Princeton Review - Anatomy of Medical School Admissions: Need-to-Know Information about Getting into Med School, the MCAT, and What it Takes to Be a Doctor

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All Rights Reserved. Published in the United States by Random House LLC, New York, a Penguin Random House Company, and in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House Companies.

This book comprises excerpts from Planning a Life in Medicine: Discover if a Medical Career is Right for You and Learn How to Make It Happen, by John Smart, M.S., Stephen L. Nelson, Jr., M.D. Ph.D., and Julie Doherty. Updated by Don Osborne. Copyright 2005 by TPR Education IP Holdings, LLC, published by Random House LLC as a trade paperback in 2005.

MCAT is a registered trademark of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), which is not affiliated with The Princeton Review.

The Princeton Review is not affiliated with Princeton University.

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eISBN: 978-0-8041-2523-9

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Pursuing a life in medicine is a major commitment: are you sure youve got what it takes to be successful in this field? Weve created this book to help you understand what choosing to become a doctor might mean for you, both now and over the next few years.

Doctors are lifelong learners. To become a doctor, you will need to develop superior study skills to help you through tough premedical courses, medical school, residency, continuing education, and recertification courses for the rest of your career.

This section outlines the keys to developing the mindset of a lifelong learner. If you read and consider this advice, you will greatly strengthen your personal study techniques.

Thinking and Acting Like a Medical Student

There are nine components to thinking and acting like a medical student. They are

1. Commitments: Recognizing your long-term, deep motivations to learn

2. Time Management: Creating a regular time structure for studying

3. Compartmentalization: Achieving simplicity and specialization of learning through structured planning and execution of goals

4. Rewards and Reflections: Evaluation and positive reinforcement of learning behavior

5. Concentration: Improving awareness, understanding, and intake of new information

6. Emotion: Remaining emotionally receptive and maintaining a balanced perspective on the studying process

7. Repetition and Cognitive Maps: Improving retention and recall of new information

8. Testing: Efficiently integrating and demonstrating knowledge of learned information

9. Mantras: Brief instructive sayings that remind you of your commitments and attitudes, and the strategies you use to keep them

We will review each of these nine in turn. No matter how accomplished a student you may already be, our experience has shown that you will learn some new information in at least one of the areas discussed in the coming pages. So consider them carefully, and ask yourself whether your premedical study engine is firing on all nine cylinders. If not, we hope you will be motivated to test for yourself what we advise here, adapting and adopting what works.

While it may seem all too obvious, reflect for a moment on the fact that the first key to truly effective studying seems to be the ability to make and keep commitments, both to yourself and to others. Read biographies of your own role models. Successful people always experience lucky breaks to get to their place in life, but as many famous achievers have said (Vince Lombardi, Ben Hogan), Luck is the residue of hard work. Or as Louis Pasteur put it, Chance favors the prepared mind. Those who know what they are committed to, know which lucky breaks are worth pursuing, and which are diversions of their precious time, energy, and resources. Winners commit themselves to excellence in a specific area, honing the skills and acquiring the knowledge relevant to their specialization. Future doctors must also maintain a strong and at times single-minded commitment to their long-term goals. To be a truly good student, whether preparing for the MCAT, writing a paper, or studying for a bio test, try to always keep your ultimate goals in mind. A good study system recognizes the value of commitments, both small and large. You must respect yourself enough to make the commitment to studying because it is primarily through effective studying that you will become a physician.

Before you can take the first step, you need to define your goals and decide how you plan to achieve them. Get out a sheet of paper and begin to write down everything that you expect from yourself. After each goal, write a sentence or two about why it is important to you and what steps it will take to reach that goal. Keep returning to questions like these: Why do you want to be a doctor? How much time are you willing to devote to the process? What results are you working toward? What past priorities are you now giving up? Start with your commitments to your education and your future profession, then add others, such as family, relationships, and finances.

After you have defined your goals and made a commitment to pursue them, strive to keep your commitments in mind. What does in mind mean? Many cognitive scientists believe that most of our waking life is spent operating in less-than-conscious states of mind, carrying out lots of mostly unconscious behavior patterns and rituals, punctuated by only a few minutes each day of truly conscious reflection and action. It is in these moments that we evaluate and choose to begin or stop any path of behavior. The rest of the time we may spend mechanically going through the motions until a chosen process is complete. The more regularly you can draw your consciousness back to the greater picture, to watch yourself as you execute even your habits, the greater your resolve and the more intentional and effective your lifes thoughts and actions will be.

How many times have you thought that there just arent enough hours in the day? While that may be true for busy premeds, you need to learn to make the most of the time you do have. If you dont procrastinate, if you manage your schedule well, if you make the most of your studying hours, and if you are careful to keep up with your major commitments, you will have the time you need to get through each day. Though you may have to force yourself to adopt a few new habits, good time management will allow you to