4 Year Premed Planner

Click Links for directions for doing each task.

If you are coming into our system with around 2 years or less until you start med school, see the Two Year Accelerated Planner below.

Two Year Accelerated Planner

Use this if you are starting in our reminder system with about 2 years or less until you start med school.

It contains all the elements of the 4 year planner, but condensed. You should adjust the schedule to your own timeline. For example, if you only have a year left, you will need to accelerate even more.

Keeping your GPA up.

How can you keep your GPA strong? I don't want to suggest that you only take easy classes. That wouldn't be fun or interesting. However, if you find yourself in a class that you aren't going to get at least a strong B in, you might consider dropping it.

If you are having trouble in a class, talk to the instructor right away. Don't wait till the middle of the semester. Ask what kind of help is available. Ask what you can do to make up for poor work so far. Teachers certainly respect someone asking for help.

Rearrange your schedule. If you need to drop one class to do well in the others, do it. It may mean taking an extra semester or two to graduate, but it will be well worth it if you can maintain a great GPA and earn academic honors. If you have to work while you are in school and it is affecting your grades, rethink your financial plan. There should be enough financial aid available to you so that you can concentrate on your education. There is no point getting through college only having learned half of what you could have. Go to the financial aid office to ask for information.

Keep an eye out for any problems you are having academically.

Deal with any problems as soon as possible. Don't wait until the middle of the semester.

How do you deal with problems? Here you are on a big campus where everything may seem overwhelming. Start somewhere, even if it's asking a friend to help you figure out what to do. There is strength in numbers. You can help them out too. For many problems you may need to talk with your advisor. Admittedly they can be overwhelmed too at the beginning of the semester but be persistent. Talk with your instructors outside of class. They probably can't spend too much time before and after class with you, so ask to meet them in their office. Older students can maybe give you some good advice. Ask them for help. It will make them feel important! Check with the premed advisor. They may be more accessible than your academic advisor. Don't let problems back up!!

If you are working a lot and it's affecting your grades, and perhaps how much you are learning, that's not good. Well, you say, I have to make money. Consider what might happen during your med school interview when they ask why your GPA is low and why your science knowledge on the MCAT seemed shaky. What will they say if you tell them that the reason is that you had to work to earn money?

They might say, "Well, wow, you did pretty well, considering." Or they might say, "Why didn't you do some financial planning so that you could focus on what is important - your school work? Would you want brain surgery from someone who got C's because they were working through school?"

They have a point. You are in school to learn. Poor school performance may hold up your med school acceptance by a year or prevent you from being accepted at all. In addition, your being too busy will cause you to miss out on much information that you will need as a physician.

If your family is not able to support you, what are the options? No one likes to be in debt, but the fact is that going to both undergraduate and medical school is about accumulating a huge debt. There is no way around it. The sooner you get through the process, the sooner you will be earning a professional salary to pay it back. In some ways it doesn't make sense to try to chip away at that debt at $7 an hour when you will be making 10 times that later.

Where do you borrow from? Make an appointment with the financial aid office and go over all of your options. How much of a loan do you need so that you don't have to work at all? If there is not enough available so that you don't have to work, make an appointment with your financial institution. As a student, you may be eligible to join a credit union. This is a member owned organization that, unlike a bank, is on your side.

If you are still short, there are two more options. First, consider some serious lifestyle changes. Sell that brand new sports car and get a bicycle. Look for shared housing or move back in with the folks. Second, if you really need to work, cut back on your school load. This will probably mean taking an extra year. Again, is this worth it for a $7 an your job? But if it's your only option, at least you will be able to do well on the classes that you do take.

Finally, if you just barely have enough money to get by, you will be limiting yourself. You may need to travel to med schools to see which ones you are interested in. You may want to go abroad to get medical experience in other countries. You will need money for some special events, for good clothes for an interview, for the application process itself and for good MCAT preparation. If you are always short, you will not be able to do a good job. Work toward having a reserve. Being short on money - and as a result not being able to submit a strong application - is one of the main causes of having to reapply a second year.

Choosing Premed Classes:

First priority is to make sure you will have all the classes you need for taking the MCAT. To do well on the MCAT you need 2 semesters of Physics, 2 semesters of Biology, 2 semesters of General Chemistry and at least 1 semester of Organic Chemistry.

In addition to the requirements for the MCAT, the medical school itself has certain prerequisites. Be sure to find out what they are in advance.

Conversational ability or flunecy in a language other than English is not a formal requirement for many medical schools, but it can be a bonus if you plan to work with ethnic populations. So plan now to do ongoing language study. The med school may make a distinction between having some language coursework and having real fluency. It is not easy to become conversationally fluent. If you can plan some travel time where you can use Spanish, a Native American language or other language, that will help.

Making premed contacts.

Find out who the premed advisors are and make an appointment to meet them. You don't have to have anything in particular to discuss, just a chance to introduce yourself and find out what they have to offer.

Check out premed organizations. You don't necessarily need to join but at least find out what they are doing. This is a good place to get some leadership credentials by becoming an officer and/or organizing projects.

Meet other premed students in your classes and talk over plans and ideas together. Keep an eye out for premed events on campus.

WHAT IS EARLY DECISION?

Early Decision is a program coordinated among most US med schools. You apply early in the process and you find out early if you are accepted. During Early Decision you can only apply to one school. If they accept you, you cannot go to any other school that season.

If you are not accepted, you can reapply to that same school and to any other school for the Regular Decision program.

The advantage of Early Decision is that they take a higher percentage of applicants, 1 out of 3, instead of 1 out of 8 or 10 for the regular application. However, the standards are higher. It is probably worth applying only if your GPA is about 3.5 or higher.

There is no real drawback to applying Early Decision, even if you don't think you are real competitive. One advantage of applying is that they know that they are your first choice, and that is very helpful.

If your grades are strong now, consider Early Decision. It will mean finishing your MCAT prereq's a little earlier. It will also mean that the summer after your Sophomore year will be devoted to MCAT prep.

Researching Medicine as a Career.

This is your first big project. You already have a sense that you are interested in medicine. You may even have a specific area that you are interested in. Even if you do, and most certainly if you don't, you will need to do deeper research into the fields of medicine that you might pursue.

Why? Three reasons. First, when you apply to med school, you need to show that you have a realistic sense of what your field of medicine is about, what the issues are in that field and how you fit in. You may have some ideas now but the only way to know if your ideas are realistic is to do the research. Second, you will need to get some practical experience in your area of interest. You will start doing that soon. So you need to have a clear and, again, realistic sense of what you are interested in and what you would hope to in that field of medicine. Third, for your own sake, it is important to find out, even if you already have an idea, what the people in your area of medicine actually do, what the working conditions are like, what job opportunities there are. And of course if you don't have a specific area of interest yet, this is the time to start looking into the options. You don't have to have a specialty when you apply to med school but applicants with a well researched and realistic focus have a much better chance.

How do You Start Researching Possible Fields of Medicine? One of the best strategies is to find physicians who are practicing in an area that you might like. Make an appointment to sit down with them and find out what the field is like. (Obviously you are looking for someone who will do this for free.) You are trying to find out:

What is the daily work like?
What are the personalities of people practicing in this area?
What are the issues that physicians in this field work on?
What kind of things can you hope to accmomplish in this field?
Are there jobs available in this field in places you would want to live?
What are the salary ranges?
What kind of organizations would a physician in this field work for?
Are there challenges that you would enjoy or is the work routine?

These are just some of the questions involved in a career choice. If you want to put some extra effort into doing this well from the beginning, you might want to work with a professional career counselor. If you have trouble finding one, you can call Jane Finkle, a national career counselor who also writes career counseling news for US News Online. Her number is (215) 564-5277 and her email is janefinkle@yahoo.com.

Start thinking about what you are looking for in a succcessful career. What are your personal goals? You can brainstorm with a friend. This is an excellent first step. If there is a course offered in career research or career decision, that would be good to take next semester.

You will also want to talk with professors teaching in those areas. However, when you do this, remember that these professors maybe be on the admissions committee when you apply. In fact, any contact you make may have repercussions later in your career. Any doctor you talk to could be a future potential employer or colleague. So when you make these contacts, you need to be fairly professional, well mannered and to follow up with a thank you note.

In doing your research you might find organizations, either non profit or governmental that are doing interesting work in your area.

Whoever you talk to, you need not limit yourself to one geographical area. Find the best, the most interesting, the most innovative. That way you can get a good picture of the whole field.

WHAT'S UP WITH THE MCAT??

What Should You be Doing About MCAT Prep? The first thing is to make sure you are getting in the MCAT prerequisite courses. Second, remember that everything you are being taught in those classes may come back to haunt you on the MCAT. Learn it well. Don't just memorize facts. Try to understand the concepts. If something confuses you, don't just drop it. Ask questions. Get some help. Try to get it to make sense. The MCAT tests concepts and problem solving more than just memorized facts. Set a high standard of what you hope to understand from your science classes. This may be a pain, especially in physics, which may be of little interest to you. But a big chunk of the MCAT is physics.

What about MCAT Prep Classes? Many people can do ok on the MCAT just prepping on their own. To do this you need to have learned your science very well the first time and to have retained it. You need to be a naturally good test taker. You need to be applying to a school where you don't need your absolute best score and you need to have a superior GPA.

If you are weak in any of these areas, you may not be able to get a competitive enough score to get accepted. For example, suppose your science is strong but you are not a great test taker. You may need to learn strategies to test better (which is possible!) Or suppose that your science is strong and you are a decent test taker, but you are applying to a competitive school. You may need help to push your score even higher.

Is There Anything a Prep Course Does That You Couldn't Do Yourself? It depends on the prep course. You've probably heard of the large national prep companies such as Kaplan and Princeton Review. These companies offer you three things: a structured classroom study schedule, a chance to review science facts and concepts, and a setting for doing practice tests. Some companies, including Kaplan, do not include any individual help. Individual help is critical, so when choosing a company, find out how much individual help you can get outside of class. Some programs stick to a set lecture and do not customize the class for the needs of the students in that class. Ask about that as well.

So, the benefit of a commercial MCAT review is that they set up a schedule for you, teach you science facts and let you take practice tests. If you say that you could do that yourself, I would agree. If you are not good at organizing your own time and don't feel you have resources for reviewing the science on your own, then a prep class can be helpful, though rather expensive. You might be able to find a private tutor who can help you individually or with a group of your friends. This could be more affordable and more effective.

But science review alone is not enough to get your maximum score on the MCAT.

Why not? There are two areas in which even students with thorough science knowledge lose points. These areas are timing and testing strategy. Timing strategy means making decisions about how you use your time on the test - how many questions you'll do, which questions, what order, how much time is ok to spend on a question, when to move on and when to keep working, whether to focus on details or take the time to see the big picture, how much time is ok to spend on organizing info, whether to go fast to get to more or to slow down to be more accurate.

Most people have developed an intuitive strategy for how to work tests based on your past experience. And for most people the strategy you've developed is not the most effective one for the MCAT. Almost every student I've worked with has been able to get extra points by learning a better way to use your time on the MCAT.

What about testing strategy? Most students report that there are many questions they get wrong even though they knew the science. What happened? Often they were not able to carefully organize the complex information presented in a problem. The current MCAT now emphasizes problem solving ability rather than straight factual knowledge. This means that you need to be able to deal with complex information and situations. We teach you new, more powerful startegies for organizing the various kinds of complex info the MCAT throws at you.

Another reason people miss problems for which they knew the science is that they focus too much on detail and miss the big picture. Or they are so worried about time that they are missing things and getting careless. Or they don't double check their work. Or they get lost part way through the problem. Or they get down to two answers and guess. Some people report that they are simply not good at taking standardized tests. For all of these errors there are strategies that you can learn and refine to avoid them. We work with you on problems that you actually missed to help you see exactly what you did and how you can improve. By doing this with hundreds of actual MCAT questions, you can learn to carefully organize and double check all of the hundreds of kinds of complex MCAT questions they can throw at you.

How much difference does this make in your score? Each section of the MCAT is scored on a 15 point scale. For an average school 9 may be a competitive score, while 8 may get you rejected and 10 may almost guarantee a spot. But the difference between an 8 and a 9 is, on the average, only about 2 or 3 more questions right. The difference between an 8 and a 10 may be only 5 or 6 more questions right. The typical person may get 50 questions right on a science section and 27 questions wrong. If you can get 5 or 6 of those 27 right by using better testing and timing strategy, you can go from an 8 to a 10.

In my experience most people CAN increase their score by 2 points or more on the 15 point scale just by mastering timing and testing strategies. This is often more improvement than you make by months of science review. Which is why I say these strategies are critical to getting your top MCAT score.

So why don't commercial courses teach these strategies? Most commercial courses attempt to address these strategies at least a little but the problem is that commercial courses use hired instructors to teach classes and those instructors, while they are usually very bright and have done well on the MCAT, only work for the company for a season or two on the average and don't get enough experience to really understand the intricacies of timing and testing strategy, let alone the understanding of how to work individually with each person according to their processing style.

The strategies I teach have come out of over 15 years of full time test prep work with nearly a thousand students, much of that work being one on one. My graduate work in learning and processing styles, learning disabilities and giftedness also has helped me adapt strategies to the needs of each student. Finally, each student works with me closely and personally as much as they need. Many commercial programs limit the personal attention that a student can get. Some, including Kaplan, do not offer personal attention at all, unless you buy an expensive package. And even when a commercial program does offer personal attention, the instructor still doesn't have the experience and expertise to understand these strategies.

The Verbal Reasoning and Essay: Unlike the science sections, there is no content that you have to know for VR or the Essay. For these sections your ONLY tool is strategy. Isn't Verbal Reasoning just reading comp, you may ask. Is there really anything I can do about if I'm not the greatest reader?

Yes, there is. The VR section is based on hidden agendas and hidden patterns. And these patterns can be learned. Consider this: most people can get a difficult question down to two answer choices. But usually those two seem equally good. Often they will pick the wrong one and when they look up the right answer, the reaction is "Ok, I can see why that answer could be right but I don't see why it's any better than mine."

So what's going on? Why is that answer the right one? Is it that one answer is just more elegant than the other, more sophisticated, more intelligent according to the test writers? No. It's not that one answer is better. One of those two answers is dead wrong. It has a fatal flaw. The situation is in fact black and white. One answer is wrong and the other is indisputably correct.

There is a hidden agenda of the VR section, a specific criterion for what makes an answer correct and what makes a fatal flaw. To master this section, you need to first learn this hidden agenda and then you need to start learning the hundreds of patterns that the test uses to create fatal flaws. There are specific strategies you can use to work two answers against each other to uncover the fatal flaw. If you combine this with learning how to most effectively organize the reading comp passage itself, you can make considerable progress.

Instructors in commercial programs are unlikely to even be aware of these insights, agendas and strategies. The biggest complaint I hear from people who have taken a commercial prep class is that the instructor couldn't explain why one answer was better than another. These are not easy patterns to discover. It took me an entire year to first discover the hidden agenda of the VR and I had read many of the commercial prep books looking for clues. It has taken many additional years to discover and refine the strategies that I teach.

Because I've been teaching professional entrance exams since 1990, I am able to work effectively with people on timing and testing strategy, the Verbal Reasonig and the Essay. I don't offer a full science review-based MCAT program, except in New Mexico. However, I will be glad to work with anyone individually through our Cutts Advanced MCAT SuperStrategy Plus Coaching program.

This is a very simple, straightforward program, in which you work with me one on one and we simply focus on the areas that are most important for you. I help you evaluate how well you are doing and what areas to keep focusing on. For most people this only takes a few hours or so of our time together, is relatively inexpensive and yet can make a huge difference in your score. I can also give you some suggestions for a science review timetable that you can follow on your own.

For a full review of the Cutts Advanced MCAT SuperStrategy Plus Coaching program, click here.

To check prices or to register for the Cutts Advanced MCAT SuperStrategy Plus Coaching, click for registration page.

MCAT Hints:

Here are some general suggestions about all sections of the test.

The Verbal Reasoning: This is what is usually called Reading Comprehension on most tests. Typically, you can get the answer down to two possibilities but can't catch why one is better than the other.

There is a reason! It is not just that one is a little better. One is right. One is dead wrong. Learning what the test is really looking for, what makes an answer dead wrong, is the key to mastering the Reading Comp.

With Reading Comp they are also trying to confuse you with complex information. And they succeed. There are specific strategies for reading through the original passage in an efficient way. There are some very powerful strategies for focusing in on those two seemingly close answers and finding the fatal flaw in one of them. So the most powerful RC strategies involve learning how to organize the info very simply and clearly. Once you can do this, you shouldn't get any wrong.

The Physical Science and Biological Science: Obvioulsy you need to be strong on the sciences for these sections. However, strategy is very important here as well. Students usually report that they often knew the science for a particular question but still got it wrong. This is most likely due to either time pressures or falling into one of the test's traps.

These traps mostly consist of presenting you with an overwhelming amount of information that you cannot organize or integrate. In other words, it's just too much to deal with! However, you can learn special tools for organizing this kind of info and beating the test.

Today's MCAT is more interested in your problem solving ability than in your ability to memorize complex facts. Problem solving is really about organizing information, integrating it and of course a certain amount of creative inspiration.

The Essay: The essay is scored on a letter scale and is usually not a competitive part of the test unless you get a very low score. The essay topics always come down to the same kind of issue, regardless of the specific topic, so we teach you a way to organize it that will look good and give them what they are looking for.

The essay scorers are indeed looking for a few specific things. If they see these, you will get a good score. If they don't, your score will suffer. With a little practice, you will be able to write an essay that gives them all the elements they want and gets a reasonable score. It's important to note that very poor grammar can lower your score, even if you have all the right elements.

Timing: How you use your time on the test makes a very dramatic difference in your score. Everyone has ingrained assumptions that automatically shape how you perform in the timed test. Most of these assumptions work against you on the MCAT. How many questions should you attempt? How fast or slow should you go? When should you cut a difficult question and when should you persist with it? How should you choose what to work on? All of these things affect your score. It is possible to explore them and refine your timing to gain significant points.

Each MCAT section (except the essay) is scored on a 15 point scale. Getting just two more questions right on a section is very likely to bump your score up on level, that is from an 8 to a 9, for example. For this reason, timing is extremely critical. Many students can actually make two points improvement on the 15 point scale just by learning how to use their time more efficiently.

Finally, what should you do if you are having particular trouble with one section? Of course it is good to focus on that section, probably getting some expert help and new insights into it. But it is usually also important to gain extra points in your stronger areas too. Your score is based on your total performance. So if you are low in Physical Science but decent in Biological and strong in Verbal Reasoning, for example, you should work hard on that Physical Science but also push your strengths in the other areas to gain as many points as possible.

PLANNING FOR REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE.

Real world experience in your area of interest will make you a stronger candidate. It will also help you understand more about your field, help you refine your interests and give you some possible future job contacts.

What is the best kind of experience? Medical schools expect you to have two kinds of experience - clinical experience in a medical field and volunteer experience to show that you understand about giving to your community.

The med school expects you to have significant experience in:

Voluntary community service
Reseach work
Clinical work
Hospitals
Leadership positions
The geographical areas and populations you plan to serve (eg. rural, urban, pueblos, international, elderly, homeless)
Language fluency if you plan to work with people who speak other languages

Many people get a chance to do a little work in a lab or clinic. This is ok but is maybe not the best kind of experience. I suggest a two pronged attack. The first prong is to get a very broad and comprehensive exposure to many of the kinds of things that go on in your area of specialty. If you take a part time job in a lab for a few months, you may well learn everything new that you are going to learn in the first week. After that, you may just be doing and seeing the same old things.

On the other hand, if you do a series of two week volunteer stints, you can get some valuable experience in about 7 very different kinds of settings in the same few months. Let's say you were interested in rural medicine. Here are seven different kinds of places you could get experience: a small family practice in a NM land grant community, a research project being conducted by Planned Parenthood in a small ranching town, a UN sponsored health cooperative in South America, a hospital on rural Native American tribal land, the state Department of Health office in a small town, a family planning clinic in Botswana, and the US Surgeon General's office..

Or you could make coffee in your uncle's veterinary practice all summer.

The second prong (remember the first one was broad exposure) is to be able to make a serious contribution, to do something noteworthy. This may be harder to arrange but you will also be accomplishing the same thing in the special project we will talk about later.

How and when will you get this experience? Start looking for agencies, companies, organizations, non-profits, etc., that would make up the broadest possible exposure. Remember that the summer after your sophomore year may already have to be devoted to MCAT prep.

You might also check with your advisor and with the premed advisor about the possibility of setting up an independent study that would allow you to do some or all of these activities and get credit for them.

SOME HINTS ABOUT YOUR PRACTICAL EXPERIENCE. When you find a place that you think would give you some good exposure, ideally you can arrange with them a 2 or 3 week volunteer period. During this time you are volunteering your efforts in exchange for them giving you time to see many aspects of what they are doing and to talk with a wide range of people at the organization. You are there to learn as much as possible. So when you contact an organization, be clear up front that you want to have this kind of opportunity while you are there. The danger is that some organization may be happy to put you to work 12 hours a day without you ever getting a chance to find out what's going on.

Researching Schools:

Let's talk about how to start researching schools that may be a good match for you. If you only want to, or only can, go to one school, that's fine. It will save you some research time. However, in that case you should start researching the professors at that school whose interests are similar to yours.

How do you research schools? There is a huge amount of info on the internet about med schools. Your first goal is to consider what you are looking for in a med school. If you intend to practice in a certain geographical area, it might be good to go to med school in that area so that you can start to learn about the institutions of that state.

Would you be ok with a good general medical background or is there a school where you could get some specialized coursework in your area? Are there some really excellent professors who are exceptional in your area of interest somewhere?

Once you've identified your requirements, you can start finding possible schools on the internet. Remember to look for journal articles as well, to see who is publishing what in your area. Keep an eye out for special programs, such as internship possibiities, clinics, semesters abroad, that may be of particular interest to you.

When you've got some prospective schools, you will want to talk with the admissions director there to learn how you can find out more. You will also talk with current students, especially in your area of interest, and possibly with past students who are working (hopefully). Eventually you will talk with the professors there and, finally, you should visit all of your serious prospects.

A SPECIAL PROJECT - YOUR SECRET WEAPON:

It's time to start thinking about a special project. I mentioned before that this project takes an issue or problem that is at the forefront of your area of interest and accomplishes some small measure of progress in solving the problem or dealing with the issue.

This project does not need to be any more difficult that a project you would do for any class. What's different about it is that it actually works on important, real world issues on a very professional level.

Imagine that during your interview for med school you were able to say that you had designed and conducted a research project on AIDS among immigrants that had resulted in a new statewide program which had reduced the number of new AIDS cases among immigrants by 80% and which had just been featured on 60 Minutes. Probably wouldn't have much trouble getting accepted, would you?

A project like that is probably a little out of your reach but let's consider the elements that make that project so impressive and how you might be able to do something similar.

First, it identifies a critical, cutting edge problem in a particular field - a high incidence of AIDS in a certain population, in this case.

Second, you have taken a critical problem - eg., immigrants have a higher incidence of AIDS than the general population (I'm making this up. It's probably not true.) - and asked, "Why can't we solve this problem?" By talking with experts you found that no one knows why the incidence is higher. So this shows you where the cutting edge is. It's the first thing you have to figure out to make progress.

Third, you design a way to move toward an answer. By interviewing experts, you find that there are three main theories of why the AIDS incidence is high, but no one knows which reason is the real one. So you come up with a concept of using interviewing to discover the real reasons.

Fourth, you use creative processes. Your first efforts show that immigrants will not honestly answer questions posed by young premed students, so you recruit some local priests to do the interviewing.

Fifth, your efforts produce new and useful results. You may not solve the problem but you make progress that future research can build on. You find that theory number one - a fear of going to AIDS testing clinic because of not wanting to be deported - is the predominant reason. However, your sample is small, so it needs to be replicated and validated.

Sixth, you get professional acknowledgement for your work and/or it leads to practical results. You present your findings to the governor's office. The state initiates a broader study based on your design, validates your results, implements a program that lets immigrants know they cannot be deported because of going to an AIDS testing clinic, and gets dramatic results. You happen to mention this in a letter to the producers of 60 Mintues.

If you can find a cutting edge problem in your field and design a way to push that edge further along, you will not only get incredible experience, but you will also demonstrate many outstanding characteristics that will make you a superior candidate.

You may need some time to research, design and carry out this project. You can start thinking about it now. By the end of the summer, you will hopefully begin to put a plan together, so that you can carry it out over the following year.

Your Admissions Timeline.

On a blank sheet of paper draw 3 lines, one above the other, an inch or so apart going from left to right. These will represent three years. Mark each line off with 12 marks representing each month. The bottom line will represent the year that you will start med school. The other two lines will be the two years before that.

Tasks to Enter on Your Planning Calendar:

Place the application deadline on the calendar
Pick a date that you want to complete your application
Pick a date to start working on the application
Pick a date to find out what must be included on the application.

When will you take your MCAT?
When will you start prepping for the MCAT (June for the April test, Jan for the August test).
Choose a prep company at least two to four months before you start your prep.

When will you do and complete your career research (this needs to be done before you start your application, and, really, as early as possible)

When will you choose the colleges you want to apply to?
When will you start doing research on these colleges?

When will you be able to do get some research experience?
When will you get some clinical experience?
When will you do some volunteer community service work?

When can you get some foreign language experience and/or practical experience in a foreign country, if you are interested in this?

When will you complete all of the MCAT prerequisites (must be done the semester before you take your MCAT)?

When will you complete all of the Med School prerequisites (these go beyond the MCAT prereq's)?

For each of the above items, calculate how much it will cost to accomplish. Plan how you will finance everything. Remember, you may need to travel to schools.