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What You Need to get Accepted to Medical School

1.  The Commitment, Desire and Drive

To successfully complete the premedical program and get accepted to medical school, you must have special desire and commitment.  Practicing medicine is not simply another career choice.  Your desire to practice medicine must be front and center in your undergraduate life.

2.  Be Well-rounded

While all premed students need to be strong in the sciences, your interests should extend beyond the sciences.  You should be relatively well-rounded.

3.  Courses

Completing the premedical course requirements and earning very good grades are the most basic academic requirements for medical school.  Medical schools judge your general academic ability by the undergraduate courses you select and the grades you earn.  Medical schools like to see that you have chosen to take challenging undergraduate courses and relatively respectable course loads.  While you do not need an overly burdensome first year course schedule, and you can afford to take a not-so challenging course load now and then, your overall undergraduate transcript, when reviewed in its entirety,  should show a student who does not shy away from academic challenges.  It should show an individual who enthusiastically embraces academic challenges while at the same time excelling in the classroom.  Show that you have the desire and ability to handle the vast amount of very challenging material covered in medical school.

4. Grades

Completing the premedical course requirements and earning very good grades are the most basic academic requirements for medical school.  Medical schools judge your general academic ability by the undergraduate courses you select and the grades you earn.  Medical schools look at two basic sets of grades, your overall undergraduate GPA and your science and math GPA.  The average overall undergraduate GPA and the average undergraduate science and math GPA of first year medical students is approximately 3.5.  This means you need to be more than an above average student, you need to excel in the classroom.

5.  Clinical Experiences

You need clinical experiences.

6.  Extracurricular Activities

You need extracurricular activities.

7.  MCAT

You need to take the MCAT.

8.  Recommendations

You need recommendations.

Links to more information for UMW premedical students: