Oftentimes, when students are interested in applying for BS/MD programs in their senior year, they may be disappointed in their lack of preparation for this process throughout their high school career, discovering too late into their high school career what they needed to do to be a strong contender for these competitive programs. In order to be proactive with your high school premed timeline, here are different actions you should take each year of your high school career to increase your odds of having a successful BS/MD admissions program outcome, each of which are bits of information I wish I knew or I did know and kept in mind throughout the application process.
Steps to Take Each Year of High School to get into BS/MD programs
High School Premed Timeline – Freshman Year:
- Reflect on why exactly you want to do medicine. A common answer to why people want to be a medical doctor is because they want to “help others.” Yet, lawyers, engineers, NGO workers, volunteers and many more professions help other people. The question is: why do you want to help people through medicine? We want to push you further: then why not consider being a nurse, physician assistant, nurse practitioner, or a scientist developing therapeutics? These professors are all valuable ways to contribute to the medical field, and oftentimes this stumps people. You must have a genuine reason for wanting to become a physician, one that goes beyond familial pressure or hopes to make a lot of money. Search for that reason within yourself.
If you want insights as to why doctors are different than other healthcare professionals, please read our blog post here: Why Medicine and Why do I want to be a Doctor?
- Understand the commitment of what BS/MD program entails. Why specifically do you want to enter medicine through the BS/MD route? Why do you want to commit to medical school early through a BS MD program rather than applying the traditional route (4-year university + medical school). Are you ready to spend 6-8 years of your life in one place? How are you sure that you want to commit to an MD at such a young age? Remember that these decisions should not be made lightly, but begin asking yourself these questions and continue to do so throughout your high school career.
- Develop strong study skills. Developing strong study skills will be important for the rest of your career; as a future doctor, you will be constantly studying through tough academic classes and taking science and medical exams for years to come. Starting freshman year of high school, start developing your study skills and effective study techniques. For example, do you memorize better with flash cards? Do you need to outline key points from your books?
- Volunteer at a hospital if possible. Volunteer opportunities at hospitals can give you an insight to the clinical setting of medicine and can be one consistent way to verify that being in the field of healthcare is something that you want to do and can handle. Also learning to give your time to help others is a skill that will remain useful and valuable throughout your high school career.
- Researching BS/MD programs. Understand what these programs are and the types of programs you want to apply to. There are programs that vary in duration and requirements (for instance, some programs still require you to take the MCAT). Having an understanding of what is available can help shape your goals.
[Read more: How to Choose BS MD Programs ]
- Do activities you enjoy. This is your first year of high school! Start exploring things that interest you, and these do not just have to be medical activities. This can be anything from a medical club to bird watching club!
High School Premed Timeline – Sophomore Year:
- Narrow extracurriculars. Now that you have explored your first year, start solidifying extracurriculars you are deeply interested in because soon you can become a leader in them. We suggest having at least one extracurricular activity that is related to medicine.
- Continue exploring various clinical experiences. Having clinical experience throughout high school is important to show BS MD programs that you have explored this career path thoroughly and that you are interested in becoming a physician. When you explore clinical experiences, you should ask yourself, “Why do I want to be a doctor rather than a physician assistant or a nurse or a physical therapist?” Additionally, you can start exploring what type of physician you are interested in becoming. Did you want to be more like a surgeon who works in the operating room conducting surgeries OR do you like to talk to patients all day and want to pursue fields in primary care?
- Keep academics high. Freshman year may be a time of figuring things out, but your sophomore year is when you may begin to take advanced classes, which means it can really be your time to excel academically. Challenge yourself academically by taking Honors, AP, and IB classes offered in your high school. One common misconception among BS MD applicants is that they think they need to take ALL or as many APs at their high schools. That is not correct. Again, colleges and BS MD admissions committees are looking to see if you challenged yourself. BS MD admissions also want to see how prepared you are for rigorous science courses. So, if you decided to not take AP Human Geography during one of your high school years, that is okay!
Begin preparing for standardized tests. Test scores are not everything, but they can boost your application especially for BS/MD programs. Consistent SAT or ACT prep starting in tenth grade will prepare you for these tests.
So, what are good standardized test scores? We typically advise students who are applying to competitive 4-year universities or BS MD programs to aim for at least a 1500 on their SATs with mostly 4’s and 5’s on AP tests. Obviously, the higher the better.
- Begin seeking out research opportunities in areas you are interested in. There are certain summer high school research programs that begin accepting applications for juniors and seniors that can serve to bring you a new perspective into the field of academic medicine. These programs can also boost your own college applications and your resume.
- Meet with your college/guidance counselor if possible to discuss plans. Meeting with your counselor to plan out your courses for the next two years and just listing your college application ideas can help you remain proactive and give insight on your goals from a new perspective.
Your guidance counselor will also be writing you a letter of recommendation for colleges, so it’s good to get to know him or her early in your high school career! They will be able to discuss your interests and how you’ve grown over time.
High School Premed Timeline – Junior Year:
- Get to know your teachers. For your college applications, you will need at least two junior or senior year teachers to write you a letter of recommendation for the college application process. They will talk about your academic strengths and also your personal qualities. For example, did you struggle to understand physics concepts but work hard by staying after school to understand additional problems? In college and medical school, you will need STRONG letters of recommendations from professors to apply to the next stage of your career. In order to receive strong letters of rec, you will need to establish strong and frequent relationships with professors.
- Create a resume. Having a resume in hand can help secure more professional opportunities, such as research positions. Additionally, submitting a resume through your Common Application can help highlight to various medical admissions committees more about yourself that cannot be said in the extracurricular section.
[ Read more: How to Create a Premed Resume ]
- Over the summer, begin brainstorming essay topics for Why Medicine and your college personal statement narrative. The To apply to BS/MD programs, you will still have to fill out the Common Application (primary application for college) . Take a look at the primary application’s personal statement prompts and start brainstorming your narrative. Additionally, ‘Why Medicine/why this program’ prompt will appear for almost all programs, so understanding and articulating why you want to pursue medicine will be crucial. Our Cracking Med School Admissions team can help you through the entire application process with our College & BS/MD Application Packages.
- Spend your final high school summer doing something meaningful. Do not only spend the summer before your senior year stressing about college. It is also a time for you to work on a passion project in your community. For instance, think of meaningful actions you can carry out for your various communities, whether that be your school, neighborhood, or religious/ethnic community. Most high school premeds will spend this summer doing summer research programs. Many high school premeds will do research over the summer, either independently with a professor they met or through an official university sponsored / medical school sponsored summer research program.
[ Read more: High School Summer Research Internships]
- Formulate a plan B. BS/MD programs are extremely competitive to get into. If you do not get into a BS/MD program of your interest, that is okay! Many top medical schools do not have affiliated BS/MD programs or early acceptance programs. It is important to make sure you spend just as much time looking at other universities you genuinely care about that can still offer you excellent pre-medical preparation. No matter the outcome you will still have good options. This thought personally gave me a lot of comfort in the BS/MD application process.
- Begin touring college campuses. Stepping foot on a campus / area to see how you truly feel there can be instrumental in shaping what schools you ultimately end up applying and committing to. Remember you may be spending up to eight years at some of these schools, so seeing it first is very important. Start creating a list of schools you are interested in including in your college list.
- Finish requirements. Make sure you fulfill all premed requirements, BS/MD program requirements, and high school graduation requirements. Most of the time, high school students with strong academic records will have no problem with fulfilling requirements. But, for instance, some high school school districts require 2 years of physical education while others require a semester of art. BS MD programs sometimes highly encourage or require various premed requirements like biology, chemistry, and physics in high school.
Factors to Consider when Narrowing your College List
- Flexibility of curriculum and majors
- Availability of majors that interest you
- Location
- Weather
- Urban vs. suburban vs. rural
- Does the college have a college campus? (For example, NYU is spread out throughout New York City, while Columbia University has a college campus in the Upper West side of New York)
- Community of premed students
- Mentorship for premed students, including a premed advising office, specific premed mentorship
High School Premed Timeline – Senior Year:
- Start on essay writing early! Regular college applications are due in late December or early January. Do not procrastinate and write your college essays over winter break. This is a recipe for high stress and poor quality essays – there are just too many essays to write in a short period of time. Instead, when you start senior year of high school – or even the summer before senior year of high school – start brainstorming and drafting your common application personal statement and your supplemental essays. Many BS MD programs will have additional secondary applications, which means that you will have more application forms + specific BS MD essays to fill out. Think about this as filling out medical school applications in high school!
- Seek out your letters of recommendation immediately. Requests for letters pile on quickly for teachers, especially those who are popular amongst students. To ensure that you will have a recommendation letter and a strong one at that, then ask as early as possible. Additionally, ensure that you have a medical professional you can go to for a strong letter for BS/MD programs specifically, ideally a person that you would have shadowed or done research with over your high school career.
- Remain organized. Beyond BS/MD applications, senior year is a lot. You have various activities like academics, extracurriculars, senior activities, and other applications to fill out. If you are applying to scholarships, you will have even more essays and deadlines to keep track of! Having a Google Calendar or notes app to keep track of all application deadlines, interview dates, and more, can help keep you on track and prevent last minute writing.
- Finalize essays. Begin to put the finishing touches on your college essays that you will submit to these programs. Having another 1-2 people, particularly college application advisors, look at your drafts will be helpful in standing out.
Check out our college application packages and BS MD application packages!
- Interview preparation. If you made it to the point of final stages of BS/MD programs, one major part of being selected is the interview. BS/MD interviews are like combined college and medical school interviews, asking questions like “what opportunities do you want to pursue in college” and “what opportunities do you want to pursue in medical school?” The BS/MD interviews are a way for the admissions committees to gain insight into who you are, and actually put a person to the applications they’ve been reading. Having mock interviews or practicing interview questions yourself can better help prepare you for the process. We wrote an entire blog post about how to answer “Tell me about yourself – college interview” and “5 common BS MD interview questions and tips to answer them!“
- Relax. Once you’ve turned in all of your applications, give yourself a break! Everything is now out of your hands, and you’ve given it your best. You made it through a tough process and regardless of the outcome, find time for yourself to decompress and enjoy your last few weeks of high school. The outcome of this process is not the final definition of your future success, and if being a physician is truly what you want to do, then you will achieve that.
This is not to say that if you follow everything in this post to a T that you will be guaranteed admission into a BS/MD program. Yet, you should let this be a framework to how you shape your preparation for these programs. And if you are a sophomore or junior reading this, do not panic because you did not precisely start freshman year. Just remain focused on your goals throughout your time in high school and do not be afraid to reach out for help when you need it. Best of luck!
OTHER HELPFUL RESOURCES
If you want to learn more about the college premed timeline or the medical school application timeline, read more here: