Pre-medical students are some of the most hardworking students out there. However, do we know just how hard they have to work? And how much money they have to spend just to be able to shoot their shot (have a shot at achieving their goals)?

1. Pre-med students take prerequisite courses (biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, physics, sociology, psychology, math, and English) at their universities. After those 2-3 years of hard work and attaining a grade for each of their courses, they then have to take the MCAT. (keep reading...)

2. The MCAT is a 7 HOUR and 30 MINUTE exam. It covers all the topics that students have already studied (and spent money on) in their premedical classes (listed above). This exam is completely repetitive of what students have already demonstrated on their transcripts with university courses. If students deem that their transcripts are not representative of their true mastery of the subject, they can opt into taking post-bac courses.

Nevertheless, the MCAT has a Critical Analysis and Reading Section (CARS) that is designed to "measure the analysis and reasoning skills you will need to be successful in medical school" (AAMC). However, all three other sections of the MCAT (biology/biochemistry, chemistry/physics, psychology/sociology) are already mostly comprised of passage based questions that require significant abilities to reason, comprehend, and apply what is written. Furthermore, CARS forces pre-med students to spend countless hours trying to grasp with subtle nuances and confusing text that is not required to turn a student into a good doctor (not to mention that the AAMC provides little to no help with understanding and preparing students for the CARS section. Explanations to answers often include no actual explanation.)  If pre-law students are not required to show their mastery of the basic sciences, why are pre-med students required to display mastery of outdated, subjectively-deemed-"canonical" literature that will never appear in our fields? 

Additionally, with COVID-19, MCATs across the country were cancelled right before the rolling medical school applications went live. This puts hundreds of thousands of students at risk. Because the medical school application is rolling, one's application is significantly benefited by an earlier, rather than later, submission. With MCATs being cancelled, many students are now unable to complete their applications in time for the application date's opening. This cannot be blamed on the AAMC, who cancelled the MCATs, because we are in a global pandemic. However, what can be blamed on the AAMC is the fact that they decided to push the first day that applications reach medical schools by only TWO WEEKS. This should not have to be said, but the global pandemic has displaced people for more than two weeks (we are encroaching on at least THREE MONTHS by now). Many pre-med students who had shadowing opportunities and last-minute application requirements lined up for the few months before medical school applications went live were left grappling with nothing. Pre-med students are people too, and two weeks is not enough time to make up for the disruption that has occurred in many of our lives. Because of only the two week extension, students across the country were forced to delay applying until next year, setting them back a year and scrambling to find last-minute plans for their upcoming time. 

More recently, the AAMC had announced that they were planning additional MCAT dates and times to make up for the cancelled exams. Start times for the now shortened, approximately 6 hour exam would be roughly 6:00am, 12:00pm, and 6:00pm. It shouldn't have to be said, but the countless hours of studying psychology that pre-medical students have spent in preparation for medical school have taught us that sleep is very important. An exam should not be administered at 6AM or 6PM (which would end around midnight). 

Additionally, the AAMC announced that it would re-open MCAT registration for recently added test dates and times on May 7th.  However, there was a caveat. They would open the system at some point between 6am-12pm ET, and they wouldn't tell us when exactly they would open it. (They did say that once it was open, they would let us know right away, but of course, this was another empty promise made on Twitter). This forced thousands of pre-med students to sit at their computers refreshing the page for 6 hours. Students on the west coast had to be awake from 3am-9am. When the registration finally went live at around 7:57am ET, the system crashed. With no support from AAMC on Twitter (their preferred platform of communication), students were left in the online "waiting room" of the MCAT Registration page, wondering whether or not they should leave the page and risk losing their spot in line to register for the exam. It is May 7th today, so we cannot currently tell you the outcome of this circumstance; however, I hope all ends up well (considering how "well" the AAMC can do at this point). 

3. Premedical students are expected to shadow, partake in research, attain paid medical/clinical experience, volunteer in a clinical setting, volunteer in a non-clinical setting, work a job, and more, all while maintaining stellar GPAs, achieving high MCAT scores, and obtaining amazing letters of recommendation. No one disagrees that working hard and learning to balance your time are critical in shaping future physicians; however, the standards are absurdly high. Pre-med burnout, depression, anxiety, and stress are incredibly real. The most popular medical school application service- AMCAS- lists 15 extracurriculars for students to write about. The application service constantly emphasizes quality over quantity, but with 15 experiences available on the application service, pre-meds can't help but turn into resume-padding cookie-cutters who are just trying everything they can to get into medical school and achieve their dreams. These unrealistic expectations, on top of requiring so many things from pre-med students yet expecting uniqueness among applications, only fosters a cutthroat and competitive system that serves to deny collaboration in a field that is highly collaborative. Not to mention, building up this perfect application can sometimes take years, and additional gap years, to obtain. The road to becoming a physician already takes 11-15 years.

Now, let's talk about the COST of even being able to apply to medical school. 

1. University/college courses in medical school prerequisite courses- biology, chemistry, organic chemistry, biochemistry, physics, sociology, psychology, math, and English can cost HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of dollars.

2. Registering for the MCAT is $320. This does not include additional fees that build up due to rescheduling or cancelling your exam. Fees also increase as you register closer to your test date. This also does not include transportation costs to and from the exam (not to mention that some students travel quite far to take the exam). Lastly, this also does not include fees required to prepare for the MCAT. The AAMC provides practice questions and tests at around $250-$300. An additional $200-$250 is needed to buy a set of prep books for the exam. Further resources and help from test prep companies can easily cost over $1000.  

3. The primary application for one medical school is $170. Each medical school after that is an additional $41. On average, students apply to 15 medical schools. This means that primary applications alone are $744. With acceptance rates at most medical schools being below 10%, many even around 2%, it is not uncommon for students to apply to many more schools to try to increase their chances of being accepted somewhere. If applying to 20 schools, the cost of primary applications alone soars to $949. 

4. Secondary applications can cost $100, give or take, for each school. With almost all schools returning secondary applications even before reading a student's primary application, most students will get secondaries. A students who applied to the average number of medical schools- about 15- will have to pay an additional $1,500 to fill out all secondary applications. Setting aside cost for a minute, secondary applications consist of about 3-5 additional essays or short essays for each school. This means that the average student will have to spend their summer writing 15x5=75 additional essays! Those essays will also have to be returned to the school within about 2 weeks if the applicant wants to stay a competitive prospective student. 

5. Interviews happen in-person and on-campus. Students have to pay for transportation to a medical school's campus, overnight arrangements, and other living costs while there. 

All in all, these costs add up to THOUSANDS of dollars. The average student who spends only the bare minimum on MCAT prep (buys only the AAMC packages, a set of prep books, and pays only one registration fee for the exam) and applies to 15 schools will spend about $3,000 just to apply (this does not include university course costs, travel fees for interviews or the MCAT, or additional test prep). Despite that, the pre-med acceptance rate is nationally only about 40%. This implies that 60% of students will have spent thousands of dollars only to get denied in the end.

Thus, we are calling upon all of you- pre-medical students, current medical students,  residents, physicians, friends and family members of those in the medical field: please give us your support in turning the medical school application process into something that is a little more humane. It is time for us to take a stand together, and together, we can make positive change. 

*We are sure that these points could have been made more eloquently, movingly, and succinctly, yet this petition is meant to start a discussion and start change. Please tell us your story and discuss the injustice of this process.