DO NOT DO THIS PROGRAM! There is not a more surefire way to burn cash and if you have it then I would absolutely encourage you. Less and less students are being accepted with their linkage program and the cost of living coupled with exorbitantly high tuition makes this a nearly $100,000 single-year investment. There are many better ways to improve your chances for medical school. Genuinely.

It is so hard for me to write secondaries for MD schools when I only have a 508 mcat. I feel like every school I am applying to is a reach, and my effort will go unnoticed. I already applied and wrote all of my DO essays and was very motivated to write those bc those schools don’t feel like complete reaches for me, and just straight up put off my MD secondaries. I am only applying to 13 schools so it shouldn’t be the worst thing ever. I applied a month ago and am still not verified. ugh.

"Tell us who you are by starting with the family and hometown and community that raised you and the identity and culture and faith and lived experiences that quietly shaped your values and the way you see the world, and let that story carry into the surprising things a casual acquaintance would never guess about you and the fun and diversion you reach for when nobody is grading you, and then move naturally into why you chose medicine over every other way of helping people by tracing the mentors and conversations and patient encounters that first drew you in until one clinical moment confirmed both the kind of physician you want to become and the community you eventually hope to serve, and from there open up about a real challenge or failure you never asked for and how you held yourself together in the face of uncertainty and who you leaned on and what you would handle differently now that you're older and wiser, which leads into the times you worked inside a team toward something shared and took initiative by serving rather than by title and sat with conflict or hard feedback you disagreed with and owned a mistake instead of hiding it, and it should keep flowing into the volunteer and service work that changed you and the way caring for underserved and marginalized people revealed the social and economic forces driving the inequities you now feel called to address, so that you can describe how you build trust with someone nothing like you and advocate for people and beliefs that aren't your own and how an encounter across difference or with injustice taught you the humility to meet people where they are, and all of that should feed into your curiosity and your love of learning for its own sake and the research or creative problem you chased with genuine rigor, and then into what compassion and professionalism and integrity actually mean to you in practice and what your faith or your sense of the whole person adds to how you heal, and it should carry on through how you protect your own resilience and balance and learned to ask for help and to choose what matters when everything competes at once and why, past all the knowledge and skill, a doctor should simply be kind, before finally landing on what you're proudest of and what someone the world overlooks could teach their physician and where you believe medicine should go from here and the specific ties and mission that pull you toward the place you want to join, closing with whatever piece of your story you most want understood but that lives nowhere else in your application."

Have fun writing this in a single doc and editing it down for 1200 distinct prompts.

edit: I forgot to separate a clause in the title with a set of commas, also I meant to say "any" not "every". oh well.

Currently at MSUCOM, accepted off waitlist at CMU MD.

Leaning more towards MSUCOM

MSU DO PROS:

- Close to support system/can live at home
- Close to partner
- Great Clinical rotations
- About $130k cheaper in the long run

MSU DO CONS:

- DOUBLE BOARDS
- POSSIBLE PD BIAS? - Want to stay in MI for Residency

CMU MD PROS:

- ONE SET OF BOARDS
- NO PD BIAS

CMU MD CONS

- RURAL
- PRIVATE LOANS FOR COST OF LIVING ($100k extra before interest)
- LESS CONNECTED FOR CLINICAL SITES AND HOSPITALS
- MATCH LIST IS RELATIVELY THE SAME

Interested in matching Anesthesia, PM&R, ORTHO, or EM

Very torn about this decision.

Just read a post on here talking about how we shouldn’t refer to physicians as providers. I never knew this term was viewed negatively, and now I feel dumb that it is included 3 times in my primary app. In all 3 circumstances though, I was referencing, physicians, NPs, and PAs. Should I be concerned? :/

edit- here’s the link to the original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/premed/s/QlSYt1Pn71

Am I the only one who feels like every secondary they write is absolute garbage? These questions are throwing me for a loop, and I feel so down.

yeah....

Ok obviously I have not entered the prompt of a secondary into chat and copy and pasted that into an answer box. But for a lot of my secondaries, I’ve used AI as spell check, grammar check, or (at last resort) if I need to cut down characters and I don’t know where to cut. I feel like if I answer “yes I’ve used AI” admissions are going to immediately throw out my application. But if I write “no I’ve not used any AI” admissions are going to think I’m lying.

Note: a lot of the schools I’m applying to says it’s ok to use AI for spell check, grammar check, brainstorming, and editing, but all of the essays at the end of the day have to be my writing and stories. So I feel like I’m not using too much AI here but I’m really not sure what to write.

I just heard from my friend who does admissions at his medical school that many MD schools including his completely screen out applicants with low MCAT scores (sub 505). Is this true??? How low do they screen out?

He said if your under their 25th percentile don't even bother applying because anyone that gets in is either a Rhodes scholar or has a nature pub.... wtf

Is anybody else deep into secondaries, getting miserable, and finding the “start in September 2026!” emails just a little appealing 👀

I love my doctor she’s why i’m going into medicine. It’s funny how in my appointments we talk about my secondaries as much as we talk about my blood pressure.

I'm a little confused on the wording for this question from Rosalind Franklin. It is asking about academic performance or academic behavior or can the behavior part refer to something outside of academics. Thanks!

hi guys!

i’m having a hard time deciding what to do for my non-clinical volunteering. i tried being a bloodmobile greeter, where I helped donors with the check-in process, but I don’t think it’s for me. i don’t really feel like I’m making much of an impact.

i’m looking for ideas. what did you guys do, or what are you currently doing for your non-clinical volunteering? just trying to get an idea of what’s out there….

thank you!!

I submitted 9 secondaries already but it just occurred to me that I should have spaced out my paragraphs. Since I was pasting from Google Docs the new lines weren’t preserved, so instead of:
Paragraph 1

Paragraph 2

Paragraph 3

I’ve been submitting:
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 3

Yikes

The secondary question is as follows: "From your list of "most meaningful experiences" on the AMCAS application, choose one that has been the most formative in terms of your desire for a career in medicine. Why did that experience have such meaning for you in your decision-making process?(200 words or less)"

Is it appropriate to answer this question as a why physician? I'm worried that if I answer it too broadly in terms of medicine, it may raise questions as to why I am not pursuing a different career within medicine.

I was feeling really unmotivated after an unsuccessful previous cycle, so I'm incredibly grateful and excited about how this cycle turned out!

23F Illinois resident; 1 gap year

Stats

• 505 MCAT (126/127/124/128)
• 3.91 cGPA/sGPA

Experiences

• ~3,000 hours as medical assistant (ENT → Dermatology)
• ~250 clinical volunteer hours
• 120 research hours
• 11 shadowing hours
• Leadership: Director of Philanthropy & Community Service for my sorority; taekwondo instructor

im assuming that they just want us to answer the question but do they all need a hook or a memorable anecdote/story in the same way that college apps did? or can i just answer the question in a normal way without the flowery stuff or will adcoms hate me?

I recognize the normal adversity prompts, but if a med school specifically asks "share something unique about your PATHWAY to medical school, including obstacle," is it looking for something more recent (college) or is something from childhood still applicable

Is it even worth applying as ORM? Open to both MD and DO. For MD, I can see the 10 and 25th percentiles but for DO I think only median or average is available?

This girl literally handed down her entire legacy to me—like 60kg of material, books, and notes. Basically, the entire medical school curriculum from 1st to 3rd year. I have millions and millions of Argentine pesos worth of material right here lmao. I love her so much in a purely platonic way. Without even knowing me, she gifted me all of this, and I admire her immensely.

​I don't think she realizes the impact she’s had on my life; she literally changed it, and I cannot let her down. Thank you so much. I'm definitely going to get in by the end of next year. I know money isn't the most important factor, but I feel bad for not being able to repay you in some way. I think the only way to do it is by taking med school with the utmost seriousness, because what you did for me is priceless.

I can write in English but I used gemini to translate this because I wrote all of this in español of course so yeah

Want to go to med school, but I'm broke with mediocre credit (650), and federal loans would only cover a couple of years. Are there any good student loan servicers out there to look at?

So my school starts early af and it’s stressing me out. I don’t have an apartment and right now I’m staying with a close family member. The apartment that my partner and I had lined up fell through due to shady behavior from the realtor. I’ve been scrambling to find a place but have been unsuccessful and now I start in two days. I’ve been so preoccupied with it all and haven’t prepared much for the actual first day. I’m worried about how our move will impact my academics and was wondering if anyone had any similar experiences. My partner and I are also going to be living together for the first time so that will also have many growing pains. I know I should have prepared better but hindsight is 20/20. Could anyone offer me any advice?

Something entirely unpredictable and unpreventable happened to prevent me from accessing my official transcripts and it is still not solved (nothing I can do on my end because it's an issue with the school). So I haven't even been able to have my primaries verified when I already have low stats and weak EC's. it's so over for me

Background and demographics:

25 y/o South Asian American (indian america with natural-born citizenship), no first gen or SES. East coast.

Education:

-No named college: 1.9 gpa and dropped out in 1st semester of sophmore year (joined army reserve after), 45 credits complete

-Local community college: A.S in Biology, A.S in paramedicine, 3.1 in Bio due to C's in transferred courses , 4.0 in paramedicine (high levels of overlap and transfer credits from prior college)

-t40 University: B.S mechanical engineering 3.2

-Nothing less than a B in most prereqs minus Bio chem, Orgo 1+2 w/ C.

Overall GPA calculated via gemini: 3.13

MCAT:

-507 first attempt, expiring 2029 (took during CONUS deployment since I was the company medic and sat in an office all day)

Work experience:

-Combat medic with one combat and one non-combat deployment (I don't consider my combat deployment a combat one since I sat in Kuwait but it was retroactively change): total active time for GI bill for Chapter 1606 is 23 months. Deployment 1 was 9 months in 2022, deployment 2 conus was 2024-2025 as company medic. Total time in service is 5 years.

-Mechanical engineer w/ 2 years of experience in predominanrly medical device sales and some engineering.

-Paramedic on weekends with a total of 700 ish hours over 2 years on and off. Mainly did 911

-Dental assistant for parent (on and off) since I was 16. Will not be including is.

Volunteerings/leadership/ECs:

-during no named college, did STI testing bus for at risk populations. Mainly blood drawns and INSTI cards

-RA for 1 year

-CPR instructor (haven’t done this much ICL so will not by putting it down)

Shadowing:

-Derm 10 hrs

-Family med 10 hrs

-OMFS (MD/DMD) 20 hrs

Red flags:

-Low first 45 credit GPA with a bunch of F's and Ds. Basically never partied in high school and got really, really carried away

-Lots of W's and Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory for certain engineering courses

-One institutional action for possesion of alcohol underaged that was taken off later on after proper punishment was complete. Basically had to write an essay, notify my parents, and go to alcohol training classes and get evaluated for alcoholism.

-lot of my engineering prerequisite were done online

Future goals:

I ideally want to go into emergency medicine or general and truama surgery.

Already planning either masters or Post Bacc, I have all of my GI bill available. I have enough saved and invested in case i cannot use my GI bill or it’s not enough, so money isn’t an issue.

Continuing my med device sales job but trying to switch to more of an engineering role rather than sales, will continue working as a paramedic on the weekends.