 So in today's video, we are going to talk about what to do if you don't get into medical school. Let's get into it. All right guys, welcome to the MD Journey channel completely dedicated to helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. My name is Laksham, an internal medicine physician and a resident in training. In case you're new here, I make videos to help you and medical school before after with all of the different challenges including studying and productivity. So if you're new here, consider subscribing and hit that like button if you enjoyed this video. But in today's video, I want to talk to my pre-med friends, individuals who want to get into medical school and ideally become a physician, but who either haven't gone into medical school after an application cycle or have a fear that maybe after applying currently, they may not be able to get in. So I want to give you a step-by-step approach to things that I tell a lot of the students that I've coached through the admission process of how to approach it from kind of a brand new fresh perspective. So step number one, after getting over some of that disappointment at the rejections and not being able to get into medical school as you want is to really focus on unifying your application. Usually the first step and the premature step that a lot of medical students will take is to figure out what kind of things can they do to add to the application. And there's definitely some elements in time and place for this. The first thing you really need to do is to start taking inventory and understand what you already have. It may not seem like very much. It may seem like you have a long way to go compared to other individuals who've applied with you. But really the first thing you have to do is to focus on one, understand what you've had to offer on your applications, including your experiences, your research, your grades, all of the things that medical schools may want in your applications. But also, and the second part is really big, is to focus on unifying it. Really what that means is a lot of students will make the mistake that they'll try to do every volunteer experience. They'll try to do all the pre-med organizations, all the research because they think that a combination of that looks like an ideal med student or ideal med school applicant. Really it doesn't. It just makes you look like more of the individuals who are applying with you. The best thing you can do for yourself is ask what experiences have I done and which ones that I enjoy and then what experiences through volunteering, through research, through my classes, also kind of correlate with it. The great example I always give is kind of student A and student B. Student A is your typical pre-med applicant who does a major in biology and does all the typical pre-med organizations and community service projects. But student B on the other hand is somebody who has experiences based on the things that they've done because of interest. Maybe they have an interest in community service or they want to potentially work with a homeless population or a underserved population as a physician so they only look for things that are kind of related to it. Either they look for research projects or health policy projects or community service projects that are kind of around their core of interest. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to do that one day when you're in position, but it just says that this is kind of what I like to do. I'm only going to look for experiences that do this. Now obviously this is a perspective approach or hindsight's 2020 kind of approach, but you can still use it to your advantage to make your already current application a little bit more stronger. And what I mean by this is already look at the experiences you have and saying if I was to do these all over again, which ones would I actually want to do? Which ones that I enjoy? Maybe you didn't enjoy any of your community service project. That's completely fine. But maybe you really enjoyed their research because you liked the science behind it. Or you enjoyed being a teaching assistant because you really enjoyed potentially helping mentor or educate and teach other college students who are now taking the class that you've already taken. So take inventory of your current experiences and find what are the common themes that I have? What type of things that I enjoy? They're kind of shown in multiple experiences that I have already in my application. And when you start doing this, you'll realize that maybe you could potentially tie your application a little better using the same experiences. Maybe your essays can start to reflect on those themes that you now started to notice in your experiences and your organizations and your research. And then when you have to rewrite your essays or ask for recommendation letters, you can tell your letter writers and your personal statements to potentially include those common themes. Now when admission boards get your application, it may be the exact same thing, but it's just kind of nicely packaged in a way. If somebody who's interested in working with somebody who's underserved or working in a research-based scientific academic kind of setting as a future cardiologist or a future surgeon, there's just so much of a better picture that an admission board can say that this is probably going to be an amazing physician who is interested in this specific area. And that is a great kind of thing to have the admission boards already be able to label you compared this is a typical pre-med student or pre-med applicant. I can't tell what's interesting about them and since they're kind of average, it's very easy to forget you. So if you can already package your current application with just a much prettier bow, you're already putting yourself ahead of curve before you even get into step number two. Now step number two is once you're able to find the common theme or what I like to call your angle for your med school applications, then you can find the missing holes. You know, ask yourself like what are the red flags, first of all, is it my grades? Is it the lack of research? Is it the lack of, you know, I know I really enjoy working with underserved, but I realize I don't really have very much on my application to reflect that. Then you can go ahead and ask yourself what can I do and during this year, this gap year to really kind of highlight that. So then I can say I'm doing experience that then I can talk about in my personal statements and ideally my interviews. And I can say from personal experience because I took a gap year purposefully and I worked with kids with autism. That was kind of a job that I kind of fell into. At that time, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, pediatrics or something else, but I was able to use that job and experience from one realized that I really enjoyed working one-on-one with individuals in their family. And I was able to talk about that in my personal statements as well as in my interview. Now, by no means am I a pediatrician. I'm actually internal medicine, but that just goes to show you that experiences don't have to commit you to a forward specialty. In fact, at that time, I was just saying, I'm pretty sure that as a physician, I would want to work one-on-one with people and have continuity care with them and their family. I was able to find a job that potentially was able to help me understand it. Do I really or do I not? And thankfully, I found out that I do. And I was able to use that and talk about it in my personal statements and my interviews. So find the missing holes after you find your common theme. So then you can have a more cohesive application versus trying to just find more experiences to add to an application that's not really cohesive or well put together. Now step number three is a little bit advanced and it's based on your comfort level, but you could potentially even contact the schools that you're actually interested in getting into and saying, one, could they potentially give you more specifics of what kind of things that they've seen in general for students who have been reapplicants either once or multiple times? Maybe they've been able to see a commitment to academics and improving your grades or maybe they've seen a year of people who have done more research because then you can kind of see the common themes of all the answers of the schools who do respond. You know, if you have four schools really in mind, three of the four tell you, you know, we really love students who do research and commit to research in the field they may be interested in. That kind of shows you that maybe this is what you should be doing in a field again that you're interested in. So instead of just planning blindly, you could potentially even just go to the sources for the people who made it one day, give you that acceptance letter that you currently want and just say, what kind of things do you guys look for? Potentially ask if they can put you in contact with some of their medical students who have applied multiple times and if they're, you know, forthcoming and honest and truthful, then they may be able to tell you kind of things to do and things not to do. Now, while I haven't applied to medical school twice myself, a common question I do give for running this channel and MD journey is, should I do an advanced degree like a master's in public health or a master's in science? And really the question is, does it really contribute to your end goal at all? Or can you do something more cohesive or more productive to again help your overall story? Imagine if you're writing your biography at the age of 30, when you potentially finish residency or at 35, let's just say 35, you know, is that master's really going to say like this, this push the needle forward in one direction or another? The answer is no, then I would say maybe use that year to redo your application and use it for something who could potentially say, well, during this year, I was able to work with the underserved population and look now I'm working as a public health advocate. And this was like a great experience to get that like ignition started on that interest. So make sure you can kind of forward the story. You may not know what the ending may be, just make sure that maybe able to push the ball a little bit down. So typical form may seem a little bit generic. And so that's why I left it to the end is definitely apply more broadly than you did the first time, you know, your first go around your first several go arounds you may have had expectations of what schools may have taken you and been, you know, disappointed after the interviews or before the interviews of not getting acceptance. So it's obviously okay to apply to them as long as you use number tip number three to get an idea of what kind of things they look for, but also ask yourself like, have you applied to deal with schools if you haven't potentially Caribbean schools? Or is there other different programs you haven't considered in different parts of the country that are parts of the world that may still help you get to the ultimate goal of being a physician? Now to avoid making this video long, if you guys do want more tips and advice on helping you on your criminal journey, one, you can check out a few of the resources, including my 99 cent Kindle ebook on Amazon as well as just kind of dropping your comments down below. Or if you want to send me a kind of a personal question, you can go ahead and send me a DM on the MD journey or send me an email at the MD journey.com at gmail.com. I'd be happy to help you. But I'll link down below a few resources, including some of our books and courses that I have that you guys can check out in case you want a step by step advice and obviously feel free to reach me in the comment section or through Instagram or through email, whatever your preference. But if you made it through the end of the video guys, thank you first of all so much. Make sure you hit that like and subscribe button. It just one helps the channel help support me, but also just tells me that you enjoy this kind of content and tells me to continue to make more. But with that being said guys, thank you so much for watching to the very end. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on your journey. Thanks for being a part of mine. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.