College applications generally are quite challenging, but BS/MD applications are a step beyond. The most competitive of these programs have acceptance rates of just 1-2%, and there are none with acceptance rates above 10%. Even more than the Ivy League, BS/MD programs are the hardest college applications in terms of competitiveness.
This can seem like a hopeless task, and many students despair at the monumental challenge ahead of them. Luckily for you, Ivy Scholars has a unique program tailored to BS/MD students to help them prepare for and apply to these highly competitive programs. Here’s how it works:
All BS/MD programs want to see four things from students’ extracurriculars:
Ivy Scholars works with students to find unique opportunities in all four categories which suit their needs, and allow them to stand out in the pool of applicants.
A past student, Jane, came to us at the start of her Junior year, for help preparing for BS/MD applications. While she had club level activities on her resume already, she needed more in depth research experience, clinical experience, and shadowing.
We first helped her secure an internship with a doctor. While the position was mostly doing paperwork at first, we helped her expand her duties and role, and she ended up creating numerous infographics for the doctor’s website, to help patients better understand their diagnoses. From this same internship, she was able to gain shadowing experience with the physician.
To help Jane gain the needed research experience, we helped her apply to a number of notable summer programs. While she was accepted to several, she ended up attending Stanford’s Anaesthesiology Summer Institute (SASI), where she gained lab and research experience in a healthcare setting. While we only had a year to work with Jane on building her candidacy for BS/MD, she was fully able to meet all four of the needed pillars.
Ivy Scholars works with students to find unique opportunities in all four categories which suit their needs, and allow them to stand out in the pool of applicants.
Another student, Audrey, came to us for help with her applications in Junior year. She was an excellent student, but struggled with standardized testing, suffering from stress that prevented her from performing up to her normal level. Since all BS/MD programs still require standardized test scores, she knew she needed help in this area.
She worked with our head of test prep, Alex Nelson, both on mastering material which proved difficult for her, and on managing the stress of exams. This proved very successful, with her test scores going from the 70th to the 95th percentile.
Most BS/MD students apply to 20+ programs, meaning there’s a lot of organizational work required to keep all the needed materials straight. We have the tools and experience necessary to keep all of the applications on track and on time.
Jane wanted to follow the most aggressive application strategy possible, and apply to every BS/MD program in the country. This is over thirty programs, each with their own requirements and deadlines.
We began by organizing all of the programs by deadline in a table, inputting what materials, tests, and essays each required. BS/MD applications come in two parts generally, first an application to the parent school, then a second application to the program itself. We separated these as well, so that Jane could be sure she was able to get all of the materials in on time.
We began the application process quite early, as soon as Jane was done with her summer programs. By finishing all of the college applications quite early, we were able to gain access to the BS/MD applications, and had time to work on all of the needed essays before the deadlines.
All BS/MD programs ask for multiple supplemental essays, on top of any others the colleges may ask for. We help students reuse their essays strategically, drastically cutting down on the amount of work they have to do, while still ensuring each application is perfectly tailored for the intended school.
BS/MD interviews are an integral part of the application process, and how the final cuts are made when deciding who gets in. We have a detailed process to help our students present themselves through these interviews.
When helping Jane prepare for her interviews, her mentor found a list of the most common questions used, and wrote them all out. Then, she had Jane practice giving her responses in mock interviews with the mentor. These were recorded, and Jane and her mentor went over them together, working to make her delivery more natural, and her answers more impactful.
While you are not judged based on your speaking ability, it does still inform how interviewers see you, and how your answers are received. Jane’s mentor worked with her to avoid stresses and hiccups in her delivery, and in making sure she conveyed everything she wanted interviewers to know in her answers.
We began interview prep once the last essays were completed, and continued it until the interviews began. Overall, we worked with Jane for 100 hours, and helped her apply to over thirty BS/MD programs.
Ivy Scholars is the leading educational consultant in Sugar Land, Texas, providing admissions coaching, test prep, and more to help students enroll at top tier schools.
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