PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): Thank you, Alison. Hello, everyone. Thanks so much for coming and spending your evening slash late afternoon with us. As Alison said, my name is Peter. I am a college admissions consultant with Prepory. I’ve been working with the company for, I think, six cycles now. And as far as my, kind of background, I went to the University of Rochester for undergrad and studied neuroscience, and I worked in their admissions office. I went to Brown for graduate school and was an admissions ambassador there as well.

I did law school in, New York and was not involved in admissions in that capacity. And then right now, I’m a fourth year medical student, at the University of Maryland, and I have been on our, medical school admissions committee for two cycles now. So I have a background in all kinds of admissions, but particularly, specialize in law and medical school admissions, which are usually what I give these talks on.

So just to kind of give you an idea of what we’re gonna be talking to you about tonight, as Alison said, we always have time at the end of this to kind of answer questions live, so feel free to just fill the chat with your questions. We’ll try and get to them as we go. But if not, by the end of the session, we’ll go through and answer the questions live that we didn’t get to during.

So, essentially, what we’re gonna be covering today is what the b… What the difference is between a BSMD versus a traditional medical school application, what makes winning applications for either one of those pathways, and sort of what you as students can be doing at different levels of your high school experience to be preparing for either or both of those, pathways, and then some things to avoid, pitfalls at the end. So what are top colleges really looking for?

So for starters, I wanna talk about kind of the different pathways that you can get to medical school through. So there’s the traditional pathway, which is what the vast majority of people do, which is where you apply to undergrad and medical school completely separately.

You apply to undergrad, and then at earliest, your third year of undergrad, so your junior year, you’ll kind of start taking the MCAT, getting yourself ready to go, and applying your spring of junior year, assuming you wanna matriculate to medical school the fall semester after you graduate undergrad. And then it’s becoming a lot more common for people actually to take a gap year after medical… Or sorry. After law… My god. Like, switch school. After undergrad, before matriculating to medical school, and so they’ll start doing that application process senior year.

But those are entirely separate application processes. You do have to take the MCAT before, or to apply to medical school. And it’s about an eight year commitment because you… Undergrad’s traditionally four years, and then medical school would usually be another four years. BSMD pathways are a little bit different because they start in high school, and you apply to both medical school and college together. So you’re committing to going to medical school where you go to college, and it’s pretty inflexible in that way. So if you go to…

You know, if you apply and do Brown’s program, you’re going to Brown undergrad, and you’re going to Brown medical school. So it’s a big deal to make the… That kind of geographic decision. So it’s a big decision to decide whether or not you wanna do BSMD and kind of lock yourself in like that. One of the big things that students look at nowadays or that people sort of consider when they’re thinking of the BSMD application is this idea that you…

It, like, is an MCAT bypass, and you don’t have to take the MCAT anymore. But it’s becoming increasingly common for, BSMD programs to require the MCAT in some capacity, either that you just have to take it and there’s not really a minimum score or that you have to take it and achieve a minimum score in order to just still matriculate. So it’s not it’s not exactly the MCAT bypass that it was in the past that people usually associate it with.

That’s kind of related to Step 1, an exam you may or may not have heard of. Hopefully not, and you’re… Don’t worry about it for many years. But, that becoming pass fail has made medical schools a lot more, cautious about students that they let in as far as test scores and GPA. So that has made that more important for BSMD programs. So, essentially, BSMD, it’s all in high school. You apply to medical school and undergrad together.

The traditional path, they’re separated, you do four years of undergrad and then apply to medical school separately. So it’s more likely than not that you go to undergrad somewhere and then be… Go to medical school somewhere else. So you also have the kind of the flexibility there. So what do medical school applicant… Matriculants kind of look like? So the… This is from AAMC, which is the American Association of Medical Colleges, from the past cycle, and it’s the overall GPA MCAT score for matriculants. So people who not…

Didn’t apply, just applied, but were accepted to medical school to give you kind of a context of what that’s looking for. The MCAT score of five twelve may or may not mean anything to people. 501, five zero two is about the fiftieth percentile. I think five twelve is, like, the eightieth, seventy fifth, something like that. So it’s a it’s a pretty decent score on the MCAT. It’s not really…

There’s no good way to compare it to the SAT, ACT, which is probably what you guys are most familiar with at this point. But it’s a pretty decent score, and people spend usually a month or two at least, studying for the MCAT and then a 3.81 GPA. And if you’re targeting sort of more top programs either for medical school, so, like, you know, the Ivies, Ivy-adjacent schools, or targeting BSMD programs, you really want your GPA and MCAT score to be looking more like three nine and five fifteen or above.

So programs are interested and care a lot about these metrics both because they use them as, kind of a barometer for how well you’re going to be able to do their… The coursework at medical school, but it’s also important for them to be able to kind of use these to figure out, are you gonna be able to pass the Step exams and kind of move through medical school and graduate? And so these are very important whether you’re looking at BSMD or the traditional medical school path.

But it is not just grades and test scores that are important to your medical school application. So this slide here, I’ll sort of go through each pillar in turn, kind of gives you an understanding of all of the different things that go into a medical school or a BSMD application. And medical schools and undergraduate institutions will be evaluating them in the context of your entire application, which we will also talk about a little bit later in the talk, what sort of the components of that application look like.

So I’ll kind of go through now each of these pillars in turn and kind of talk to you guys about how they’re evaluated and what, what you should kind of be striving for. So the first one is academic excellence in GPA. When applying to medical school and particularly when apply… When considering BSMD programs, you basically just have to be, like, striving for a four o and taking very difficult classes. In order to succeed in medical school, obviously, you have to have some semblance of academic resilience.

And what people want to see, what admissions officers wanna see is not only that you are doing well in your courses, but also that you have a sustained rigor in the courses that you’re taking. So they’ll be comparing people who are getting straight A’s in, you know, regular courses or honors coursework with people who are getting straight A’s or maybe even slightly less than straight A’s in all APs or all, IB coursework. And they want to see the people…

That students take the courses, that are most rigorous that are available at their school. And these are all things that are gonna be available to medical schools and to undergraduates because, when your when your guidance counselors send kind of their letter of evaluation of you, it sort of comes with basically this explanation of how your school’s program works, what courses are offered.

So if you have a school that is, you know, well resourced in the sense that it has every AP course available at the school and you took AP bio and basically nothing else, even if you have a straight a’s, that’s not going to really put you in a favorable position to get into really top, undergraduate programs and or, BSMD programs. So kind of all the things you would expect. Upward trajectory is important. Strong grades are important, and then, demonstrated increasing rigor throughout your years of high school are all important.

Your application as a whole is reviewed by schools, and it’s not just one thing that can, you know, make or break your application. But a g… A poor GPA is definitely going to hinder your ability to get into very strong undergraduate programs and, BSMD slash traditional medical schools. Clinical exposure. So this is something that is, very important, but only to a degree. So, you can’t… So it’s very hard to…

For students to be able to justify a strong interest in medicine if they’ve never, like, seen a patient, watched a doctor do their job, etcetera, etcetera. And if you’re… If… You know, when I’m reading, I primarily read applications for traditional medical school at this point. But when we see students who, you know, apply to medical school and write these essays saying about how… Why they know they wanna be a doctor and where their motivation for medicine comes from, and I don’t see patient interactions.

I don’t see reflections on what physicians did that they observed. I don’t really believe or it gives me pause in reviewing what they say about the… Their supposed goals as a physician. So getting clinical exposure in high school is very important. It’s less important for the traditional path if you’re just applying to, undergraduate programs for sort of a more science premed angle.

But for BSMD, it’s essentially fundamental to your application both because of sort of what I just said and also because getting an MD letter for BSMD programs is very important. And one of the ways you sort of get those MD letters is by shadowing physicians or, to the extent that you’re of age working as, like, an MA or a scribe or something in medical offices to get, experience with physicians. That’s gonna be a lot more limited when you’re in high school.

It is certainly not expected, but it’s just another pathway to potentially forging those relationships with physicians and getting those letters. And so what this looks like is it looks really great when people shadow different physicians across multiple specialties to show that you’re interested in learning about what different kinds of doctors do because what an anesthesiologist does is very different. What a psychiatrist does is very different from what a PCP does. Additionally, they like… We like to see that you’ve shadowed, like, a particular person for a sustained period of time.

So I will say shadowing definitely is a happy medium. You don’t have to be shadowing the same doctor for, you know, a day and a half to two days a week every week for the entire semester or anything like that.

But, you know, being with a single physician for a few weeks at a time, or particularly what’s popular is over the summer or over winter break, is a lot better than, you know, a day here with a GI and a day here with a nephrologist and a day here with a generalist who don’t really get to know you, don’t really let you do or see a lot because they don’t know you well, and then your experience is sort of lacking.

So your essays don’t come out that great, and then you also can’t really get a strong letter from them because they don’t know you super well. Lots of… A lot of this happens in undergrad. A lot of students get their clinical experience through undergrad. So usually what students will do is try and target undergrads that have medical schools attached to them or have hospital systems attached to them because it’s very easy to sort of go in and get shadowing experience.

But outside of that, it’s helpful to kind of locate people in your area, whether it’s through family friends or just, you know, sending cold emails to clinics, which we help patient… Or patients, which we help, students with all the time to kind of try and convince doctors to let them, you know, shadow their practice for a little bit. So this is something that’s particularly very important for BSMD.

It’s a little bit less necessary for the traditional path if you’re just starting with applying to undergrad and then doing medical school, but it will help both applications. Research experience, also very important. I feel like we’ve, both on the undergraduate level and the medical school application level, seen that it’s sort of easier for students to be getting involved in research now, and a lot of the research that’s being… That they’re being involved with is just very superficial and not very in-depth.

Like, existing in a lab and, you know, watching somebody else do a Western blot is not exactly what is gonna be impressing reviewers both at the undergraduate and medical school level when you’re talking about research experience.

So I’m not saying you have to, you know, be a PI of a lab and lead your own first author article in JAMA, but, you know, actually contributing to an ongoing project, whether it’s, you know, gaining the trust of the PI of the lab to be able to do some of the experiments or potentially even coming up with a project of your own that they help you supervise are things that really help to set you apart, from other people who sort of just got their way into a lab and then didn’t have a lot of, you know, outcomes, results, publications or poster presentations, or anything that shows that they had a meaningful involvement beyond, again, finding their way into a lab.

And that’s things that, our coaches help students with a lot is not only kind of helping to get those, PIs to notice their emails and agree to meet with them, but also when they’re with them helping to kind of come up with, you know, research topics or things to pitch to the to the faculty to kind of help them get involved with the research more so their experience is higher yields for, admissions reviewers and also for them. All of this should be things that you guys wanna do.

Nobody wants to, like, sit in a lab or watch somebody else do research for hours a day and then just go home. Community engagement, service mindedness, humanism, all of these are things that are important very much so at the medical school level, but also at the undergrad premed, sort of level. So programs wanna see that you care about other people, because medicine is a profession where, you know, we get in it because we want to help other people. We wanna see them do well.

We wanna be with them at their most vulnerable and hopefully help them through it and get to the other side. And showing that you can do that at the level where you’re not really allowed to touch patients, is by showing that you have a particular area of service or a particular community or population that you’re interested in helping and sort of working with them. I remember a student that I read recently. Their situation… Their involvement was very impactful to me.

They worked, they basically, like, knitted, and were, like, a volunteer, like, knitting instructor, if you will, for all of these different organizations. They taught, like, formerly incarcerated people how to knit. They taught, they knit, like… I don’t know what it… What… It was, like, some kind of, like… I think they called it, like, a breast prosthetic or something, which is not… Maybe I’m saying the word. Wait. Wait. Wait. It was wrong. But it was a really cool, organization they just volunteered with.

And then they also would just go to hospitals and sort of at, like… I mean, a little bit more formally than that, but they would just go to hospitals, ask if there’s patients who’s… Who, you know, need someone to talk to, and then they would go in and teach them how to knit. And it was just very nice to see somebody share something that’s of interest to them with other people, and they had very good reflections on what it meant to the patients and the conversations they had with them.

And all they needed to do was know how to knit and then, you know, email enough hospitals before a, you know, coordinator was able to say, yeah. Sure. You can come to our ward and hang out with our patients. So it just shows that they went the extra mile. They cared, and the barrier to entry was pretty low. Leadership. So this will come in a lot of different ways, and it can come in a lot of different things. It can come in your research experiences.

It can come in your service experiences. It can come in your clinical experiences. But this is sort of just that what I was what I was hinting at about the going the extra mile is that you actually made an impact and that you… Like, the involvement was different because you were there, ideally, for positive reasons.

So this is another thing that’s helpful either with, you know, friends or just having someone to brainstorm with in ways that you can sort of take what exists in the things that you care about and find a way to improve them or find a way to add to them, whether that’s organizations at your school, whether it’s, you know, you…

That you care about a particular population of people in your local area and you wanna be able to do something for them, or you care about a cause and you want to figure out how you can contribute to it, like, these are all things that you can you can be a leader in and you can show initiative and drive and service mindedness and teamwork in.

But it’s helpful to kind of have somebody to, like, be a sounding board and plan with you and figure out how to reach out and come up with kind of the logistics so you can bring your, bring your passion to life. So that being said, those are all sort of the things that application reviewers, admissions reviewers are looking for. So what actually goes into the nuts and bolts of, medical school slash BSMD application? So this slide is consistent across both BSMD and traditional. This is essentially the college application.

So this common application is how you apply to college, and it’s also how you apply to BSMD program. So it’ll have your transcript, all of your grades from high school, your standardized tests, SAT, ACT, AP exams, letters of recommendation, your experiences, which is essentially your resume up until this point, and then your personal statement. Again, SAT and ACT scores are all that much more important for BSMD programs because… Especially for ones that don’t require you to reach…

To take the MCAT after admission, this is the only standardized test score that they have to project how you will potentially do in medical school. So they want those scores to be very high. So you’ll oftentimes see… I don’t remember what they are on the websites now, but they’ll quote, like, minimums of, like, 1,400 or something like that on the SAT to be read. That’s one of those instances where, like, sure.

That’ll get you read, but, you know, accepted applicants into BSMD programs have, like, fifteen fifty or above on their SAT and then the equivalent for the ACT, which would be, like, a 35 or a 36. So testing is very important if you end up going the BSMD route. This slide is specific to BSMD programs and is not part of the traditional route. So that first slide was if you apply to college, and then that’s great.

If you wanna apply to medical school after that, there’s a whole separate path, which I’m happy to answer questions about, but it’s a little bit beyond, if… You know, where you are in high school right now, I would say. But these are specific to BSMD applications. So there’s supplemental essays that each school will have that generally take the flavor of why do you wanna pursue medicine and why do you wanna do it at our program. So there are programs that are more research heavy.

There are programs that are more social justice community service heavy. Identifying those when you’re deciding… Like, assuming you wanna do the BSMD route, identifying which programs are which is helpful because if you really don’t have any research and you don’t have a lot to show in that kind of pillar, you’re not gonna be a very competitive applicant even with top scores to a program that has… That is very strong for research and has sort of more focus on that. And it also is just…

It’s about fit similar to kind of the undergrad application. And then why medicine? This is a crazy important essay, and it’s essentially what your personal statement would be if you were applying to medical school, but it’s also why we usually tell students who apply BSMD to not make their personal statement why they wanna go into medicine. It can be… It can touch and concern similar things like humanism and service mindedness and caring about other people and helping, but…

And, you know, curiosity, etcetera, but it shouldn’t be tailored specifically to why medicine because usually, BSMD programs will have some version of a why medicine essay as part of their actual application. And then probably the most important thing, because everything up until this gets you read but does not get you in are the interviews. So for BSMD applications and traditional applications, you will get interviews.

For undergraduate just applying to college, usually, the interviews only come from kind of the Ivies and Ivy adjacent schools, and those interviews don’t really matter a lot. They essentially go to everybody as long as there’s availability of interviewers. There’s not really a screening process that goes to getting those interviews. If you bomb them, they’ll hurt you. But if you absolutely kick it out of the park, it’s not really gonna do a ton for your application. These interviews that happen for BSMD programs do result from a screening process.

Someone does read your application first and decide whether you merit an interview. And then if you bomb these, you’re not getting in. And if you really hit it out of the park, you will very likely get in. And these interviews come in two separate flavors. So first of them… Darn. I thought there were slides on those. Maybe not. Maybe they’re later. I think they are later. So I’m gonna put… Yeah. I was like, we just looked at that, so I’m gonna I’m gonna hold up

ALISON KALESHI: on this and

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): come back to it. They’re soon. Yeah. They’re

ALISON KALESHI: up.

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): I feel them. They’re coming. Okay. Sure. I guess we’re finishing up these generally. So when are these due? They kind of follow the same timeline as the early action, early decision program. So they’re not due any earlier than early regular school. So if you’re just applying to college and nothing else and are considering medical school afterward, it’ll be similar to your EA/ED deadlines, which are usually November 1 to as late as the fifteenth. Some schools are as early as the October 15, which is also similar for just regular undergrad.

I know they’re… Like, Georgia, Clemson. I don’t know. There’s, like, there’s a hand… UNC, I wanna say. There’s, like, a handful of schools, who are just regular college admissions who also have that fifteenth deadline. So, essentially, this slide is to say that they’re early. Like, you don’t apply to BSMDs with regular decision. You don’t do it in the in the December, January deadlines.

You have to have all of your stuff raring and ready to go for November 1, which if you’re applying to EA/ED schools is not is not crazy different other than the fact that you do have to have those essays for the BSMD supplements prepared, so the why medicine and the why our program. And then you also have to make sure that, like, your MD letters of recommendation are in because doctors are very busy and don’t operate under the same timeline as, like, your teachers.

So, like, where they kind of do this every year and know that, you know, October, November is when letters are due. Doctors don’t really have that. Like, if they’re writing letters, oftentimes, it’s for medical school or for residency, and those are due very different times. So, like, they don’t have that kind of, like, November, this… Oh, October, November. Like, I better be getting these letters in, so you really kinda have to be on them for that. So letters of recommendation, there’s a lot that goes into selecting them.

There’s a lot that goes into asking for them. There’s a lot that goes into building, like, who you wanna ask to make sure that your application is, the best it can be and people aren’t all highlighting the same skill and making you seem one dimensional.

I talk at length ad nauseam with my students about picking their letter writers and, how they can talk to them about, you know, what they hope to be in the letter to the extent that the letter writer feels comfortable with that, sharing information with them, like, potentially through, like, a brag sheet on here that’s essentially, like, a quick version of your c… Or your… Not CV. Well, I mean, same thing, but resume, drafts of your personal statement, stuff like that to kind of help them personalize the letter.

And then kind of the importance of asking for a strong letter, but I mean, recommendation. A lot of times people will just say, can you write me a letter? But you wanna… Like, there’s a difference, and there’s a difference on the receiving end as well when someone asks you for a strong letter of recommendation. Sometimes it really does make the letter writer pause, and if they don’t think they can, then they won’t. And that’s honestly better than them writing you a template letter that doesn’t really get you anywhere.

And then the supplemental essays, I kind of already mentioned you. That’s just one more thing you have to do if you do BSMD that you’ll have to have ready by those early deadlines. There they are, Alison. I found it. Okay. So as I was mentioning before… Here, buckle in.

ALISON KALESHI: As

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): I was mentioning before, the two flavors of interviews that are super important for BSMD are standard and MMI. So standard is standard. It is usually one person. It can be multiple people, sometimes, like, two or three in sort of a more panel format, but it’s conversational. It’s usually half an hour to forty five minutes, and it’s kind of just getting to know you. You’ll get questions like, tell me about yourself, similar to the essays you’ll get, why medicine and why our program. And then you’ll get different letter…

Different questions that kind of get at, you know, why you’re motivated to do medicine, how resilient you are, how you face challenges, how you think about things, you know, what you’re passionate about, stuff like that. It’s really just to kind of help them understand you. And then there’s an opportunity for you to ask questions about the program as well. And there’s advice and strategy around what questions to pick, making sure you have questions to ask them so you seem engaged, things like that.

Be yourself is important, but the be yourself is not the only thing that’s important for these interviews. Just being yourself is great, but people expect you on interviews to be the best version of yourself. So you don’t wanna go in nervous, but you also don’t wanna go in so chill with the idea that, like, oh, Peter, so just be myself. So, like, I will because people will not take it well if you’re just, like, super relaxed to the extent that you’re, like, not… Don’t…

Aren’t perceived as caring about the interview and taking it as seriously as the interviewer would expect. The second interview, which is a little bit

ALISON KALESHI: Peter.

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): Oh, yeah.

ALISON KALESHI: I’m gonna add in a quick point on this for some of our students that they’re not super familiar with the interview process. Because for a lot of traditional applicants to college, the interview can sometimes be seen as less heavily weighted than the written component. With BSMD, we’ve noticed that having the proper interview skills is going to be very important if you’re going to progress in this process. And as you very well said, showing that enthusiasm and excitement for medicine is, something that’s important, but it doesn’t come naturally. And at Prepory, you have the support of our interview specialists to specifically guide you in how to really navigate these different, formats for the interviews. And with that, Peter, I’m gonna hand it back to you so you can go ahead into the next format.

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): Absolutely. And, yeah, to your point, I’ve been running our interview team here for three or four years now, and it’s difficult. Oftentimes, high school students have not gone through the process of interviewing before. Like, either the jobs that you guys have had haven’t really required them or maybe you don’t have jobs or have things that have required an interview.

And I’ve worked with many students who have said wild and crazy things to me, and I’m like, thank god you said that here, and I can correct that, and no one will ever hear it again. So the importance of going through multiple, practice interviews with people is absolutely, like, paramount to success in the application process for medical school and for BSMD. MMIs are different from standard in the sense that it is still about getting to know you, but it is far less conversational.

These interviews are usually structured in stations with, you know, ranging from six to sometimes 10 stations, also varying from, you know, four to ten minutes each, where you’ll usually have a period of time where you’re essentially, like, reading a piece of paper that has a, like, a scenario on it. You have a couple minutes to kind of consider how you would respond to the scenario, and then you go ahead and respond to it. So these are… Can often be ethical scenarios.

So, like, a popular one people will do is, like, if you’re on rotations with another third year medical student and you guys are on general surgery and you’re about to scrub in for your first cholecystectomy, and you come in and your friend… You smell alcohol on their breath and they are kind of wobbling a little bit and you knew that they were out late last night, like, what… How would you respond to you guys both about to be going into an operation together? They also are sometimes, asking you about the…

Like, the usual… I mean, they’re usually ethical scenarios. Obviously, that’s an ethical scenario, but sometimes it’s not that, and it’s a little bit more interactive where, like, you are playing a character and the interviewer is playing a character as well. So, like, sometimes they’re… They’ll do something like you and this… And the interviewer are, like, co-owners of a business, and the interviewer has not been showing up on time or has been, like, closing the store early or something.

And, like, how would you be, like, broach the conversation with the, your co-owner of the business about what’s going on here? So and they just kinda wanna see how you work through problems and different dilemmas, and, there’s a lot of, you know, strategy and advice around things you wanna talk about and ways you wanna approach those so you, come across as successful. So this, I’m gonna kind of go through a little bit more quickly just to make…

Because a lot of it, I’ve already said it’s sort of just putting it into, a road map for school and to make sure that we have time for questions as well. But this is kind of when you wanna be thinking of all of these sort of things throughout high school. So ninth grade is… At least for the students that I work with, like, the only ton…

The only year of high school that I say that it’s okay to just kind of try things and do stuff and not really have, like, an end goal in mind or necessarily an intention beyond just following your curiosity. So this is, you know, volunteering for all of the things, going to the, club fair and, like, trying every single organization that you’re interested in. Like, this isn’t about… This isn’t the year where you’re trying to, like, sink your teeth in and get a lot of depth of your experiences.

This is all about breadth and seeing what’s interesting for you and what’s cool and what you might what you might like and how you might wanna spend your time. And then when you get to tenth grade, that’s when you wanna start honing in and, like, kind of trimming the fat for stuff that you’re, like, just a member of and don’t want to continue moving up in and things that you don’t really want to, kind of pursue in the future or, like, don’t really wanna spend your time doing.

This is also a time to kind of start reaching out and getting good summer plans in, whether that’s, you know, working or doing research fellowships or, shadowing physicians or doing competitions for, you know, different student organizations. This is also when you take your PSAT. And the second half of tenth grade is also a really good time to start preparing for the SAT or the ACT to reduce pressure kind of later on and also to give you the opportunity to potentially retest, which is a very common thing for students.

It’s also a good time to start adding coursework, that is increasing in rigor, which will bring me to eleventh grade where you really wanna start taking, this is when you really start ramping up on your difficult coursework. And a lot of times, you’ll start, particularly for our premed, start adding, you know, the AP sciences, the AP maths. This is when you really start moving to, like, leadership for your different clubs and organizations. This is when you wanna start thinking about, like, what’s your kind of…

This is your upcoming into your last summer that’s gonna be on your college application. So really making sure that you have solid booked and busy plans for the summer that aren’t just, you know, vacationing. It’s also potentially when you start thinking about your college application in more real sense in terms of what does my activities list look like, what are holes that I still might have. Now is now is kind of the time to really start solidifying those.

And this is also a good time to really start visiting schools, seeing what you’re interested in, and really starting to, like, solidify in your mind. Am I really pursuing BSMD based on what I’ve done so far, or what does traditional path more of the path for me? And then twelfth grade is just when everything hits the fan and you’re doing everything all at once. You’re continuing to maintain your coursework and your grades. You’re taking your standardized test if for some reason you still have to. You’re preparing your applications.

You’re still leading all of your clubs and organizations, so everything really kind of starts to hit all at the same time. Twelfth grade fall is a lot. And then a lot… And then by December, you’re just, like, hanging and vibing and waiting for this… The stuff to come in, and so spring gets a lot easier.

This is kinda just a slide that shows a lot of different things that you could potentially be doing with your summers throughout all of high school, but certainly as you get to, you know, a tenth and eleventh grade summer, particularly things that are sort of more geared towards premedical students. So finding ways to get involved at your, you know, local hospital, finding ways to get involved in research at your local university or at, you know, different more…

Different prestigious universities through, like, summer fellowship programs, getting EMT certifications if you’re, if you’re of age and you’re able to do that. You know, it’s all about the three pillars, finding ways to get involved in clinical experiences, service experiences, and, research experiences. And then, of course, having stuff that you enjoy for fun too, like the person who knitted. Even though that is a… It was a service thing, it was also something that she just really enjoyed doing.

So with that, I kind of wanna take a moment now to sort of walk through what this looks like in a college application. So this is a student I worked with a few cycles ago who was… We went down the traditional application path for medical school. So they were just in… Intending to apply to college and then we’re going to figure… You know, apply to medical school after college, and sort of go that way. So they had a four point o one weighted.

They were fifteen thirty SAT, higher in math than, the reading section, but still a strong score regardless. They had a lot of engineering student organizations that they were involved in. They were part of FIRST Robotics. They’d started this medical technology startup with some of their friends and also worked as an app developer for different educational startups that they were not the… Like, they weren’t the creator of, but they were the app developer person. They had a lot of research, so they did…

They worked in a, neuroplasticity lab at one of their local universities, and they also did YYGS for one of their summers, which is one of the more prestigious, summer fellowship programs that students can get involved in that has its own application process that is another added fun stress to sophomore, junior year.

They had a good amount of teaching being, you know, sort of the teaching assistant analog for high school, did math tutoring, did their own sort of tutoring nonprofit, and then also did STEM advocacy collaborating to reach that number that didn’t themselves reach that number. And then also had, leadership in sports among the things that they had already done.

And then kind of to give you, like, a sort of overview kind of how they brought this together in their, personal statement, they sort of started by talking about their garden, and, you know, the care they took every day in going out to make sure that, like, the cherry tomatoes and the bell peppers and the eggplants looked good and seemed happy and were taken care of, referred to them as, like, their children and sort of used the garden as a metaphor for taking responsibility for others and, you know, caring and adapting to their needs, which you can kind of see as being a, a throughway into, you know, medicine and health care.

And was also great because this student applied biomedical engineering, and you… We see so often students writing these boring engineering essays that are just like, I tinkered in the in the garage, you know, and figured out this thing, and I realized I love engineering. And it’s just everybody writes them, and the analogies are always the same, and they’re just so boring.

So reading, like, a cute gardening kind of intro to an essay that ended up being about, health care and engineering overlap is also a good way to stand out and kind of showcase your personality beyond, oh, I’m just, you know, another engineering kid.

And then it moved into talking about how their, the impetus behind their startup was actually from a teacher that they knew who was blind, and they wanted to create, kind of a technology that would help them with their ADLs. And kind of the whole the whole thesis of the essay was this idea of I optimize because I care, which itself is fairly, you know, not anything crazy and something anybody could write about. But the way that they… The creative way that they decided to introduce the…

Their I… Their own way or the way that they look at caring for others and having a responsibility towards others, i.e., the garden, and then kind of moving that into sort of how they look at problems and what motivates them, just serve to be a very compelling under… Like, argument for both engineering and health care down the line. I think that’s the last slide. Yeah. This student ended up going to Stanford for BME because we always get that question. So what are some common mistakes to avoid?

So one of the things… I mean, you saw my timeline. It was pretty judicious, and it was starting in ninth grade. So common mistakes to avoid are starting too late. A lot of times people will start thinking about college sometimes the spring… This… The summer of, you know, eleventh grade into twelfth grade or even still, like, the spring of junior year, which is a lot of times too late. It’s too late to really start adding meaningful experiences to your application.

And a lot of times, we’re kind of doing what we can to make the best of what you have, which is fine if that’s where you’re at. But it’s better and puts you… Situates you better for, you know, competitive undergrads and BSMD programs if you start early and are intentional with your application as, you know, as soon as kind of getting to high school. Broad but shallow activities, as I mentioned, ninth grade is great for broad.

After that, you really wanna start trimming the fat and getting very involved in the things that you’re doing so you have results that you can talk about, impacts, and reflections that you can you can mention, that serve as compelling evidence that you really got involved and cared about what you did and actually made a difference. Ignoring and downplaying the interview is a perfect way to not get into medical school. That’s both for BSMD and for traditional. You…

Once you get to the interview portion, they’ve screened you such that they, for both BSMD and medical… And traditional, such that they know that you will be able to handle the rigors of medical school. They’re less concerned about that, and it’s more about was your application real? Like, did you AI all of this? And, like, you’re actually not the person that you say you are. Can you respond to questions in real time and, like, think through and give good answers? Do you seem like an…

Like, a kind and caring person who they would want to be their doctor, who they would want to, you know, be a colleague working with them, things like that. And so if you bomb an interview, you’re cooked. I’ve seen that happen more often than not where we see these absolutely beautiful pristine essays, and applications, and then our interviewers for one reason or another. Like, the interview didn’t go well. They didn’t get good vibes, whatever, whatever. And so, they don’t give good recommendations, and then we tank the, application.

Chasing prestige over passion, prestige isn’t a problem. But if your only motivation is that, it makes it hard for you to put together a compelling story for why the institution, when we’re talking about, like, you know, why our program for BS/MD and the ever popular why our school for just the traditional college route. Because people who wanna go to Columbia are very often not the same people who wanna go to Brown. They’re very different schools. They collect very different students.

They have very different offerings while both being very well resourced schools. So chasing just… You know, if you… Having a college list of 15 that are just the top 15 schools, is usually not the best way to go. Weak, generic essays, I feel like that explains itself, and then applying to an unbalanced list of schools. So, again, applying to 15 of the top 15 schools gives you, like, a 97% chance that you won’t be going anywhere unless you’re…

Even when you’re really, really well prepared because these schools accept, like, three to 5% of students regular decision and even less than that for the ones that do have BSMD. I believe I’m turning it back now to Alison to chat with you guys a little bit about how Prepory specifically manages this and can provide assistance in this area.

ALISON KALESHI: So we’ll talk a little bit about who Prepory is now that you have a sense of how to build a highly competitive, premedical and BSMD applicant profile, and we are excited to support you in greater depth. At Prepory, we have been around for nearly fifteen years of success in this space in guiding students and families through every grade level from eighth grade through senior year for all things college admissions counseling.

In this time, we’ve guided more than 14,000 students towards their highly competitive admissions goals, and cycle over cycle, Prepory reflects excellent admissions outcomes to show for it. One stat that we are incredibly proud of is that ninety four percent of Prepory students are admitted into at least one or more of their top five choice schools. And when we say top five, it’s about aligning with each student’s goals and their aspirations, not just a number.

Our work is really about turning your competitive dreams into results during the most competitive time in admissions history. We’ve spent many years helping students stand out in the premedical and BSMD admission cycles, and one area where we see huge impact is in how students can really develop and become a compelling applicant, and this happens in the time and years ahead of your application deadlines.

And last cycle alone, our students are accepted into every Ivy, every Ivy Plus, and every school from number one to number 50 on The US News and World Report list with exceptional BSMD outcomes as well, of course. And I do wanna flag something for you all.

In the right hand corner of our screen, you will see a QR code, and you’ve also seen links in the Q&A, to schedule an initial consultation where you’ll be meeting me or another member of the enrollment team to discuss how Prepory can support you, and your enrollment in Prepory’s programs will set you up on a trajectory towards success. And with that in mind, we can go ahead and move forward in discussing a little bit about what our programs include.

You will be meeting with your admissions experts over the course of one hour meetings. Earlier on in high school, you’ll be meeting every other week, and then the cadence will increase as you advance into your upperclassmen years. There are parent check ins throughout. You will have thorough notes every single session as well as unlimited essay and resume support, from Prepory’s writing specialist team as you’re entering into that application cycle. We also want to make sure that you have an understanding that this is a full team of guidance.

You have your admissions expert, but you also have, the committee review team, which includes former admissions officers and former assistant directors of admissions, specifically to really guide and strengthen your profile through those annual profile reviews, and your admissions expert is looking forward to supporting you. And for, the Q&A, we have several questions that we would love to get started, on answering.

I see, some excellent, very specific questions, and I do wanna note that if any of your questions don’t get answered this evening, we want to make sure that they get answered during your complimentary consultation. But I’ll go ahead and kick us off, Peter. We have a student that said, may I know if there is a competitive edge for a student graduating from a charter school versus a public school? And something I would think that is important to note is that, you’re not going to be compared, school to school.

You are really going to be ultimately compared in how you perform within the context of your environment. So what’s and how are you challenging yourself at your specific school? If you are an eighth grader and you are seeking specific guidance on which high school to choose, we can absolutely provide that guidance through our eighth grade program, but we want you to also have an understanding of developing the right plan and what that looks like at your specific high school.

We see another one, that is, specifically asking how should students balance highly selective programs, such as Brown and Rochester with programs where admissions may be somewhat more attainable? This is a great question. You will be applying, to a multitude of applications. You’ll be applying to up to 15 distinct applications with Prepory, and we specifically want you to have a very balanced list. So we think about what are our target schools, what are our reach schools, what are our likely schools.

We call them likely schools because safety schools are disappearing, given how competitive admissions is, but we want you to know what schools are right for you as well as your likelihood of entry into those schools. And at the end of the day, it will be your choice, the schools that you apply to, but you will have, very thorough feedback and guidance on which are the right programs for your student to apply to. I’m gonna go ahead and, keep it moving.

I see, how many BSMD programs should a strong BSMD applicant realistically apply to? Peter, I’m curious from your perspective when you think about the right number of programs. When I think about Prepory, you have a number of applications to submit. You have up to 15 distinct applications within our standard program offering. But when you think about your students, do you see a mix of premedical applications versus BSMD? I typically…

With the students that I’ve worked with previously, I recommend having a mix of applications just to really be able to compare your options. But do you have a hard and fast number if you’re applying BSMD this cycle that you would recommend casting the net out into?

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): Yeah. There’s not really a… If you’re a strong applicant, if you apply to 12, you’re… You have an x percent chance of getting in, anything like that. It’s really, if you have if you have a good chance of a pre… BSMD program because you have all the things that I’ve mentioned, good research, great grades, and test scores, etcetera, etcetera, and it’s not just, you know, throwing it out in the wind and hoping for the best, then I would… I usually push students to sort of…

Of the schools they’re planning on applying to, making more and more of them BSMD programs. So we’ll have… Usually, students that work with me will apply to anywhere from, like, 15 to 25 schools, just generally speaking. And so if… It’s all about the students’ goals. Right? So if they have a school that they really love, then…

And they would rather go there than do BSMD, then sometimes the plan should be to kind of apply to a reasonable number, like, you know, three to five BSMD programs, but then, you know, go full force on the one school. Because even if they don’t do BSMD, might still get into the school undergrad, do really well there, and then still do very well in medical school.

I usually make this point earlier in the talk that, like, if you don’t get into BSMD programs, you can very well still go to medical school, and most people become doctors the traditional way. But if BSMD programs are your main goal and you want to maximize your, your chances of getting into BSMD and not having to do the traditional application route, then I would usually say if students are applying to, you know, 15 to 25 whatever schools, making as many of those BSMD programs as possible is the vibe.

And then if, you know, you kind of don’t really get to care as much about geography, you’re more just applying to the schools that have BSMD programs because they’re a little bit more on the rarer side. But I don’t have a, you know, 10 to 15, you’re great. It’s more what’s the student’s goals in terms of it’s BSMD or die or, you know, BSMD is a great option, but I wanna keep my options open and then sort of modulating from there.

ALISON KALESHI: Excellent. Alright. So I’m gonna go ahead and keep it moving. We have a couple more questions. How is, anatomy club regarded for both, BSMD and premed? For me, it shows that you have, this kind of unique and tech driven interest specifically.

We want to take the opportunity to mention that sometimes having awards and honors in terms of tournaments or specific knowledge can be very helpful in terms of kind of buffering your activities list with those, the honors and awards component, but it is not going to be the end all be all. So if anatomic club is your only activity, we recommend expanding further into reflecting community impacts, having clinical hours, and, of course, having a passion project as well. I see a biology question. I get this a lot.

I meet frequently with, many students that are interested in the premedical and BSMD pathway on a weekly basis, and I’m looking forward to meeting you all during your initial consultations. But as a premed, a biology major, it is, not necessarily frowned upon, but it’s highly impacted at many universities. When many students think about the traditional pathway to premed, they think of biology as the only option. And at Prepory, we provide a significant support system into major strategization for each university that you apply to.

You’ll have your first choice, second choice, third choice for many of these schools, and it impacts how you are read. At a highly impacted major, we want you to have the opportunity to consider other majors that perhaps fit your profile better rather than feeling that biology is your only option because it’s the only option you’re aware of. Nancy asked though an exceptional question. I get this one a lot too. Is being top 5% at a less competitive school better than top 10% at most competitive public schools?

The answer is, like with most things in this space, is it truly depends. It really depends on your student, not just in terms of their grades, but are they challenging themselves with the course rigor at their school? I want to see a student that is taking the most challenging courses and excelling in them, but doing so with direction. Rather than just relying on the strength of the institution of the high school you’re applying to… Applying from, we want to see how you are performing within the context of your environment.

So with that in mind, we wanna plan for your specific experience at your specific high school. And if you need specific guidance on determining which high school is right for your student and what that trajectory would look like, we can absolutely guide you with that as well. For our senior, I see we have a senior in here. Do we provide help with personal statement and essays? Of course, we do. We wanna get you moving as soon as possible.

Feel free to click the link to learn more about what your enrollment at Prepory will look like. You will have unlimited revisions and unlimited writing supports, for up to 15 distinct applications, and we wanna get you moving as quickly as possible. You seem to have a great profile from the small tidbits that we have, but the written story is going to be very important as you’re competing at a very high level. Alright. We have a couple more that have come in.

I do want to note, we have about five more minutes, so we’re going get through as many of these as possible. If your question doesn’t get answered, please do click the link to make sure you set up that consultation. For the UCs, I see, is it good to fill out all the 20 slots or not all 20? This truly depends on the area of impact that you have. If you’re just filling out 20 activities, just to say you have 20, it’s not going to be impactful.

We want to see that you have activities that really tell the right story for your applications, for your personal insight questions that are accompanying that activities list as well, but it’s not a necessity to fill out all 20 slots. And with that in mind, let’s see. For students that are seeking, different opportunities, and for age limits. We really specifically will be looking with you, at Prepory for the right opportunities that are aware of your specific grade level, of your specific age, and making those recommendations. In terms of… Let’s see.

Is it better to take AP slash IB science courses early or maintain a balanced progression that allows deeper extracurricular involvement? It’s really going to… You’re going to need the best of both worlds. We want to see highly competitive science courses and that you’re excelling in them, but we don’t just want to see academic excellence. We need to see that leadership and that intellectual curiosity piece that is highly important to these schools.

The goal is to really be able to manage your time well, and something that Prepory does for students of all grade levels is guide you in understanding what should I be prioritizing when and, when is the right time for me to move on to the next thing. Alright. Let’s see. For one of these questions, what is the, fastest path? If you’re seeking the fastest path, or an accelerated pathway to medical school, it would be the BSMD, program opportunities rather than the traditional pathway.

Attending a community emergency training, could this be helpful? Yes. But we think about what is your contribution and what is, your specific, impact within the time that you spend within this training. So like all things, it’s going to require that depth of excellence that these universities are specifically hoping to see.

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): I also do wanna point out, read, the… Which one’s quicker path. A lot of the BSMD programs are eight years, just like medical school, traditional path. So you will more likely than not, if you do BSMD, be doing four years of undergrad, four years of medical school. So it doesn’t really save you time. It could save you time in the risk… In the respect that you don’t do a gap year should you end up going that route with traditional, but it doesn’t save you your school. It would save you a year of, like, your life, I guess. But

ALISON KALESHI: Yes.

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): Generally, you’ll still be doing eight years of school, undergrad, and then medical school. There are some that are seven year programs, but the majority of them are still eight years.

ALISON KALESHI: Really great points. And something that I really value about, BSMD too is that instead of potentially taking, several gap years in between undergrad and medical school, you do have that conditional acceptance, of course, provided your performance is in the right place within the program. But you’re absolutely right, Peter, in that regard. And with the questions that we have coming in, I see some very specific UC PIQs questions. We want to make sure that you have, the right answers in terms of how you’re expressing yourself for those personal insight essay questions.

The UCs, that writing style is a bit different than the Common Application. So what I would recommend, for this question is, of course, to set up that initial consultation so that we can specifically meet you where you are at this point in the cycle and get you moving quickly. And as I shared earlier, you will have unlimited writing supports, and revisions for those distinct applications. And for, the BSMD opportunities, when we think about, UConn, among other schools, For these programs, with BSMD across the board, it is highly competitive.

They are, an eight year specific combined pathway, and it guarantees you this conditional entry into, UConn School of Medicine. It is going to require absolutely stellar performance, so it is highly competitive. Great question. So, Anaya, you asked an excellent question. What is the point of BSMD if it’s the same time as regular premedical? And as I touched on earlier, I think that we think about time and, yes, you’re likely to spend eight years working towards this goal.

But when you are applying as a premedical traditional applicant, you are not given a guaranteed conditional acceptance into medical school. So you potentially may take a year off after graduation to study for the MCAT or perhaps several years, to work while studying for the MCAT. The goal is to save you time and that it’s continuous entry into your, program all the way from the start of the BSMD program until the very end so that there are no lapses in time.

And I think that when we think about saving time, it’s the potential, in terms of if you take time away from school after graduating and you delay the medical school application process. And with that, we’re gonna answer

PETER EVANCHO (HE/HIM): It’s also not… Sorry. Just to add to the what’s the point. So there’s pros and cons, of course. Pros for BSMD are, besides time, if you apply the traditional route, a lot of your undergraduate career is spent preparing for medical school. So it’s making sure you take the right courses. It’s kind of planning things around when you’re going to do the MCAT, making sure that your extracurricular experiences and all of your stuff kind of line up and tee you up for going to medical school.

And it’s fine, and a lot of people do that, but it is very kind of constricting, and people oftentimes end up leaning into doing things that they might not be as passionate about because they know that they check medical school admissions boxes versus for BSMD programs because you have this conditional acceptance as long as you’re able to, like, work towards your GPA and make… And maintain the grades and MCAT scores should you have to take it. The…

People oftentimes have a lot more freedom to do other things that are just truly of interest and take classes that are fun and enjoyable, not necessarily because they’re contributing to a medical school application because they are already in and don’t really have to worry about that.

Some of the more cons are kind of things I mentioned earlier about, a, you have to know for sure that you wanna be a doctor when you were 16, 17, 18, which a lot of people don’t know and is, like, very fair because even shadowing a physician for a summer doesn’t really give you a holistic idea of what doctors do.

And then you’re also committing yourself to eight years in a particular place, which even if you do, like, the second or, like, whatever they call them, like, second look days or the visit days or whatever, it’s hard to know that you’re gonna love a city enough to stay there for eight years. So doing the traditional route allows you more flexibility than the BSMD one is. So it is a lot of kind of talking through with people about the pros and cons and having a sounding board because…

Just because it’s guaranteed admissions to medical school, it’s not necessarily always the right pick for everybody. And just because it’s not the right pick for you, it doesn’t mean that you won’t be a doctor one day. You might just go the route that most people go and do, you know, traditional and kind of go that way.

ALISON KALESHI: Absolutely. And with that in mind, we have a couple questions coming in. Does Prepory support medical school, applications? Yes. We do. I saw several of those that came in. We absolutely do. Go ahead and scan the QR code for that initial consultation. We have, an important profile question, specifically in terms of the EMT certification, and planning to part time… Planning on doing so part time, at their state college next year. Will it help or hurt when I apply? Currently… So this is a very specific profile question.

What I do wanna recommend is scanning that QR code. Having your EMT certification and also having shadowing hours is helpful for your profile, but we also wanna make sure that you’re differentiating yourself among other applicants that have the same components on their profile as well. And then I believe we see, one final question. Why do we have less BSMD programs, than premed and less colleges too?

Specifically, traditional four year pathways have been around far longer, than BSMD, and the limited seats at BSMD programs also, alongside the high applicant volume drives down those acceptance percentages. And with these questions, we are concluding that Q&A. It has been a delight getting to meet all of you. We have an absolute understanding of how present you all have been. You’re very focused, and we’re excited to meet and support you.

To get your unique questions answered, please follow the link that has been shared in the Q&A as well as in the chat, and we look forward to meeting you soon. Alright. Have a great evening, everybody.