Before the application: Well-being
Tip: Help your child take care of their mental health by teaching them stress relief skills that they can use throughout the whole medical school application process.
More Info: For example, yoga, meditation, deep breathing, listening to relaxing music, have all been shown to reduce stress and are techniques that students find effective in college and in medical school. The earlier you start, the easier it will be for your child to reach back to these tools during the stressful moments of application season. Furthermore, building these healthy stress-reducing habits now will set up your child for successful stress management in medical school.
Resources: Apps such as Calm and Headspace and yoga videos on YouTube make mindfulness easy and accessible.
Primary Applications: Time Management
Tip: Help your child organize primary application deadlines and manage their time efficiently.
More Info: Ideally, your child should aim to submit their primary application within the first week it opens and to submit secondary applications within the first few two weeks of receiving them. An application timeline that is this tight requires a lot of advance planning in order to have the applications ready to submit in time.
Assist them in creating a realistic timeline, ensuring they allocate ample time for each component. This will help reduce your child’s stress and enhance the quality of their applications. By teaching your child effective time management habits, you are setting the foundation for a smoother medical school application process–and a smoother medical school experience.
Resources: Tools like The PreMed App and Planner by Motivate MD, Google Calendar, Microsoft Excel, and more can help your child stay on track. If your child needs an extra push, try setting up one of these tools together and checking in regularly with your child.
Recommend time management techniques like the Pomodoro method, which structures a task into 25 minutes of work and 5-10 minutes of break time. In fact, this is a study method that many medical students find helpful!
Secondary Applications: Organization
Tip: One of the most effective things that an applicant can do to increase the odds of acceptance is write secondary applications ahead of time.
More Info: Writing secondaries in advance can be exhausting, as there are at least 3 questions each per secondary application. Thus, helping your child organize and plan responses to secondary applications is key. Because there is so much overlap between various schools, creating a secondary application topic tracker can save your child lots of time. Encourage your child to compile a list of secondary essay topics for the schools they are applying to and organize them by common theme. Have them compose a response to each question theme that they can then modify as needed for specific schools and for specific word or character limits. This saves your child significant time and stress.
Resources: Common secondary questions include “why our school”, “why D.O.,” and questions about diversity and adversity. Help your child research the secondary questions for the schools they are applying to, which are usually the same as the previous year.
Interviews: Practice, practice, practice!
Tip: Improve your child’s interview skills through mock interviews.
More Info: Beyond the written application, interviews are a pivotal stage of the application cycle. As a parent, you can provide invaluable support by giving your child mock interviews of various scenarios so that they are prepared for what to expect and how to answer common questions. The interview process is intimidating, and having responses prepared in advance will boost your child’s confidence and ensure that they are putting their best foot forward on interview day!
Read up on common interview questions and use these as samples. Encourage your child to attend mock interview sessions offered by pre-med advisors. Practice some calming and confidence-boosting exercises with your child such as deep breathing and affirmations. Help your child create a list of their answers to common questions–they can bring this list with them to the interview to enhance their preparedness.
Resources: Here is a list of common interview questions.
Waiting Period: Well-Being outside of the Application:
Tip: Waiting to hear back from medical schools is very stressful for applicants, so help your child distract themself with activities they enjoy.
More Info: Use this as an opportunity to bond with your child–engage in their favorite hobbies and pastimes. Encourage them to socialize with friends and family, to exercise and spend time outside, and to remember that life goes on outside of the medical school application process.
Resources: Reach back to the tools that we mentioned earlier such as meditation, mindfulness, and yoga.
Post-Application Period – Navigate Setbacks with Resilience.
Tip: Help your child develop resilience for handling both successes and setbacks after receiving rejections.
More info: Prepare your child for the emotional rollercoaster that may follow applications. Remind them that rejection is a normal part of the medical school application process, and that rejections do not define their worth.
Teach them that setbacks are an opportunity to grow and reflect. If your child will need to reapply, normalize this and let them know that you will not be disappointed in them and that you are proud of them for pursuing their dream.
Discuss your personal experiences with rejection and how they helped you succeed and grow. Through active listening and a non-judgemental approach, you can show your child that you support them through every step of this journey. Building resilience helps your child navigate not only the challenges of medical school but also teaches them skills to manage setbacks they will face in medical school and future training.
Normalizing the realities of rejection and re-applying to medical school by sharing stories of successful applicants who re-applied.
Read this post for frequently asked questions regarding reapplying to medical school.
As a parent, you play a pivotal role in guiding your child through the medical school application cycle. With these tips, you can foster an encouraging environment that will enable your child to successfully navigate the difficulties and complexities of the application process with confidence and resilience.
The medical school application process is just the beginning–in medical school and beyond, your child will navigate unforeseen challenges and hurdles. Parents make up one of the strongest pillars in the pre-med and medical student’s support system. Helping your child in the application process will build a strong basis for medical school and residency, making your child feel more supported embarking on the next steps in a medical career. Finally, remember that while this journey is difficult, it is also exciting and transformative.
