“I want to be a doctor.” Whether this has been your lifelong dream or is an option you have recently started considering, it is important to understand what it takes to become a competitive applicant for medical school. As a pre-med, you have to be strategic and make good decisions during all phases of your path towards becoming a physician.
Becoming a doctor has always been a desirable career goal but it is even popular today than ever. Last year, more than 50,000 people applied to medical school for roughly 20,000 spots. The number of applicants has risen by over 10,000 in just the past 5 years. To have a chance at gaining admission, pre-meds need to be strategic and make good decisions both before and during college. They can’t be amateurs; they need to be pros.
Our book, Your White Coat is Waiting: Vital Advice for Pre-Meds, provides critical advice for pre-meds on what to do to build a body of work that will help them be competitive applicants for medical school and connects. It also ties what they are doing today with why it will be important to them as a physician in the future. Through anecdotes and detailed advice, we give pre-meds specific takeaways they can implement immediately in order to be successful.
Our book provides targeted information for the following:
- Individuals contemplating whether a career in medicine is right for them
- High school students seeking to be pre-med in college
- Collegiate pre-med students
- Career changer post baccalaureate pre-med students
- Parents seeking to learn more about the medical school admissions process
While there are several pre-med advice books currently on the market, many are written from the perspective of one doctor or a group of medical school students. None combine the expertise of a pre-med advisor who has guided hundreds of students over the years and helped them gain admission to top medical schools plus the wisdom of a Yale-trained physician with over thirty years of experience in his field.
Kirsten E. Kirby, M.S.Ed., served as Assistant Director of Pre-Professional Programs and Advising at Johns Hopkins University and later, as Director of Health Professions Advising at Franklin & Marshall College. Having advised students at both an elite research university and a liberal arts college, she understand the unique opportunities and challenges each type of institution presents to pre-meds. Her advisees have gained admission to numerous medical schools including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Penn, Dartmouth, and many others.
William M. Kirby, M.D., attended medical school at Penn State University School of Medicine and went on to do his residency training in pathology at Yale University and completed a fellowship at Barnes Hospital. He is the Chief of the Autopsy Service for the Christiana Care Health System in Delaware and was the Associate Chair of Pathology for many years.
Having both of our voices represented in this book provides readers with the full picture of the trajectory of becoming a doctor, from being pre-med to attending medical school, completing residency training, and then serving as a physician.
No matter where you are in your path to becoming a doctor, we hope that you finish our book feeling empowered, informed, and ready to turn your vision of putting on the white coat into reality.
Your White Coat is Waiting: Vital Advice for Pre-Meds was published by Kirby Career Advising.
YOUR WHITE COAT IS WAITING 