Name: 3 Obvious Mistakes Premeds Fall For (❌Guaranteed Rejection!)
Uploaded: 2025-09-30T17:59:53.000Z
Duration: 8 min 12 s
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56% of medical school applicants were rejected last year.

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After working with thousands of pre-med students and serving on admissions committees ourselves as physicians, we know exactly what the medical school adcoms are looking for.

These are the three most common mistakes applicants make that cost them an acceptance.

The first and most common mistake is not submitting your application soon after applications open in June.

Deadline dates on the AMCAS website will tell you that you have until the end of the year to submit your application, but if you hope to be a competitive candidate, this is not even remotely accurate.

Submitting early and staying at the front of the pack for each application component is one of the most essential strategies for getting into medical school.

Ensure your application is among the first to be reviewed by admissions committees by submitting early and keeping up with actual deadlines, not technical ones.

We outline all key application dates in our Application Timeline Guide, linked in the description, and it's updated each year for every cycle.

It's a free resource that provides a month-by-month overview of what you should be working on when.

Submit your primary application as soon as possible in June, and no later than the end of the summer.

Rolling admissions means your chances of acceptance continue to decrease the later you submit.

And this strategy holds true throughout the entire application process.

You must be ready to submit secondary applications within two weeks of receiving them, and you need to schedule interviews before all of the slots are claimed by your fellow applicants.

The next crucial mistake is following a checkbox mentality.

Admissions committee members are looking for more than whether or not you can check off the bare minimum application requirements.

They want to see passion, determination, and dedication.

They want to see that you pursued interests longitudinally both inside and outside of medicine.

Simply checking off the boxes of what you think admissions committees want to see will starve your application of any personality, making you look like every other cookie cutter premed.

Adcoms want to hear why you felt passionate about your activities in your application and during interviews.

You won't have anything interesting to say if the only reason you pursued an extracurricular was because you thought you had to check it off the quote-unquote premed list.

Take the time to figure out which aspects of medicine you are truly interested in.

Yes, showing a well-rounded list of extracurricular activities is an asset, but it's far more impactful to show commitment and passion toward your interests.

Following your passions means you'll be able to speak enthusiastically and, most importantly, authentically about your experiences.

Your passions help develop the story behind why you pursued medicine, creating a compelling application.

For example, maybe you immigrated to the U.S. as a child and are committed to advancing medicine for the underserved.

To address this need, you founded an organization at your university that helps with medical aid, humanitarian work, or water sanitation in the country you were born in.

If you're passionate about pre-hospital care, you could bring a student EMT program to your school to help with your campus' response to emergency calls.

Our own Med School Insider, Dr. Austin Johnson, saw this need at his own small-town college in Colorado, and organizing an EMT program there played a key role in his acceptance to Stanford Medical School.

While this specific opportunity won't be available at every college, Dr. Johnson's strategy can be translated to your specific interests and circumstances.

Determine where your passions lie, and then look for a need you can fill.

What are the pain points of other students?

What needs do you see in your own campus and community at large?

And how can you establish or build upon something that fills those needs?

If you love research, but you and your peers find it difficult to connect with mentors and projects, how about creating a database to reduce the friction between students and PIs?

Moreover, having a majority of one-off or short-term activities is sure to raise eyebrows regarding your commitment.

You've heard it before, but quality over quantity is of utmost importance when approaching your medical school candidacy.

You're meeting your partner's parents for the first time.

Do they want to hear that you've had two or three serious relationships in the past, or dozens of flings?

The final critical mistake is wasting crucial time on activities and tasks that don't actually make a difference.

The med school admissions process is taxing and time-consuming, and your time is far from unlimited.

You absolutely must learn to prioritize what's most important.

Successful applicants determine their own strengths and weaknesses, and they understand how to move the needle in as little time as possible.

This is where the popular med school concept of certain topics or activities being high-yield comes into play.

Don't half-heartedly keep up with weekly or monthly meetings just for the sake of logging hours or appearing well-rounded.

Instead, focus on making a significant, longitudinal impact on the organization you are leading or contributing to.

Authentic passion and long-term dedication are what admissions committees are looking for.

For example, if you're determined to serve the underserved, become a care coordinator at a nearby free clinic that facilitates low-cost primary care medicine for those in need.

Prioritizing meaningful involvement over simply checking boxes not only strengthens your application, but also prevents the burnout that comes from spreading yourself too thin.

Many premeds obsess over one aspect of the application cycle and neglect the rest.

They spend many months studying to retake the MCAT to increase their score by one or two points to an already decent enough score when they could have gained significant experience that would enhance their application to a much greater degree.

Others place too much emphasis on research and extracurriculars only for their grades and MCAT to suffer.

It comes down to objectively and accurately assessing the strengths and weaknesses in your application and allocating your time and energy in the most strategic way.

In our two-hour webinar, you'll gain the insider strategies that high-achieving applicants use to impress admissions committees and secure multiple medical school acceptances.

You'll leave with actionable insights that you can start applying to your own application right away, no matter where you are in the process.

We only run this free webinar on a select few dates a year, and spots are limited, so sign up or apply for our waiting list using the link in the description.

Myself and our insider physicians, who were top of their class, scored in the 99.9th percentile and earned incredible merit-based scholarships, will lead you through our secret process for securing multiple acceptances to top medical schools across the country.

We've helped thousands of premeds navigate the application process. 97% of the students we work with through our comprehensive packages gain acceptance to at least one medical school, and 99% of them would recommend us to their peers.

We've helped students get into top programs like Harvard, Stanford, Johns Hopkins, and UCLA.

We know what works because we've been through the exact same things ourselves and become doctors on the other end.

Equally important, we've been on the other side of the table as admissions committee members, making decisions on candidates, and we've built a process that works to most effectively navigate the system and drive the results you want, getting into medical school and becoming a doctor yourself.

Now you can access our secret insider process and ask direct questions of our physician insiders absolutely free.

Visit MedSchoolInsiders.com forward slash secrets to learn more.