Medical Book suggestions for undergrads

I read a lot during the pandemic, and so I wanted to share some suggestions about some of the best books I read (and also a few books I read which I do not recommend).

Books I recommend

Stiff

This book is a well done look at the dead, from cadavers to cremation. I think it is a good book to read if you are taking an anatomy/physiology class in college, doing a gap year before medical school, or if you have been accepted to medical school (or another health professional school that uses human cadavers to teach anatomy). It is a quick and light read with short chapters

Emperor of all Maladies

                This is an all-time classic book about the history of cancer treatment. It is a long book but very well researched and reads very quickly in my opinion. I am a sucker for the history of medicine, and this book really focuses on how the treatment advanced over time.

The Gene

                By the same author as the Emperor of all Maladies, this book is a great historical look of the discovery of genes, evolution, DNA, etc. This book was a good read, very long and occasionally dull at parts. I must admit I skipped the parts where the author weaved his own family history into the book, as I wanted to focus more on the history aspect of it. Highly recommend reading after the Emperor of all Maladies, but know that this book can’t live up to his first.

Hippocrates Shadow

                I will start this off by saying the author has a horrible reputation now, and for that reason I can’t recommend buying this book. You can google his name to figure out what he did, but I don’t support giving him any additional money. That being said, the book was actually a good read about how to talk and interact with patients, and some of the historical reasons we treat things (that don’t necessarily need to be treated). It is a good read for someone going to medical school, or someone early on in their first year of medical school who is learning the ropes of treating patients.

The Body

                This book by Bill Bryson is a very good look at the entire body, system by system. It is actually relatively basic once you learn medicine, but for an undergrad looking to learn more about human biology it is a fantastic read. A bit dry at times, but good to read before bed. Easy to pick up and put down.

Superbugs

                This book surprised me as to how good it was. It has a nice plot of an infectious disease doctor working on a clinical trial to study a new antibiotic while providing fantastic commentary on the rise of antibiotic resistant pathogens. Was a quick and easy read.

Pharma

                This book is about the history of pharmaceuticals in the US. It was eye opening how much there was a lack of oversight early, and very good at providing a history of how that developed. Also discussed specific drugs

Medical Books I read but cannot recommend

Doctored

                This book is about a cardiologist who is starting as an attending in NYC. I don’t recommend it because of a couple reasons: his life isn’t that interesting, and he whines a lot about his more successful older brother. I found myself rolling my eyes at this book. I haven’t tried his other book “Intern” but I doubt it is any better. Maybe consider reading this if you are planning to go into private practice to see how stressful it is, but otherwise skip this one.

House of God

                Hear me out. This is an absolute classic. I read it twice, once as a premed and once as a fourth year medical student. It only really resonated as a 4^th year student, so I would say hold off reading this until once you are in the clinical years of medical school and have reference points. We will all have a fat man at some point during our careers, but it won’t be easy to understand as a premed.

The great influenza

                I read this during the height of the pandemic because it was I thought it would be interesting to read about the prior massive pandemic. Don’t get me wrong, it was super interesting. It was over 700 pages and ultimately became dry at times. It also belabored points too long, and overall once I got to page 500 I was burnt out of the book.

Hot Zone

                This is a book about the Ebola crisis. Not the one in the 2010s, but the one back in the 1980’s. The book was recommended in the class of “nonfiction that reads like fiction” but I really found it to read like nonfiction. I had a tough time following the timeline, and it jumped around quite a bit. I also thought it would be more of a historical book and so I was disappointed there.

Bonk

                This book is about sex, and it is by the same author as stiff. I was excited thinking that it would be a deep dive into all aspects of the history of sex, and to some degree it was. I was left disappointed though; it was a very short book (only about 225 pages on the ebook) and was on very random topics. I wouldn’t bother reading this one.

Extracurricular Activities

It has been over a year since I last posted. I feel old now that I no longer overlap with a single student at Boston College. I do think I have some insight to share regarding extracurriculars, as I reflect on what I did at BC and what other people did who I interviewed for medical school. I think the most important point is that medical schools want to see people who can not only handle the rigors of college, but also do things outside of class and studying.

One thing that I gave up when I started at BC was sports. Sure I loved golfing and playing hockey, but both of those involved time that I was not willing to spend, especially at the club sport level. While medical schools love people who are able to play varsity sports at the collegiate level (looking at you Duke Medical), a club or intramural sport is not going to look even as close to as good while still requiring a significant amount of your time. Instead, I invested my time in things that were both fun and rewarding.

I have touched upon BCEMS in the past, but I think that was the best opportunity to gain clinical experience while in school. Even if I wasn’t seeing patients every time I covered a soccer game or field hockey game, I was able to make friends with a large group of people who had interest in the healthcare field. I know as I became a junior and senior at BC, it became a lot more common for people to have their EMS certification and so they had to hold “skill sessions” to determine who could join the organization. Basically they were looking for competence, which you think should have been present in everyone with an EMS certification, but you would be surprised. What BCEMS gave me was not only my first health care experience where I treated patients, but it also gave me something to talk about during med school AND residency interviews. That’s right, 4 years later and I was still reliving some of the more exciting BCEMS calls I had with emergency medicine attendings, discussing how those experiences led me to emergency medicine. BCEMS required a lot of my time, and was the main group I was involved in.

This is not to say that you should only do things that look good on an application. But with medical school entrance being more competitive every year, you have to consider it. And I still found time to go to the gym 4 times a week, hang out with friends, and also take part in other fun activities like teaching classes for BC Splash, volunteering with Special Olympics, and being an RA. In fact, being an RA was certainly discussed at medical school interviews, as it showed a maturity that could not be conveyed through other activities.

Everyone also says “get a leadership position” to look good for medical school. While I agree that helps, there are plenty of ways to show commitment to an activity without a leadership position. One way is through longitudinal involvement. Even if you aren’t selected for leadership positions, having an activity you were heavily involved with for 3-4 years looks great to interviewers. I saw too many times in BCEMS people who didn’t get a leadership position and decided to put their time and effort into something else instead of continuing in EMS.

Mission trips are also something that is very prevalent at Boston College, but I do want to warn you that they are sometimes seen as “voluntorism” (https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/sep/13/the-business-of-voluntourism-do-western-do-gooders-actually-do-harm), where rich kids raise money to go for one to two weeks abroad and “help” people. Some medical schools (*cough* Loyola *cough*) love these trips, but you will run into others who look down upon them. If you are passionate about global health, you can get involved at the medical school level in a more meaningful way through research or established clinics that you continue to go to in a longitudinal manner. Who knows what the schools you apply to will think of these trips, but if you are doing them because you want to get involved in global health I encourage you to build up your app in other ways in addition to a service trip to really prove you want global health to be a part of your career as an attending physician. There are plenty of underserved communities within the United States that need volunteers, so there is truly no need to do these mission trips outside of the US. A funny story is that I had a friend at BC who was from Jamaica, and would go back home during the summers. He told me how he would see the BC students on their “mission trips” in the clubs almost every night. Personally these trips are not worth the money that you have to spend, and you would be better off volunteering in a non-medical setting with underserved communities in a longitudinal manner, and then parlaying that into involvement in global health once going to medical school (where you can often get grants to travel instead of relying on family and friends to donate).

While reading through applications of students I was going to interview, things that stood out were often hobbies. I saw plenty of “baking” hobbies, but really anything that you can talk passionately about will make the interview go much better, as they are able to see your passion through the way you talk about a hobby or activity.

Everyone who applies to medical school does shadowing, has good grades, did well on the MCAT, and 75% have some research experience (although if you’re anything like me it was just one summer of doing PCR’s to ensure that I wasn’t one of the 25% who didn’t do any research à and it remains to this day the only thing I did because it looked good on my application). What makes people stand out are their unique hobbies and activities. Boston College is no different from any other college in that it has all kinds of diverse interest groups. Find what you love to do and don’t quit on it if you don’t achieve a leadership spot. There are so many amazing people at BC that not everyone can have a leadership position. But the most important thing in my opinion is that school comes first. If your activity cuts into your grades, you should decrease the time spent with it because ultimately what gets you in the door to medical school interviews is your performance during school. GPA and MCAT are the two most important things for medical school, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Update (3 years later)

It has been awhile since I’ve written anything here, specifically 1043 days. I happened to be in the Chestnut Hill area and reminiscing about my time at Boston College and thought back to this blog. I was shocked to see that people still visit it, and my study guides still regularly get downloaded. I hope some of my insights into studying helped at least one person out there, and hopefully people looking into going to BC found some useful information here.

I am now less than one year away from graduating medical school, and I can say that BC prepared me well. The biggest hurdle of medical school is passing Step 1, and having a good work ethic is key to doing well on the exam. I felt the difficulty of the classes at BC, and the work required to succeed instilled a very strong work ethic. Sure you will study more than you ever have at medical school, but it is worth it. I went from doing very little homework on weekends at BC to using my weekends in medical school to catch up in studying, often putting in 8-10 hours of work throughout the day. If I treated college like a 9-5 job, medical school was an 8-6 job 7 days a week. But I felt well prepared, and other students from BC felt the same way. I still keep in touch with at least 10 of my friends who are at medical school and all of them are succeeding. My score on Step 1 was a full standard deviation above average, and I felt a lot of that was due to the fantastic base of knowledge my biology degree from BC gave me.

That being said, one thing I will say is medical school is expensive. I will be leaving school next year with 250k of debt from medical school alone, and that is on the low side due to a lower cost of living and a tuition that is less than BC’s. I will be the first to admit I had family contributions helping me pay for BC, and if I had 100-200k more of debt from undergrad on top of my medical school loans it would be a lot scarier. Some people will argue that choosing a community college for two years or a state school for all four years is the way to go. I would argue against community college just because there is an unfortunate stigma that the classes are easy. For some reason, state schools also have a stigma against them, but I know plenty of people who got into medical school from a state school. I am not trying to discourage anyone from attending a costly private school, but I am mentioning it because I know classmates who have 400-500k of debt between undergrad and medical school, and that continues to accumulate interest and can seem insurmountable at times.

Another thing I will suggest to anyone reading is to follow your passion. I have tried to do things in life not because it looks good on a resume, but because I enjoy doing them. Working in EMS was something I genuinely enjoyed, and now I find myself going into Emergency Medicine. It is insane to look back and realize that meeting an EMT on my floor freshman year (who encouraged me to take the class) changed the course of my life. Since entering medical school, I have also pursued things because I was interested in them. One thing that came out of nowhere was writing a book based on an online writing prompt! Of course I had to write it under a pen name to separate my professional and personal lives, but it was something that took up a lot of my free time during my first year of medical school. The book is proof that medical school, while difficult, does not consume your entire life if you don’t let it.

(Shameless self-plug: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1730797105)

I know it’s easy to say “just get a 3.7 GPA, a 510 (or preferably higher) on the MCAT, and take part in a couple of experiences related to healthcare” but that is really what it takes these days to get into medical school. It seems daunting when you enter as a freshman because it is. To ask an immature (no offense, I was once there) 18 year old who is away from home for an extended period of time for the first time in his or her life to succeed immediately is impossible to predict. Try to avoid putting pressure on yourself at the beginning of college. Too many times I see people post about how their dreams of medical school are over because they got a 3.0 their first semester. Do not give up! Assess what was wrong, whether it was not studying far enough in advance, partying too much, taking too many challenging courses at one time, or simply just being homesick, look for ways to correct the issues. I look back now on college and realize that if I studied for classes like I do in medical school now, a 4.0 would have been easy and the MCAT would have been a cinch. Study habits are everything, but college is also supposed to be enjoyed. Take advantage of the free time you will never have again to go to the gym, explore Boston, and have a good time with friends!

Hopefully this makes some sort of sense, if it’s too long here are the main points:

• BC prepares you well for medical school
• BC is expensive, medical school is also expensive
• Read my book if you are bored (it has nothing to do with medical school but does have some science in it)
• Don’t put too much pressure on yourself, but also don’t have too much fun. College is a time to be enjoyed, but at the end of the day you are going there to set yourself up for a good career.

I shall post again in another 1043 days, and it’s slightly depressing that I still won’t have received a single attending paycheck by then.

Final Thoughts

Since a couple of people have asked if I would do a wrap-up post, I decided I would! I applied to 24 MD schools with a 3.78cGPA/sGPA (they were identical which I found funny) and a 510 MCAT, I ended up with 7 II’s (interview invites) (but I only went to 5), and 3 acceptances (2 off of wait lists). I submitted my AMCAS application the very first day, and all of my secondaries were submitted by the first week of August. I was fortunate enough to get early interviews in September, so I did not really have the long wait that awaits many people during the application cycle. Because of the early interviews, I was accepted on October 15^th, which was the first day you can hear from schools that you applied regular decision to (I did not apply early decision anywhere). I am excited to start the next four years of my life, and I wish everyone reading this the best of luck!

For those of you reading from BC, or thinking about coming to BC, I’ll offer a bit of a reflection on the premed track here. It’s hard to get very good grades in premed classes at BC, because there is a significant amount of grade deflation. Most classes scale to a B-/C+ border, so to get the average GPA for MD school (a 3.5-3.6) you have to do significantly better than the mean. But while it may be harder than a lower ranked school or your state school, I feel that BC has prepared me, and the others I know who got into medical school, to face the rigors of medical school. Every professor I had was willing to work with me, and I took advantage of every opportunity I was given by professors. Freshman year our general chemistry professor offered office hours where he would give us problems very similar to the weekly quiz and then after we did them he would go through the problems and discuss our approach to solving them. You would think out of a class of 200 that the room would be packed. It wasn’t. There were only 3 of us there every single week, and so the professor got to know me and worked with me on my problem solving skills.

Where I ran into trouble at BC was with the advising. I had heard horror stories from classmates about going into the advising office as a freshman, and being told because of their first semester GPA they had no chance at medical school and they should just give up. After hearing that, I never went into their office for advising. If your first semester (or even freshman year) GPA is low, worry about improving your study habits and figuring out why you aren’t doing as well as you can. Everyone who is accepted to BC has the potential to do well in all of their classes. As a tutor, I found most people failed because they lacked good study habits from high school (start early, and you can’t expect to pass a test studying the night before), or they simply didn’t understand the material. Medical schools see an upward trend and many people get accepted who did poorly their freshman year. It is a time of adjustments and for some people it is a struggle that they figure out a semester or a year later. There are also an increasing number of ways to improve upon a GPA after undergrad such as a SMP (Special Masters Program) or a Post-Bacc, which help medical school see you can handle the workload. I found that instead of going to the BC Premed department for advising, I relied on the online community along with the older students in the clubs/organizations I was a member of.  There are so many people in your own class, or the classes above you, who are going through the same struggles (or have conquered them) who can help you through any difficulties. In my experience, the BC premed office has just exacerbated the struggles that students undergo, and I stayed far away from that office unless I was demanding that they send out my committee letter in July and not August

I started this blog because I was bored during the summer, but I hope that it has helped some of you who have read it or used the study guides. If it has helped only one person, writing this was worth it.

Interviews

It is hard to describe the anxiety during the application process waiting for interviews. All my secondaries were submitted by the beginning of August, most of them within 2 weeks, and then the waiting period begins. I was lucky enough to get a few interview invites in late july, and early august, which made waiting a little easier. After attending the early interviews, the waiting period began until I could hear on October 15th (or later). In the meantime I kept checking my email and waiting for more interview invites. It was a gap of about 2.5 months between interview invites. So a lesson to be learned is that you shouldnt be checking SDN to see which schools offer II’s each day, because thats a way to go insane. Focus on things like school, friends, and family instead.

At the interviews themselves, expect a full day event. Most interviews contain anywhere from 8-20 people, and begin by meeting the dean of the medical school. There is usually a brief introduction to the school, and then a tour and lunch. The timing of the interview varies by school, as does the number and style, and I would urge all of you to look online to find the differences in interview style. There is traditional, either closed or open, and MMI, each of which have their own pros and cons. At all the interviews I have attended, the interviews were a general conversation and not a pressure packed interview like I thought it would be going in. The questions varied, but each interviewer really wanted to get to know me and my reasons both for choosing medicine and choosing to apply to that school.

In terms of preparing for interviews, I prepared a sheet of notes to look over, with common questions I found online. I used only bullet points because I did not want to sound scripted. I also attended a 1 on 1 interview prep session with the BC Career Center, so that I could make sure my responses were well thought out, and that I could stress the benefits of a BC Jesuit education. Before each interview, either during the car trip or plane ride, I would read both my AMCAS application, especially the personal statement and activity section, and the secondary application for the school I am interviewing at.

So far so good, every interview has gone well. Its a long cycle, there is plenty of anxious waiting time. Try not to let it get to you.

MCAT 2015 Wrap Up

I took the new MCAT on May 22, after self-studying for almost 6 months. The reason I decided to self-study instead of taking a review class was that I felt the test companies would not know exactly what the test was about. Now that a good amount of people have taken the test, the review companies will have a better grasp on material covered.

How I studied:
I did 6 months of studying with Kaplan’s 7 book set (http://www.amazon.com/Kaplan-Complete-7-Book-Subject-Review/dp/1618656449) which I felt adequately prepared me. I read through the books over winter break, just taking in the material covered, and not taking any notes. I would recommend reading the official AAMC guide to what is on the MCAT beforehand (https://www.aamc.org/students/download/377882/data/mcat2015-content.pdf) (I also am attaching a shorter version that someone posted online). I then went through the books and took notes on all the books. I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND MAKING FLASHCARDS FOR THE PSYCH/SOC BOOK. There is a lot of rote memorization in this section. I then did content review for the first 2-3 months. Finally, I took the first of the 3 kaplan FL exams that come with the set, and scored a 497. This score was not indicative of my percentage correct, so I would recommend ignoring the score and focus on the percent correct, at least until the AAMC releases its score guide. I then did more content review and practice problems until the exam. I was putting in probably 2 hours/day during the school week, 3-4 hours/day during the weekend, and then after school ended I had two weeks before the MCAT, and studied for 10-12 hours/day for the 2 weeks. My other FL scores were better than the first, and I got my percentage correct up to between 75-80% correct, which is where I was shooting for.

The actual MCAT
I arrived early and got to start at 7:30AM instead of 8:00 AM. You are allowed to take the first 10 minutes to write down any formulas. I think I wrote down some AA’s and some physics formulas I was weak on. I took the allotted time on each section, and I thought it was very indicative of the AAMC practice exam (CARS was harder on the real one).

Scores
I scored between the 80-90th percentile, which for me was right where I wanted to score. I am happy to answer any additional questions in the comments about my preparation or recommendations. I will be applying to med school this summer, hoping to avoid a gap year

Shorter version of topics

Tips for those applying this cycle, or looking to prepare for next cycle

BC’s premed committee and premed department do next to nothing to help their students prepare for the application cycle. I, along with most of my friends, have been forced to learn using a variety of online sources and 1st person accounts. I figured I would share some of the most important things I came across:

1) AMCAS opens for apps in early May, but you cannot submit officially until right around June 3rd. This gives you 1 month to work on you application. What you want to have already done is the personal statement (so that you can edit it over the month), and if you have the time, a description of all the activities you plan to list on AMCAS, along with a more detailed description of your 3 most important. I didn’t realize that you can expand on 3 activities, and my personal statement did that instead. This forced me to have to rework my entire personal statement, which took some time.

2) Send in your transcripts ASAP. I cannot stress this enough. I sent in my transcripts on the first day the AMCAS was open, and it still took 1-2 weeks to process. From what I am told, it takes longer if you wait longer. One additional “trick” is that the AMCAS will only calculate your cGPA and sGPA once, so if you send in your transcript before spring grades are available, medical schools will not see those grades right away. This is a bonus for those of us who had a less than stellar spring semester, but if you are relying on the spring semester grades to boost your GPA up, DONT send in the transcript early.

3) When to take the MCAT? Med schools are rolling admissions. That means that your app should be submitted ASAP in order to have the best chance at getting into a school. If you want an MCAT score back, taking the MCAT in April or earlier will guarantee that. It is common to hear that the July MCAT is the cutoff for “too late” if your application is on file. However, one can take the july MCAT and then update the schools with the new score. If you wait until May/June, there is a simple trick to avoid the huge verification line for AMCAS. Submit your AMCAS app without the MCAT score on the first day you are ready, and apply to a single school (preferably one lower on your list of wanting to attend). That way, when your score comes in, you can make the decision about whether or not to apply to additional schools. This saves money, especially if you cannot decide which range of schools you want to apply to.

4) Ask for your Letter of Rec early! It also never hurts to set a made up deadline about 1-2 weeks in advance of the actual deadline, so that the professor completes the letter sooner rather than later. This reduces the stress on you. I suggest asking for the letter mid-February, and then dropping by to check how it’s going in early april. Don’t wait too long because professors get busy later in the semester and may not want to write a letter for someone who came later.

5) Verification on AMCAS. I mentioned it briefly above, but it is important. It is common knowledge in the online community that the earlier you submit the primary app, the earlier you are verified. Submitting it even a week or so later can cause the wait time for verification to increase dramatically

Hopefully these are helpful. Good luck to anyone applying for this cycle!

Physics Semester 1 Formula Sheet

Physics Semester 1 Formulas

If you enjoyed this please check out the orgo reaction sheet and the gen chem formula sheet

General Chemistry Formula Sheet

Gen Chem formula sheet

Psychology Study Guide

This study guide is from my psychology as a natural science course. I tried to keep it short and include mostly definitions and the main facts because I know the MCAT tests basic knowledge. Plus I have already been through the Kaplan Psychology book and I tried to include detailed notes on the topics that were discussed in that book, and then graze over some of the other topics we discussed in the class

Psychology