Today we want to talk about whether or not you actually need medical school admission consulting
or is this all a scam? My name is Behrouz Moemeni I'm joined with Meng who is one of our senior
admission experts and we're going to talk about this, we only have 10 minutes, if you've never been
to any of these videos or podcasts, I'm just setting my timer, every week we discuss one topic
and we only have 10 minutes to give you our best answer for this topic.
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to specific sections of the video that you're interested in. Now, let's get back to the video! So
here it is, I just set my timer if you could see it, there we go. Once the timer goes off we're done. Now
before we start, I want to say that this is completely unscripted, we're not going to use
any fancy effects, visual, audio, etc, it's all pure content and everything we teach
you it's the same things we've learned in our private consulting with our own private students
but we have nothing to sell you, all we want to do is give you lots of free content. All right! So Meng,
do students need medical school admission consulting or is it a total scam? Okay well since
we only have 10 minutes, I'm going to start off by giving the straight up answer and my answer is
yes, okay and we can definitely talk about why in the next nine minutes or so that we have.
I think one of the reasons is because the process is complicated and it's only getting more and more
complicated as time goes on because of the number of applicants and the amount of vetting that goes
on in this entire process so from the students and most people only do it once, hopefully, maybe
twice but you know with that amount of experience it's actually a really hard process to navigate.
So I agree with that, but I'm gonna give a little bit of a different
response to this. I actually think it depends. It depends. Here's what it depends on.
One: do you have somebody who is intimately familiar with the admissions process
that has helped others successfully in the past that can help you out?
If yes, well that's the form of medical school admission consulting from somebody you know
that's not charging you so there you go. Two: are you a mature applicant let's say a master's, PhD,
you've done this process you feel confident and you have the level of maturity where the
application process doesn't intimidate you and maybe you in another context you've even sat
as an admissions committee member and know both sides of the story so again you may not need it.
Those would be some of the scenarios where you may actually not need it and then all
of a sudden you're going to end up having too many chefs in the kitchen which is a bad idea.
If you have someone to help you or if you know you're confident
then you don't need it, don't use it. If you don't
and you have doubts, you should definitely use it because just like any other form of coaching,
it's something of value if you could if it's a skill you lack and you're willing and able to
take that feedback make changes and the admissions process is you know to someone who has never done
this or someone who's not familiar or someone who's been - who's done this and being rejected,
obviously if you've been rejected in the past that means whatever you did by definition
probably did not work it's not going to work again so it doesn't make sense to do the same thing
again. Like they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results. So assuming we're not operating under that sort of mode of
operation and we're gonna do something different, it makes sense to ask somebody to help you out.
Now I'm gonna keep dissecting this, now should you pay for it or should you ask somebody to do it for
you for free so you don't have a friend or family to help you out but then you have the option of
you know again medical school admission consulting just because you have the consulting in it doesn't
necessarily mean it has to be paid but then how do we how do you find somebody to help you out
and consult with you but not get paid? What are the scenarios? We have six minutes. Well first
of all I think it really depends you have to be careful about the credibility of the information
that you're getting so whether it's paid or unpaid you need to make sure that that person like you
had said Behrouz, has either experience on the other side of the process or you know they have a lot of
experience helping successful students get into medical school. Some of the options I mean
if you've volunteered, or shadowed, or worked in a clinical setting and you have a good relationship
with a medical professional for example they are people who are more or less experienced in the
process, they've gone through it themselves, they've probably seen other applicants go through it they
are a possible source of information to help you navigate the process. Other students will also go
to professors who though themselves have not gone into medical school or into the medical profession
have probably worked with students who are on that same path written, recommendation letters,
hopefully been successful - seen their students be successful in that process, they could
also probably provide you with some valuable information. Those are some of the things I can
think of right off the bat. I think those are valid points, now the question is what are the pros and
cons paid versus unpaid medical school admission consulting so let's run through them. Pros: well if
it's unpaid you don't have to pay I guess that makes sense you save some money. Cheaper, yeah.
Con: if they don't have the experience, you may end up having to redo the process again. Con of
you know paid obviously you're going to be some amount of money out of pocket but if you don't
know how to choose the person who's going to do a paid consultation and you choose the wrong
person or organization, again you may be out of money and also end up with a rejection letter just
because they didn't know what they were talking about. So of course due diligence has to be done to
figure out who's best, who is not. Also just to add one thing is someone who you're not paying
like a professor or maybe a physician, they're not committed to helping you through the entire
process right so like they could say yes because they have some amount of time and you know they
have all the good will, I trust that but you know if they get busy, if there's - if something
happens you know they may not be able to see it through with you. Exactly so, so what happens is
when you have someone who is not paid and it's not family and friends that's close family and friends,
they don't have any skin in the game, they don't have accountability, so there's a chance
that all of a sudden they may tell you sorry I'm busy now for the next
three weeks and your deadline is coming up or they're not gonna give it the amount of effort,
time, and energy required versus a - an organization where that has skin in the game hopefully you've
chosen an organization that has some reputation, has some sort of guarantees, because they're
more sort of they have a skin in the game because they want to protect their reputation
and if it's a proper organization they want you to do well so that you could go and tell your friends
so that they could do there is going to be more and more referrals for them so it's a win-win.
So that's again another thing to definitely think about.
One of the major cons I think of asking friends and family is and also just unpaid
medical school admission consulting is the fear that they may not tell you exactly how it is
because they don't want to hurt your feeling but it's better to have your feelings hurt
before you get hurt feelings because of rejection and then waste a lot of time and
money and energy and a whole year of your life wasted but there's definitely pros and cons I
don't know if there is a right or wrong answer. I think more or less it depends on the individual,
their circumstances, their resources, and their ability for access to either
free some sort of a free consulting or a paid consultant. That's I think what would come down to.
I think one thing we haven't mentioned is the possibility to do your own research in a way
that's a way to seek out consulting for yourself based on what's available out there on the world
wide web, right? So in that sense like when you do that there's also obviously pros and cons to
that. One it's free, that's definitely a pro, if you have internet typically you have access to a
lot of information at your fingertips. A con might be that there's a lot of conflicting information
out there so it might be difficult for you as an inexperienced applicant to differentiate
what's good from what's bad and when you can when you've done enough research to see
to be able to see you know or find a credible source that you trust when you've done that
there's the step of implementing all of that advice and at that point feedback is really
really important right and that's what an advisor could offer that simply looking at resources
online, no matter how credible, that doesn't come with that level of feedback. So that was
time, 10 minutes. So that was it for us but you know what, maybe we're going to break a rule, I'm
going to add some last a couple of items as well. A couple of other things that I think are
important is your time. If you're busy trying to apply and somebody else can help you out
cut that time, that's a huge advantage if they know what they're talking about and they can help you
whether it's paid or not it doesn't matter but that time is important and lastly certain things
it's really hard to do like how are you gonna do a mock interview on your own? I'm not really
sure how that's possible. Is it possible? Sure it is, you know there's even apps for it but
I think that's sufficient information for someone to make a decision between
using medical school admission consulting versus not and if you find the right one it's certainly
not a scam although there are scams out there, be careful, but there is also a lot of good
organizations and individuals that really want to help out. With that said that wraps up our One
Question Podcast wherever you're watching this, hopefully you could subscribe. Give it a like and
hopefully we'll be able to see you at the next episode and we'll talk to you soon! Thanks so much
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