"So, you didn't get in": A guide from a reapplicant for reapplicants.

Admissions season is winding down, and at this point all you applicants should more or less know where you stand. For those applicants who got into their dream school, or any school at all--congratulations! Your premed years get doubled in M1/M2, and the subjectivity of the interview process gets melded right into M3.

For those who are on waitlists, hold out hope! And for those that didn't get in, I'm sorry :/. I know just as well as you guys how much it freaking sucks to be rejected.

This is a mini guide for you, to maybe offer you some hope and comfort, and some advice, on the months ahead. Almost certainly the game is not over for you, and if you've made it to your first application cycle, odds are you have the metal to get the acceptance. Keep on persisting and you will very likely get in.

Step 1: Get it out of your system. It's okay to be depressed for a little bit, to cry, and to be angry, and to let these negative emotions have you for at least a little bit. I always relate getting rejected from med school the same as being broken up with by a long time significant other. It sucks at first, and can dictate your life for a few days to a few weeks: maybe you don't eat as much, or you stop working out, or you lock yourself in your room for a week. It's okay to be upset. It's natural: you worked your ass off to get into medical school the first time around and you didn't get what you, by all rights, should have earned.

But get it out of your system fast. Don't let this poison inform some messed up decisions on your part before heading into the next application cycle, or worse, stop you from applying at all anymore. Finishing your premed years is definitely not easy, and if you have the willpower to make it this far, odds are you have plenty of passion to pursue an MD/DO degree.

If you're a senior, finish up your semester strong--you don't want to have to explain all C's and B's in your final semester as being "depressed" about rejection, esp after that 3.85 you pulled beforehand. So, take some time for you for a few days/weeks, then pull yourself up and finish your degree strong. If you're not a senior, you may not have the option to not show up to work.

Step 2: Evaluate what went wrong For some people this can be quite simple:

1. My GPA just wasn't high enough, time to apply for a SMP! Or,

2. My extracurriculars were too little/too late: hold out commitment on these extracurriculars, and maybe add some hours per week over this gap year or two, and show them I have what it takes.

3. Maybe I applied naively? Apply as soon as the gates open, and apply broadly for schools that you would be competitive for. An ORM applying to Harvard with a 3.8/34(516) will almost certainly not make the cut. Apply to a lot of schools that fit your academics and that you've demonstrated a passion for. Someone with a crap ton of research and a 3.8/34 will likely not be a good fit for Tulane, which focuses a lot on global health and primary care.

For others, evaluating your faults can be quite difficult. This was definitely the case for me. I had pursued Physics quite intensely for several years, to the point that physics outweighed premed activities on my application the first time around. Adcoms were questioning my commitment to medicine, and it was very tough to get around this issue in one cycle--even after one cycle, my premed activities STILL paled in comparison to my physics activities, and explaining/getting around this was very hard.

For you, it might be:

1. Your essays/extracurricular descriptions just were not what adcoms were expecting, despite having faculty and services review your essays. You need to consider your OWN story, and formulate an argument that advocates how YOU would fit very well into the medical field. This is not an easy task, and it took me a few weeks of wrestling around with this to get something on paper I really liked.

2. Maybe you suck in the interview. This one is probably the hardest to fix, because doing well in interviews involves strong professional and interpersonal skills, which only comes from practice by interacting professionally with a lot of people. You can help teach yourself this by taking up some patient-interactive clinical volunteering, CNA/EMT, any job with customer service, or just doing mock interviews.

And it's a skill that needs refining, and practice is the best way to do so. Practicing interview responses the weeks before an interview is not going to cut it. I've seen quiet and loud jerks, mousy people who should've used the anti-dandruff shampoo the night before, to people who are waaaayyy overdoing it and it's apparent that their responses are too strong/asskissing/not genuine. The sweet spot is right in between, where you're kind and professional, but not milking it too hard.

In light of the fact that college years don't mandate a professional environment, coupled with applicant competitiveness, this may be the hardest interview in your life. It behooves you to not screw this one up, especially considering it is by far the most influential factor in admissions decisions. (see p. 2).

3.Maybe your problem doesn't fit into any of the above categories. The best you can do is talk to some schools you applied to and potentially ask for admissions advice. This often will not be successful, as many schools explicitly state they do not offer admissions counseling, because they simply wouldn't have the staffing to manage that. If that's the case, talk to your school's career services or premed adviser, and ask them what their opinion is.

Take time to think on this, because this step is the single most important one.

Step 3: Reapply intelligently.

I already spoke on this in step 2, but I'm going to add a little more here. Sometimes it's smart to reapply to the same schools you applied to the first time around. In my experience, though, this is often not the case for two reasons.

1. If you've been rejected, the problem is usually one you can't fix (for them) in a single year. It's weird: 150 volunteering hours looks fine to most schools, but maybe the school you're reapplying to takes note of the fact they rejected you the first time around, when you only had 75, and that 75-150 jump isn't enough: you have to keep in mind, they already made up their mind about you once, making them change their mind is NOT easy.

2. You changed your personal statement in such a way that your story might be different/incongruent with the first one you submitted. Adcoms might take a look at a glorious application, note that you weren't admitted the first time around, raise an eyebrow, check the old application, and find out the two stories have some apparent inconsistencies.

Adcoms love to pick apart these essays HARD, so they might see an inconsistency that's not really there.

I only got one interview from a school that I reapplied to this time (roughly 1/3 of the schools I applied to were reapplications), and I was eventually rejected. The schools I was accepted to this time were entirely new schools that I researched the second time around.

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After all of this, and maybe a few years of fixing up your resume/transcript, I think you should have a very strong shot of getting in the next time you apply. Good luck! I know you can do it.

Oh, and one more thing. Don't be too hard on yourself for not getting in. Out of 45000 something applicants, only about 19-20000 get in. For example, out of the applicants with GPA/MCAT scores in the 3.8-4.0/39+(522+) region, 1/10 DIDN'T get in. If you didn't make the cut this time around, you are in with a large group, and have very good company. It's hard to see them when a lot of your friends are matriculating (this was the hardest for me), but they are there, and you're not alone.

And, in the end, what difference is 1 or a few years going to make when you're sitting at the end of your career at 65+ years old having made a significant mark in the world?

It'll be alright.