The idea of having to reapply to medical school may feel like one of the lowest lows for premedical students. But if you find yourself in this situation, take a deep breath and remember that thousands of applicants who had to reapply to med school are now pursuing their dream of practicing medicine.
With honest self-reflection, you will be able to chart a path forward, determine if medicine is truly right for you and improve your application to maximize your chances of admission the second time around. In so doing, a few steps are worth considering.
Step 1: Consider Why Your Application Was Unsuccessful
The successful med school reapplicant must understand what went wrong with the first application. A constructive exercise is listing reasons why your application might have been unsuccessful and planning strategies to address identified deficiencies.
A second set of objective eyes, and maybe a third and fourth, can be hugely helpful in identifying areas of weakness. Ask family and friends that know you, but also ask qualified folk who know the intricacies of medical school applications. Think doctors, professors, premed advisers, etc.
[READ: 6 Questions to Ask Your Premed Adviser]
Certain medical schools may even provide targeted feedback for individual applications and can be helpful sources of information with suggestions for improvement. Be mindful that while some schools are open to this, others expressly forbid this practice. Always research each school individually before contacting them.
Step 2: Assess if You Need to Improve Your Academic Record
In most cases, a weaker academic record is the main reason for a med school rejection. Among applicants to U.S. M.D-granting schools with an MCAT score between 502-505 and a cumulative GPA of 3.4-3.59, only 26.1% were accepted from 2020-2021 through 2022-2023, according to the Association of American Medical Colleges. You can check acceptance rates for your own stats using AAMC’s FACTS table A-23.
Before you reapply, research each school you applied to and/or would like to reapply to and list their average GPA and MCAT scores in an Excel sheet. AAMC’s MSAR database is helpful. Honest self-reflection is especially crucial here. If you fall below the average of each school you applied to, and particularly if you fall below the lower quartile of schools (if they publish that information), this is likely the culprit.
If your MCAT falls in the lower range for a school, an improved score is likely to be your best bet at a successful reapplication. If your GPA is the culprit, enrolling in a postbaccalaureate program or a master’s program to demonstrate your academic abilities can significantly help. If you plan to reapply with low numbers, you will need something else very compelling about you to make admissions committees consider inviting you to interview.
[See: Anatomy of a Successful Medical School Resume.]
Your GPA and MCAT statistics do not define you, your worth or your ability to become an outstanding physician. However, with many more applicants than available seats, medical schools use these figures to narrow down applications. Quickly reapplying without addressing a weak academic record is unlikely to be successful and frequently results in loss of a year and a significant financial burden.
Step 3: Write a New and Improved Personal Statement
The personal statement is a rare opportunity to demonstrate to admissions committees that you are a strong candidate beyond the numbers. Make yourself truly jump off the page and separate your application from your competitors.
Committees will know that you didn’t receive an acceptance the first time; don’t hide it. Instead, acknowledge this reality. Demonstrate how you have improved from the experience, how your application reflects improvement and how motivated you are to continue pursuing medicine. If you plan to do a full rewrite, don’t neglect prior areas of strength in your old essay.
Step 4: Assess if Extracurricular Components Are Missing From Your Application
At times, applicants don’t have enough experience in patient-facing activities to demonstrate convincingly to committees that they know what medicine is really like. This could happen if applicants switched to premed late in their college years and applied soon after switching, or if an applicant focused solely on academic efforts and didn’t spend enough time getting meaningful exposure to clinical medicine through volunteering, working in a hospital, shadowing or clinical research.
[Read: Physician or Doctor Shadowing — What Medical School Applicants Should Know]
Experience in the clinical realm can solidify your decision to pursue medicine, reassure admissions committees that you know what you are getting into and serve as a source of meaningful content for a stronger personal statement.
Step 5: Perfect Your Interview Technique and Talking Points
The interview is your last opportunity to demonstrate to medical schools that their upcoming class is better with you in it — that you offer unique experiences, viewpoints and abilities and that you will represent their school well as an alumnus. If you received multiple interviews but no acceptances your first time applying, it is especially crucial to focus on interview skills and reflect honestly on what may have deterred committees from offering you a spot.
After submitting your primary and secondary applications, interview preparation should be your primary focus. Practice, practice, practice! Do multiple mock interviews with medical professionals, professors, advisers or anyone experienced in interviewing students who can provide specific feedback.
Practice answering each kind of potential interview question: behavioral, research, ethics, personal application questions, etc. With each type of question, know how you will draw on experiences or events in your life to answer and how you will highlight strong points of your application to the interviewer in your answer.
If there are weak points in your application, know that these will frequently be brought up by interviewers. In preparing for your interviews, there is a careful balance — you do not want your answers to sound so smooth that they sound rehearsed, but you want to practice so that you can confidently and clearly articulate your ideas.
Planning for reapplication to medical school may seem daunting, but as you begin to implement your plan you will likely find that it’s not as overwhelming as it seems. Rushing to reapply in the next admissions cycle without improving your application will likely produce the same result as the first time.
Deferring enrollment for more than a year is a challenging thought, but in many cases it may be the most efficient path to a med school acceptance and a rewarding career in medicine.
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Reapplying to Medical School: What to Know and Do originally appeared on usnews.com
