, otherwise known as OldPreMeds.org, a small online group that he got involved with By 2005, Rich took over as the group's business manager, running conferences Rich has helped develop the organization into a much more solid and effective resource for nontraditional students Getting to see all the sides of the medical school application process giving Rich a different view and understanding Factors that did not allow Rich to go to medical school Personal relationships Monetary considerations Financial crisis Lessons learned from taking the postbac To prove to medical schools that he can do it. To prove to your yourself that you want to do it, willing to work this hard and long to get to some place Major takeaway from this episode Consider postbac as much expensive place, time, effort, and resources to answer that question and realize in your first year that you can't really do this. Links and Other Resources Check out Tim Horeczko’s podcast The Pediatrics Emergency Medicine Playbook If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including The Premed Years and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 9 Ryan and Rich once again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. In today's show, they discuss about residency matching for older students. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Entering into a residency program in later 40's. Family, internal medicine, and psychiatry will be amenable to the older residents, but how about surgery or emergency medicine? Are there stories wherein older 4th year's are not considered for or are at a significant disadvantage for these two specialties? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: In some ways, older students have the more advantage in residency than traditional students. Job experience Residencies are a job where you're expected to work in a small group and be responsible for what needs to be done. Most traditional students have never had a job in their life. Older students have worked and understand what it means to be responsible, to be on time, and to be supportive of your team in doing that. The ability to network Going into residency has a lot to do with board score. There is a significant amount that has to do with networking: Letters from your professors How you do an interview Small group dynamics around you Issues Each medical specialty has its own culture. Rich has observed no bias in emergency medicine people in their 30's and 40's. As with surgery, it depends on the surgical specialty and the culture on the program. More competition Residency slots become more competitive. Major takeaway from this episode Older medical students who have done successfully in medical school, have done well in their boards, have done well in their rotations, and have done all the networking necessary to get into a residency slot, probably have as good a chance as any other student landing a spot for most specialties. It doesn't matter how old you are, whatever you want to do, you can make it happen!   Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Premed Years Podcast and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast and possibly an MCAT-specific podcast so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 8 In this podcast, Ryan and Rich take a plunge into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. Today, they discuss about the issue on age especially when considering to take an MD/PhD program. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: MD/PhD possible at age 40? Embarking on a premed journey at 40 years old and planning to start his postbac courses this Fall at a 4-year college. If he started medschool at 43 with a 7-year MD/PhD program plus a 4-year residency, he won't be working until 54. With a PhD in Social Science discipline and NPH and working at public health and related fields. Is it worth considering going back and doing the MD/PhD at their age and with the education already gained? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: More training involved Age does not impact medical admissions. However, MD/PhD is a little bit different as it's geared towards biomedical research, bench research, wet research, and is perceived to be a more conservative, disciplined group of people so this involves more training. Difficult program Geared towards hard core research (laboratory, in-depth scientific research) and applicants who apply for these have a significant amount of in-depth research (many of them have original or near-original work) so they are highly sought-after spots because they are supported (paid for completely through the medical science training program and monthly stipend) Other things to consider Long time in school Many people who do medical research only have an MD People who do clinical/ lab research or more geared towards the social aspects of medicine, an MD is more than enough a degree to do that with. It is going to be a difficult road for a non-traditional student without significant research background to get into an MD/PhD program. Major takeaway from this episode While you can have it, what else are you going to give up in order to get it? This is a personal choice you have to make for yourself, for your partners, and your family. Links and Other Resources Learn more about Jessica's story who received 10 acceptances to medical school at medicalschoolhq.net/168. If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 7 Every week, Ryan and Rich share their thoughts and insights here on the OldPreMeds Podcast as they seek to answer the questions raised over at the OldPreMeds.org. In today's episode, the question is all about children and medical school, specifically mentioning children in your application. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: Do you mention your children in the application especially if it adds to your narrative of why you wanted to become a doctor? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: If your children have anything to do with your forthcoming, motivations, desires, and commitment to medicine then it is certainly important to mention that. Can you put down parenting as an extracurricular? No, if it's just being a parent in itself. But if you're doing things around your child that are organized (e.g. PTA, little league coach, soccer coach) these can be activities that would list well on an extracurricular activity. How do the admissions committees look at students with children? Parents who are on the admissions committees would probably look highly on someone who has been able to successfully got good grades, MCAT scores, and has been able to take care of two kids while doing a full time job. This is a show of discipline in her efforts and a high level of maturity and responsibility. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Session 61 of The Medical School Headquarters Podcast - Medical School Mom – Prioritizing Family, School and More Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 6 Ryan and Rich answer your questions over at the OldPreMeds.orghere on the OldPreMeds Podcast. In today's episode, they will touch on letters of recommendation - what the admissions committee is looking for, how to get strong ones, and when is the best time to get them. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: How do you get a good letters of recommendation? Do you need to take more upper division science course work to get a good letter of recommendation? Does the letter of recommendation need to come from a professor you interacted recently? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Many medical schools require 2 science professors and 1 non-science professor for a letter of recommendation What the admissions committee wants to see from the letter of recommendation: How you're evaluated in a class setting in recent history Ways to get good letters of recommendation: Take another course or two and make an attempt to network and get a letter written. Get a committee letter which takes away the need for specific individual letter requirements and get one overall evaluation from your undergraduate school. Some schools have recommendations for nontraditional students SUNY Upstate Medical School- Students who graduated more than 5 years ago and are currently employed may submit one letter of recommendation from a current supervisor or someone form a science faculty they took a course from a while ago Weill Cornell Medicine (Cornell University)- Supervisor at work or research professor; students working in career fields like nursing or other medical fields can get a letter of recommendation from a supervisor from a physician you work with that may be useful General Note:Students (nontraditional especially) should think about networking when they start going back to medical school because they need to get good letters of recommendation. When is the time to get letters of recommendation? Don't wait until application season to ask for letters of recommendation.  You can have your letters sent to Interfolio.com and they will hold on to the letters until you're ready to apply to medical school. If you feel that a person is going to write you a strong letter of recommendation, ask for it even if you're applying next year. Major takeaways from this episode: Make an effort to network and even as you go into medical school, network early because you will need letters of recommendation again when you apply for residency. Schools have different specific requirements for letters of recommendation so check out the MSAR and go through the College Information Book to find out what each school wants for letters. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@oldpremeds.org or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 5 Ryan and Rich again take in questions from the forum over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. In today's episode Ryan and Rick talk about the risks of late application to medical school and the repercussions of taking the MCAT late. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: If you are taking the MCAT on August 22nd and sending in the primary application in July, are you going to compete for a very few (less than 25%) remaining interview slots in most schools? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Applying to medical school has to be done early and often. Consider this scenario during the medical school application process: Several schools in late September suggest that 50% of the interview slots have been assigned There are rolling admissions Limited number of interview slots Your chances start going lower and lower Reasons for the slim chances: There is enormous competition. There are 50,000 people applying for 20,000 MD spots 20,000 people are applying for 7,000 DO spots Steep competition with lots of good candidates The process involves time and processing, verifying and transmitting applications to the AMCAS or AACOMAS Each school may get 5,000 applications for just 100 spots There are so many OCD, neurotic, and near paranoid premeds when it comes to submitting early (An Admissions Committee said that they got 25% of their applications on the first day of transmission, which was on opening day) What is "Rolling Admissions?" Med schools admit students as they come through the application cycle (no end date as to when all the admissions will be announced); instead, they do this as the cycle continues. Hence, the first day of acceptances can be sent out by October 15. Schools lock down good candidates before they get offers from other schools. Fewer seats and more applicants = application screening gets more critical What happens when you take the MCAT late: If you're taking the MCAT late, you still have to submit your applications early so it can go through the verification process. Once there is a mark that you have an MCAT pending, the school will sit on it and wait till they review everything. But at least they already have your application. Rich recommends that if you need to take a late MCAT, think about applying the next cycle. Otherwise, take the MCAT early enough to get your score back and apply early. A professor at the NIH said that the application process is your first medical school test, an open book test, and applying late is your first failure of this test in medical school. Major takeaway from this episode: Submit your applications early. Take the MCAT early enough to get your score back so you can apply early. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 4 In today's discussion, Ryan and Rich answer a question related to last week's episode question which has been broken into two parts. To check out last week's episode, go to www.opmpodcast.com/3. OldPreMeds Question of the Week - DO vs Caribbean: A U.S. DO school or a Caribbean MD? Which is a better choice? (More job prospects) Cumulative GPA is not above 3.0 unless over 120 hours of classes are taken; Science GPA 3.5+ Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Always, always, always go for a U.S. MD or DO over Caribbean even if it takes you a couple of application cycles to try Squeeze in the residency slots can affect the Caribbean students more. Consider the stats: In U.S. medical schools, About 40% of people get accepted Residency matching rates after 5 years at 94% Residency matching rates after 8 years at 97% Placement rate at 100% (get residency slots outside of the main match) Attrition rate at 3% In short, most people who start med schools in the U.S. are able to finish. Other things to consider: Residency slots for the ACGME - MD and DO will be one credited residency program with one match 1-2% of the U.S. med school graduates who never look for residency go with research or other non-clinical fields What happens if you go offshore schools? They would accept almost everyone but only 50% of people who go to the big 3 or 4 Caribbean schools actually get a degree. If you start a Caribbean med school or any other off shore med school, you may only have 1-2% chance of actually earning a degree. Your chances of getting a residency slot are 40-45%. ( A huge risk in the amount of loans plus you won't be able to practice medicine; most likely, you will end up being an Anatomy teacher in the medical school) For-profit nature Caribbean schools vs. U.S.: For-profit schools in the Caribbean are 100%; in the U.S., only two of all DO and MD schools (out of 175) have a for-profit basis. Major takeaway from this episode: Only consider Caribbean medical schools as your last resort after you've applied twice and done repair to consider all other options. Schools are different. The big schools in the Caribbean may not be as valuable as some of the smaller schools in Australia and in Israel, which have different school setup and histories. In either case, the residency match rates and the numbers for that are just working against anyone who goes offshore. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to the OPM Podcast Episode 3 to hear the first part of this 2-part question Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 3 Your questions, answered here on the OldPreMeds Podcast. Ryan and Rich again dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: A U.S. DO school or a Caribbean MD? Which is a better choice? (More job prospects) Cumulative GPA is not above 3.0 unless over 120 hours of classes are taken; Science GPA 3.5+ Here are the insights about GPA from Ryan & Rich: There is an assumption about GPA that it's all a number. The truth is that it's beyond a single number. A cumulative GPA is not the only thing the medical school admissions committee is going to look at. Other things they will look for are: Science vs. non-science Bio, Chem, Phys, and Math (BCPM) vs. others Grade trends Other additional degrees or coursework (post-bacc) -Combined with the rest of your undergrad -Reported as a separate line item Some schools where your post-bacc or graduate program or last year or two of your undergraduate count as your official GPA for admissions purposes - the "32 hour rule" Wayne State University Michigan College of Human Medicine Boston University Medical School Louisiana State University - New Orleans AAMC survey got 127 replies from medical schools for what factors they consider Therefore, don't just look at the number. Instead, look at the overall factors going on. Other considerations in the application MCAT is the most efficient method to show that you can handle the work. Take an MCAT prep course few hours a week for a few months and get a much better score. Put your application together in a more coherent, compelling, and concise manner to really convince the schools. Go through at least two application cycles before considering an offshore medical school Arrogance vs. overconfidence EC's, personal statement, and secondaries Major takeaway from this episode GPA is not the be all and end all when applying to any medical school. The second part about Caribbean medical schools will be tackled in the next episode. Links and Other Resources If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Also check out the Premed Years Podcast at www.medicalschoolhq.net. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

In this episode, Ryan introduces the OldPreMeds podcast, which you can find at OPMPodcast.com. Take a listen! Links and Other Resources Full Episode Blog Post dopremedright.com – Buy a t-shirt while there are supplies! OldPreMeds.org Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 1 Welcome to the inaugural episode of the OldPreMeds Podcast! OldPreMeds.org is a site dedicated to nontraditional premed and medical students. This podcast is going to take questions that students post in the forums over at OldPreMeds.org which will be turned into episodes. Your questions will be answered to help you on this journey to becoming a physician. If you're a nontraditional student entering the medical field on your terms and you may have some hiccups along the way or perhaps changing careers and you're ready to change course to go back and serve others as a physician, then this podcast is here to help answer your questions and educate you. The OldPreMeds Podcast is published by Dr. Ryan Gray who is also the publisher of the Medical School Headquarters Podcast, which has been around for more than 3 years now. A Brief Overview - Who We Are OldPreMeds.org was founded in 1998 by six slightly older students who were getting harassed for some online forum for an MCAT prep course. They decided to create a mailing list that began with six students. Rich Levy eventually got involved with the site since 2002 and formally took over eight years after serving as both executive director and publisher of the OldPreMeds.org. OldPreMeds.org has now joined the family of Medical School Headquarters where Ryan has taken over on the role of publisher of the OldPreMeds.org website as well as in helping direct the society that it runs under. Currently, the site has over 10,000 registered members and over 25,000 monthly unique visitors, being the largest organization that is solely dedicated to nontraditional students who tread the path of medicine. OldPreMeds.org  is founded under the auspices of the National Society for Nontraditional Premedical & Medical Students. Where we are headed to moving forward What used to be the nontraditional is now the new traditional and with so much misinformation out today both for nontraditional students and the regular students about medical school prospecting and application, we are dedicated to overcome this major challenge and put clear emphasis on accurate, referenceable, attributable information. OldPreMeds.org provides a safe place for students to go and ask questions and not be judged in the same way that you will be in other sites. Rich is not exiting completely as he will still get on the podcast, along with Ryan, to share their wisdom to listeners. If you have questions you want answered here on the OldPremeds Podcast, go to oldpremeds.org and register for an account. Go into the forums and ask a question. Links and Other Resources OldPreMeds.org Visit medicalschoolhq.net for tons of information about the premed journey Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Session 2 In this episode, Ryan and Rich dive into the forums over at OldPreMeds.org where they pull a question and deliver the answers right on to you. OldPreMeds Question of the Week: What age is too old for medical school? Here are the insights from Ryan & Rich: Age is not a factor. Here are some facts and figures: About a thousand a year over the age of 30 matriculate every year into an allopath medical school which is about 5% of the total number of students who start the year. From that number, about 200 are of the age of 35. About 350 people a year over the age of 31 start osteopathic school 10-12 people a year over the age of 50 start medical school Success Story: One of our more recent success stories is Laisha Heedman, a nurse/midwife who recently graduated from the West Virginia School of Osteopathic Medicine at the age of 57. She has gone onto residency and family practice medicine. Is there any bias that goes on with age? The percentage of applicants is nearly the same as the percentage that you get accepted regardless of age range. Applicants who are above 40 years of age seem to be less represented but there is no bias going on. Factors that may be affecting the demographics are difficulty in preparing, getting the grades, and doing things that need to get done when you are working full time and you have a family. Many people who have been successful in other medical careers such as nurse/midwife, nurse practitioner, nurse, PhD researchers have also been successful at getting  into medical school at 40 and above. MD vs DO? The applicant base for MD schools is about 50,000 while for DO schools, it's under 20,000 - large difference. For an applicant per seat basis, it is therefore more competitive to get into an osteopathic school than it is to get into an allopathic school. Do older students have less years of good working time? Different variables to consider: Burnout as one of the common issues of physicians Prior working experience in healthcare as a nurse/midwife or other medical-related What the admissions committee will actually be looking for: Will this person be a good physician that you want to be treated by? Links and Other Resources OldPreMeds.org Listen to our first episode at OPMPodcast.com/1 to find out more about who we are. Find us on iTunes and go to opmpodcast.com/itunes and leave us a rating and review. Check out MedEdMedia.com for all the shows that we produce including the Medical School Headquarters and the OldPreMeds Podcast. We will soon be launching a medical school podcast as well so stay tuned! Email Dr. Ryan Gray at ryan@medicalschoolhq.net or connect with him on Twitter @medicalschoolhq.

Rich Levy from OldPreMeds.org joins us for the second time to talk non-traditional premed news and his upcoming conference. If you're a non-trad, check it out! Links and Other Resourceshttps://medicalschoolhq.net/mshq-115-oldpremeds-executive-director-and-non-traditional-premed-expert/ (Full Episode Blog Post) Check out my https://medicalschoolhq.net/books (Premed Playbook) series of books (available on https://medicalschoolhq.net/books (Amazon)), with installments on https://amzn.to/2EhxhRf (the personal statement), https://amzn.to/2lHXoux (the medical school interview), and https://amzn.to/2vVQpU5 (the MCAT). Related episode: https://medicalschoolhq.net/opm-1-introduction-oldpremeds-podcast/ (Introduction to the OldPreMeds Podcast). Related episode: https://medicalschoolhq.net/opm-6-how-to-get-the-best-letters-of-recommendation-as-a-nontrad/ (How to Get Letters of Recommendation as a Nontrad). Need MCAT Prep? Save on tutoring, classes, and full-length practice tests by using promo code “MSHQ” for 10% off Next Step full-length practice tests or “MSHQTOC” for $50 off MCAT tutoring or the Next Step MCAT Course at https://medicalschoolhq.net/nextstep (Blueprint MCAT (formerly Next Step Test Prep))!

Rich Levy from OldPreMeds.org joins us for the second time to talk non-traditional premed news and his upcoming conference. If you're a non-trad, check it out! Links and Other Resources Full Episode Blog Post Check out my Premed Playbook series of books (available on Amazon), with installments on the personal statement, the medical school interview, and the MCAT. Related episode: Introduction to the OldPreMeds Podcast. Related episode: How to Get Letters of Recommendation as a Nontrad. Need MCAT Prep? Save on tutoring, classes, and full-length practice tests by using promo code “MSHQ” for 10% off Next Step full-length practice tests or “MSHQTOC” for $50 off MCAT tutoring or the Next Step MCAT Course at Next Step Test Prep!