MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep 2024 is this Friday, October 26, 925 Eastern. I'm starting the day in my track, the pre-med track, planting the seed of your personal statement. We have three tracks going all day long and a couple hours of amazing exhibitors where you can learn more about their programs. Again, MappedCon presented by Blueprint Test Prep, October 26, register for free. It's a virtual event and all the sessions will be up after. So even if you can't make it live, go register and get access to the sessions. Go to MappedCon.com right now, register. That's M-A-P-P-D-C-O-N.com. If you're applying to medical school in 2022 to start medical school in 2023, join me Wednesday or Thursday, Wednesday night at 9.30 p.m. Eastern or Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern at premedworkshop.com. Go register today. I'm going to show you how to tell your story in your application. Again, that's premedworkshop.com. If you are applying to medical school in 2022, be there or be square. The Medical School HQ Podcast, session number 65. Hey, this is Z-Dog MD, rapper, physician, legendary turntable health revolutionary and part-time gardener. And you're listening to the Medical School HQ Podcast hosted by the irredeemably awesome Ryan Gray. Welcome back. I am your host, Dr. Ryan Gray, and I believe that competition amongst your premed and medical student peers is detrimental to becoming a great position. In this podcast, we show you how collaboration, hard work, and honesty are critical to becoming a superior position in today's health care environment. Welcome back, folks. I changed up the beginning. I hope you like it. Let me know. Go to the show notes, medicalschoolhq.net/65 as an episode 65. And let me know if you agree with that. That's saying what we stand for here at the medical school headquarters that competition, negative competition, more specifically, amongst the premed medical student peers is detrimental in your learning environment on your way to becoming a physician. Let me know what you think. Before we get started with today's great interview, I wanted to thank the three amazing people that left us five star reviews and iTunes. I usually name and read a little bit about it here at the beginning of the show. But from here on out, I'm going to move it to the end of the show so that we can get into the interviews a little bit sooner and so that you can start learning a little bit faster. So if you will, please listen until the end of the show and learn how these three people helped our podcast out a ton. As a general rule of thumb, we don't recommend that anybody study for less than eight weeks. But from there, it's just a number that goes up depending on a couple of major things. That's just one of the answers that Alec gives us as he answers the three most common questions he receives about the MCAT. Alec is a former premed student turned MCAT Prep God with the company that he runs, Em Prep, which you can find at emcatquestion.com. You might already be very familiar with their work and use their service with their MCAT question of the day that sends a MCAT question right to your email inbox. Alec and I are going to talk about studying for the MCAT, whether or not you should take the MCAT 2015 and when exactly in the calendar year to take the MCAT. Three great questions that can have huge impact on your score and your application. Alec, thank you for joining us. Please tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got into the MCAT Prep Arena. So my name is Alec Lee. I'm a co-founder of Em Prep. I co-founded it back in 2007. I've been really been working with MCAT content since then. I was a premed at the time. I work for Em Prep now full-time and I've taught close to about 1500 hours, if not more, of coursework with our students who come and work with us. So we run a comprehensive course and I'm the head instructor for that. I also developed a lot of the core strategy content for our course for the MCAT and so I've really been in this space and have been working this content for quite a long time now. So a former premed, where did you go awry on your path? Why did you jump out of being premed? Well, I wouldn't use the word awry. I think that I realized probably somewhere towards the latter part of my undergrad that being a physician just wasn't my thing and there's various personal reasons for that. But although I did the entire premed route, once I realized that actually being a doctor wasn't for me, then I decided to take a different route. We were already working on Em Prep for a couple of years at that point and because I really liked this space, I decided to stay in it in the capacity that I was in at the time. But just being a doctor wasn't in the car parts for me. So I don't know how personal you want to get but I think it's an interesting topic and one that we haven't covered too much but maybe briefly for somebody listening that is struggling with that question. Do I really want to do this? Maybe they have mom and dad at home pushing them. Maybe it's what they thought they always wanted to do so they're kind of sticking it out. How did you make that decision and did you get any pushback from anybody to stay on that path? So I never really had anybody at home that was really gunning for me to be a doctor. I had heard throughout the course of growing up that it would be something that would suit me. And so maybe that was the only reason that it was ever on my radar in the first place. But I think as I was exploring the space, there were a couple of things that turned me away. One was the fact that I wanted to be able to work with large groups of people or have an impact on large groups of people simultaneously rather than a more one-on-one interaction. And I should put it in the caveat that of course I know that this isn't applied to every single medical profession and that not every single doctor does the things that I'm going to describe but at least as a general practice, it was the case for me. And that was okay with not having a significant impact. I was okay with making the trade-off of numbers so that I could reach lots of people for significance and take that trade-off of not really having a massive impact in people's lives. So that was just one thing and so other career options simply seemed like a better route to take and if I wanted to have that kind of impact with people. Another reason was I just wasn't prepared to invest a decade or more of my prime years, not just in school but really just devoting the rest of my life to this kind of exploration. Not again that it wasn't interesting but just that I couldn't see myself immersed in it for so long. So I've always seen myself as perhaps a jack-of-all trades at a lot of different interests and hobbies and so I wanted to have a lot more flexibility in my career. And so I didn't want to sort of pigeon my whole myself in that sense. And I think the last one and this was probably the biggest thing for me was that I was concerned about the loss of, let me see how to describe this. I was concerned about the loss of equality in my professional relationships with my clients. Specifically my feeling of what to expect as a physician was that I would be working with people not as equal human beings coming to the table working on a problem but as me the sole really the primary provider of knowledge and this scarce asset of abilities to prescribe drugs and perform procedures and that relationship was incredibly asymmetric. And I wasn't sure that that was the kind of relationship that I wanted to have with people. Again, not that it's a bad thing or that that's the way that all doctors do their job but it was something that I saw was a risk for myself. And so that was a really important driver for me. That's an interesting one that last one that you mentioned is Allison and I just recently released episode 62 where we talked about, I basically interviewed Allison and talked about what it's like for a doctor to be a patient because Allison, we haven't really talked about it before but Allison opened up in that podcast that she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease during her residency and what it was like to get that diagnosis of a chronic disease and now all of a sudden you're the one with all the doctor's appointments and you're the one with all the insurance problems and you're the one struggling for information. And so that's interesting. And so if you haven't listened to that podcast yet, those of you listening, go get it at medicalschoolhq.net/62. But yeah, I mean, those are all great, great reasons for taking a second thought about what you're doing and the path that you're on. And for those, again, listening, if you have those doubts, it's okay to think them, work through them, you can take some time off and figure them out. And if you decide you want to go different route, go different route because it is, it's a huge commitment like you talked about. One that I thought was worth it, one that you didn't, and that's okay. Absolutely. I don't want anyone to be left with the impression that it's a core career decision or that it's the wrong choice. You know, it's very, very personal and it wasn't for me, but it, of course, is the right thing for so many people out there. Yeah. And more and more people as we get record numbers applying to school every year and record numbers of people taking the MCAT, which is what we're talking about today. Exactly. How do you like that segue? That's perfect. So I asked you to come on, I initially asked you, what are the most common questions that you receive at mprep? And you came back to me with three. So let's cover those, the three most frequently asked questions that you get. What's the first question that you get? So these aren't in order of frequency, but one of the top three questions is how long should I spend studying for the MCAT? And this is one of those very personal decisions when it comes to the MCAT because it really depends so much on the student's track record. As a general rule of thumb, we don't recommend that anybody study for less than eight weeks, but from there, it's just a number that goes up depending on a couple of major things. One is the prerequisite courses. If you're missing prerequisite courses, you obviously should take them before the MCAT if you can. I will say this about them. The students often need fewer prerequisites than they're led to believe. For example, the physical sciences section of the exam covers quite a bit less content than AP physics and AP chemistry courses from high school combined. There's obviously some content differences there, but they're pretty minor and relatively easy to handle. So students also don't need calculus or statistics. And so students are often recommended by their universities, "Oh, you should take introductory math." Well, introductory math are usually covering some form of statistics or calculus, which you really don't need. Students also arguably don't need to have past a semester's worth of organic chemistry. And I know I'm sort of going against the dogma here of MCAT preparation, but the exam really is about critical thinking and application. And so the exam is also written to be relevant to students from all sorts of backgrounds. It's the great equalizer of GPA and all the other non-academic and academic factors from different people at different schools. And so the MCAT is always going to be defaulting to a more basic level of content knowledge expectation, where the difficulty really is in the critical thinking rather than the content knowledge. So that's sort of a little bit about how we think about prerequisites. The second thing for timing is your performance in those courses. So just because you didn't excel in a course doesn't mean you're not ready for the MCAT, but you should have a pretty solid understanding of the concepts discussed. It also never hurts to have a pretty strong background in biology, since that context just helps you gauge a lot of information that's presented in those passages. But again, that's not a requirement. So where we tell students, "Oh, you probably don't need physics too," or whatever is included in more advanced topics of organic chemistry or general chemistry or physics. It really can't hurt to have those more advanced topics in biology. Things like genetics, microbiology, cell biology, immunology. Again, those aren't really tested in great depth, but it's really great to have that context for a lot of the passage of how they're constructing information, why they're selecting certain information to present to you, et cetera. The third thing is, of course, the amount of time that you have to study each week. So when I say eight weeks, I'm assuming that you're going to be devoting a good 15 to 30 hours per week studying in some form or another. But if you work full time or you're some form of a non-traditional student, or you're just a really busy pre-med and you can only put it in 10, 15 hours a week, then you should give yourself a longer one way with those materials. So this really is a tough issue to gauge, and one way to get a handle on your baseline is to just go to the AAMC's website, take the free practice and cat exam, and get a sense for yourself roughly where you're sitting at this current time. But definitely by far, one of the biggest issues that students end up facing is that they under-prepare for the exam, either because they started studying too late, or because they started studying on time or early, but they kept on procrastinating because they felt like they had lots of runway before the exam. And I think that's a huge pitfall for starting early, because it's really hard to light a fire under, but when you feel like you have all the time in the world, but you really don't. Yeah. And that third, I'll add one more of why they under-prepare is the hashtag that I made up, hashtag respect the MCAT. They didn't respect the MCAT, they didn't understand what it was. And you mentioned it earlier that it is a lot more critical thinking versus content. Yeah. Just because you've aced every class that you've taken as a high school student, as a college student, doesn't mean you're going to do well on the MCAT, because it's totally different kind of test. Exactly. And to add a little bit more to that, we've had PhD students or PhD candidates. And in some cases, people have completed graduate degrees in content covered on the MCAT who've come to us with very, very low scores, wanting help on the exam. And I think that that really attests to the fact that just knowing the content doing well in your courses isn't enough, because that's not what this game is about. The game, I like it. It's a game. Absolutely. I always talk about the MCAT as a game. It's a game with rules. And when you know how to play the game really well, then you know how to beat it. And also, I think the analogy holds true when you're trying to learn how to play the game, because when you play with someone with experience, someone who's good at the game and who can teach others to be good at that game, then you're in a much better position to do well yourself. Okay. That's awesome. I like that analogy. So we've talked about studying too short. Is it possible to study for too long? Well, I don't think that you ever really aren't studying. You might be able to actively study for too long. But I think that the MCAT preparation starts in high school when you start learning science and then start learning how to think about the content. But that's not really the question that you're asking. I haven't had any cases where I've said to someone that they spent too much time studying. I think the bigger issue isn't, did you study for too long? But rather, did you study the wrong way? That is, there's that old adage that practice makes perfect. And I remember in high school, I had a gym teacher who said practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect. Yep. I love that quote. So if you're approaching the MCAT with unrealistic expectations, then you're really not going to be ready no matter how long you prepare. But if you're preparing correctly, if you're preparing really for what the MCAT is going to present you with, then I don't think that you can spend too much time doing it because it's, as a critical thinking exam, it's all going to be about how you think about information. And that won't decline. That skill won't decline with time. It'll only grow. Okay. Yeah. I like how you brought it back to the critical thinking part because the way you think, you can't forget the way you think. You might forget content, but the way you think is the way you think. So as long as you're training that properly, you're good to go. Right. And more to the point of forgetting the content itself, as I teach my students in our eight week long course, I'm telling them by the time we get to week three, look, you need to go back to week one and make sure that you're keeping the information fresh in your mind because another big pitfall of prep courses in general and looking through these consolidated reviews of the material, things like that, when you are left with the impression that everything made sense when you reviewed it. And so therefore you know it and never need to review it again. Then you're setting yourself up for a disaster because it might make sense to you in lecture that very day. But three weeks down the road, it might not seem so fresh in your mind. And so I'm always cautioning students that by three weeks out, they need to be going back and making sure that it's also fresh in their mind so that when they get to test a, there aren't seeing anything that they haven't seen in weeks or some cases months. Okay. Great advice. So how long should I study is the first big question that you get? What's the second most common? Not again in any order, but what's another common question that you get? Right. So another common one is, should I take the new MCAT? We are on the cusp of the change of MCAT 2015 almost exactly a year from now. And for that, the short answer is no. You should not take the MCAT 2015 and you should take the current MCAT if there's any way for you to swing it. So when's the last time to take this MCAT? So the new MCAT starts February 2015. Okay. The very last administrations will be January of 2015. Okay. So even though the calendar year is 2015, you can still take the old MCAT in January. Exactly. Yeah. And they just recently added a couple more dates in January. So you should check that out. It is now the end of January 2014. But at some point very soon, they will have their date set and we will transition as planned. So why are you advising not to take the new MCAT? Right. So the long answer really there is maybe that you should maybe not take the new MCAT, especially if you don't have your prerequisite courses. So if that's the case, then you almost definitely won't be ready for the new MCAT and it's extra content. So you should make sure to have any prerequisites or take any prerequisites courses that you're missing. So there's a couple of reasons that advising students to not take the new MCAT. The first is that the exam is going to be a lot longer. So if you think that sitting for nearly five hours to take the exam sounds like a long time, then the new one's going to be upwards of seven hours. And just from the perspective of mental stamina, it's a tough proposition. Our board exams are eight hours. That's nothing. Yeah. I mean, look, there's no reason that it shouldn't be a great preparatory experience. But if you have a choice, I'm sure you'd have your board exam not be eight hours. Yes. And the students right now who are on that cusp, I think that a lot of them really do have that choice. And I would personally, I would always choose to have a shorter exam. So the second reason is that as a longer exam, it's going to have a lot more content. And that's obvious from the fact that it is longer, but really, there is a lot more content. Students will get a break on some of the physics, some of the organic chemistry, but the amount that they removed is a lot, lot less than the amount they added. And so this means that you're just going to have a greater chance of having gaps in your knowledge somewhere, not even mentioning the mental drain being six hours in. So those are two reasons. The third reason is that it's a brand new exam and rollouts of major standardized tests like this pretty consistently see a drop in the scores for the first year or two after the switch. This happened to the SAT, happened to the GRE, happened to the GMAT, and I put my money on it happening to the MCAT too. So I know that sometimes it's hard to quantify because a lot of the grading schemes change, but in general, people don't perform as well after a switch until people start getting more use of the content. There's more publishing, people have spent more time with the new content. I think there's a lot of reasons for why that's the case, but empirically, it's the case for a lot of situations. So with that, I should probably mention that the new MCAT won't be scored on the same scale as the current exam. So there might be some reprieve in terms of scaling, but it's just too early to tell right now since the WMC is not releasing their scoring information until the end of April of 2014. So either way, you just don't want to be on the front end of exam changes and bear the brunt of that kind of switch. I would almost liken it to switching it to a whole new language and the admissions committees are going to have to translate that language of a 30 on the old MCAT and whatever the score is on the new MCAT and how do those equate and how do they compare. I'm assuming the WMC is going to give that comparison in some sort of chart, but it'll take a while, like you said, to figure all that out. Right. And they are collaborating very actively with medical schools to make sure that the content of the new exam is representative of what students are, should be prepared for in med school. And they're working with these med schools to make sure that the data that they're providing and the scores that they're providing are going to be useful for the admissions process. I'm not saying that the new exam is a bad exam. I'm just saying that it's going to be more challenging. And I'm all about the path of least resistance. Yeah, there's always that fear of the unknown. Right. Okay. So one more reason on that. So the last thing is, because it's going to be a new exam, there's going to be a lot less content available for it and less expertise on it. So there's only going to be one official practice exam, as opposed to the current eight. And the current MCAT contents that exist out there are mostly going to be obsolete and need to be switched. And so the problem is that the WMC giving us a test prep company is a lot of time to make sure that we can prepare students for the exam structure. And so we know what to expect in terms of the content, but there's still a lot of uncertainties that make it difficult for us to publish practice materials or develop coursework. And every company, every test prep company is facing this right now. Frankly, nobody's thrilled about it. But we're doing our best to make sure that we can help students be ready. Where's the best place right now? Maybe that has the most information about the MCAT 2015. If somebody knows that that's what they have to take, because they're not going to be ready for the old one, is there any places where they can go and get good information now? I'd send them to the double AMC directly. So their website will an easier way to really just find this specific information is just to go to Google and type in double AMC MCAT 2015, because you'll go directly to the relevant pages, and as opposed to having to dig around for the URL. And the double AMC's published various preview guides for the exam. And so you can see some sample practice questions. You can see what sense of the exam structure they have released. So definitely the double AMC is the place to go right now. Okay. If a student again knows that they have to take the new test in March of next year, is it futile to take an old practice test? Obviously the content might be different, but is the logic in the way that they're asking questions going to change that much? So not really. The structure of the questions themselves will be constant. At least as far as the double AMC is revealed to us, it'll still be a multiple choice exam. It'll still be for answer options per question. There still won't be a penalty for wrong answers. There's still going to be testing, you know, critical thinking as opposed to content, but you still have to know a lot of content. And so in that sense, there are there are a great number of structural similarities. And although I wouldn't say that the current preparation contents are going to be completely obsolete, the double AMC is cutting off all access to the old contents come January 31st. And so as far as they're concerned, it's over. If students have their hands on some of these older exams, I don't necessarily think that they will be useless, but I think that they should really be taken with a grain of salt because a lot of the content is being removed. I shouldn't say a lot, but a decent amount of content from the physical sciences being removed, some things from the biological sciences. And unless you're going to sit there and be really diligent about recognizing which information is no longer testable, then I'd say that the current exams could potentially end up doing more harm than good if they give you, again, these unrealistic expectations for what to expect. Okay, fair enough. All right, so that's whether or not to take the new one or try to squeeze in the old one. What's the third most common question you get? Yeah, so this one's pretty easy. This one is when should I take the MCAT? And I think that's a really interesting question. And, you know, in truth, the answer is you should, and students probably aren't going to like this, but students should take it when they're ready. And I need something specific, something specific. So that usually means later in undergrad career, once you've got a pretty strong background in prerequisites content, but I've seen people successfully push it back to the end of their sophomore year. I think that you'll see a lot of that in the coming months because of the scramble to take the current exam. So one thing I'm predicting right now is that overall scores, but as raw scores, on average, are going to drop for the calendar year 2014, because a lot of people are going to be rushing to take the exam before they're actually ready and have a weaker performance. I couldn't end up being wrong about that. Time will tell. But obviously that doesn't really directly address the question. I'd say you're ready to take the exam once you've taken your prerequisites and you've put in a solid two to three months of studying at the minimum. Okay. So let's talk about just real quick to orient some of the maybe newer pre meds. The exam is typically, so if you want to talk the average, it's typically taken in your second semester as a junior, correct? In the fall semester as a junior. Okay. And so you're saying because of this new push, maybe they're taking it at the end of their sophomore year. And again, for orienting those that are listening, you're applying to medical school again at the end of your third year, kind of beginning of your fourth year, kind of all around there. Yeah. So I guess one thing that I didn't really address there is although that doesn't really, so I guess I kind of answered the question of when you're ready to take the exam, but what about for those who want to push it back as long as possible? Yes. That's what I want to talk about. What are some negatives about pushing it back? I think there's a couple, but the main one is that if you take it too late, then it's going to delay your application. And that's not really a good place to be in. If you're not submitting your application very early on in the process, then you're setting yourself up for not being in a prime admissions, cannercy position, especially with rolling admissions. They're going to be starting to look at people really, really quickly. And you don't want to be at the very tail end unless you're an absolutely stellar candidate. And you're a shoe in for various med schools, which is a tiny minority of people. So I would definitely make sure that you've got your score, if possible, by the time you submit your application, or at least very, very soon after that. And I know that there is definitely some leeway there, and it's not a requirement. So I don't want to leave that impression. But I don't think that it's something that you want to be worrying about, especially at right as you're putting together your application and getting your references. And you have other things to be concerned about doing well on the exam should be over, and that you should just have that one last thing to worry about. Yeah. And so you mentioned turning in applications, and depending on what application service you're using, applications open up in May or June. And so the MCAT takes about a month to get your score back. So if you work backwards, then you can say, "Okay, maybe the latest I should take it is March or April." And so that's kind of the time frame that I normally tell people, as the latest, to be able to get their score back and make that decision, "Do I want to click the submit button or do I need to hit pause and figure out what went wrong?" Right. I think also, speaking of pushing it back, you want to get as far away from the habit of delaying, delaying, delaying the MCAT, because those students end up perpetually studying for the MCAT, and the MCAT's just one portion of your application. The more time you spend studying for the MCAT, the less time you're spending shadowing, volunteering, exploring the pre-med space, or the profession, doing all the other things that come with being a pre-med, and that's a really tough trade-off to make. And I think that goes not just for those who keep saying, "I'm not ready now. Let me push it back two months, and I'm not ready now. Let me push it back two months." But also those who keep retaking the MCAT, as much as people might be tempted to do that, it shouldn't be as easy a decision as, "Well, am I going to do better?" That's not the only thing that's really going to matter in the eyes of the med school. Yeah. All right. And one last thing I'll add, maybe you can add something else after. The MCAT, if you're taking it and you're submitting your application, and it's checked on there that you're scheduled to take the MCAT later, your application sits there. The schools aren't going to check you out until all that information is there. So you can submit it, but maybe your grades get verified, but the schools really won't look at you until all the information is there and ready for them to look at. Exactly. And so I really think that those late summer, early fall test dates are geared towards not people who are just decide to apply last minute in the fall, but geared towards people who are planning applying next year and just want to have the next year to not have to worry about the MCAT and do all of the other things that are going to be involved for preparing for the application process. Perfect. I think, unfortunately, too many people use it to delay their application, and it hurts them. And I wish the AAMC would, and MCATs would let them know, "Hey, your chances go down every day," but unfortunately, they don't. But that's a different argument. I've said it before. The whole rolling admissions, it's a game of musical chairs, and the longer the game goes throughout the year, the less chairs there are. And so the music keeps playing, though. Absolutely. All right. Alec, any other last-minute tips or advice you would give that pre-med student out there freaked out about the MCAT? So I think that anybody who's really freaked out about the MCAT should, as much as this is a plug for our own company and our own product. I really think that it's true that students who are very concerned about this process should at least have a conversation with test prep companies, whether it's us or whether it's some other company, just to see what options are available for them to help them along. I've worked with, unfortunately, too many students who have come to me or have come to us after having self-studied or after having tried just some shock and approach to the MCAT, not having seen the performance that they wanted and saying, "Okay, I learned my lesson. I need to go for the real deal here and sign up for a course." So a course isn't for everyone, but I think that everyone should at least give it some serious consideration to see if it's going to be right for them or not. Okay. What kind of services do you offer at MPRP? So we've got tons of free practice content. We've got a database of practice passages that students can sign up for, our MPRP Q-Bank. The free content, you sign up for their mailing list, you'll get a MCAT question of the day. We've been running that for almost seven years now, and so there's over 2,000 practice questions that students can just play around with for free. I don't know if "play around" is the right term. I signed up for that, and I unsigned up, or I unsubscribed because I got too many wrong. As a physician, I got too many wrong. I'd forgotten all that stuff. You know, I think that's an understandable. The MCAT's not testing you on medicine, but yeah, I mean, so there's that. And of course, we do run a course, a live version, which is run live online, and we also run an on-demand version for students whose schedules are a little bit less flexible. But no matter what, at the end of the day, our goal when we work with a student is to make sure that they're going to perform the best on test day. We're a pretty small company. Every single one of our students, their success reflects on us and has a pretty significant impact on how we view ourselves and how others view us. And so we make sure that everyone comes through our doors, our online doors, is getting the value that they're signing up for. And I actually did a video review. You gave me access to do a review on your anytime course, and I have that, and you can get it at medicalschoolhq.net/mprep. I go through the pros and cons, and Alec didn't pay me to write the review. I did it, and I had some negative stuff in there to say, and a lot of positive stuff. So go check out the medicalschoolhq.net/mprep, and you can see that review. All right, folks, that was Alec, again, from mcatquestion.com. Go there, see what he has to offer. He's got a ton of great stuff going on. Obviously, there's a lot of stress among everybody with all the changes coming to the MCAT starting after January of 2015. So as I promised at the beginning of the episode, I do want to thank the three people that left us five star reviews, and the reviews helped us tremendously. We were the highest ever in iTunes this past week. We got up to number 26 in all of science and medicine. That's thousands of podcasts. We were up there with some of the big boys, and that's because we got a lot of reviews this week, and three is a lot for us, and iTunes sees that, and they reward the show by putting us higher in their list so that more people can find us. They figure if people are rating and reviewing, then it must be a good show. So I do want to thank Palf Guy, P-A-L-F-G-U-Y Palf Guy. He says, "Help me stay sane during the application process." And that's exactly what we try to do with the whole process, the pre-med process, application process, medical school, residency. We try to open up your mind to the whole thing and open up your eyes and let you understand what's to come so that it doesn't hit you like a brick wall when it actually does come because it can have that tendency. So thank you Palf Guy. Dr. Inc. 924 says, "My go-to pick-me-up and information station." That's awesome. Thank you, Dr. Inc. He says, "It's been so fantastic in so many ways, helpful resource, entering the beginning of the application cycle." Tons of great information. Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Inc. 924. And we also have a weird username here, KB02112014. So KB February 11th, 2014, says, "Excellent and informative. The best medical school podcast I have come across. Humble, unbiased and informative with excellent guests." And Alec, again, was another excellent guest today. So thank you KB February 11th, 2014 for that review and rating. If you like the show and you want to see us get higher in those ratings than number 26, my goal is top 10. One of these days, I want to see myself in the top 10 or see our show in the top 10. You can help us do that by going to medicalschoolhq.net/itunes and taking a minute to leave a rating interview. And it literally only takes a minute. I appreciate everything you guys do for us. A couple other reminders on the way out. Go say hello to us on Twitter. We're @medicalschoolhq. You can go leave some comments. If you have any other questions about the MCAT or comments about any of the information that Alec covered today, you can do so on the show notes for this episode, which you can find at medicalschoolhq.net/65 as an episode 65. And beyond that, I hope you got a ton of great information today. I hope that some of this information will help lower your anxiety level about the MCAT. Yes, it's a huge test. Yes, it is the great equalizer. But with the information that you're learning from these podcasts, and that's the goal with these podcasts, is to educate you. Hopefully, that will put you a step ahead and lower your anxiety levels and help you study properly for the MCAT. Take the MCAT when you're supposed to. And one less thing to worry about on your path to becoming a physician. So hopefully today's episode helped. I hope to see you next time here at the medical school headquarters. [Music]
