Pre-Med and BSMD Admissions: What Successful Applicants Do

Webinar Transcription

2026-2-25-Pre-Med and BSMD Admissions

Lonnie: [00:00:00] Hello everyone. Welcome to CollegeAdvisor’s webinar, “Pre-Med and BSMD Admissions: What Successful Applicants Do.” My name is Lonnie Burrell and I will be your moderator for this webinar. To orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’re first gonna begin with our live presentation, and then we’ll have the opportunity to answer your questions during our live Q&A.

Lonnie: Um, also, if you would like to download the handouts, they are readily available to you by going to the handouts tab and downloading them. All right, with that set, let’s now meet our presenter.

Dr. Katie: Hi everyone. I am Katie. Um, I will, I’m excited to be here tonight, but I am currently a resident. Um, I also was part of the brown BSMD [00:01:00] prep BSMD program, abbreviated as PMLE or Program in Liberal Medical Education.

Dr. Katie: Um, so I’m excited to be here with you all today.

Lonnie: Awesome. So with that said, before Katie gets into her presentation, we actually would love to get a sense of where our live audience, what grade you all are in. So if you can let us know by responding to the poll question, and then I’m gonna share those results with Katie.

Lonnie: Um, so Katie, you know, we have a large variety of students from different grade levels, parents and guardians. And you said that you are currently in your residency or you’re a resident. Can you just briefly describe to those who may not fully know what that is?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, absolutely. So for those of you who are in high school, but also for those of you like me with parents that came from other countries and might have a different medical system, I always like to break it down how it works, at least in, in the American medical system.

Dr. Katie: [00:02:00] Um, so you attend four years of college and sometimes that can be abbreviated based on, you know, AP credits or different programs that you’re in. But typically it’s four years of college, and then you always do four years of medical school after that. This is your general medical training. This is when you are called a medical student and you are on your way to get that MD degree.

Dr. Katie: Now after that, you still have to pursue, if you can imagine, uh, residencies training. So you’ll often hear people call themselves PGY x, y, z number. Uh, PGY just means post-graduate year. So it means that you have your MD, you’re a doctor, so I can call myself a doctor now, and I do. Um, and you have chosen your specialty.

Dr. Katie: Where a lot of people get confused is this word of like intern and fellowships, where you may have heard from like Grey’s Anatomy. So intern refers to your first year of your residency. So your PGY 1 year, it’s just like a term you’re, you’re also a resident, but like an intern is just like a very specific, like when you’re a baby resident [00:03:00] and you might be doing things that are outside of your chosen specialty, like myself.

Dr. Katie: So I just, um, came off of medicine, for example, medicine nights. So I was doing things that were outside of my chosen specialty, which is psychiatry. Now after residency, you can still choose to do an additional, uh, learning, which is called a fellowship. So I’m thinking about pursuing a child fellowship. So that would mean that I am a psychiatrist and a fully trained adult psychiatrist.

Dr. Katie: And then after that I might pursue additional training in to work with children. And then after that, hopefully I’ll become what they call, or at any point really after residency. But you become what they call an attending doctor, which is like finally you’re a doctor and you can practice by yourself and do all the things that you wanna do.

Lonnie: I love that. I love that. So yes, we always hear that the journey is somewhat long, you know, as it as it relates to your education within, you know, when, when it comes to come becoming a doctor. But I think that is definitely worthwhile, um, to say the [00:04:00] least. So that is so awesome. Thank you for sharing that terminology and information with our audience.

Lonnie: So back to the poll, we have 40% of our live audience are in the ninth grade.

Dr. Katie: Okay.

Lonnie: And then we have 29% 11th grade, 23%, 10th grade, and just a little under sixth percent for 12th grade and others. So that’s really awesome to see that we have majority of ninth grade, uh, live audience tonight. So, with that, Dr.

Lonnie: Katie, I am gonna turn it over to you.

Dr. Katie: Yes, excited to have all of you also be thinking about this so early on in your high school careers. I think that’s a wonderful thing to be thinking about early on, but also to be planning out the rest of your high school schedule and your extracurriculars. So we’ll definitely talk through all of that today.

Dr. Katie: So let’s start with, I like to start with dispelling what it actually means to be pre-med. I think there’s a lot of misconceptions around being pre-med, and also this is, again, different in other countries, which is why there’s partially that [00:05:00] adds onto the misconceptions. So in America, being pre-med does not mean.

Dr. Katie: Anything in particular? Actually it comes, it, it comes out. Being pre-med just means you’re going to college and you have an end goal destination of going to medical school. In mind. There’s no, at most schools, there is no pre-med major, which means that you end up majoring in whatever you want to major in.

Dr. Katie: You can major in biology, you can major in public health, which are typical quote unquote pre-med majors, but you could also major in English and political science and whatever you wanna do. And I’ll talk a little bit later too about why that, and for some, some of you out there that might actually be strategic and might actually help you in your journey.

Dr. Katie: Um, so what I’m trying to say is that when you are applying as a pre-med, all it means is that you’re interested in medical school. It also means that you have to, in college, take the courses that medical schools want to see on your transcripts. So typically they want to see some biology, they wanna see some physics, they wanna see some English literature, some psychology.

Dr. Katie: Um, so those are the classes that they wanna see. [00:06:00] And you are taking those classes in. College doesn’t mean any kind of major, it just, it’s like this almost like hidden or secret designation that you have in your mind. Um. I wanna make it clear that being pre-med is very different from applying to college though.

Dr. Katie: So right. When you’re applying to college, and I’ll talk more about this when I talk about what common mistakes people make, but when you’re applying to college, you’re applying not to go into medicine yet you’re not applying for medical school. And so it’s very important when you’re applying to college, you’re application is geared towards applying for, for college itself and not aimed at like, oh, I wanna be a doctor in the future.

Dr. Katie: Because at the end of the day, you’ll have plenty of time to make essays, write essays about why you wanna be a med doctor in the future. That’s, that’s when you apply to medical school. Okay. Okay, so for me, how did I know I was interested in Prima when I was in high school? And this is for all of you, hopefully ninth graders and 10th graders out there also.

Dr. Katie: Um, so I start by saying my parents weren’t doctors. Um, neither of my parents are physicians. I don’t have a lot of doctors in my family, and so I never actually got to [00:07:00] see very much firsthand what it meant to be a doctor. But I did have a pretty good sense of what I did not enjoy. I did like a biomedical research program when I was in my, I think my junior year of high school, for example, just to try it out.

Dr. Katie: And I was like, my God, I hate this. I was like, I can’t do engineering. That’s definitely X for me. I also am not someone who ever enjoyed math or physics. Um, so. You know, that also helped me eliminate engineering for, for what I will say. So one big thing that I did was I actually, I, I did a lot of pursuing extracurriculars that I was genuinely passionate about, and this is something that I recommend to everyone, like look for, keep your ear to the ground of what upperclassmen are doing and also what’s available in your area.

Dr. Katie: We’re all limited by what we have available to our locations, but for me, I had heard, I kept my ear down to the ground. I heard about an upperclassmen doing a suicide hotline, volunteering at a suicide hotline where I’m from, which is, I’m from Los Angeles. And that was something that immediately intrigued me.

Dr. Katie: I was like, this is something that I [00:08:00] feel, I don’t even know what it was in high school. I was kind of like drawn to it. I was like, there’s something about working in mental health that I felt like I could do really well. And so I, I showed up, I signed up for the volunteering, I started doing it, and I discovered, I think two main things.

Dr. Katie: One thing is you get, I get a lot of satisfaction out of. I think literally and figuratively talking people off the ledge, there was something about being in that high intensity crisis moment and working on using my words to make all the difference. And I was constantly thinking about how I could improve my verbiage when I heard other people use really good lines, I would write those things down.

Dr. Katie: Um, that was something that I constantly was thinking about working on, and I found that when I was going home, I would like my mom would come and pick me up and I would be excited to tell her about the stories that I heard that that night. Like excited to do talk with things that I did. My mom not super interested in mental health, didn’t really care that much, but I like, and those moments, I knew that like I could feel that kind of joy.

Dr. Katie: And I would also say the second half of that is I [00:09:00] realized really quickly that I needed that kind of immediate gratification of like when I’m helping someone, when I’m doing that interaction. That was something that gave me energy and. I think that’s a, that’s a another thing for all of you high schoolers to kind of pinpoint or start to kind of get a sense of as you’re doing extracurriculars, what is it that gives you energy and what is it that drains you?

Dr. Katie: Um, I’ve also did other extracurriculars that I didn’t enjoy, like speech and debate. I ended up actually being pretty decent at speech and debate, but I found it to be incredibly draining. Writing up those arguments, but also going and presenting and talking every single time. That was something that I found pretty draining.

Dr. Katie: And so I’m like, okay, public speaking, maybe not my thing probably won’t become like an ambassador or something anytime soon. So those are things that you’re trying to pay attention to, right? Like has to broaden net of extracurriculars, but start to whittle down based on what you find Gives you energy, gives you joy and, and I say that it sounds very woo-woo, but I promise you that’s actually a huge part of, if you can do self-reflection early on in high school, one, it makes for much, much better essays once you hit your senior year of, of, of high school.

Dr. Katie: And [00:10:00] so like I can always tell as someone who has read lots of essays, when someone has spent a lot of time self-reflecting and thinking about themselves and what they enjoy. But second of all, it means that you’re charting a more genuine path for yourself. So I was talking already about how I’m gonna become a child psychiatrist.

Dr. Katie: That’s, I mean, you can look back and say like, wow, that was pretty obvious, like early on. But at the time in high school, I couldn’t, I simply could not have known that. All I knew at the time was, Hey, this brings me a little bit of joy. Let me do, you know, one step at a time and see where it leads me. And clearly it was true to myself because here I am, a lot of like 10, 15, a lot, a lot of years later.

Dr. Katie: Um, unfortunately looking back and knowing, hey, this was something that I actually clearly I spoke true about, because here I am doing that same thing and finding a lot of satisfaction and joy in it. Okay. So I talked a little bit about Teen Line already. This was a suicide hotline for teenagers across the world.

Dr. Katie: So I, um, ended up writing about it actually in my personal statement. Um, because, and I’ll talk a little bit more about like [00:11:00] how I arranged the essay, but it lended a lot of, um, backing to the fact that I, at the time I put my major down and my like declared major as Cognitive science, the focus in linguistics.

Dr. Katie: So I was able to talk a little bit about like, hey, like this was interesting from like a brain science perspective, like neuroscience perspective, also from a linguistics perspective. I was very fascinated if you couldn’t tell, um, by language and interview and how I could use my words to improve how someone’s feeling, but also how you can tell someone’s how someone’s doing based on their words and what words they choose.

Dr. Katie: Um, and so I talked a little bit about the importance of language, about development of language in kids who were being abused at home. ’cause that actually came up also when I was in the hotline. And so that all came together and coalesced into, um, you know. When they say passion project, I think that’s like really what it comes down to.

Dr. Katie: Do they have a really, do you have a clear vision of your interest and who you are and what you’re, and it’s hard to have that in high school, but that’s kind of what it coalesced into, into my college application and helped me be really successful in the college application process. Second thing is Science Olympiad.

Dr. Katie: Um, I’m sure [00:12:00] some of you guys have set your schools. Um, I ended up being the captain of my Science Olympiad team and this was actually a really standout extracurricular for me, even though we never, I’m from California again, so like it was really hard to win at State. But one of my recommendation letters, spent a lot of time talking about my work in Science Olympiad.

Dr. Katie: We won, you know, a couple of, um, awards here and there, so I was, I had some like objective evidence to back up my work there as well. And I primarily did biology subjects. So again, kind of more to support that fact that I was interested in medicine. Um. I would say also, I ended up writing an essay about how I felt like I failed as a, as a leader of the Science Olympiad team and I remember com, some of the colleges I ended up once, when you get into college, sometimes the admissions officers write you a little note.

Dr. Katie: I think it was at. Princeton or maybe at Yale, they like sent me a little note that was like, we really app, like we, especially like we’re in awe of like your work with Science Olympiad, which I was kind of shocked by because I was like, oh, this is a team that a lot of schools had also, I didn’t like win any huge awards.

Dr. Katie: Um, so maybe there’s something to [00:13:00] it. Um, last thing is research. This is a word that you will hear over and over again if you decide to pursue the medical process. Even now. To this day, I’m a graduate, I’m finally making a salary and I still have to look out for research opportunities. Um, it’s, when I say research, by the way, I wanna be very clear that research is specifically referring to scientific peer reviewed publications.

Dr. Katie: So this is not like you going off and doing research on Alzheimer’s on your own and then like writing a blog, although that’s really cool and kind of a separate extracurricular. What I’m talking about is you’re going to like a local university or academic center and going to typically someone who’s a PhD or m.

Dr. Katie: Who’s in charge of a lab and they are sifting through data. They’re sifting through maybe like bench work, including like, you know, like little pipettes. As you can imagine. That all folds itself into research and then it ultimately becomes like a poster or a peer reviewed and then published presentation or research paper of [00:14:00] some kind.

Dr. Katie: Okay. And I should say that it’s not expected for you to publish or do anything fancy, but I did do a cup. I did do that biomedical engineering program I talked about. We did end up doing a little poster presentation at the end of it, and that was kind of like my research experience, I guess. Um, so what does the expected academic profile, I get this question a lot.

Dr. Katie: I wish that I could give a clear cut like, Hey, if you have this GPA and these many aps, you’ll get into Brown’s pleading program. That’s unfortunately not how it works. What I will say though is try to take. The most challenging courses offered at your high school, particularly in science related classes?

Dr. Katie: So I’m thinking biology and chemistry as like the primary two. Those are both classically, especially chemistry. It’s classically like what they call the leader class of, of college, right? It’s, it’s like the class that’s the toughest. It’s how you, they kind of like test your medal to see if you’re gonna make it through as a pre-med in college.

Dr. Katie: Um, and so it’s important to show colleges, [00:15:00] especially if you’re interested in BSMD programs, um, that you are strong in those elements that you will survive the college like. Um, the college leader classes and that you will make it out on the other end and, and, and do well, I think the biggest thing about BSMD admissions that I often will mention is they’re taking a chance on you as an 18-year-old, that you are going to stick it out and become a doctor and become a good doctor.

Dr. Katie: And that’s a really big chance to take on someone, um, that you haven’t even met ever. And so that’s, that’s a little bit of why like these APs and grades are so important. If your school doesn’t offer any APs, I’m actually doing a whole separate webinar about APs later on this month, so I don’t want to get too into the weeds about it.

Dr. Katie: But what you should know is that you are evaluated based on what your school offers. Um, so, uh, whatever your school offers, take what you can. Second thing is SAT scores. I think about SAT scores very much as like a gateway, if that makes sense, into admission. So once you get above a certain score, you and I both know, or any, I, you [00:16:00] take the SAT out there, but we kind of all know that standardized tests at some point, like a couple of points here and there, it’s kind of if you had like were were lucky that day, if you slept well the night before, if you happen to get like a reading comprehension section that really just like didn’t make any sense to you, right?

Dr. Katie: Like that can make a huge, just like a little bit of a difference. So once you reach a certain, I think like threshold of SAT score, it really doesn’t make a diff big difference if you got like that 1600 or like the 1520. Like it really, it’s like a minor, minor difference at that point. And we get that.

Dr. Katie: And so once you’re scoring high enough, it’s a standardized test. That’s what they’re using it for you kind of like you’ve opened the gateway into like being accepted for, for competitive admissions. And then the last thing I would say is interest and depth of interest in medicine. But also other subjects.

Dr. Katie: Remember, you are not applying to medical school here. You’re applying to be a college student, and they are, and like they are looking at you as a college student. So who are you gonna be on campus? What are your myriad of interests? They shouldn’t only be in medicine, [00:17:00] given that you can’t study medicine in college.

Dr. Katie: So who are you gonna be on campus? What are you gonna be interested in? What kind of college are you gonna be? Those are all the questions that I’m asking when I’m looking at ad, ad admissions, uh, like the admissions paperwork. Okay. So for me, I, I’ve said already, I’m from California, so I applied to my local state schools, all the UCs.

Dr. Katie: Um, and those were actually, those were like. My mom really wanted me to go there, as you might imagine, ’cause I’m closer. So UCs were top of my list. I applied to a good number of Ivys, Caltech, Stanford, a couple of BSMD programs, as well as some safeties. So I will say for me, and everyone kind of lands differently on this, when I work as an advisor with CollegeAdvisor, I kind of help students figure out where they land on the spectrum of, if you’re pre-med to BSMD, how much BSMD do you want?

Dr. Katie: And versus how much pre-med. And for me, I was pretty, I was pretty like on the side of the pre-med, if that makes sense. Like I went primarily applied, applied pre-med, and I threw in a couple of BS [00:18:00] MD programs here and there. But that really wasn’t my primary aim. Um, I wanted like that full four years of liberal arts education.

Dr. Katie: And I didn’t want to just only do stem, that was like an important thing to me. Um, so I got into a, a, a lot of these schools. Um, I actually, I always tell my students as well when I work with them, I didn’t get into my early action school. And so that was incredibly devastating for me early on in like December when it came out.

Dr. Katie: But then I redid my application, turned it around, and got into like almost all the schools after that that I applied to. And so basically, don’t be sad for all of you out there who are thinking about, or if my seniors out there are waiting for the March admissions, um, it, it can still, it I can still happen really well.

Dr. Katie: And, um, I tore a number of schools in the East coast because I’d never actually, never really been to the East coast very much prior to applying. And so I toured a couple figured out where I could live and ended up choosing Brown’s, uh, program in medical education, which is the PLME program. Um, the Brown PLME [00:19:00] program is an eight year program, and every single BSMD program is different, but mine meant that I did not take the MCAT and I also did not have to apply to medical school.

Dr. Katie: Okay, so common misconception, do you have to major in STEM to be pre-med? I, it’s even in green. The answer is no. Right? No. With multiple exclamation marks. I actually ended up majoring in anthropology. I actually created my own major, essentially, and I majored technically in science and technology studies with the focus of medical anthropology and mental health.

Dr. Katie: There’s a reason why I don’t often say what I majored in ’cause it’s a very long mouthful. Um, what I will say though is I want all of you, ’cause I’m coun, I’m counseling all of you guys for college applications. I would say think very strategically because what you put down on your common application that that college application for your major as like your intended major is not at all what you have to end up applying.

Dr. Katie: As [00:20:00] most schools, you actually only declare your major in your sophomore year. This is true for Brown, this is true for all. The Ivys is true for like a lot of schools. You don’t declare your major until your sophomore year, which means the major that you put down on your college application really should be the major that fits in the best with your application.

Dr. Katie: And also that you can write the most interesting and compelling, uh, essay about because you, you will have to write an essay about why you wanna major in that. Hence why when I applied, I said Cognitive science linguistics. Right? I’m not saying that I, I definitely consider, like I, I still considered actually majoring in it, but it also just fit together really, really well with my application and it lent itself to me being able to talk about multiple aspects of my application and kind of like where those interests aligned and, and, and, and met.

Dr. Katie: Um, so why would you major in stem? So, one, oftentimes people will do well, a lot of, you’ll see a lot of biology and human biology and public health, uh, pre-med majors. And the reason for that is because [00:21:00] the classes that you have to take to major in biology overlap pretty heavily with the classes that medical schools want to see you take.

Dr. Katie: So medical schools will want to see you take like. Calc two, calc BC or Calc two. And then also want to see you take like three semesters of biology, including like cell and molecular biology, for example. And those also happen to be in the biology major. And so it, it, it often happens that there’s a very large overlap because like the, the classes overlap.

Dr. Katie: Why would you not major in stem? So that’s a really interesting question too, and I didn’t clearly, one reason is might be because you have another disparate. And like deep interest in something else. So I, for example, strongly considered majoring English. I could have done, excuse my rice cooker, I could have done an English major and also done those pre-med classes and it would’ve fit perfectly fine into my schedule, right?

Dr. Katie: Like I did that, like exactly what I did. I major in anthropology and I took all the pre-med [00:22:00] classes anyway, so it was not a, it was not trouble, it’s just that you have then more required classes to take. Um, what I will say though is sometimes when you major in something that’s not in STEM one, I think it lends you to a very different perspe, an interesting perspective on medicine.

Dr. Katie: I find that I am, I was like, I definitely serve me really well on the medical school interview trail. Um, I will also say, people often are curious about why you majored in it and it, it, like, it kind of helps you stand apart in some ways. Um, so those are both reasons why you might think about why you might not major in stem.

Dr. Katie: Um, and then, so those are the two, like that. Very true. Also, separate from strategically, what are you gonna declare as your major? Something that I would advise all of you to like, like, think, be thoughtful about and even talk through like an advisor about. So, oh, I forgot I had this slide. I already talked about what I majored in.

Dr. Katie: Okay. So this is what I majored in anthropology and mental health was kind of like, anthropology is at the lens that we use and the mental health was like the subject that I chose. Um, but some other interesting ones, like some people chose like the political [00:23:00] science of reproductive health, for example.

Dr. Katie: Or, um, there was one person who did like the ethics of computer science and like ai, all like all really, really cool majors. And the fact that we, you can take classes that will serve you in that function at Brown is, uh, one part of why I really, really loved my college education and, and general really value, like generally college education.

Dr. Katie: So. For me, what I will say, um, is that Brown, we’re famous for what’s something called the open curriculum, which just means that we’re, there’s a lot of like things that means that we have no gen ed classes and that we’re all about freedom and taking classes across all the departments that you want to take.

Dr. Katie: So I took a class in the religious studies department about Buddhism and death. I took a class in the philosophy department about everyday moral problems. I took a class in the history department about, um, history of prisons and like institutionalization. And these are all like classes that I honestly, pretty regularly think about and like comes up in my day-to-day conversation.

Dr. Katie: Um, [00:24:00] uh, and so that’s why I ended up kind of like mashing my own major because I got to take the classes that I loved, but I also had to take all these like random other classes that were really fulfilling and really interesting to me. Okay, what else can you do on your college application? So these are the three like kind of main points that I hit for the, for, for, especially for pre-med applicants.

Dr. Katie: First thing is shadowing. Um, some BSMD programs especially will look very heavily at shadowing hours. It’s tough to get shadowing hours, right? Like, I think depending on what state you’re in, there’s a lot of times a lot of rules around your age and, you know, like getting into the hospital. Shadowing by the way just means that you are literally following a doctor for a day.

Dr. Katie: It can also be like following a dentist by the way, or someone that maybe works in private practice so that you might have an easier time getting access to them. Um, so if you, your family, friends, um, I know some people who even asked like their own doctors to see if their kids, like if they knew if their, if their doctors knew, maybe they could shadow.

Dr. Katie: Those are all pretty, [00:25:00] like, those are all fair options to try shadowing. I will say I had zero shadowing hours actually going into my college app, like going into college. And so while it’s something that I think is really nice to have on your application and makes for really good essays, um, it’s not a must.

Dr. Katie: I didn’t have any, um, second volunteering at local hospitals, senior homes, any sort of clinical experience where you’re in like a clinical setting, senior homes often sometimes can be a little bit easier. Those are all worthwhile ways that you can kind of be in the hospital and Sure. Your interest in medicine.

Dr. Katie: I certainly, I volunteered a, a good number of hours at the local hospital. Um, and if ideally you can be placed somewhere where you get like in-person patient interaction, that is ideal. Um, final thing, like show thoughtfulness in your medicine interest. Um, uh, if this, if this is like, one thing I could hammer in, for those of you who might be sophomore and juniors, is to start self-reflecting early.

Dr. Katie: And what I mean by that is. [00:26:00] Saying that you want to help people, um, often enough is not, is not enough to, when it comes to like a pre-med essay, um, you want to be thinking when someone asks you why you want to be a doctor. It helps if you’ve shadowed for sure. And now that I’m on the other end of it, and as a doctor, I have a much better understanding of what it means to be a doctor, of course.

Dr. Katie: But I like to say like, think a doctor as like, um. As like a, a connection with different roles. So a doctor is a teacher, for example, when I am in my primary care clinic, I find that I spend a lot of my time educating patients, whether it’s about diabetes or hypertension, or about how medications work, about medication side effects.

Dr. Katie: I find teaching to be actually one of the most fulfilling parts of being a doctor. And, and also I, I just love teaching as a, as a person. I teach medical students as well. Um, or I want to teach medical students my future as well. And um, so like you could think of a doctor as a teacher. You could think of a doctor as an advocate.

Dr. Katie: Um, I worked briefly on like a policy that went to the state Congress where I was at the time about what [00:27:00] went through the minimum age be for, um, kids to be imprisoned, like literally put in juvenile attention. Um, right. Those are things that doctors can comment on. I know shockingly enough, like we have, because you have that empty behind in your name, you have the power to advocate for things.

Dr. Katie: Um. You can even think of it as like minor advocacy. I will write notes for my patient saying, Hey, like, landlord needs to get rid of the lead in the walls. Or, Hey, like, school needs to make these accommodations for my kids. Right? So these are all things that you do as a doctor. You are an advocate and your voice has that kind of power.

Dr. Katie: Um, you might also think of a doctor as like, I don’t know, like a puzzler or detective or like a Sherlock Holmes or like if you’re interested in surgery, right? There’s like, those doctors are primarily working with their hands, so you can think of it as like, you know, something to do with your hands. Um, there’s all these different facets of what it means to be a doctor, and I would invite you all to.

Dr. Katie: Think about what kind of fits in with who you are, your application, your background, and like spend some time thinking it through and being really [00:28:00] thoughtful about why you wanna become a doctor. Obviously as a 17, 18-year-old, it’s really hard to say, but hopefully me telling you a little bit about like how I got here and my story getting here kind of gives a little bit of insight, um, for you all into, into ways that you can think about it, um, as well.

Dr. Katie: So general advice, um, for those of you looking to study pre-med, this is true like for high school and for college. Know which professors are hard graders versus easier graders. This is true also for high school, right? You do pre matters in high school, know which teachers are harsh graders and easier graders.

Dr. Katie: Oftentimes the upperclassmen will know and you can kind of get a sense of that and you can like try to, I don’t know, go for one teacher or another. Um, this is true also for, for being pre-med. Your GPA matters a lot as a pre-med, especially your science GPA when you’re applying to medical school. So it’s important to look at like.

Dr. Katie: Like to know, like, is this professor really tough in anatomy or not? Um, get your recommendations early. This applies to you now. And in med school, have someone like, kind of pinpointed, so you need a humanities teacher and a [00:29:00] STEM teacher to apply to college. Typically, like I would have those, um, those people in mind, you know, keep an eye out for like who does up, like upperclassmen often will say like, oh, who’s a good recommendation writer, for example, who takes their time with your recommendation?

Dr. Katie: Um, also people who know you well, people who know you extracurricularly. I had mentioned earlier that one of my teachers wrote extensively about my Science Olympiad, um, work in his recommendation letter. It was like four pages long. I asked him after I graduated for the recommendation letter so I could show some of my students that I’m advising.

Dr. Katie: Um, and it, yeah, it was, it was, so that’s like not the norm. Typically, recommendation letters are one page long, but the one thing that they should comment on are who you are as a person and who you are as a thinker. Not necessarily like, oh, just like, oh, you were the best student in my class. You had a hundred percent on all tests, right?

Dr. Katie: Um. And then final thing, this is my like, don’t make this mistake kind of like, uh, discussion or, or like, like the declaration. Do not write in OneNote application just about your interest in [00:30:00] medicine. Um, I read as, I worked as an advisor now for like n near no more than eight years. I led, I forgot, I graduated med school, um, for like eight years now.

Dr. Katie: So I’ve read a lot of essays and what I will say with my, every single time. No matter what the first essay that someone comes in with, we always scrap, and that’s just part of the college essay writing process. The first one you write is never gonna be the perfect one. That being said, one of the biggest mistakes that I see often is I’ll read multiple essays and they all are about your interest in medicine.

Dr. Katie: Remember, you’re not like you’re trying to keep my interest for 15 minutes. As I’m reading your application, I wanna get a sense of who you are, but I also wanna get a full picture of who you are, your life, like where you come from. I, I wanna have like this image of who you are, and that image is not going to be, I wanna be a doctor, I wanna be a software engineer.

Dr. Katie: Right? That’s just one tiny, tiny sliver that honestly can fit into one essay, maybe a couple if you really wanna mention it, but it really shouldn’t be the entirety of your application. It’s like one of the most common mistakes that I’ll see. [00:31:00] Okay. Um, if you’re interested in BSMD programs, and happy to answer more specific questions about them in the Q&A as well, but it’s very competitive.

Dr. Katie: If you are, remember I was talking about that spectrum earlier? If you are like really, really dead, dead set on BS MD programs, you’ll have to apply to a lot. And everyone always asks me like, do you have a list of them? How does their application work? Unfortunately, I have to say that it’s not a standardized process.

Dr. Katie: Um, some of them were on common apps. Some of them that I submitted were on like PDFs that I literally had to email in, um, which is like, I don’t think they do that anymore. I was so backwards. Um. So every single BSMD program is different. Every single BSMD program also comes with different requirements. I was literally just talking to someone, well, actually one of my co-residents, uh, who’s a medicine resident about her experience.

Dr. Katie: And she was in, I think, a seven year program and she had to take the MCAT and she had like minimums in every single, um, category, for example. And she had a completely different undergrad experience and med school experience than I did. So make [00:32:00] sure you do your research before you apply, but also after you apply right?

Dr. Katie: Make sure it’s actually like the right fit for you. I would say that most BSMD programs for me wouldn’t have been the right fit because again, I really wanted like a strong. It serves me well today. Today like a strong liberal arts education. Okay. Uh, with BSMD programs, there is a very specific interview.

Dr. Katie: It’s a very specific style of interview. Sometimes it’s called an MMI. Um, I would advise everyone prepare practice for that interview. It’s, it, it’s actually this, this is different by the way, from a pre-med application for a BSMD application in your interview can make or break whether or not you get in.

Dr. Katie: So it’s very important to do well. And last thing, my little, little tidbit. Sometimes people listen to me, sometimes people don’t and then they regret it. Always fill out your entire common application ahead of time. By that I don’t mean, obviously you don’t have all your essays written. Literally just write the word essay into the essay section.

Dr. Katie: Because what I’m saying is fill out all of those drop boxes because sometimes you fill out a [00:33:00] Dropbox and a surprise essay will pop up and you’ll be like, oh no, I have 30 minutes to the deadline and I have not written that essay because I did not know it existed, because it didn’t appear before this.

Dr. Katie: Um, so very important, like do all the little drop boxes, get all the little logistics stuff in before you even have to like get your essays in. Okay.

Lonnie: Okay. Okay. Thank you Dr. Katie. Great information for our audience. So, with that said, we are now gonna move into our live Q&A. So just a reminder, you can download the slides by going to the handout tab, how it’s gonna work for the live Q&A.

Lonnie: I will read through the questions that you have submitted in the Q&A tab, and you’re more than welcome to go ahead and start submitting those questions if you haven’t done so. And then I will paste them into the public chat for you to see, and I’ll read [00:34:00] them out loud for Katie to answer. As a heads up, if your Q&A tab isn’t letting you submit questions, just double check that you joined the webinar through the custom link in your email and not the webinar landing page.

Lonnie: Try logging out and logging back in through the link in your email and if that does not work, try logging in, um, through the website. Launching page. Um, and you’ll be able to ask your questions there. If you have any other support you need, just go ahead and send me Lonnie, a private message, and I will do my best to support you.

Lonnie: All righty, Dr. Katie, you ready for the first question?

Dr. Katie: I am.

Lonnie: Okay. So someone, um, mentioned are you mentioned around passion projects. Mm-hmm. And they were wondering if you could explain more of what a passion project is and how it impacts college and med school.

Dr. Katie: Mm. Okay. Um, I guess, and I, I wish I could, I should [00:35:00] have reframed it as I don’t, I think maybe passion product isn’t the right word, but like passion, uh, there’s another word for this that people are using.

Dr. Katie: Uh, feel free to chime in if you think of it. But the idea is that you are an applicant. With, um, some amount of, of depth in your, in your work? So for me, like the suicide hotline really, I think maybe also the science Olympia, depending on who you ask, was like really like one of the two, the two standout parts of my application.

Dr. Katie: I spent hours after school doing science Olympia, for example, like, um. Working on different events, like doing, building, like things that launched eggs, you know, doing all these things for it. And it’s something that I spent a lot of time into, but that clearly also my interest and passion for kind of paid off for like, you could see the achievements that I got and also that information helped.

Dr. Katie: Um, same thing with like the suicide hotline. So I guess what I’m saying with Passion project is it, it doesn’t have to be like some, it doesn’t have to be like you write a book or you win a science fair or you like magically like find the [00:36:00] cure for cancer. I didn’t do any of those things. I find, I think like, I’m like a very, like I was a relatively normal high school student, right?

Dr. Katie: And so when I think about passion project, what I really think about is like finding that thing that feels very genuine and that you’re very interested in. For me it really was the suicide hotline. I think it, when I, when you, when I, when I talked about it in my essays, it really came to something that I like had a lot of interest in and also like delved more into, in the sense that I had like.

Dr. Katie: A lot of like the biology and neuroscience and mental health interests kind of like encapsulated in a lot of my application.

Lonnie: Great. Okay. Our next question, so we’ve gotten a few questions in regards to the last statement you made about the style of interviews. Um, so one wanted to know what is an MMI style interview?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, yeah. Um, so the MMI style interview, I think it stands for multiple mini interview if I’m not wrong. Basically it’s like you have a bunch [00:37:00] of 15 minute interviews and each of those interviews though, typically instead of like, oh, like, oh, who are you? Like, nice to get to know you, like, where are you from?

Dr. Katie: It’ll be like quick, like, like an ethics question. So like, what would you do in the setting of like if a patient came in and they were Jehovah’s Witness and they refused blood transfusion, they needed blood transfusion, like what would you do? Or it might be like, Hmm, okay. Like tell me a little bit about, um.

Dr. Katie: Like, uh, what is like a public health intervention that you feel like has changed the world in the past decade or in the past, like several decades? Again, it’s like questions like that, that are kind of more related to medicine and are, are are tough because right, as a high schooler, you’re like, oh, there’s a lot going on.

Dr. Katie: Um, so there’s ways and there’s books and there’s like, there’s ways that you can prep for them.

Lonnie: Thank you for providing that clarification or a little more insight into that type of interview. Our next question says, in general, do BSMD programs provide less education compared to [00:38:00] traditional four years in your major?

Lonnie: And can you be as competent in your abilities?

Dr. Katie: Oh, that’s an interesting question. I only have ever gotten that one before. Yeah. So, um, for, again, as for my BSMD program, right? I, it’s the same length as everyone else. So I did four years of undergrad and, uh, four years of medical school. So I, I went to the same training that everyone else in the book did.

Dr. Katie: If anything, like, I’m maybe like one or two years younger than most of my co-residents, because a lot these days, a lot of people take gap years to go into medicine. Um, but we otherwise like have the exact same training. What I will say for some of the accelerated BSMD programs, I, I absolutely do not think that they are like lesser trained.

Dr. Katie: I do think they probably had a harder go of it, like they had a rough time in undergrad because a lot of them had to fit in all of those like pre-med STEM classes into three years. Um, so sometimes like they had to take classes is what I’m told, like in their summers or [00:39:00] winter breaks. Especially for like those six year programs where it’s like super duper contend condensed.

Dr. Katie: Um. They like, so they might’ve been like rougher in undergrad, but I would definitely not say you’re worse prepared. Also, medical school is four years, like pretty much no matter what. And so either way, we’re getting, we’re all getting the same doctor training. So at the end of the day, like people don’t care nowadays that I went to A-B-S-M-D program, except for the fact that I’m a little younger than them, maybe.

Lonnie: Yes, yes. Um, but still very impressive as well. Uh, so our next question says, and this is about your research. Um, so someone said, would you, Des, can you describe or how would you describe your interactions with research in high school versus undergrad?

Dr. Katie: Hmm, that’s a very good question. So in high school I was very much like I didn’t know what was happening.

Dr. Katie: I didn’t know what I was doing. But the ways to, I would say, to start getting research are, I think two things that I did. One was that I [00:40:00] often cold emailed, um, like professors at my local university, which for me was either UCLA or USC. Like I would literally cold email professors introducing myself, like providing my resume.

Dr. Katie: But I would also like look into what their research was. Oftentimes you’ll be able to find it, like if you look under like UCLA biomedical sciences or something, like it’ll list professors and then if you click into their name, it’ll actually also list their research interests and their recent publications.

Dr. Katie: And so I would like, genuinely, I would cold email them and be like, do you need a high school in your lab to do anything? Um, and most of those emails went unanswered, like one in 10, maybe I got a response. And usually the rejection, right? But that’s how you kind of get started and get your foot in. The other thing that you can do is look for different research programs.

Dr. Katie: Now, when I was in high school, there might be new ones now, and someone else once it maybe have menu, Lenny, someone told me that you can use chat GPT for this, which is wild. I did not have that when I was in high school. But, uh, there was this website on, I think it was the University of Rochester. If [00:41:00] you look up University of Rochester biomedical summer research programs, it might still come.

Dr. Katie: I don’t know if it’s still around, but it was just like a list of a bunch of different research programs, um, that occurred over the summer. So things to look out for here, because I caution, especially if there’s any parents out there, some of these programs, like they charge a lot of money and like, what are you really paying for?

Dr. Katie: I would say a program should be at least four weeks long and there really should be something about like. You are being assigned a lab, you are being assigned a mentor, you are being assigned someone that you’re working with, and at the end of that you might present like a poster or something like that.

Dr. Katie: Um, it shouldn’t be like, if it’s like a, oh, like this is a leadership camp or leadership opportunity. I feel a little bit more sketch about those because I’m like, I don’t really know what’s happening in there. Like you’re, maybe you’re sitting in a classroom, classroom, you’re not really like doing research in those particular circumstances.

Dr. Katie: Um, so that’s kind of my little research plug.

Lonnie: Yeah, very helpful. Uh, so our next question is about your residency. So, uh, it [00:42:00] reads, what was your residency like and what were the main tasks you had to do?

Dr. Katie: Oh, that is interesting. Um, so being a resident is tough. Uh, it’s, it’s hard work. You work really long hours.

Dr. Katie: Any of you who watch Grey’s Anatomy or any of the other shows I watch that I actually recently started the Pit. And The Pit is probably one of the most single, most like, accurate medical shows I’ve watched. Um, that like watching it, I was like, yep, that’s exactly like, I’m a little bit less busy than that, but, ’cause I’m, I’m resident on attending, but I was like, this is very accurate to when I worked in the ed.

Dr. Katie: Um. So as a resident, you are responsible for your patients. You are the fir we call it the frontline provider, meaning like you are the first person to go to if anything goes wrong. If someone’s heart stops, you are the one who is sprinting through the hospital. Um, if, uh, someone stops breathing, you are the one sprinting to the patient’s bedside.

Dr. Katie: If a patient is screaming and yelling, you are the one going to bedside and you [00:43:00] are trying to figure out how to calm down this patient and what they need. Um, so you as a resident, you are, you are what the hospital like exists on, like you are the backbone of the hospital and you run all of your decisions by like the attending doctor.

Dr. Katie: So it’s like, let’s say you wanna start different antibiotics, you would run that by the attending doctor typically. Um, or like during nighttime you might like start it and then you might revisit it in the morning. But typically that’s, that’s what a resident does. Like we, we are, we have like some supervision.

Dr. Katie: Um, but other than that we are like the first people that, um, patients are treated.

Lonnie: That’s very insightful. Thank you for sharing that. Our next question is, can you explain, uh oh, it disappeared quickly. Okay, here we go. Can you explain how one should look at differences between giving back to the community and undergoing shadowing experience?

Lonnie: Which, which is [00:44:00] primarily for you? So kind of the difference between like, I wanna do communities work, but then, you know, also kind of like the balance between the shadowing experience too.

Dr. Katie: Oh, okay. Um, I would honestly say most people should engage in. One or both if they are able, if you’re able to find Chatham experience, I think you should gauge of both.

Dr. Katie: So community work is more like volunteering. So if you were volunteering at the senior center, for example, and you are like, maybe you play piano. So you go once a weekend, you play piano and play covers for the people who are there. Or like me, when I was doing, um, the suicide hotline, teen line, that would be considered like under the community service bucket.

Dr. Katie: Shadowing is separate in the sense because you’re not. Really helping anyone, as much as, I hate to say, you’re literally just like following a doctor around. So you’re kind of like, ooh. Like what, what are they doing? What are they doing? What are they doing? Um, but you’re not really like giving back or slash like helping [00:45:00] people per se directly.

Dr. Katie: Um, I would say community service, it’s important to kind of find like your own niche of what you care about. Um, a strong application is. Or rather a week application is one where maybe you’re involved in like five different clubs and for all of them, like you meet for an hour on a different weekday and you like every, so often once a month you like go, you do like a little bit of beach cleanup.

Dr. Katie: You maybe like go to the soup kitchen like once a month and you like do a little bit here and there. What I would rather see is you dig really deep into one thing or another. So maybe if a soup kitchen is something that you find really valuable, you get really involved in food insecurity and, and like maybe you get, or maybe you get really involved in like homelessness or unhoused ness in your city.

Dr. Katie: Um, or if you’re really into beach cleanup, like maybe you really get into like environmental stuff and you like start doing more in that area, right? So like dig in deep into whatever it is that, um, you find appeals to you within the community service branch.

Lonnie: Okay. So with that said, I’m gonna give Dr.

Lonnie: Katie a small break, [00:46:00] uh, ’cause she’s been sharing a lot of great information with you all and I’m very excited to share more about the work that we do here within CollegeAdvisor. So for those in the room who aren’t already working with us, we know how overwhelming the admissions process can be, especially as we think about applying

Lonnie: Um, to pre-med programs and BSMD programs. CollegeAdvisor’s team of over 300 former admission officers and admission experts are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process in one-on-one advising sessions and essay editing through our digital platform. CollegeAdvisor has had 10,000 total Lifeline clients and a 4.8 out of five rating on Trustpilot with over 750 reviews.

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Lonnie: At the end, you’ll also learn more about the [00:48:00] premium packages we offer that will pair you with an expert who can support you in building your college list, editing your essays, and much, much more. We are here for the, we’re here for the whole process. And so with that said, we are going to continue to move forward with our live questions and answers.

Lonnie: Uh, Dr. Katie, are you ready for the next question?

Dr. Katie: Yes, I am.

Lonnie: All right. Um, someone, um, asks, can we know more about how you explain to admission officers, uh oh. There, the question disappeared. I’ll get back to that question. Sorry about that. Okay. So someone asked the question around when you entered the BSMD program, how were you able to cope with the stress from the accelerated and accelerated [00:49:00] condensed classes?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, that’s a very good question. Um, and I, I’ll also answer like how it kind of differed from people at Brown who are pre-med. So I, again, for clarification. Brown. Not condensed actually, or accelerated. It was just a full eight years. And the way that my program worked specifically, and this, I’m only speaking to Brown ’cause that’s what I experienced.

Dr. Katie: Um, it was actually less stressful than, um, than the typical pre-med experience because I actually didn’t have to take, um, any math classes because I took AP calculus in high school. I didn’t have to take any physics classes because I took AP physics in high school. So I was able to test out a lot of like the annoying pre-med requirements that I personally didn’t really like.

Dr. Katie: Um, so it was actually a lot less stressful. It’s also less stressful because you know that you have a spot in medical school waiting for you. Look, I didn’t have to apply to medical school and that meant that all of my [00:50:00] activities, all of my extracurriculars, everything that I did in college. Was what I wanted to do.

Dr. Katie: Like it wasn’t, it wasn’t geared because I needed to get into medical school. I didn’t like, feel like I had to force myself to do research because I wanted to get into medical school. All the things I did purely were because I was interested in it. And so it was actually much, much less stressful. I also didn’t have to pay mcat.

Dr. Katie: Um, and I also saved a lot of money from like not having to apply to medical school. So all in all, I would say, like, my experience, I’m not gonna lie, was, was a, was like a lot less stressful than the typical pre-meds. And I say this with lots of love. My best friend right now, um, is in med school at Cornell and was actually my roommate all through like when I undergrad at Brown.

Dr. Katie: Um, and she was a typical, like she was a pre-med, like more traditional pathway major to neuroscience. Um, just like your classic like pre-med that you would imagine. And those are the things that she did think about, right? She did think about taking the mcat, she had to think about, um. Doing research in undergrad so that she could apply to medical school.

Dr. Katie: Um, so I think that was like kind [00:51:00] of the main difference is the more traditional pathway you have to gear up for another application. That being said, um, I, I will say some of the benefits, uh, of like the BS MD program and some of the downsides benefits are that it offers me that freedom, less stress, of course.

Dr. Katie: And it also offered me the opportunity to create a lot of relationships. So a a lot of the research that I was able to get done, I did a lot of shadowing as well, actually in college, specifically not in high school. Um, but I also scheduled a little, a lot of shadowing because a lot of the doctors were aware that I was ing and so they knew that I would be a medical student with them someday.

Dr. Katie: And so they were excited to have me in their clinics and to experience like what it was like, you know, what, what their jobs were. And that’s, that’s how I was able to understand early on what I liked and didn’t like again. Um, I would say that, um, one, one of the downsides is that you are locked into that medical school.

Dr. Katie: So I was locked into Browns medical school. If you apply out, you lose your spot. Um, so that was one of [00:52:00] the, I think like one of the bigger downsides for me.

Lonnie: All right. Okay. So I found the question, um, so going back to the question I was, um, start with is can you, can we know more about how you explained to admission officers why you preferred a BS MD over a traditional path?

Lonnie: So a little bit maybe. Yeah. You know,

Dr. Katie: that’s a good question too. I don’t know if I, that that’s a good, a good, that’s a good roundabout way to ask the question that I think should be asked, which is when you’re replying, you have to make like a, a, an argument for why they should take you like 17, 18-year-old me, um, into their program.

Dr. Katie: And why not just go through traditional pathway. So one thing that I, again, this is very brown play me specific, because that’s where I got into and where I applied. But for me, a big part of it was, first of all, you have to make a good argument. So you have to have like the, the strong [00:53:00] academics. You have to show a lot of thoughtfulness about why you wanted to go into medicine.

Dr. Katie: So why I talked a lot about, um, medicine. Being an educational role. And I had some, you know, background in tutoring that I had done, um, and was interested in. And, um, so I, I kind of wrote like a, a, hopefully a good essay about why I wanted to go into medicine. And then I also, for PMI specifically, I talked about the importance of the liberal arts, like the, the broader education for me.

Dr. Katie: And something I will say is that when you are a pre-med student, um, you have to, you, you know, you must take certain classes. The biology, the chemistry, the physics, the math that I’ve talked about already, you have to a certain amount of classes and you do well in them. And so that means that there’s a little bit of pressure to, um, you’re not quite as free with your other classes because you have all these classes that you already must take.

Dr. Katie: And on top of that, the other classes you typically want them to be lighter classes, classes that are less stressful for you and you might not [00:54:00] be as worried about like grades for, because your GPA matters. And so my argument was that I, and this is true, I am someone who’s always been incredibly excited whenever that cast, that class catalog drops every semester.

Dr. Katie: Like I was someone who like truly, and I’ve, my advisors have told me this before too, like I truly embodied the Plea Me spirit in the sense that I really took such like the broadest array of classes. Like I really took classes in so many different and bizarre departments because I was honestly just chasing like what I was interested in.

Dr. Katie: I’d be like, that was, and I would, there was like a period that we call shopping period at Brown where you go and sit in the class and you see if that professor’s a right fit for you. You’ll even see like, are they a magnetic speaker? Are they a good lecturer? Like is this a class I’m interested in as they’re like trying to sell this class to me?

Dr. Katie: And for me, like I would shop like 20 classes every single semester and then I would whittle it down to the five I had to that, that I got to take. Um, so. That was kind of like my sell was like, [00:55:00] Hey, I am this person who is not, I am not your traditional pre-med student. I, I did not major in neuroscience. I have all these other interests.

Dr. Katie: That’s why I’m a good fit for your BSMB program.

Lonnie: Great. All right. Our next question, it starts with, so happy to be here. We are so happy to have you as well. Love your energy. Um, you’ve mentioned the importance of advanced STEM classes in high school. I’m not naturally skilled in science and I’ve been told that it’s better to take an on-level class and earn higher grades than an honors or AP course.

Lonnie: With consistent Cs, I fit much of the other criteria you mentioned colleges look for. So do you think those kinds of grades could be excused?

Dr. Katie: Yeah. Um, I would say that having like one. For example, like I had, I remember someone from my high school had one C in AP US history [00:56:00] and ended up going to Harvard.

Dr. Katie: So it’s not like one C is going to tank your entire application, but it is like a cause for like what happened there. And for us it was actually, we had like a really, really. Harsh grader, um, in our ap US history, and weirdly enough, college admissions officers are actually assigned to the high schools in your area.

Dr. Katie: So they actually know like what’s tough and what’s like, what’s easy. And they also know what’s typical for most other high schools in your school. So things I would look at for you are what are other, like, what are your classmates taking, for example, if a lot of them are taking aps and you would wanna be challenging yourself as well.

Dr. Katie: Um, I would say that you want to be taking enough that you’re challenging yourself to your full potential and you’re also getting balancing A’s and B’s. Uh, um, I would say like, I don’t, I, I think like a transcript full of CS would probably be detrimental for like a pre-med application, especially for stem.

Dr. Katie: But if you’re having ASS and bs, okay, we’re, we’re in a solid place. Um, I’m also giving another talk on APS later, I think on this month. [00:57:00] So we’ll be talking more about APS then. The last thing I would say is if science is not your strong suit, I would not say science is my strong suit either, to be honest.

Dr. Katie: But it often is like the realistic truth is you’ll be doing a lot of science as a pre-med student. And so you have to make the choice of like, is this something that’s truly so difficult for you that you’re going to be like not enjoying your life and not enjoying your time, trying to beat yourself over the bush to get yourself to this place?

Dr. Katie: Or is this something that where you’re like, you can, you can kind of push through, which is what I basically did. I was like, I can do well enough that I can push through. It’s not my strong suit, it’s not what I enjoy. But at the end of the day, medicine is not necessarily all stem, especially once you get into medical school.

Dr. Katie: Um, but it’s a lot of science on your way there. And so I would really, I would evaluate to see if that’s something that you like, it’s something that you can push through or something that you’re, you’re like, I, I would not want anyone to hate their entire college experience just because they wanted to be a doctor.

Dr. Katie: [00:58:00] That would make me sad.

Lonnie: Yes. And we had a few questions that were very similar to, to the question that you just answered. Mm-hmm. And, um, this may be our last question, and so again, we weren’t able to get to every question, but I did try to look through some questions that I saw had a very similar theme.

Lonnie: Um, so our last question is, what skills or habits do you see in the most successful BSMD students? So I can start developing them now while in high school?

Dr. Katie: Oh, okay. Um, also an interesting question. I think that for any A-B-S-M-D or med student, um, they kind of train similar things, but I would say, especially for BSMD, a lot of my a, my, my, um, colleagues we’re incredibly, we do a lot of things.

Dr. Katie: We know how to put together a good application and we typically know how to develop like that, like that. And not [00:59:00] passion project, that like passion image, like we have kind of like some set goals and we know how to do the extracurriculars and do the work to work towards them. Um, I would say if there’s one habit I would develop early.

Dr. Katie: Two things. One, self-reflection and self-reflection leading to good writing. If you can be a strong writer, you’re gonna be writing essays for the rest of your days. By the way, guys like to apply for things. You have to keep writing essays. I just wrote essays last year to apply for residency, and I have to write essays again for a fellowship and every time I apply for like a scholarship or like an award or an honor, right?

Dr. Katie: Another essay. If there’s one thing you could hold on early in on strong writing skills and self-reflection, like strong writing skills about yourself. Second thing I would say is, um, good study habits. Gosh, I had pretty bad study habits, I’ll be honest, all through college. And then med school really jipped me out of that because I could not afford to have bad study habits anymore.

Dr. Katie: Um, people like say that it’s akin to drinking water out of a fire hydrant, and [01:00:00] that is like a very, very completely true and apt statement. Um, there’s no way to prepare for med school, but what you can do is figure out how you best learn and how you best study. Is it from what lectures? Is it from doing flashcards?

Dr. Katie: Like those are the things that if you can, if you learn early on, can only serve you in the future.

Lonnie: Awesome. That was some really, really great piece of advice for our audience. And I think you previewed that you are gonna be doing another webinar around advanced placement classes, is that what you said?

Lonnie: Yeah,

Dr. Katie: at some point.

Lonnie: Okay, that is great. So our audience can definitely get to see you again in an upcoming webinar. So with that said, we are now at the end of our webinar, so thank you everyone for coming out and thank you so much, Katie, for your expertise. If you haven’t been able to scan the QR code and schedule your free assessment with us, please keep this browser open until the webinar officially [01:01:00] ends. At that time

Lonnie: you should be redirected to the booking page. Okay everyone, this is now officially the end of the webinar and we really enjoyed our time. Thank you for joining us. Goodnight.