Medical schools are highly competitive. The national acceptance rate is 43%, according to data compiled by the Association of American Medical Colleges. Students often ask, "How do I get into medical school?" Use these top 10 tips from doctors and medical students to help you prepare for your pre-health profession.

1. Get Some Medical Experience on Your Résumé

Job shadow with doctors and other medical professionals. Admissions committees don't expect applicants to have real experience actually treating patients. After all, you're not a doctor yet. But they do want to know that you've spent time getting to know what your future job would be like. Job shadowing is a great way to get some medical experience but there are other non-shadowing opportunities that may be available to you.

"Med school admissions committees want students to have realistic expectations for what a career in medicine will be like. says Dr. Sarah Carlson, an associate chief of surgery at VA Boston HCS, and an assistant professor at BU School of Medicine. who has also served on a medical school admissions committee. As an undergraduate, she volunteered to file x-rays at the local hospital, then parlayed that into an opportunity to talk with the radiologist. He explained both how to read x-ray films, and why he chose his profession. "It's those types of interactions that are important to have under your belt," she says. "Quite frankly, medicine isn't for everyone, so it's best if you do some soul-searching and spend some time with the people who have the job you want. Most doctors are happy to sit down with students who are considering a career in medicine."

Former pre-med student and current medical school student Karmyn Polakowski served with Michigan Tech's EMS for a couple of years. "It was definitely the highlight of my undergraduate career," she says. "I was not only able to deploy my patient interaction and care skills, but I found the EMS family that created bonds to last a lifetime. EMS brings out special qualities in everyone and learning how to utilize everyone’s strengths is really quite eye-opening. This lesson in itself makes me confident in my ability to work well as a physician amongst a group of other healthcare workers someday soon." Polakowski is now attending Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.

Other ways to get medical experience include becoming a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) or as a hospital scribe doing data entry. Some applicants are able to gain clinical experience by helping to care for family members.

2. Do Research Projects

3. Put in Time Serving Others

Dr. Carlson volunteered with the Big Brothers-Big Sisters organization. So did Joseph. Rake leaves, build an accessibility ramp, clean the beach, walk a dog. There are lots of non-clinical options for volunteering that demonstrate your willingness to pay it forward and supply back.

"They have many different programs and services." Joseph, accepted into Central Michigan University's College of Medicine, was part of the Forever Friends program, matched with an elderly woman she visited a few times each month. "I 've formed a great friendship with her, and hopefully, helped alleviate some loneliness. It 's a win-win!"

"Doctors are generally pretty altruistic people, and med schools want to see that you care about your community or have some drive to contribute to the greater good," says Dr. Carlson. "Community service comes in many forms, and really anything qualifies, from trash cleanup and mentorship programs to working the concession stand at a fund-raiser for a charity—anything that requires some unpaid time for a good cause."

Ask your pre-health professions advisor about volunteering opportunities on campus or in your community, which could include helping at local food banks or blood drives, local shelters for the homeless or those dealing with domestic violence. You could tutor, deliver good companionship and Meals on Wheels, or walk the dogs at a local animal shelter. Take an alternative spring break and work with Habitat for Humanity or on developing clean water sources for Third World countries. Check with your school for a list of community and global partners it works with who can use your time and talents. The mentors you develop will come in handy when it's time to gather recommendation letters—most schools ask for at least three—and the friendships you develop will last a lifetime.

4. Choose a Major You Will Excel In

Grades aren't everything, but they're extremely important. Choose a field of study that will yield a competitive GPA (grade point average). The recommended GPA for medical school applicants is 3.7 for MDs (medical doctors), 3.5 for DOs (doctors of osteopathy), and 3.4 for NDs (Doctor of Naturopathic). While many students who are planning careers in medicine decide to major in biology, Dr. Carlson earned her bachelor's in chemistry. Many of her colleagues majored in even more unexpected fields, including engineering, English, music, and classics.

"It 's OK if you 're not on the pre-med track right away when you start college; pursue experiences that genuinely interest you and rely on guidance from your faculty mentors to navigate your path"Carly Joseph

There is no such thing as a pre-med major, says pre-health professions advisor Dr. Kemmy Taylor, who works with students preparing for medical careers at Michigan Technological University. "There is no specific major requirement for getting into medical school.. You can major in whatever degree program you want." You will still need to do well in both your cumulative and your science GPA, classes like biology, physics, chemistry, and math, that are required for medical school admission. If you are struggling in any classes, get help right away.

During her fourth year, Joseph had to take many of the medical school prerequisite classes that were not part of her engineering curriculum and build a Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) study plan into her schedule.

5. Apply to Multiple Medical Schools

Improve your odds by not placing all your hopes on one school. Do individual research on each school, says Taylor; application requirements can vary from school to school and from year-to-year.

She also notes that you can reach out to admission committees with specific questions about the program and expectations. And, she says, don't be bummed if at first you don't succeed. Try again. "If you don 't get accepted into the school of your dreams, it 's OK! Schools have many applicants and can 't take everyone," says McKenzie, who was accepted into the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. "My dad, who has been a family physician for 29 years, often tells me, "An MD is an MD, it doesn't matter where you go to school."

"Don't take it personally when you get some rejections—they happen at every stage of the game. If you cast a wide net, you'll increase your likelihood of getting an acceptance."Dr.  Sarah Carlson

Other ways to get noticed among the hundreds or even thousands of medical school applications submitted each year: send supplemental materials beyond your application. For example, "if you've published a paper, consider sending a copy of the publication with a handwritten note to the director of admissions, indicating you really hope to be considered for acceptance," she says.

6. Study Early and Often for the Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT

MCAT scores range from 472-528. Accepted medical students average around 508. Recommended study time: 300-350 hours.

Take a course and buy books and study on your own. Find the method that works for you. Take practice exams many times and don't let your practice scores spook you, says McKenzie. "I used the Kaplan book series, and studied by reading, highlighting, and taking notes. The real MCAT was not as hard as the Kaplan test, in my opinion." The pre-health professions advisor can help you find the resources you need.

You can also join a pre-health professions club or association at your school, including Alpha Epsilon Delta, the national honor society for health pre-professionals. Members help each other get ready for tests, along with hosting speakers and events to help gain knowledge and experience.

7. Learn Another Language

"I speak Spanish almost every day at work," says Dr. Carlson. "It 's what I use the most from my premed education." Joseph spent a semester in Chile. "Focusing on language, culture, and people challenged me in a me in ways that technical classes couldn't and was critical in my preparation for medical school. If you 're thinking about studying abroad, do it. Communication and understanding different cultures are crucial skills for anyone entering the medical field, and medical schools look for applicants who make the effort to broaden their horizons culturally."

Medical volunteer programs abroad are another option to gain both life and health-care related experiences. Students are placed in hospitals and clinics in both rural and urban settings where staff is inadequate. Work, with professional guidance, can include giving vaccinations and other tasks interacting directly with patients, as well as helping to make facilities cleaner and more accessible. Programs are normally for people aged 18 and older

8. Don't Skimp on Extracurricular Activities

Show that you're interested in other things besides schoolwork. Dr. Carlson says having outside interests makes you stand out (she plays violin in an orchestra). "It's OK to indicate some of these personal interests on your med school applications—they supply the interviewers something to relate to you with," she says. "I interviewed one applicant who only got a C in biochemistry, but he wrote lots of letters to the admissions committee highlighting his other strengths. They accepted him, and he turned out to be a star."

"Medical schools like to see commitment in their applicants, be it to sports, work, or extracurricular activities," says McKenzie. "It 's easier to not join clubs and just do homework and relax, but devoting time now to extracurricular commitments is worth it in the long run. These experiences also supply you good opportunities to get to know people who can write the letters of recommendation."

Joseph says to choose activities based on what works best for you. Aim for quality rather than quantity.

"There 's a lot of pressure to have as many leadership roles as possible and be involved in tons of student organizations. For me though, having a few deep and lasting experiences was the way to go. I chose to invest my time in research, improving my Spanish, and volunteering," she says.

9. Be Polite and Be Yourself at Medical School Interviews

Research the schools you're interested in and look at mission statements, so you know something about the institution that you can share at the interview. Practice answering interview questions. When you arrive, be courteous to everyone you meet at the interview, including the receptionist.

"Schools are interested in learning what kind of student and person you are," says McKenzie. Schools invest in students and are looking for a good fit.

If you need help with effective body language, knowing how to dress professionally or for other tips, check out your school's Career Services office, which may offer mock interview opportunities and other techniques to help you present your best self.

10. Be Ready to Explain Why You Want to be a Doctor

Bonus Tips for Getting into Medical School

Dr. Carlson has two more important suggestions to help you successfully apply to medical school:

Ask a Mentor or Advisor to Pick Up the Phone and Make a Call for You

"This is an unwritten rule that everyone does and nobody ever told me until I was several years into my training," says Dr. Carlson. "If you want to go to a particular school, find a way to have one of your mentors or advisors reach out to the admissions committee on your behalf."

For example, if you wanted to go to the University of Michigan ask your advisor or another mentor to call the director of admissions or any other person they know and advocate for you. Email can also be effective, she says. "It's a bonus if your mentor/advisor actually has a personal contact at the medical school you're interested in. "There is a culture of 'I can vouch for this person' that goes very far in the medical world. A phone call won't get you in if your application is terrible, but if you're on the cusp of acceptance and someone makes a call on your behalf, it can supply you the push you need to be accepted."

Don't Be Afraid to Self-Promote (In a Humble Way).

"It's OK to highlight the accomplishments you're proud of; put these in your required personal statement or find a way to work them into conversation during interviews. The key is to do it humbly but confidently: 'I was fortunate enough to win a teaching award from my time as a chemistry lab TA, and that's something I'm really proud of.' It's OK to be proud of your own achievements! Selectively highlighting a few make your application stand out from the rest."

Pre-Health Professions at Michigan Tech

Michigan Tech's placement rate into medical school is 60 to 70 percent (well above the national average) and is nearly 100 percent for physical therapy school. Choose a pre-health profession and prepare for your future today.

Whether your goal is medical school or dental school, clinical experience during your undergraduate career is a must. Here are some common ways to gain it at SUNY Cortland.

Volunteer

Most hospitals house a Volunteer Department that students can contact to gain experience with patients. It may only be in patient transport or calling patients to review their hospital experience, but any contact with patients is beneficial.

Additionally, nursing homes and hospice centers need volunteers for a variety of tasks. Many volunteer opportunities also exist at important healthcare organizations such as rape/suicide crisis centers, HIV/AIDS resource clinics or Planned Parenthood.

One of the most common locations for their students to volunteer is the Cortland Medical Center. For more information, contact Jarrod Kolodziejczyk, the hospital’s director of volunteer services.

Emergency Medical Technician (EMT)

SUNY Cortland boasts a close-knit, award-winning Emergency Medical Services (EMS) student group that provides quality emergency care service 24 hours per day, seven days per week on campus.

The function of the squad has grown into a first response unit, as well as an organization which educates the campus community. The College also financially supports students in taking training courses such as the EMT basic course, which allows students to administer basic life saving techniques on a patient.

Learn more about EMS on its campus group page.

Observe in a Dental Office/Clinic

Pre-dental students can find volunteer opportunities to work locally at community health clinics, local schools or even globally to promote oral care in underserved populations.

A full list of opportunities and community health centers can be found on the American Dental Association website.

Shadow a Medical Doctor

The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) offers many tips on setting up a shadowing experience with a doctor, including how to find one, how to ask them and even what you should wear.

Members of SUNY Cortland’s Pre-Medical Advisory Committee can offer their expertise if you are interested in a shadowing experience.

Study Abroad

SUNY Cortland students can participate in a special study abroad trip to Cuernavaca, Mexico during winter break designed to expose pre-health professionals to healthcare in a developing country.

Students develop Spanish language skills to be effective healthcare providers, observe medicine in a variety of clinical settings and gain cross-cultural experiences that will add to their cultural competence.

Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA)

A CNA works under the direction of a nurse, assisting in basic tasks such as obtaining vital signs and weight/height measurements as well as bathing and dressing people who cannot do these tasks alone. Generally, a CNA is required to complete a 75-hour training course and pass an assessment exam.

Phlebotomist 

Phlebotomists are the technicians that draw blood for laboratory analysis. They need to know everything about blood collection, including handling of needles, tubes, bags and related equipment, as well as the regulations associated with blood collection. A phlebotomy technician course is required, along with passing a national certification exam. Phlebotomy gives students a flexible, paid position to gain patient contact hours. 

Scribe

In this role, you follow Emergency Room clinicians around during clinical encounters and document medical history and physical exams in the electronic medical record. Scribing allows you to observe the patient-doctor interaction, learn medical terms and documentation skills and develop an understanding of challenges in healthcare.

Hospitals usually work with scribe companies that train and match students with area hospitals. Scribe America is a company that places students locally. Many require a yearlong commitment, which means that you will work part-time during the semester.

Researchers found that applying gentle, non-invasive electrical stimulation to the brain during virtual reality training helped budding surgeons to more easily transfer the skills they’d learned to a real-life setting. In addition to training better future surgeons, the approach could help skill acquisition in other industries.

Motor learning allows us to develop new skills, like mastering a tennis serve or, in the case of a surgeon, developing precision suturing skills. These days, surgeons are likely to learn these types of skills in a virtual reality (VR) environment before they transition to the real world.

Researchers at Johns Hopkins University in the US have developed a method of improving how medicos learn surgical skills in a virtual environment so that their learned skills are transferred more effectively to a real-life scenario.

“Training in virtual reality is not the same as training in a real setting, and we’ve shown with previous research that it can be difficult to transfer a skill learning in a simulation into the real world,” said Jeremy Brown, a study co-author. “It’s very hard to claim statistical exactness, but they concluded people in the study were able to transfer skills from virtual reality to the real world much more easily when they had this stimulation.”

By “this stimulation”, Brown is talking about a gentle electric current delivered to the head, more specifically, the cerebellum, a part of the brain that plays a critical role in error-based learning. Non-invasive brain stimulation (NIBS) has been used before in attempts to Strengthen motor learning. One form of NIBS, the one that was used in the current study, is anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (atDCS), the application of a constant electric current to specific areas of the brain. Anodal stimulation depolarizes the neurons, increasing the probability of an action potential – a rapid sequence of voltage changes – occurring. The action potential and subsequent neurotransmitter release enable one neuron to communicate with others.

The researchers recruited 36 participants, 17 females and 19 males, with a mean age of 27. While 12 had medical backgrounds, none had prior experience with laparoscopy, robotic surgery, or any other teleoperation device. Each was asked to perform a complex visuomotor surgical training task in a real or virtual environment and then switch to the opposite training environment. The task involved driving a curved surgical needle through three rings with a 2 mm radius distributed at 45-degree increments inside the vertical plane. ‘Real’ training environment in the context of this study meant performing the task using the da Vinci Research Kit (dVRK), an open-source research robot, to control the surgical instruments.

Participants received either atDCS or sham cerebellar stimulation during the training task, which they had to perform at three speeds: fast, medium, and slow. While all participants showed improvement from baseline, groups receiving cerebellar atDCS showed significantly improved skill transfer from the virtual to the real environment at fast and moderate speeds, whereas groups receiving the sham stimulation did not.

“The group that didn’t receive stimulation struggled a bit more to apply the skills they learned in virtual reality to the genuine robot, especially the most complex moves involving quick motions,” said Guido Caccianiga, the study’s lead and corresponding author. “The groups that received brain stimulation were better at those tasks.”

The researchers say validating their findings using a larger sample could significantly impact robotic surgery training programs. Enhancing skill transfer through NIBS could speed up training time and shorten the learning curve. Outside of training surgeons, the approach could help with skill acquisition in other industries or learning more generally.

“What if they could show that with brain stimulation, you can learn new skills in half the time?” Caccianiga said. “That’s a huge margin on the costs because you’d be training people faster; you could save a lot of resources to train more surgeons or engineers who will deal with these technologies frequently in the future.”

The study was published in the journal Nature Scientific Reports, and the below video, produced by Johns Hopkins, shows a participant receiving cerebellar atDCS during training.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

Obtaining a CPC, CCA, or CBCS certification implies that an individual has met competencies in the field of medical billing and coding. Certification is invaluable to the student's career goals. Students have an opportunity to make confident, informed decisions about the national certification they prefer.

The Certified Professional Coder (CPC) test is offered by the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC). It is the gold standard entry-level coding certification for physician, or professional fee, coders.

The Certified Coding Associate (CCA) is offered by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA). It is an entry-level medical coding certification across all settings--physician practices and inpatient hospital.

The Certified Billing and Coding Specialist (CBCS) is offered by the National Healthcareer Association (NHA) and is currently an entry-level medical billing certification for physician practices. In the summer of 2021, the test will transition to an entry-level billing and coding certification, with the inclusion of ICD-10-CM, CPT, and HCPCS Level II testing.

A large British study suggests that living with others, whether another person, or even a pet, may slow down the decline in cognitive skills that tends to come as people age.

Cognitive decline in older adults is a major public health issue, with almost 10% of U.S. adults ages 65 and older estimated to have dementia, and 32% estimated to have some degree of cognitive impairment. Previous research has shown that living alone and social isolation are associated with an increased risk of cognitive decline with age.

"Research indicates that having long-term, high-quality relationships, whether that’s with family, friends, or romantic relationships, is not only important for happiness, but for promoting good brain health and reducing the risk for dementia," said Dr. Leah Croll, assistant professor of neurology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.

Pet ownership has been shown to reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation in those living alone, but up until now, no study had directly compared rates of cognitive decline between pet owners and non-pet owners.

The study, published in JAMA Neurology, found that pet ownership was associated with slower rates of decline in cognitive skills in older adults living alone, but not in those living with other people. There was no difference in rates of decline between pet owners living with others and pet owners living alone.

Croll commented on these findings, stating that pet ownership may potentially represent an "alternative option for people whose social circumstances don’t allow for them to have frequent interactions with other people."

The authors used data from 7,945 adults 50 years or older living in the U.K. They compared rates of decline in cognitive skills between pet owners and non-pet owners over a period of nine years.

Each year, the participants were asked to perform several tests: reciting 10 unrelated words immediately after they were given, and after a delay, and naming as many animals as they could in one minute. These tests were designed to measure verbal memory and verbal fluency, skills that are vital to performing daily tasks and remaining independent as one ages.

As the U.S. population ages and the number of single-person households increases, dementia and cognitive decline in older adults will likely become increasingly important public health issues.

This study suggests that even for those who can’t live with another person, a beloved pet may be protective against the effects that loneliness and social isolation have toward cognitive decline with age.

It should be noted that the study only tested two domains of cognition, and that further work needs to be done to provide a fuller picture of how to slow cognitive decline with age. From what research is available, Croll currently recommends that her patients "stay active, eat a heart-healthy diet like the Mediterranean diet, and keep in touch with their friends," in order to promote healthy aging and prevent cognitive decline.

Joey K. Ng, MD, is an emergency medicine resident at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York, and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.