 Welcome back to the channel, everybody. For those of you who are new around here, my name is Michael, aka Dr. Chleney, and I'm an interventional radiologist in New York City. On today's video, we're going to be talking about everything you need to know about menstrual applications, and also do a deep dive on a lesser talked about topic of those menstrual applications, the secondaries. As always, I partner with my good friends over at MotivateMD on this video because they help pre-meds for a living, and they are the most up to date on the menstrual applications. Also, if you don't know what secondaries are, stay tuned because you're about to learn everything you need to know. Let's go. All right, so let's go ahead and get into the painful process, also known as the med school application. First, let's start at the beginning with the pre-medical prerequisites required to get into medical school. The classic or core pre-medical school prerequisite courses that you need to take in order to get into medical school and start your med school application are biology, general chemistry, organic chemistry, and physics. Now, if you are a pre-med major, you may take many more courses than this, or many more science related courses like biochemistry or genetics, but these are the classic pre-medical school or prerequisite courses that you're required to take. As you may know by now, I was an economics major, and I had to go back as a non-traditional student to take all these pre-medical school prerequisite courses as a non-trad, and I did them all in about three or so semesters, just crank them out. So you either have the opportunity to do these courses while you're in undergrad, or you can do them later, like I did. So after you completed all these pre-medical school prerequisites courses, the next thing is the dreaded MCAT. MCAT stands for medical college admission tests, which tells you everything you need to know about it. It's basically a huge exam that you have to do really well on to get into med school. That's it. The exam itself is about seven hours and 30 minutes, which is pretty long, but if you've been in medicine for a long time now, like me, that's pretty much average for these big tests, and I've taken many, many of them. The average time spent studying for that MCAT is about 12 weeks, and during those 12 weeks, you spend about 20 hours per week of dedicated study time. So basically it's like a part-time job. When I talk to MotivateMD about this topic, they recommend you spend about 50% of your study time doing practice questions, and I totally agree with that. It's oftentimes difficult and challenging to get into these harder question types, so the more questions you do, the better you'll perform. One thing you need to know is that the med schools you apply to will see all of your MCATs that you took, so if you took the MCAT one time, did poorly, took it again, did really well, they'll see both of those scores, and you can't pick and choose which one to send them. I recommend you check out the AMC website regarding all things MCAT because this test changes all the time. I remember taking this thing and feeling defeated and not happy with my score, but now I look back a decade later, and it's not that bad compared to all of the other board exams I've taken over the past decade. Next, we have the application process, which is the meat of this video, which I want to get into and spend a little more time on. What's included in the primary application? Well, I'm glad you asked. The primary application includes the personal statement and common-asked essay questions. I did an entire video with MotivateMD on the personal statement, and if you haven't seen that video, I highly recommend you click it after this video, of course, but I'll link it up here. I'll briefly touch on the personal statement here, but I'm not going to go too far in depth because I already did a video on it. The goal of the personal statement is to convince the admissions committee your worth as an applicant. MotivateMD and myself feel that your personal statement should revolve around two core questions. One, why you want to be a physician, and two, why you'll be a great physician. Again, I'm not going to go too much into depth, but I just want to talk about that briefly, and you can watch the whole thing on my other video. The next part about the primary application is the activity section. You may be asking yourself, Michael, what activities can I list on my application? The answer is anything. Each application has about 10 plus ways to characterize your activities. Do you need to fill out all 15 spaces of work and activities in that section? Of course not. It's quality over quantity. Choose experiences that really resonate with you and those that you're comfortable expanding on if you were asked about them on your interview day. When writing your activity descriptions, ask yourself one of the following questions. What did you do in this activity? What was the impact of this activity on you or others? And what is the relation of this activity in your future career in medicine? Depending on the application system, you may be able to designate these activities and which ones are important or more important than others. Just like the personal statement, it's important to get quality feedback on these activities, which you're in luck because MotivateMD also does that. All right, so now it's time to talk about the lesser talks about subject on the application and that is the secondary application. A lot of people don't even know what that is, so that's why I wanted to touch a little bit more on this topic. So for those of you who don't know, you send your primary application and then if they like you enough, they'll send you a secondary application, which is basically just another application. I guess one isn't enough. So these will be sent to you after you submit your primary application. Secondaries can be composed of yes or no questions, short responses to prompts, or even full on essays. Some of the most common essay prompts include the following. Why this school? Adversity essay in which you describe a significant challenge in your life and how you overcame it, and what you learned in this experience. A diversity essay talking about how you would add diversity to the school, how you contribute to the med school, your future goals. They may ask you to explain academic lapses or breaks that you took, or if you're applying to your school, they may ask you, why DO? And I know you all are wondering, do these secondary applications cost you money? And the answer is, of course they do. There's no such thing as a free application when it comes to medicine. These applications usually average around $100 per application. So yes, it's an additional fee on top of the previous application fee that you already paid, and you may get a ton of these from different schools depending on how strong of an applicant you are. So you may notice that the cost tends to add up a little bit. And as far as turnaround on these applications go, you want to submit these within two weeks of getting them. So now another question we have is, are these secondaries important, or are they more important than the primary application? And the answer is yes, because every part of your application is just as important as the next. Think of secondaries as a final shot to make your first impression before you get chosen for an interview. There's a strategy for writing these secondary essays, just like there's a strategy for taking the MCAT or writing your personal statement. And don't worry, because if you're feeling overwhelmed or stressed out about the importance of these secondaries, motivate MD, of course, as you're covered. They are always here to help you and help you take the pressure off. They view the admissions process from the student perspective. And because of this, they have identified the patterns that make certain students competitive and memorable. They also have a ton of editors that have been on the admissions committee of their respective school. Motivate MD has also gone around to a ton of different medical school admissions committees and asked them what they look for in an essay and what makes a good essay. Motivate MD has a diverse team made up of 40 plus different med students and doctors from across the countries from various different backgrounds and experiences. Chances are Motivate MD also has editors from programs that you are filling out secondaries for, which is critical because they can give you valuable insight that you wouldn't get anywhere else. Their team is here to guide you through every step of the application process, including primary and secondary applications. And the best part about Motivate MD is that it is actually affordable. They are committed to providing superior essay review services that are at prices you can actually afford. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. And let's not forget Becca, the director of operations over at Motivate MD who is phenomenal. I've known Becca for about the three years that we've been working together and she is amazing, like literally amazing. I can't express that enough. I'll put her number on the screen right here and also leave it in the description box. Feel free to call or text her anytime if you have any questions. If you choose to work with Becca, I promise you she'll always be available to help you out whenever you need her. Alright, now you know everything there is to know about the med school application, including the secondaries. So that is pretty much it. Hope you all learned something and hope now you know what everything there is to know about the med school applications, including the secondaries, which are very important as well. Thanks again to Motivate MD for helping out with this video and sponsoring today's video. I love Motivate MD and everybody over there so much, which is why I keep working with them. They are an amazing group of people and have helped so many future doctors. It's kind of crazy. I always leave emails from Becca, the director of operations, who always tells me how many people find out about Motivate MD and have gotten into med school after just watching my videos when I talk about them and it always makes me feel good and reminds me what I'm doing is actually helping people and I love that. So I will work with Motivate MD whenever they want to. So make sure you go check them out because I promise it is worth your time. On that note, that's officially end of this video. Make sure you smash like, subscribe button, follow my Instagram and TikTok if you don't already and I'll see you all on the next video. Peace.