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RECENT POSTS

Interview with TheBiopsy.com Publisher Roheet

In Session 14 of The Premed Years, Roheet from TheBiopsy.com was kind enough to sit down with us and share his journey through the pre med process. Listen to find out how a newspaper changed his career path.

 

Roheet graduated from UCSD with a biomedical engineering degree and is currently in his gap year. He is in the middle of interview season, hoping to land one of the 20,000 or so seats to next years starting allopathic medical school class.

 

He is in a gap year because he had to reapply, not getting in to medical school his first time applying. Something not unusual these days, and something I had to do as well. He had a great MCAT score, a 33. He also had a good GPA at 3.6. So what was the biggest reason he didn't get in the first time? Better question, what was the reason he didn't even get an interview?

Interview with Dean of UCF College of Medicine

Interview with Dean of UCF College of Medicine

In Session 13 of The Premed Years we had the pleasure of talking to Dr. German, the Dean of The University of Central Florida College of Medicine (UCF COM). UCF COM was the first, built from the ground up, allopathic medical school in the US in almost 30 years.   It gained full accreditation this past week which is excellent! Their inaugural class is graduating this year and will find out their fate in the Match in March.

Avoiding the Burn: 7 Tips for the Premed and Med Student

Guest Post As someone who spent 11 years in clinical medicine and ultimately experienced significant burnout, I did a lot of reading about compassion fatigue and physician burnout in hopes of gaining insight as to how this happened to me. I found a lot of statistics about medical burnout itself, and realized that I was (unfortunately) in very good company, as almost half of US physicians self-report as having at least one symptom of serious burnout.
Shadowing Secrets for Every Premed

Shadowing Secrets for Every Premed

Allison and I join forces again for another session of The Premed Years.   For this session we talk about shadowing. We've already done a post about shadowing physicians, but we thought it would be good to revisit the subject since it seems to be a common question among premed students.

Jargon Every Medical Student and Premed Should Know

Medical terminology hits you like a brick wall when you start medical school. Suddenly you’re expected to be able to say and spell words like “keratoconjunctivits” or “leukoencephalopathy.” While learning…

Choosing Your Specialty: 8 Things to Think About

Selecting which field in medicine you are going to pursue can be a difficult decision for some medical students. Some students already know what specialty they want to pursue even before they start orientation. Others start to get anxious as the end of 3rd year draws near, desperately trying to figure out which field suits them best. Many use the process of elimination as they move from one clinical rotation to the next, crossing off fields of medicine they don't like and making a list of those they do. Only 5 or 6 fields of medicine are represented in the required 3rd year clinical rotations, so exploring other specialties is often necessary. The following will hopefully help you in making your decision.  

Take every opportunity to explore!

All medical schools require students to pass the following required 3rd year clinical rotations: Internal medicine, pediatrics, OB/GYN, and surgery. Many also require neurology, family medicine, emergency medicine and radiology. Therefore, if you are interested in ophthalmology, ENT, or orthopedics, you may be asking, when am I going to find out if I really want to pursue this specialty? Some schools provide elective time during the 3rd year, while many do not. As such, there is the summer between the 1st and 2nd years of medical school as well as some time early in 4th year.

Interview with a 56-Year-Old Medical Student

In Session 11 I talk to Kate. She recently turned 56-years-old, and is a 3rd year medical student at West Virginia School of Medicine. AMAZING! You can read a profile that she wrote for us already here.

 

Kate shares with us her story of switching from a biology major, focusing on premed, to nursing and how at age 50, she got the itch to go back to school to become a physician. One of the decisions that helped her make the decision to switch to nursing was the cut-throat culture of the premed (I'm hoping to change that here!).

10 Books Every Premed Should Read (While Not Studying!)

Below is a subjective list of the 10 books every pre med student should read (or anybody for that matter) prior to going to medical school. The list covers everything from attendings, residents, interns and even medical student stories.   If you have a book that you read that you think should be added to the list, leave a comment below.

2014 MCAT Dates

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the organization that administers the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT) has not yet released the 2014 MCAT Test dates.   The 2013 MCAT Test dates were released at the beginning of October, and I would expect something similar again. So keep checking back here, and we'll update this as soon the test dates are available.

Interview with Columbia Postbac Premed Program

Session 10 of The Premed Years brings you what I hope is the start to many expert interviews involving deans of medical schools and deans of postbac programs.

These experts are the reason I started the podcast. These are the people that have the most up-to-date information, the most unbiased information when it comes to helping YOU on your path to becoming a physician.

For Session 10 I interviewed Dr. Victoria Rosner. She is the Associate Dean and GS Coordinator of Academic Affairs at Columbia's Postbac Premed Program.