 So how hard is it to really get into medical school? What stats you need? What are the acceptance rates? What are the grades you want? As well as what are the things you should be doing to increase your chances? We're going to get to all of those in this video. Let's get to it. All right guys, what is going on? Welcome to the AMD journey. My name is Lux. I'm the first year in total medicine resident helping people just like you on their medical journey succeed with less stress. Today we are talking about how hard it really is to get into medical school and break down the numbers as well as things you should be doing now, as well as in the future to make sure your chances are as high as possible so you can get coveted and DDO, whatever it may be for you. Before we get started, I would definitely appreciate your support by first hitting that like button and also considering hitting that subscribe button for videos just like this on a weekly basis. If you're a pre-med trying to get into medical school at the very end, I'll talk about a resource that can help you go from point A to point B and get that coveted acceptance. Let's start talking about how hard it truly is to get into medical school and let's start diving into the numbers. Number one is kind of what the acceptance rate of getting into medical school is. If 100 people applied, how likely is the chances for you to get accepted? Now, obviously this depends on both institution as well as the type of medical school you're applying to. These are institutions that are likely going to have a lower acceptance rate as close to anywhere from 3 to 5 percent so 100 people apply only 3 to 5 will unfortunately get accepted and the average for allopathic or MD institutions around the United States is honestly not too far from that probably a little bit higher towards the 5 to 7 percent. And then if you're looking at other types of medical school such as a DO school, which is for doctors of osteopathic medicine, which is also a physician, the acceptance rates goes up a little bit closer to probably 6 to 8 upwards to about 10 percent depending on institution. And then finally, you also have institutions that are in the Caribbean, that are international and those acceptance rates will be a lot higher depending on areas you're looking for. So with that being said, it really just means that the numbers vary. You can be in a really competitive market if you're just applying for an MD school in the United States, but if you're keeping your options a little broad and you're considering both DO as well as Caribbean schools, you definitely do have a good chance of getting into med school as long as other things are taken care of, which we'll touch upon in this video. And then quickly I want to talk about some of the other numbers such as the MCAT as well as your GPA and these numbers will fluctuate and likely kind of level up every single year as people become more and more adept at taking the exam. In regards to your MCAT, usually the average MCAT for somebody who gets accepted into medical school is about a 510 to a 511 and obviously people getting into Ivy League med schools are going to be even higher in that 516 range and obviously there are going to be people who don't get the average score that may still be able to get into medical school because of the extracurriculars as well as their GPAs. Speaking of GPAs, usually the average that I would say that's kind of been consistent even when I was applying medical school is about a 3.7, 3.8. If you have that kind of number on your GPA, then I think you'll be pretty safe. The main thing in this video that I wanted to talk about is while we understand that the numbers fluctuate anywhere from 5 to 10% acceptance rate, I really wanted to help you understand how to improve your chances. So I want to give you a few tips. So tip number one is to just be more thoughtful of your takeaways and experiences. It doesn't matter how big of an experience you have, whether it's a huge community service project or something that's just like a one-time instance such as shadowing a physician, get in the habit of asking yourself what did I take away from this experience and ideally start to kind of have a running list, almost like a resume, but just for you of saying I did this experience and these were my takeaways. But in the future, you can continue to add to your takeaways as you reflect on experience. But the thing that's going to help you here is when you have to do your application and your interviews, you sound like somebody who's been more thoughtful about what you've encountered instead of being somebody who seems to be doing the same kind of organizations and community service and shadowing that everyone else is doing. And to be honest, your application may look the same in terms of experiences. If you take that extra step and start to do more insightful kind of takeaways of each experience, regardless of how big or small they were, you're going to be able to make your application as well as your interview stand out. Now tip number two is a little bit of a continuation of a first step and that's to show some effort in research, community service as well as shadowing. I know there's always a question of what kind of things that I'd be doing in college to get into medical school. Should I be doing a little bit of everything? And usually I stray on the side of saying I would do less and make sure the quality is better than do more and try to look like somebody who's been more of a superficial pre-med. But in this situation, I do recommend that you at least get your feet wet in things such as research as well as community service and also shadowing because then if somebody asks you a question on an interview or on your application, what experiences do you have doing research? Maybe the institution you're applying to get into medical school really values that in their applicants. So if you've done some kind of exposure, maybe you'll be able to speak about it even if you don't have a publication or an abstract, you don't necessarily need to have a result. It's more of the effort that went in. And if later you decide that your research or community service aren't the things that you're really interested in, you can take them off your plate but at least you've shown some effort. And if you use the first tip then you can at least have some takeaways of what you made of each of those experiences. And now tip number three is really huge. I realize now as a physician is to really educate yourself about the field you're going into. Now that doesn't mean that you need to go ahead and grab a medical textbook and start learning how to manage diseases or learn your anatomy. That's not what I mean at all. Instead, you can grab books written by physicians through their experiences to really understand what it feels like to be in the shoes of a doctor. You can go ahead and watch YouTube channels from people who are physicians if you haven't subscribed. Hit that. Just get an insight of what it's like to be a medical student and what it's like to become an actual practicing provider. And if books aren't your thing then things such as podcasts, as well as learning about things such as health policy and just understanding what's happening in the environment, the community of health care is super important because one, it'll help you understand do I really want to do this in the future? And two, you can have a very intellectual conversation without seeming like you're forcing it on your interviews as well as your applications. And the last tip to understand to really boost up your acceptance rate of getting into medical school is to understand that it's important to work on your communication skills, your people skills, your interview skills because it doesn't matter how amazing you are on paper, you could have an amazing MCAT, amazing GPA, amazing research experience. But if you can't talk to people in a normal kind of environment then you may not be able to talk to patients on a stressful environment and that can really impact how your interviewer sees you as a future physician interacting with patients and their families and if you can't do that, you may not get accepted. So make sure you're working on the skills to understand how to limit the ums and the o's and also keeping your thoughts concrete as well as insightful. That guy is basically a breakdown of how hard it is to get into medical school including the numbers as well as tips to increase that acceptance rate to get that coveted doctor before your name and then those two letters afterwards. Before we end the video, if you are a pre-med, you're interested in getting into medical school and you need a little help then a few resources I'll link down below. One is simply Kindle book that's 99 cents on Amazon that you guys can check out called The Pre-Med Journey which basically takes you from step one all the way to getting accepted as well as if you need a little bit more hand-holding and a little bit more direction on how to study how to apply to medical school, how to take the MCAT and things of that sort. Then we have a full course for pre-med students at the MD Journey called The Pre-Med Blueprint which you guys can also check out down below. That's basically it for this video. Hopefully you guys enjoyed it. Thanks so much for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I've been a little help to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.