Medical School Reapplying Consulting

So you’ve been rejected from all the medical schools you applied to for the first, second, or maybe even third time. What next?

You are not alone. 60% of medical school applicants do not get admitted to a single allopathic medical school each year. Just take a moment to think about that. The majority of medical school applicants do not get admitted to a single medical school. In addition, medical school admissions is becoming increasingly competitive each year, with acceptance rates at top primary care programs halving between 2006 and 2016, plummeting from 8.8% to 4.6%.

At Solomon Admissions Consulting, we get calls daily from Ivy League graduates who are reapplying to medical school. What we find that all these medical school reapplicants have in common is that they often lack self-awareness of why they weren’t successful. Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Medical school admissions is a one shot deal, and the last thing you want to do as is to reapply to medical school without changing a thing and therefore repeating the same mistakes of the past. The longer you wait to seek professional help from a former medical school admissions officer, the same individuals who evaluated your application and rejected you, the greater the opportunity cost of becoming a physician.

So how can the former medical school admissions officers at Solomon Admissions, who work as medical school admissions consultants, help you as a reapplicant to get you over the finish line as quickly and painlessly as possible? The greatest benefit of working with Solomon Admissions is that you will be paired one-on-one with a former allopathic medical school admissions officer. Your consultant is the person who evaluated and rejected your application and now he or she will be helping you in your reapplying. He or she will provide invaluable insights on the deficiencies in your application and why you were rejected, which will be consistent with the real reason your application was not successful. The insider knowledge of these former medical school admissions officers will be a key resource for you to gain admission to medical school as a reapplicant.

Below are five common mistakes reapplicants make in their application, and how our team of former allopathic medical school admissions officers can help you to change the outcome as you reapply this time around.

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Medical School Reapplicants Don’t Understand that they are Damaged Goods

“We rejected you last year. What’s changed in one year to alter the outcome from a rejection to an acceptance?”

There is a higher burden of proof for reapplicants versus first-time medical school applicants. All things being equal, a medical school will accept a first-time applicant over a reapplicant. As a medical school reapplicant, you must show substantive improvement from the last application cycle. Whether this be in your written application, interviews, research publications, clinical or volunteer experience, or recommendation letters, the improvement must be substantial.

The heightened bar for admission for medical school when you reapply is particularly true for medical schools that you are applying to again for a second time. Our former allopathic medical school admissions officers at Solomon, having served on medical school admissions committees as voting members, can identify areas for improvement in your application and help institute substantial improvements in your application to medical school as a reapplicant. Our medical school admissions consultants will have accurate insights on what went wrong that you simply will not have.

Medical School Reapplicants Lack Compelling Recommendation Letters

At Solomon Admissions, we often find that reapplicants make two critical mistakes when it comes to medical school recommendation letters:  choosing incorrect recommenders and not preparing the recommenders to write a compelling recommendation letter that supports their narrative.

As former medical school admissions officers, the medical school admissions consultants at Solomon Admissions have read tens of thousands of recommendation letters and understand what makes a recommendation letter truly shine and stand out. Our medical school admissions consultants work with reapplicants to choose the most compelling recommendation letter writers and to properly prepare the recommenders to write strong recommendation letters that have specificity and substance and that are not generic. Above all, our medical school admissions consultants will teach you how to train your recommenders to write compelling letters that support your narrative.

Medical School Reapplicants Pick the Wrong List of Medical Schools For Reapplying

You can have the most compelling medical school application on the planet, but if you choose the wrong list of medical schools to apply to, you will be rejected. The selection of the right list of schools to apply to is both a science and an art. While the former can be aided by looking at resources such as the MSAR, the latter can only be done correctly by an experienced former medical school admissions officer with years of experience getting reapplicants into a wide variety of allopathic medical schools.

At Solomon Admissions, we find that our clients often overestimate the schools at which they are competitive at. Just because you have a 3.8 GPA and 515 MCAT with research, clinical and volunteer experience, does not mean that you are a competitive applicant at top 20 allopathic medical schools. Reapplicants often fail to understand the nuances of what each allopathic medical school looks for beyond just the raw numbers. They also fail to understand that most allopathic medical schools reject applicants who are as numerically qualified as the applicants they admit.

During your reapplying process, our former allopathic medical school admissions officers will help you select a realistic list of 25-30 medical schools to apply to in order to maximize your odds of admission. They will let most reapplicants know that there is no such thing as a “target” or “safety” medical school, and with the admission rates at most medical schools under 5%, that every medical school is a “reach” school for most reapplicants.

Medical School Reapplicants lack a Compelling Answer to Why Medicine?

Did you write your medical school personal statement about how experiencing firsthand the illness of a family member inspired you to combine your interests in science and helping people to become a doctor? If so, that’s not the type of compelling reason medical schools are looking for in a successful medical school applicant. The narrative you presented is cliché, not interesting and not worthy of admission to medical school.

At Solomon Admissions, upon your reapplying to medical school, the first thing our former allopathic medical school admissions officers will do is help you craft a compelling narrative for why you want to be a physician, seamlessly incorporating your research, clinical and volunteer experiences to convey your point. Whether the compelling reason is to serve as a physician in an underserved rural community or to incorporate medical training to become a medtech entrepreneur, our medical school admissions consultants will help you to stand out from the pack and leapfrog more qualified applicants on paper through a compelling narrative. This narrative will come to life during the medical school admissions interview, a critical marketing opportunity during which our medical school admissions consultants will prepare you to shine.

At Solomon Admissions, we get many overrepresented applicants with sub-3.5 GPA’s into allopathic medical schools. How do we do it? Through a compelling narrative in many cases that propels you over more qualified applicants on paper.

Medical School Reapplicants Fail to Tailor their Secondaries to Specific Medical Schools

Did you know that you have to tailor your secondaries to what each medical school looks for in its applicants? That you can’t simply recycle generic secondary responses for different medical schools, especially when reapplying? Do you know what every allopathic medical school looks for in its applicants?

We do. At Solomon Admissions, our medical school admissions consultants can help you tailor your secondaries to the tendencies of each allopathic medical school. For instance, if you’re reapplying to Georgetown, our medical school admissions consultants can help you tailor your Georgetown secondaries to focus on how you have taken a holistic approach to your premedical studies and extra-curricular activities, addressing Georgetown’s Jesuit values. If you’re reapplying to UChicago, our medical school admissions consultants can help you craft the UChicago secondaries to focus on how you have taken an interdisciplinary approach to your premedical studies and extra-curricular activities, a key trait that UChicago looks for in applicants.

When reapplying, directly addressing what each medical school wants to see in its applicants requires tremendous research on your own with only a two week window to research, draft, polish and submit each secondary. You can put in the work on your own, or you can simply save time by working with our former allopathic medical school admissions officers.

Choosing a Medical School Admission Consultant

There is no national ranking system of the best medical school admission consultants and so there's no easy way to determine if an admission consultant is qualified and knowledgeable about the medical school admissions process. So how should you choose a consultant? Click below for a checklist of important criteria and necessary questions to ask a potential medical school admissions consultant.

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