How to get into medical school

Understand the requirements to be a doctor 

Make sure you understand what being a doctor means for you and your life. Read newspaper articles, online pieces, and get hold of any other forms of media that can give you an insight. Once you are completely sure that medicine is the right career for you, you can start thinking about your application.

At school age, it is very easy to forget the importance of exams such as GCSEs, A levels, international baccalaureate and so on. Preparing for the medical school application process begins as early as high school. The grades you achieve in homework, projects, coursework, and examinations during this period will form an enormous component of whether you get a place to study medicine. One should not take their knowledge for granted, as examinations can always go worse than we expect. Preparation through studying and taking practice exams seriously is one way to help ensure success in exams.

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You'll also need to gather information about the universities you'd like to apply to. You should understand the basic structure of their curricula, their teaching and examination formats, and any distinct features of the course. For example, if they have cadaveric dissection as part of their syllabus, or whether they offer the opportunity to complete student projects.

If your application is strong, it is likely that you will be invited for an interview. In it, you will almost certainly be asked about why you have applied to this particular university, why you want to attend it over others, and why being a doctor is important to you. 

Undertake work experience in a medical setting

Another way to find out whether medicine is the right course for you is to gain work experience in some sort of medical environment, and seize the opportunity to observe the way doctors communicate with patients and other staff. Work experience in a medical setting is also a requirement for your medical school application. 

Work experience in a hospital gives you the opportunity to see medicine practiced in its classical form. You will see all grades of doctors working as a team, as well as the way they interact with other professions. Work experience in a clinic or at a general practitioner’s office is also potentially useful, as you'll be able to observe appropriate methods of medical communication. However, it offers little in the way of demonstrating multidisciplinary teamwork experience.

Try and get a taste of a range of medical environments before applying to medical school. Hospices, hospitals, community clinics, and nursing homes are all useful places to gain experience.

Apart from working in a medical institution, it is also advisable to take the time to speak to somebody in the medical profession, and get their views on what their career has meant for them.

Hands-on experience will definitely help you to compile a competitive application. If you do not know what being a doctor actually involves, it will be difficult to make your application convincing.

Academic requirements

In order to get into medical school, you obviously need to be of a certain intelligence. You don’t need to be an Einstein, but you do need to be getting straight A grades or close to straight A grades. This will make your medical school application a lot easier. This isn't to say that unless you are top of your class medicine isn’t for you, but the more you are struggling with school academic work, and the lower your grades, the more difficult it will be for you to get a place to study medicine.

Some universities may prefer candidates with a certain set of results. Do not apply to these institutions if you do not have the required grades. It will waste both your time and theirs. Be pragmatic. The aim when applying to medical school is not to win a place at a prestigious university. The aim is to win a place to study medicine. Make that your objective.

Extracurricular requirements

Take the time to volunteer at a nursing home or charity shop, or have a part-time job. These activities will show that you are capable of managing more than just an academic career, and also that you have a genuine interest in caring for people. If this is a long-term activity, it will bolster your integrity and may give you an edge in your medical school application. 

Playing sports or being involved in any kind of team activity is also beneficial for your medical school application as it highlights your ability to manage a work/life balance. Medical schools will be looking preferentially for candidates who have demonstrated a clear ability to balance their lives between work and extracurricular activities. The stresses of being a doctor are much more difficult to handle when you have nothing to balance it. Examples of extracurricular activites include playing sports, playing a musical instrument, or even an artistic pursuit like painting or sculpting.  

However, be careful in your choices. One of the favorite questions of a committee is about extracurricular activities, it can be during the application process or during the interview. For instance, if surfing is your favorite activity as well as how you unwind and stay healthy, why would you want to relocate to a medical school in a mountainous area with no access to the ocean? In contrast, the candidate who bikes or runs seems more transplantable. You might think, "well I will just give up surfing for 4+ years", but the deciding committee knows better. They want you to be the right fit and be happy in their program. These are some thoughts to consider when sharing your favorite extracurricular activities.

Personal statement

The medical school personal statement or reflective essay is a core element of most applications and thus should be a showpiece of what you have to offer as an applicant. You need to highlight your qualities, and what makes you a valuable addition to the university.

You must focus on why you would be a great student, and why you should get a place. A lot of candidates become overly focused on why they want to study medicine, or what medicine involves. Don’t make this mistake. Be confident and write about what it is about you that makes you deserving of a place. If you write about an experience, it is important to emphasize what you gained from it and not to retell the story in extensive detail. The university will be interested in what you learnt from each of these experiences and how it relates to being a doctor, but not in which hospital you were, or what you spent every second of the experience doing. 

After completing your personal statement, you must read and reread it many times. Do not send in a statement with spelling errors, or other silly mistakes. Some universities have stated that they throw applications with spelling errors directly into the bin!