Dear pre-med reader,

It’s been brought to my attention that there are numerous online services that throw themselves at pre-meds, all promising top-notch personal statement support and advice, all for a seemingly “nominal” fee. I am hereby informing you, with utmost confidence, that they are all scams.

My first tip-off to this was a comment on my post about how to ace the personal statement. Don Osborne of Inquarta.com commented about aspects of personal statements that he, as someone who has read many of them, would enjoy seeing. Nothing in his comment was anything I hadn’t already addressed in my post, and it was a clear attempt at simple link-baiting, but I figured I would give the man the benefit of the doubt and check out his website. The first thing I notice upon arriving there is that he too, has a post on “How to write a winning personal statement”. Interesting, I thought. I click through to give it a read, and to my surprise, it copies every idea I presented in my post, in almost the same order, and the only thing that’s different is the wording. And then I notice that he published it a mere 3 days after I published mine. Fair enough, I’m a believer in coincidence, maybe we just had the same brainfart. I then click through to his staff bios and suffer a sinking feeling as I come to the inevitable conclusion that not a single person working for that company has any right to be giving medical school personal statement advice–not a one had ever applied for or attended medical school. And yet their website (which is crap, btw, and hasn’t even bothered to update since 2008) offers articles with headlines like “How to become a doctor”. Incredible. What the fuck, Don, you had so little expertise on board that you stole from a med student’s blog? Seriously?

Now wait a minute, Jae, you say. Looks like Don’s worked for Princeton Review teaching MCAT Verbal, that’s legit, right?

Um, no. I worked for Princeton Review teaching MCAT orgo while my friends handled gen chem, bio, and physics (we basically ran the Palo Alto office that summer), and I can assure you teaching MCAT for a test prep company gives you about as much “expertise” in med school admissions as learning how to play the board game Sorry (see what I did there?). And at a hefty $4k for Inquarta’s package, sorry is exactly what you’ll be when you realize just how badly you got screwed. The sad part is, Inquarta’s on the cheaper end of the spectrum.

Let me break down for you exactly why you should never use an admissions coaching service:

  • They’re after your money, not your acceptance. It’s true: they have no vested interest in you actually becoming accepted, and are simply preying on your fear. Remember that no one can give you any sort of guarantee, so essentially what you’re doing is throwing money at a problem and hoping that works–think this will work on a patient?
  • They have no medical people. The reason for this is simple: no one in medicine has the time to sit there and read personal statements as a part-time job, we’re too busy studying or treating patients, and when we’re not doing that, we’re chasing sleep. Sure, we’ll read for our friends/family, but seriously? Someone could die if I don’t learn how to diagnose this disease, so a complete stranger’s essay isn’t even going to make it onto my list of priorities unless there’s some extremely compelling reason. So if these companies have no medical people on board, how can they possibly offer solid advice about any aspect of med school? Simple. THEY CAN’T. Whatever they tell you will be hearsay and secondhand, and it can’t even begin to compare to a firsthand account.
  • Their qualifications suck. There. I said it. I don’t care if someone’s read a million personal statements, worked for Princeton Review/Kaplan, been on the admissions committee for an MBA program, has a Ph.D. in English, whatever–if they don’t have exact, personal and firsthand knowledge of going through the medical admissions process, they are useless to you. Quite frankly, the louder they tout their seemingly-related-but-not-quite credentials, the bigger phonies they are.
  • They tell you to do the wrong things. Many will offer banks of “personal statements that worked”, while others will straight-up offer to write your essay for you. While the latter is obviously a poor choice, the former is a surprisingly insidious idea that’s also bad–because what you’re seeing is what other people wrote about, what other people are passionate about, what other people are driven by. This time would be much better spent figuring out you.
  • Testimonials are a poor standard of measurement. Particularly on the company’s website. Of course they’d pick the best ones that make them sound good. Of course they’d filter for positive ones. Of course they could just be making all of them up. It’s the Internet. What you’re getting is their version of the testimonials.
  • You’re better off using friends/family. These people care about you. These people know you. And they’re free. Surely you have at least one friend who’s talented at writing who can help you? Any applicant who trusts a stranger to give them better service than their own personal network should stop applying the moment they make that choice–because I can tell you right now that kind of attitude doesn’t work in med school. There’s an expected trust of your colleagues, and if you can’t trust them, they sure as hell won’t trust you, and you’re gonna be one lonely, pathetic student.

I’m seriously, seriously hoping this is a wake-up call for anyone considering admissions coaching. Don’t do it. You and your wallet will both thank me later.

Cheers,

~Jae

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At this point I suppose some pre-meds are wondering, “Well what the hell qualifies you to give advice, then?” The difference between me and an admissions coach is that I fully admit to being fallible. That said, I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve made it into medical school. My undergrad mentor served on the admissions committees for both Harvard Medical School and Stanford School of Medicine. My classmates serve on the admissions committee for Baylor College of Medicine. If it’s between me and a business, I daresay I have the purer motives for giving you advice.

An open warning about admissions coaching services