Medical schools seek applicants who have a realistic idea of what it’ll be like to be a physician, gained in part by interacting directly with physicians. Since there are limitations to in-person interactions right now, schools are encouraging aspiring doctors to be creative in how they build this aspect of their preparation. Virtual shadowing can include having conversations with physicians about their careers, observing telehealth appointments, or attending interactive presentations organized by student organizations or the growing collection of opportunities like webshadowers.com and virtualshadowing.com (with past episodes on YouTube).
 
You might start with some of the passive opportunities – listening to podcasts or watching YouTube videos, then move on to reaching out to alums or physicians in your network (including your own or family members’ physicians) to see if they’ll have a quick zoom chat with you about their career. Develop a list of questions you’d like to ask so that you feel well prepared for the conversation. We have some suggestions on our handout about informational interviewing.
 
Keep track of the hours that you spend in these activities and write a quick summary of the key points, what you learned, new questions that you have, next steps you might take after this experience. When you apply to medical school, you can include these experiences on your application, but more importantly, you’ll have gathered new perspective that will inform how you envision yourself in your future career, which will come through in the way you talk about your motivation for medicine in your personal statement and interviews.

We’ve talked with the staff at the Princeton Internships for Civic Service (PICS) and International Internship Program (IIP), which are two of the most popular prehealth internship options. Both offices are working with internship providers on remote opportunities, as well as some that will meet in person. The Summer Health Professions Education Program (SHPEP), one of our favorite opportunities for first-years and sophomores, is planning on a fully remote experience that will still give you an inside perspective on life at a professional school. All three of these programs have placements that vary in scope and duties, so expect to spend a few hours reading placement descriptions to determine what might best fit your interests. PICS and IIP are both offering prehealth-specific information sessions to highlight some of their opportunities in the coming weeks (their 12/7 deadline is among the earlier internship deadlines we’ve seen – plan accordingly)!
 
Outside of these three programs, we’re starting to curate our list of internship opportunities. So far, some are planning for remote, some for in-person, but many have not yet been updated for the summer. Keep an eye on Vitals for listings as we learn about them.
 
You may also want to stay closer to home for the summer. With some creativity, it’s very possible to create a summer plan that will help you develop your competencies without an official “internship” program. Working at a local summer program with an underserved community could demonstrate your service orientation and improve your cultural competency; a part-time job interfacing with the public (retail, food service, etc.) could demonstrate your reliability and hone your oral communication skills. Any job, full-time or part-time, could be combined with a weekly volunteer shift at a local healthcare facility (if it’s safe to do so) to help you gain insight into a clinical environment and help you develop your “bedside manner.” You may be able secure funding for local opportunities through Princeton programs like the Bogle Fellowship (for first-years) or Dale Summer Award (for sophomores) – check SAFE regularly for funding opportunities. Designing your own opportunity can demonstrate vision and initiative, and let you follow your own passions in a way that might not be possible in a pre-established internship.

Our understanding is that no exceptions or extensions are being being granted for MCAT examinees -- if you want to participate in campus life, you will be required to arrive on campus by January 24. If there are changes to this policy, they will be posted on the Princeton Spring 2021 website.

HPA has conveyed to the administration the importance of the MCAT and taking it in a timely manner in the medical school application process, and that a test taken no later than mid-May is optimal for the coming application cycle.

There will be a system in place for students to request approval for travel out of Mercer County/Plainsboro for academic reasons after the quarantine period in January. This travel exception request procedure is still in the works, but will be in place before the next set of MCAT dates in March.

The Princeton site is ideal. Beyond that, we're waiting to see what guidance is provided regarding travel exception policies and procedures. There will be a system in place for students to request approval for travel out of Mercer County/Plainsboro for academic reasons after the quarantine period in January. This travel exception request procedure is still in the works, but will be in place before the next set of MCAT dates in March.

HPA has compiled a list of test sites by estimated driving distance. We recommend trying to book an exam as close to Princeton as possible and ideally in New Jersey, since travel within the state (versus into NY or PA) seems to be the most acceptable during the pandemic. Some of our guidance will also be contingent upon conditions over time, so do your best on the day that registration opens in February; you may have to be flexible in date or location given the state of the pandemic.

Other suggestions:

• Be sure to consider your plan for maintaining safety as you travel to and from the exam site. Drive yourself in a rental car or carpool with an on-campus friend who is following the social contract to reduce exposure that could result from a ride-share service or taking public transportation.
• Look into the parking logistics at sites of interest and try to avoid densely populated areas.
• If you have to travel beyond Princeton, an afternoon test time may be preferable to avoid rush hour traffic.

Your goal should be to have your file complete at schools (verified primary application, secondary application, letters of recommendation, MCAT score) by early August. This will give you the best chance to be screened and potentially offered invitations to interviews at the beginning of the application process (see FAQ: Why apply early). 

The first step in being file complete early is to submit your primary application early. An application submitted within the first two weeks of June should be verified by mid-July, which will give you a few weeks to complete secondary applications, which are commonly sent after your primary application is verified. MCAT score reporting is independent of application verification -- your application will be verified whether or not you've taken your MCAT.

MCAT scores are released about a month after you sit for the test. So, if you're willing to submit your application in June without knowing your MCAT score, you could take the MCAT as late as late June / early July and still have a complete file by early August. If you want to know your score before you submit your application, we recommend taking the MCAT no later than May 15 so that you can submit your application by June 15.

Not at all! This past year, about 60% of our applicants were alums and none of them were on campus--we always plan for virtual information sessions and ways to interact with advisers. 

It's hard to get significant clinical experience as a junior even in a normal year, which is part of the reason that only about 15% of our applicant pool in recent years has been juniors. If you can find ways to develop an understanding of the day to day work of physicians and to develop the competencies that medical schools seek in other ways, it may still be possible to be ready to convince medical schools that you're ready by this year, but we expect that more students may take glide years in coming years than in the past.

There are many reasons that students take the post-graduation glide year, including:

• Your senior year grades will be on your application, which can give more evidence of readiness for medical school.
• You'll have access to letters of recommendation from smaller classes and your thesis that you undertake in senior year.
• You don't have to manage interviews during the academic year.
• You have a year to gain real world "adulting" experience before returning to academics.

We will talk more about pros and cons at our Applicant Information Session, which will take place in October.

For starters, it’s helpful to think in terms of what medical schools might value in students who have participated in research, and my impression is that it is less about specific techniques that you learn at a lab bench and more about the competencies that you gain in a research setting. In terms of intellectual/thinking competencies, these can include the ability to critically read primary literature, to devise your own hypothesis-based line of inquiry, to generate and analyze results, to write those results up and present your findings to others. In terms of interpersonal competencies, these can include working collaboratively, learning to take constructive criticism, being organized and reliable, being resilient and adaptable when research doesn’t go the way you expected. 

So, all of these competencies can be accomplished in many disciplines (not just science!) and in many settings. It may become harder to provide as much evidence of teamwork ability when you aren’t working side by side with folks on a regular basis, but otherwise, you will not lose as much as it seems like you might by being remote. 

The place where it may be more of an issue to not be doing in-person science research is if you want to pursue an MD/PhD in an area where you’d ideally be at the bench. It’s easier to know for sure whether you want to devote your life to bench work if you’ve spent more time in that setting before applying. 

The other thing to be thinking about upfront is that the letter of rec from your thesis experience can be one of the most powerful letters that you can get, since it’s from someone (or multiple people—often a postdoc or grad student will cowrite with your advisor) who works with you one on one over a long period of time. Try to make a point of giving whoever is overseeing your work a chance to get to know you well in this remote setting!

This is definitely a challenge that’s being presented by the pandemic. A lot of what admissions officers hope to learn about you—your ability to work in a team, your resilience and capacity for improvement, your oral and written communication skills, your reliability—will hopefully still be things that you’re able to exhibit even in the virtual environment. Keep all of those AAMC competencies in mind in how you interact with faculty, preceptors, and supervisors and try to behave in ways that’s giving potential writers helpful anecdotes that they can share about these competencies in their letters.

We still want two letters that speak to your readiness for the science component of medical school (because schools really want to know you’re ready for this), including one from someone who taught you in a class (because they want to know what you’ll be like as a learner and colleague in the classroom). If you’ve done a science-based internship or other research experience where your writer can speak to your science and thinking and reasoning competencies, that can cover one of the two science letters. For the classroom letter, it’s common to have a faculty member co-write a letter with a preceptor, so if it’s easier to get to know your preceptor, that’s a helpful step. If you can get to know someone in multiple venues—the lab and a class, or as a student and TA, or through conversations during office hours, residential college events, or other less formal settings than just in class—that can also help.

We recommend that our applicants have an active conversation with each writer (by zoom or phone, not just email) so that they can talk about themselves and their candidacy, remind the potential writer of their behavior in the class, and then share resume, a short biographical sketch, and other information with the writer to gain reassurance that the writer has ample information to write their letter. We have also reduced the number of required letters for applicants this year from four to three to help address this concern.