As a premed student at LMU, I have some tips for you! Knowing a few tips and tricks might be useful for your undergrad life and for your application to medical school. Looking back, I wish I knew some information: which classes to take, what major to choose, and what medical schools look at most. There is a lot of information out there that says GPA is the most important one, NOO MCAT is the most important one. It actually isn’t about GPA. As I talked with multiple doctors and professors, I thought that GPA was the most important part of the application. What matters the most is to get a strong GPA not only overall, but to also do well on your science classes. The major is up to you, however, in my opinion do something that is related with science because the pre-reqs for a lot of science majors like biology and biochemistry are the same as pre-med reqs, which will ultimately make it a lot easier for you. But do medical schools care about what major you did? That’s a controversial topic. Some say it doesn’t, but others say it is important. The professors I talked say that science majors are better, so ultimately do what you wanna do!!
The medical school reqs are:
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Biology for one year with lab
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General Chemistry one year with lab
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Organic Chemistry one year with lab
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Physics one year with lab
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Also sociology, psychology, humanistic and Spanish are recommended for some medical schools in the US.
The second most important thing is your MCAT score, which consists of biology, chemistry, physics, sociology and psychology. However, don’t stress much about this- you did the SAT, ACT, and maybe even an IB or AP. You can do this too! You just need to study and make your dream come true, hard work pays off! If you study with a MCAT tutor center, you will feel more ready for the exam.
The third most important thing is your background and what’s on your resume. While I was doing a clinical research at UCSF, I got some tips from another researcher. He said that the most important thing is the consistency in your volunteer activities and researches. If your resume is 5 pages long and you only contributed to the faculties or at hospitals less than 2-3 months, the medical schools won’t say “OMG YOU DID SO MANY PROJECTS/ VOLUNTEER WORK!” They want to see you successful in one great thing, rather than a million good things, so do something that you love for a couple of years. The recommendation you get from them is the second important thing. To sum up, make your resume the way medical schools want, and don’t forget to BE CONFIDENT!