100 Blog Posts You Should Read Before Going to Med School

September 6th, 2009

By Kitty Holman

Going to med school can be an exciting start to a great career in the health care profession. Of course, it isn’t a decision that you should make lightly, as it takes a considerable financial investment and will dominate much of your time for years. These posts will help you learn what to expect every step of the way from applying to school to finding a job once you’re officially a doctor to making sure you’re well-prepared, informed and can make sound decisions about your career.

Getting In

Read through these posts to learn how to ensure your success in applying to medical schools, what schools are looking for and what to do to grease the wheels of the process.

1. How to Make the Most of Medical School Secondaries: This post will help you get through the long process of applying to medical school, focusing on your secondary round of apps.
2. A guide to not being a pre-med douchebag: If you’re still in the early stages of you medical career this post can help you learn how to not be a jerk and infuriate your classmates.
3. How to Maintain Perspective and Sanity Throughout the Long Race to Medical School: Here you can learn how not to lose your mind when you’re spending months and months preparing and applying for medical school.
4. Along the Bumpy Road to Med School: Read about this student’s frustration and anxiety about testing and getting into the medical school of choice– easier said than done.
5. Does A Recession Affect Medical School Acceptance Chances?: Read this user submitted question that many prospective medical students may be asking themselves.
6. Medical School Admissions: Lessons Learned: This doctor shares her experiences on what will help students increase their chance of acceptance into medical school.
7. Too Old for Med School?: If you’re an older student looking to head back for a career change, read the advice featured in this post to help you determine if it’s the right choice for you.
8. So you wanna be a Med Student: This post will guide you through the beginning stages of applying to medical school.
9. Tips for Medical School Applicants with a Low GPA: Didn’t do so well in undergrad? This post can help you get into med school regardless.
10. A Medical School Admission Essay: How Not to Make it Toxic: Wanna write an essay that might actually get you into college? Get some advice from this site.
11. Medical School Admissions – What is Required?: Learn what you will be required to submit and do in order to apply to medical school from this post.
12. What college courses are a prerequisite for medical school?: If you’re in college now learn what you should be taking to improve your chances of getting into medical school and to help make sure you’re ready.
13. Tips on Writing Medical School Application Essays Using a Personal Approach: One way that you may be able to set yourself apart when applying to medical school is to make things more personal. This post can help you to make the most of your experiences when writing an essay.
14. Tips For Getting Through A Medical School Interview: Don’t blow your admission to school on a botched interview. This post will help guide you through the process.
15. Tips on Getting in Your Medical School of Choice: Use the advice in this post to help you get into the medical school you’d love to go to.
16. Courses to Take Before Medical School: Make sure you’re sitting pretty when you head off to school by taking these important courses ahead of time.

Getting Started

These posts will help you prepare for your first year of medical school after you’ve been accepted.

17. Are You Ready for Med School?: This post, written by a medical student, asks some questions that can help you determine if you’re really ready for all that med school has to throw at you.
18. 7 Good Things: Here you can learn how to use some of the things you might have learned at another job to succeed in medical school– even if you never thought they would be useful.
19. Things I wish I knew before starting medical school: This post will help you prepare for medical school by informing you of all the little things, from the cost to what to expect in the first months of school, so you’ll be prepared.
20. First Week of Medical School: Read this post to learn about another medical student’s experience in the first week of school– some experiences that you might share when you get there.
21. Starting Medical School: It is OK to be Nervous: If you’re nervous about starting medical school, you’re not alone. Read this post to get some support before you start.
22. 101 Things You Wish You Knew Before Starting Medical School: Get some sage advice on what you may not know before you get to school that might help you out in the long run.
23. Nothing Can Prepare You for Medical School: Think you can get ahead of the game when it comes to medical school? This post explains why you might need to slow down and just take things as they come.
24. Tips and Advice by Medical Students for New and Incoming Medical Students: These tips can help make your transition to medical school a little easier.
25. Advice for Medical Students: Check out the links in this post to get some advice on medical school and choosing a specialty.
26. Advice to a Young Medical Student: Read through this post to get some advice if you’re just starting out in the medical field.
27. How to Spend the Summer Before Medical School: Don’t waste that valuable time before you head off to school– use it wisely and this post will tell you how.

Financing School and Managing Money

Medical school doesn’t come cheap, so get some great advice on how to pay for it and how to manage your money while you’re in school from these posts.

28. Med-School Prep: Considering Military Scholarships: Read about some of the military sponsored scholarships you can get to help fund your education in this post.
29. Average Med School Debt: Check out this fact-checking post to find out what you can expect to pay for four years of medical school.
30. AMA offers suggestions on cutting med school debt: The American Medical Association offers some tips in this article that can help reduce the cost of your medical school education.
31. Financial Fallout: This article explains why the large amount of debt accumulated by many medical students forces them into high-paying specialties, leaving many fields without enough willing doctors to staff them.
32. Can You Go To Medical School When You Are Drowning In Debt?: Do you have a load of debt from undergrad? This post will help you learn how to manage this and still go to medical school.
33. A Financial Second Opinion: Why Medical Students and Residents Need a Financial Adviser: Medical school isn’t cheap and paying it back can be a pain. This post explains why you might want to consider a financial advisor to help you get your finances in order.
34. 9 Ways for Medical Students to Begin Building Wealth: Don’t let medical school ruin your finances for life, this post will help guide your financial future throughout school.
35. Medical Student Loan Repayment Options: Check out this post to learn how you can start paying back those hefty loans.
36. 5 Money Saving Tips for Medical Students: Learn some little ways to save big throughout your medical educational.
37. Paying for Grad School: Tips from an Insider: Read this post to learn the basics of getting funding for school– every little bit helps!
38. 7 Tips For Managing Your Student Loan Debt: When you get out of school you might have a lot of debt to pay back. Take some advice from this post on how to pay it all back.
39. One Way to Repay Medical School Loans: Get a little bit of advice on taking care of those loans from the president of the AOA.

Advice from Med Students

Who better to get advice from on medical school than medical students themselves? These posts offer guidance to help you get through the roughest years of your medical training.

40. Grades and Medical School: This student explains why many students in medical school and pre-med become grade grubbers.
41. GTD in Medical School: Here you can read the steps this student is taking to prepare for staying productive in medical school.
42. Ass-vice: The Med School Years: This former medical student gives new students the straight story when it comes to what medical school will be like, with a special focus on those interested in being an Ob/Gyn.
43. Two Years Later: At first, this medical student loathed school completely. Two years down the line, however, the perspective has changed as you can see from this post.
44. What Third Year is All About: Read through this post to get insight into what your third year of school might end up being like, frustrations and all.
45. How to Survive Lectures: If you’re the type that likes to fall asleep during lectures read this post to learn how to navigate them more productively.
46. Tips for Medical Students: Scrubbing in Theatre: Get some straight up advice about what you should do when you’re scrubbing in for surgical procedures.
47. Last Day: Learn what a difference a few weeks can make when you’re trying to get the hang of a new rotation.
48. Reflections on My First Year of Medical School: Learn from this student’s experience in the first year of school so you’ll know what to expect.
49. The First Month: Get an idea of what your first month of medical school will be like from this student posting.

Getting through School

No one ever said medical school would be a walk in the park, so learn what to do and what not to do to make it through in these posts.

50. Keywords For Your Surgical Rotation In Med School: This post does an excellent job of listing out the key terms you’ll need to know not just for your surgical rotation but for your medical career in general.
51. How to Date a Med Student: Read this post to learn how med school may take a toll on your dating life.
52. 20 Free Online Resources for Med Students: Utilize these resources to help you get into med school and do well once you’re there.
53. Your Options as a Med Student: This chart is a humorous way to guide your choices into a specialization.
54. Harvard Medical School: How to Naturally Reset Your Sleep Cycle In One Night: Medical school may wreck havoc on your sleep schedule, so read this post to learn how to reset it with some ease.
55. Atul Gawande’s Five Rules of Medicine: Read through this post to get some advice on how to act and treat your patients.
56. Medical Students and Depression: This audioblog talks about the stresses many students are under and how they can get help and treatment before depression takes over their lives.
57. On Drug and Alcohol Abuse Among Medical Students: Getting through medical school is hard, but you shouldn’t use drugs or alcohol to get through it. Learn what to do to change your habits in this post.
58. Professionalism when you have no privacy: advice for medical students: What you say on the web might come back to haunt you. This post helps you learn how to maintain a professional face everywhere.
59. Important Tips for Student Well-Being: Make sure that school doesn’t negatively affect your health and well-being– read this post for some advice on staying healthy while pursuing your studies.
60. 100 Best Sites and Resources for Medical Students: Page through this list of great resources for medical students to get help with just about any challenge you’re facing.
61. What is Medical School Really Like?: TV and movies make med school look a lot different than it really is. Get the inside scoop on real life med school from this post.

Residency

The next step after completing your basic medical training is to do a residency, so learn what to expect from these posts.

62. Walking Barefoot Uphill in the Snow….Both Ways!: Read through this post to learn what not to do if you want to stay in the good graces of the doctors you’re working with.
63. What Do You Do With a Med Student?: Once you make it to residency how do you work with interns? This post will help you learn what to do when you’re in the situation and what you can expect when working with residents as an intern.
64. Advice For Applying To Residency: You don’t get a break after you finish medical school– there are more applications to be done. This post can help prepare you or at least let you know what is in store.
65. 10 Tips To Survive Wards: Learn how to streamline your workflow and make this part of your education as easy as possible.
66. The Medical Residents’ Bible: Read this post to get advice and information from the author of this great text for medical residents.
67. Medical Residency: This post, written by the wife of a medical resident, exposes some of the unique challenges working as a resident will pose.
68. Residency Relocation Loans: You could help pay for your education by being willing to relocate to a new city. Learn more from this post.
69. Residency Match Success: Lessons Learned: Get some advice from this doctor on choosing a residency program that will suit you best.
70. Presidential Advice for Medical Residency Applicants: In this post, the president of the NRMP gives his advice on what makes for a good medical residency application.
71. More Advice you Never Wanted to Hear: Residency: This blogger gives some great advice on how to make your residency a successful one.
72. What do I need to know about Residency (Internship and Fellowship)?: If you’re ready to take the next step, this post can help you learn what residency is all about.

Your Education

Make sure you’re getting the most of your medical education by reading these posts all about medical school.

73. Case Western Reserve University med students learn from one another: This medical school proves that sometimes the best way to learn is from other students.
74. Med School Equips Students with iPod Touch: Wouldn’t it be great if you could just carry around an iPod instead of a ton of books, planners and other stuff? This school did just that and you can read more about it here.
75. On Helping People: What is your goal for medical school? Do you want to help people or do cutting edge research? This blogger explains her goals, some of which you might share.
76. Medical School Curriculum Reform: The things you learn in medical school may be changing sometime soon, as this post explains.
77. Two-in-One Med School Programs: Those who are just coming out of high school may want to consider one of these programs that allows students to simply go straight from undergrad into medical school– no applications required.
78. Medical students want to become primary care doctors, until reality hits: Medical school may change your mind about what you want to be upon graduation, as this post discusses.
79. What Academia Doesn’t Teach: Consider these important aspects of work life when going through medical school to ensure you emerge a balanced doctor.
80. Squeamish? Don’t worry, medical students are too: Think you’re too squeamish to ever be a great doctor? This post will show you that you’re not alone.
81. What is the Medical School Curriculum?: This post will fill you in on the classes you can expect to take at most medical schools out there.
82. Choosing a Medical School Specialty: Unsure what you want to do with your medical career? This post will help give you some guidance.
83. The wonderful world of medical slang: You might pick up on more if you know a little medical jargon before you ever get to school. Check out the link on this post to expand your vocabulary.

Testing

Taking tests will determine your success at getting into medical school, graduating from it, and eventually becoming a doctor, so learn how to do well on them from these posts.

84. Multiple Choice Medical Exams Favor Male Students: This article explains how even testing format may affect your ability to do well.
85. How to Prepare for the MCAT: Learn what you need to do to ensure you get a good score on this important medical test from this post.
86. Why the MCAT is Necessary: Check out this post to learn why you need to take the MCAT even though it seems stressful and pointless at times.
87. What’s a Good MCAT Score?: Not sure what you should be aiming for on your MCAT? This post will tell you where you should fall.
88. Are you an MCAT, or an MCAN’T?: Studying for tests can suck, but you can do it and this post offers some light at the end of the tunnel.
89. GPA and MCAT: This post will tell you the basics of what you need to know about what kind of GPA and MCAT you’ll need to get into med school.
90. The 4 Ways to Score High in MCAT Biology: The biology portion of your MCAT can be a pretty big deal so read this post to get some tips on doing better.
91. Getting prepared for the MCAT: Learn how you can prepare for the test that will pave the way for your medical career in this post.
92. And I thought the MCAT Was Hard: This post will let you in on just how hard your exams in medical school might be.
93. An MCAT Class Is Essential in Preparing for the MCAT Exam: Read through this post to understand why taking an MCAT class could make or break your score.
94. MCAT, grades most critical: Your performance on the MCAT in conjunction with your grades, can make a big difference in your success in admissions. Learn more from this post.

Life After Med School

Learn what to expect when you graduate, from getting a job to filling out a resume from these helpful posts.

95. How to Write Medical Resume: Whether you’re applying for internships or jobs after college having a great resume is essential. Get tips from this post on how to write one.
96. An Open Letter to All Graduating Medical Students: You may still have a long way to go but you can start thinking about your life after graduation today with this post.
97. Why Incentives Don’t Work in Medicine: This post explains why you should be a doctor to help people, not to bring in a hefty paycheck.
98. Non-Clinical Opportunities After Medical School: If you do loads of work for your medical degree only to find that you don’t love working with patients then read this post to learn about alternative careers.
99. Where can a doctor find a job?: Learn where you can look for work after you finish all those years of medical school.
100. What to Look for in Your First Job After Residency: This post will help you better understand some of the qualities your first real medical job should have.

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website