So bring it back about seven months and we begin the medical school application cycle. So what is the medical school application cycle you ask? A nightmare! Before even applying it's your task to complete an undergraduate degree and all of the schools individual premed pre-requisites which take about four years to complete by themselves. They include English, biology, inorganic chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, calculus, anatomy, physiology, and all the labs associated with those classes. After that is done you must prepare to take the $275 MCAT during your junior or senior year. I could spend a whole blog post talking about how much I hated the MCAT. But I will not for my sanity! I took the MCAT for the first time in June 2013. My preparation for that exam included a semester long free prep course and two weeks of self-study right after coming home from a medical research project to Peru. So of course I did not feel prepared and I entered the exam room about ready to throw up and poop my pants at the same time. Due to my stress level and lack of preparation, I did not do too well on the exam. A few weeks later I got my score, it was a 23. For those who do not know, 24 is about the lowest score you can get and still get accepted into a medical school. The national average for M.D. schools is about a 30. So I was very disappointed with my score and to show how disappointed I was, I went to my bed room and buried my face in the pillow for about an hour. Hailey tried to console me, but I told her to get away. I was so mad. The next day I came up with a new study plan. I obtained some new study materials and hit the library for about eight hours a day for the next six weeks. I retook the last available exam in September. I improved my score dramatically and proved to myself that I can work through failure.
Just a brief exlination of the MCAT, it is a 4 hour exam that includes a physical science section, biological science section, and verbal reasoning section. The verbal reasoning section is a load of crap. You basically read passages about butterflies, crime rates, Eskimos, or whatever milarky they decide they want you to read. Then you answer trick questions about what you read in the passage. Questions sound like, "if this author were to write a passage about gun law instead of butterflies what would be the tone of his passage?" Then the answer would be something like, "Potato." It really wasn't that bad, but it kind of felt that way. The physical science section covered inorganic chemistry and physics. Which most students learn about two-three years prior to taking the MCAT. So that is a lot of review. The biological science section contains anatomy, physiology, biology, and organic chemistry. In short, the exam is loaded with tons of material and it is a horrible determinant of medical school success. Stats will tell you it isn't but I believe it is, at least in my case.
So after you are finished with all your prereqs, and taking the MCAT, now the real work begins. First you must pay to use the med school online application service. This costs about $300 for your first time use and about $30-$50 for each school applied to. With Hailey's and my great saving skills, we only had enough money to apply to about 4 to 5 schools. Most students apply to at least 15. With my own personal believes, my scores and grades, and a bunch of other factors, I thought my chances were best to apply to DO schools. They are in the long run more expensive, but they are a little easier to get into and provide great education for doctors wanting to going to primary care medicine. So I began my search for DO schools and found 4 to 5 schools I want to apply to.
My top three schools were Pacific Northwest University of Health Sciences, Midwestern University in AZ, and AT Still in AZ. My primary application cost cost was about $600. After schools receive your primary applications and see that you meet the minimum requirements they send you a secondary application attached with another $50 to $100 fee. All of the applications include about 2 to 3 essays that are very tedious and critical, luckily I had a lot of family to help me edit and proofread my essays.
So with all my primary and secondary application fees I ran into about $1200 worth of expenses. This is only to five schools and this does not include travel expenses for interviews. After the schools receive all my applications I then waited. I immediately received rejections from my bottom schools. From my top two school I receive one interview and one wait list spot. The odds were not much in my favor, but I guess one in five is not too bad. A lot was riding on my interview to Pacific Northwest University. It was a good thing I had great letters of recommendation and a friend who had connections. I received my interview in January just two weeks after Olive was born. I nailed the interview with flying colors and was accepted to Pacific Northwest University.
The interview flight cost me about $400. And then I had to come up with $1000 deposit to hold my spot. Thank goodness for the blessings of family and tithing, or Hailey and I would not of been able to come up with the money to pay for my MCAT and medical school applications. So all in all we dropped about $3200 in application costs. I could have paid off my car or paid for a luxury second honeymoon with that money!
Well, I think this post is long enough. I will continue with our journey after my acceptance and our move to Yakima in the next post! Here are some cute pictures of Olive. Kinda random but I love to show how adorable she is!
We love baby Olive & are glad that she is here! She is the cutest!!!!! Holy smokes, I didnt know that the application process was so tedious. I mean, I imagined, but..ayyy yi yi!
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