PreHealth Spotlight: Jay Patel

Class year: 2019
Major: Biochemistry and Moleular Biology

I was fortunate enough to have finished the MCAT the summer before I applied, so I didn’t have to worry about it in the few months I was preparing my essays in the spring and summer of 2020. Spend a lot of time on your essays and have them proofread...

Vitals

• First Year Medical Student at Pritzker School of Medicine (University of Chicago)
• Accepted to 11 medical schools (including Cornell, UMass Chan, BU, Kaiser, Rush, and 6 others)

While at UMass Amherst:

• Research Assistant in Chueng and Maresca labs
• TA for Intro Bio with Caleb Rounds
• Counselor for 3 summers at a Grief Camp for 5-17 year olds
• Volunteered with American Cancer Society driving patients to appointments
• Certified EMT and ER Scribe at Baystate
• Chief Scribe for Lahey Health overseeing/training 30+ scribes at 14 clinics/sites

You are in an early stage of a long path to becoming a physician, so it is important to enjoy the journey.

If I could change one thing about undergrad, I would be more open to trying different learning/studying strategies. Preparation for coursework is a large chunk of your time as an undergraduate, so finding ways to cut down on time needed to study while still learning all the content can make a major difference. I probably spent a large amount of time passively learning (taking notes and re-reading repeatedly) in a lot of my courses. It worked but probably cost me more sleep than I would’ve liked. Studying “smarter,” not harder, can help you do well in your courses and leave you more free time.

Before UMass, I used to struggle quite a bit with academics for most of my formal education. At the end of freshman year of high school, I ended with close to a 2.0 GPA. Since then, I revamped my study habits and sought help from mentors and peers, which ultimately helped me through college and in medical school. To this day, I continue to look for ways to be more efficient at learning/studying.

In terms of non-academic experiences, I had a lot of clinical exposure and employment positions during undergraduate and my gap years. I spoke with patients in a variety of different settings. I also had to deliver bad news on occasion.

Making good connections with professors and work supervisors is so important. I had strong recommendation letters and a good depth of experience in different areas such as community service, research, patient care experience and teaching. I think the schools I received acceptances to probably liked my essays, since I bugged at least 15 people to read my personal statement. 

You’ve probably heard some advertisements say, “The MCAT is hard. The MCAT is important.” It is true – the MCAT is hard in the sense that it is a different type of exam compared to your typical undergraduate exam.

There are 2 things you need to do in order to do well on any (well, most) exams:

1. Learn the content required for the exam; and
2. Learn the “logic” of the test creator

For #1, the AAMC publishes the content that is covered on the MCAT. Make sure you know most of the content on there. I used to tutor/teach MCAT, and the biggest mistake I saw students make was over-studying content and underutilizing practice. Practice questions (and practice tests) are important because they help you assess whether you understand the content and if you can apply it.

For #2, do as much practice as you can with AAMC material (ideally, you would do all of it). Make sure you time yourself and simulate real testing conditions. After you complete a set of questions (or a practice test), analyze every question (both correct and incorrect) with the highest level of detail. What threw you off about the question stem or answer choices? Were there any vocabulary words (or sometimes, made-up vocabulary words) that threw you off? How was your timing? Try to save AAMC material for the end (the last 4-6 weeks). If you want to do third-party practice materials, do them before you start AAMC and remember that their question logic will differ from the AAMC (still good practice). The scores you get on the AAMC practice exams are good predictors of your actual test score.

Finally, create a plan that will work for you. Some people only need 2-3 months, while others need longer. I personally took about 7 months since I was working a job while studying.

I was fortunate enough to have finished the MCAT in July of 2019, so I didn’t have to worry about it in the few months I was preparing my essays in the spring and summer of 2020. Spend a lot of time on your essays and have them proofread by multiple people.

Interviews aren’t as bad as they seem. Do enough simulated practice with others until you feel comfortable answering most questions. Most of my traditional ones felt like normal conversations. Have a general idea of what you’ll say for common questions (i.e., “why do you want to go to our school?”). In MMI interviews, you’ll need to “logic” out possible answers to scenarios and draw on information from your experiences (if possible). A tip for MMI: most scenarios leave out information so that you will make assumptions – so watch out for that.

Medical school has been great, our lectures have been in-person so far. Attendance is not mandatory for some courses, which is nice because some people prefer to learn from home or watch recorded lectures during their own time.

At Pritzker, my classmates are supportive and friendly. I would say they are like students I’ve met at many other medical schools. I chose Pritzker based on financial aid/scholarships, curriculum/grading, and research opportunities.

We’ve gotten the chance to start talking to both standardized patients and actual patients. Standardized patients are paid actors who play the role of a patient. They are specially trained to present the characteristics of real patients and give medical students the opportunity to learn in a more controlled environment. I had a lot of clinical exposure prior to medical school, so the transition to “hands-on” medicine was much smoother for me.

Published March 2022