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You Only Have One Chance to Make a First Impression

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Quick tip: Ensure your personal statement can stand alone and doesn’t rely on your AMCAS or ERAS activities’ section for clarification. I see some personal statement drafts that subtly refer to a candidate’s big accomplishment without fleshing it out. You need to assume that the reader is seeing your essay first and independent of your AMCAS/ERAS.

For medical school admissions consulting help, please contact me as soon as possible. The season is heating up. Submission to AMCAS starts June 1.

Have a great holiday weekend!

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Post Baccalaureate Programs versus Supplemental Undergraduate Courses

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Whether you matriculate into a formal post baccalaureate program or simply take supplementary courses independently, AMCAS calculates your GPA similarly: Undergraduate courses are undergraduate courses to AMCAS. So what is the advantage of a post baccalaureate program?

1. Reputation. These programs are known quantities to medical school admissions committees.
2. Ability to get quality letters of recommendation (LOR). Most post bacc professors are very familiar with writing medical school LORs.
3. Link programs. Some schools have partnerships with medical schools, so that if you maintain a certain GPA and score well on the MCAT, your application is facilitated by your participation in the post bacc program.
4. Organization and pre-med help. Not all post bacc schools have this, but many of the good ones do.

The drawbacks to these programs are a) competitive admissions and b) the cost, which can be significant.

Contact me for post baccalaureate application help. I assist with post baccalaureate personal statements and resumes/CVs.

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Emergency Medicine Fellowships for Family Practitioners

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Here‘s an article from an Emergency Medicine news magazine on the advent of Emergency Medicine Fellowships for Family Practitioners. As you can imagine, these training programs are rather controversial, especially amongst current Emergency Physicians. (Note that the link listed in the article is not valid.)

For residency admissions consulting help, contact me.

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What is the Cost of that CT?

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Check out this interesting NYT’s article “Teaching Physicians the Price of Care.” When I was in residency we were taught to consider whether a test would change management before ordering it, but we never explicitly reviewed prices.

What’s provocative is that some systems reward physicians financially for expensive testing. That topic is notably missing from the article.

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Submitting your Medical School Letters of Recommendation

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Your medical school recommenders have several options for submitting their letters to AMCAS. You want to make the process as convenient as possible for the writers, and different ones may have different preferences. So offer each writer all feasible alternatives. If your recommender plans to send the letter by snail mail, provide him or her with a self-addressed, stamped envelope.

Here are the options:

1. AMCAS Letter Writer Application: This application enables letter writers to upload documents securely to AMCAS rather than send letters via the mail. If you are interested in this option, and can upload a PDF version of your letter, make note of the requesting applicant’s AAMC ID and AMCAS Letter ID included above and go to https://services.aamc.org/letterwriter. You will need to register for your own AAMC account in order to use this service.

2. Interfolio: AMCAS can receive letters sent to Interfolio if the student requesting this letter is an Interfolio user or your
institution/organization uses Interfolio to deliver letters of evaluation/recommendation.

3. Mail your letter: If you select this option, please attach this form to your letter(s) and mail to:
AMCAS, attn: AMCAS Letters
AAMC Medical School Application Services
P.O. Box 18958
Washington, DC 20036

4. VirtualEvals (VE): VE is available to members of the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions (NAAHP). If you are a VE user, make note of the requesting student’s AAMC ID and AMCAS Letter ID included above and upload your letter(s) to VE.

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About Dr. Michelle Finkel

Dr. Michelle Finkel

Dr. Finkel is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. On completing her residency at Harvard, she was asked to
stay on as faculty at Harvard Medical School and spent five years teaching at the world-renowned Massachusetts General Hospital.
She was appointed to the Assistant Residency Director position for the Harvard Affiliated
Emergency Medicine Residency where she reviewed countless applications, personal statements and resumes. Read more

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