How to Get into Medical School

The wisdom of my peers is an invaluable asset in my business. I have been doing this work for 12 years–some of my colleagues have done it for 20 or more. Here, a top NYC consulting practice shares its experience and truth…it may surprise you:

“Medical and dental school are a major part of our practice. In this past cycle, we have already have five clear admits to Harvard Medical School.

• One was a neuroscience major

• One was a fashion major

• One was a biological basis of behavior major

• One was a public health major

• One was an English major

The fashion major did the best: He got full rides from Northwestern, Johns Hopkins, Vanderbilt, Case; he got 25% from UChicago; he got into NYU (which is always a free ride), and Harvard. He ended up choosing NYU (barely edging out Hopkins).

Rigor is not really a thing in medical school admissions. All that time spent in honors classes could be better spent in research labs, hospitals, community service, and leadership. We had a potential client two days ago mention that taking anatomy, genetics, and physiology would be easier as a bio major. Our medical school consultant told her genetics is always a good elective for a premed, but there is no need to take anatomy or physiology. As many medical school admissions faculty have told me, "We'll teach you all the anatomy you need in medical school. Take the class if you're intellectually interested in it, but don't take it because you think it'll help you get into medical school."

Some colleges do have "premed" or "pre-dent" as a major. These majors do NOT look better on a medical school application.

In short, medical schools don't care about what you major in. They care about how you perform on the MCAT, how you perform overall as a student, how you perform on the specific group of prerequisite courses required to attend medical or dental school (such as general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, biology, etc.), and they care deeply about your extracurricular activities in research labs, clinical settings, shadowing, community service and leadership, etc.”