How Should I Prepare for Medical School in College? [Timeline]

Follow the guidelines offered here to create a winning medical school application!

(If you are starting the process later than your first year of college, use this key to enable you to follow the advice presented here.)

Freshman year

1. Lay a foundation in your science coursework.
2. Look for mentors.
3. Volunteer.
4. Explore research opportunities.
5. Maintain personal interests.
6. Get your feet wet with clinical shadowing.

Click here for detailed advice for preparing for med school during freshman year.

Sophomore year

1. Start your MCAT prep/review course.
2. Spend time with your mentors.
3. Deepen your commitment to one or two favorite volunteer activities.
4. Go more in depth into research.
5. Look for hands-on clinical experience

Click here for detailed advice for preparing for med school during sophomore year.

Junior year

1. Take the MCAT.
2. Ask your mentors for LORs (July-August).
3. Assume a leadership role in a lab, at work, or with a volunteer organization (August-October).
4. Contribute to research publications.
5. Start journaling (November-December).
6. Start writing your personal statement (January-April).
7. Write your experiences section.
8. Turn in AMCAS primary application (May-June)

Click here for detailed advice for preparing for med school during junior year.

Senior year

1. Get to work on your secondary applications (July-August).
2. Prep for your interviews (throughout the year).
3. Keep yourself in the present moment.
4. Submit update letters (research publications, promotions, projects).
5. Revisit those personal interests…and relax.

Click here for detailed advice for preparing for med school during senior year.

Let’s jump right into freshman year. What should you do to get started?

What should I do during my freshman year to prepare for medical school?

• Step 1: Lay a foundation in your science coursework.
  If you already know you want to go to medical school, then this is the time to focus on your grades. Be careful not to overload your schedule. Overcoming poor grades in your freshman year takes tons of energy and is always an uphill battle. It’s better to start strong. Plus, doing well now prepares you for the upper division coursework in coming years. If you have one difficult class that is weighing you down, visit the professor during office hours and ask questions. They might have a teaching style that you’ve never seen before. Make it your goal to learn everything you can from them, without giving up.
• Step 2: Look for mentors.

  Mentors are anyone who will guide you with valuable input on your path to medical school. Look to professors, volunteer supervisors, and practicing physicians who seem eager to teach and share their wisdom. Spend extra time learning what they do, and ask questions about their career path. If you eventually request a letter of recommendation (LOR) from them, you won’t be just another name but a real person they want to help succeed.

• Step 3: Volunteer.

  You can volunteer to help others in any way you can imagine, but make sure that it changes you. In other words, don’t volunteer just to look good. Truly giving your time and support can affect you in a personal way and motivate you to do even more. With the right motivation and this approach, you will be amazed at how much you enjoy and benefit from your volunteer experience.

• Step 4: Explore research opportunities.

  Getting a position in a lab can be downright competitive. Most labs are looking for their version of a restaurant dishwasher, so don’t be surprised if you get your start cleaning glassware, monitoring supplies, and doing general labor. Think of this as your apprenticeship. Once you show that you are reliable and hardworking, they might move you up to a more interesting role. Everyone has to start somewhere. If you are wondering what type of research suits you, ask your professors or mentors for ideas. They might even know of a study that needs volunteers.

• Step 5: Maintain personal interests.

  There are so many premed requirements that you might feel like you are putting your personal life on hold. Well, of course, you are. However, a bland, boring application does not stand out from the crowd, and a bland, boring life does not make for a caring and compassionate doctor.
  Make time to pursue your passion for music, art, sports, or other interest or hobby. Try to fit your practice into small chunks of time, so that you can come back to it whenever you need a break from studying. This will serve you well in future years when you have even less time and need an outlet for stress. Finding the ability to relax and find joy is a valuable skill, so don’t forget to figure out what you love, and do it!

• Step 6: Get your feet wet with clinical shadowing.

  This is a great way to get exposure to medical practice, so ideally, you should try to observe several different specialties. Then, once you have a direction in mind, look for opportunities to pursue more active volunteering in the years to come.

What should I do during my sophomore year to prepare for medical school?

• Step 1: Start your MCAT prep/review course.

  Yes, it’s early, but hopefully, you have taken most of the classes needed for the MCAT by the end of this year, so the subjects will be fresh in your mind. If there are some courses you have not yet taken, use this as an intro to help you do better in the class when you take it. Find a review course that provides plenty of practice exams, and retake the same ones every few months, even if you did well. It’s the practice that counts!

  Consider taking the review course full-time during the summer between your sophomore and junior years of college so that you can take the MCAT at the end of the summer.

• Step 2: Spend time with your mentors.

  Hopefully, by now, you have identified a few mentors who will go to bat for you and write an LOR that is passionate and supportive of your goals. Spend this year getting to know your mentors better. Show up at their office hours, volunteer for a research project, or help grade exams. Find a way to show them your work ethic and people skills. The importance of this step cannot be overemphasized.

• Step 3: Deepen your commitment to one or two favorite volunteer activities.

  By this point, you should have found a volunteer activity that you enjoy. You can cut back on the variety of things you do now and focus on one or two main activities that you are good at and that make you feel that your time was well spent. If at all possible, assume responsibility by participating on committees or helping to organize events.

• Step 4: Go more in depth into research.

  If you have discovered what type of research you are interested in, now is the time to pursue it on a deeper level. Offer to do a literature search, contribute to a poster, or take on a more serious responsibility. This is the time to develop new skills, so be proactive in your education. Washing beakers for three years will not be the best use of your time.

  If you find that you don’t love bench work, there are plenty of other ways to gain key research experience. These include clinical research, epidemiological studies, and health economics research, just to name a few. Medical schools find these to be just as relevant to the practice of medicine, if not more so. Ultimately, it’s not the type of research experience that matters to medical schools, but rather paying attention to detail, learning to interpret data, and being able to communicate your findings. If you develop these skills, your research experience will make your overall application stronger.

• Step 5: Look for hands-on clinical experience.

  You’ve done some shadowing, and now is the time for action. Get your hands dirty, or at least find an opportunity to put gloves on. Become a patient educator, hospital aid, medical assistant, or other role in which you have contact, either verbal or physical, with actual patients. This activity will show that you are comfortable in a clinical setting and could give you some great things to write about in your personal statement.

What should I do during my junior year to prepare for medical school?

• Step 1: Take the MCAT.

  If you didn’t take the MCAT over the summer, your junior year is an ideal time to take the MCAT. You have taken all the required coursework, so most of it will be fresh in your mind. You will get your results back well ahead of the application submission deadline, so you can know which schools you are competitive at. And you still have time to retake the exam if needed.

• Step 2: Ask your mentors for letters of recommendation (July-August).

  Now is the time to start asking for LORs, before your mentors are hit with dozens of letter requests. Schedule a time to meet with your letter writers and share your goals and accomplishments. Fill them in on your volunteer activities, which they might know nothing about. Some will ask for your resume or CV when they are writing your letter, so get started on this early this year, and bring it to the meeting. After talking, ask if they will give you their highest recommendation. If their answer is a wholehearted yes, thank them and ask if there is anything you can do to assist them. If their answer is not yet, ask what you can do to improve. If you sense any negativity, you might need to look for another letter writer. Too many applicants submit ho-hum letters that quickly contribute to rejection.

• Step 3: Assume a leadership role in a lab, at work, or with a volunteer organization (August-October).

  Now it’s time to flex your leadership muscles, one of the key qualities that med schools look for in applicants. You can do so by taking on a supervisory role, assuming a decision-making position, mentoring others, or taking your volunteering to the next level. It is better if you can show commitment to an organization over an extended time and discuss how you developed communication and interpersonal skills within that organization.

• Step 4: Start journaling (November-December).

  You will soon be writing your personal statement and multiple secondary essays, which for many students is the hardest part of the application. Writing about yourself can make you feel vulnerable and emotional. This often makes us back off and write superficially, just when we are about to come up with something powerful. Journaling is a way to get through this part of it. Spend a few months writing for 10-20 minutes every day. You can write about your experiences, growth, and goal, or anything that comes to mind. Don’t make it too difficult by expecting yourself to come up with a fully developed essay. For now, just get used to putting your ideas and thoughts down and writing about yourself. This practice will set the stage for the self-awareness you need to craft a great personal statement.

• Step 5: Start writing your personal statement (January-April).

  Personal narrative is a style of writing you might not have learned in college. It can take several months to write a great essay, so ideally give yourself three to four months for writing, editing, rewriting, and polishing. You also have 15 experiences and three most meaningful experiences to get down, so there is a lot of writing to do in this period. Staying organized and setting mini deadlines for yourself is the key to completing the task. (For comprehensive primary application assistance, our admissions experts are here to help you.)

• Step 6: Contribute to research publications.

  Conducting your own study and being first author on a paper are great goals, but ones that are not always possible in college. Some students do get their names on posters or publications by working on a small team and making significant contributions to a study. While this is a nice bonus for all your hard work, it is not necessary for medical school admission. Med schools are more interested in what you did than in what your name is on.

• Step 7: Write your experiences section.

  Pay careful attention to the experiences sections. If these are written hastily or without purpose, your application is likely to come across as sloppy and disorganized. Consider each one a mini essay, with a beginning, middle, and end. Start with the organization and your role, then create a snapshot of your responsibilities and accomplishments, and end with how this experience has influenced you or increased your motivation. Look for balance across the experiences. If you talk about your leadership capabilities in one, look for examples of compassion, teamwork, and communication in the others. It’s okay to mention an experience that you discussed in your personal statement, but avoid repeating information. Above all, do not use this small and valuable space to describe the organization/lab/project in minute detail. Your role and how the activity contributed to you becoming a physician should be the take-home message of each experience.

• Step 8: Turn in AMCAS primary application (May-June).

  The application usually opens in early May, and you can submit about one month later. Medical schools use a rolling application process, which means that they offer interviews most often to people who apply early in the cycle. As the schools’ classes fill up, they have fewer spots to fill, so the selection naturally gets more competitive. Applicants who apply early on have a better chance of getting an interview, so don’t make the mistake of applying late in the cycle.

What should I do during my senior year to prepare for medical school?

• Step 1: Get to work on your secondary applications (July-August).

  The key to writing your secondary essays is to stay organized. Some schools having as many as five essays, so with most people applying to more than ten programs, the number of documents can start to boggle your mind. In addition to your coursework and other obligations, the secondaries can feel like another full-time job. If you have a break over the summer, use it wisely. Create a spreadsheet of all your secondary applications, the essays, and deadlines.
  
  Decide which ones are similar enough to be used in more than one school. This is called “recycling” essays, and while it can be done effectively, it can also set you up for disaster. Applicants have been known to submit an essay to school A with the name of school B in the essay! This will make you come across to the admissions committee as someone who does not pay attention to details, which is not the impression an aspiring doctor wants to make. Make sure you check each secondary essay you write for these kinds of errors.
  
  Another common error is recycling an essay in a way that does not answer the question being asked. Some topics can appear similar at first glance but ask for very different approaches. In this case, recycling makes it appear as though you did not understand the question, which is never a good thing. Reread each essay prompt/question and your answer to decide whether you answered the question in its entirety. Sometimes it is easier (and better) to start from scratch.
  
  Finally, realize that secondary essays are about showing fit with the specific program sending you the secondary. Unless explicitly asked, your focus should be on “why this school?” rather than “why medicine?”

• Step 2: Prep for your interviews (throughout the year).

  Interview invites start coming for some applicants in early fall, and continue as late as spring. The best way to prepare for your interviews is to practice, either with your premed advisor or with a consultant (we offer video mock interviews). Most applicants find that their first interview is the hardest. So, if your first interview happens to be at your dream school (or is your only interview), do whatever it takes to prepare thoroughly ahead of time.

• Step 3: Keep yourself in the present moment.

  With all the writing about your past and dreaming about your future, you might find your mind wandering, rather than staying where it needs to be. The ability to keep your focus on the here and now is an important skill, whether studying for an exam, caring for patients, or analyzing research data. You can practice mindfulness, meditation, or yoga if you need help in this area, but above all, practice staying present. You will find that this focus reduces your stress and improves your ability to perform.

• Step 4: Submit update letters (research publications, promotions, projects).

  The good news: You just got your name on a poster or paper!
  
  The bad news: It’s four months after you submitted your primary.
  
  This would be a great time to send your target med schools an update letter. Be careful to keep it succinct, and do not repeat things that are already on your application. The last thing the schools want is another essay to read! Be careful. Some schools do not accept updates. If this is the case, do not send one. “Failed to follow directions” is not the pile you want your application to be in. See “When to Send Letters of Interest to Med Schools” for more information.

• Step 5: Revisit those personal interests…and relax.

  Speaking of stress, you are finishing college, waiting to see if you will become a doctor, anticipating a move to a new city or state, and trying to keep your grades up. All this transition can lead to a lot of stress. Remember those activities you used to do for fun? Go back and revisit them, or find some new ones. If you plan to go to med school, your stress is not going away anytime soon, and the sooner you find ways to reduce it, the better you will be equipped to handle new challenges. Perhaps the biggest benefit to stress reduction is that as a doctor, you will soon discover the many ways that stress affects your patients’ health. The most genuine way to teach others how to reduce their stress is by doing so yourself. Practice stress reduction in your daily life, and you will not regret it.

Use the following table to adapt all this advice to a four-year plan for your needs:

Senior Year	Matriculation-1 or year of application
Junior Year	Matriculation-2 or year prior to application
Sophomore Year	Matriculation-3 or two years prior to application
Freshman Year	Matriculation-4 or three years prior to application

Accepted’s expert medical school admissions consultants can guide you through every step of this process, starting in your freshman year and working with you through your acceptance to medical school.

Get your copy of the Preparing for Medical School in College Timeline!

Related Resources:

• Get Accepted to Medical School in 2023, a free webinar
• How an Accepted Med School Admissions Consultant Can Help You
• What Do Medical Schools Look for in Applicants

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