Must have books

Sorry for the lack of blogging this week. Spence and I have been so sick this past weekend. He picked up a nice cold from school (yay for going back to school) and decided to share it with his wife. So nice of him!

So I was thinking back to our med school application days and I was trying to think what books were our favorites. Through out the whole process we constantly referred to two books.

1. The USA News Best Medical School Book find here.
2. MSAR: Admission requirements found here.

The MSAR is an awesome book that goes through all accredited medical schools. It will tell you a bit about the school and what kind of requirements it had. It was really useful when applying and trying to decide where to fit the school in our list. The MSAR will ist the cost of the medical schools as well so we didn't have to go searching for that information. It also helped Spencer get a better idea of what the school was like for interviews.

When it  came to us deciding on schools to go to we used the USA News Best Medical Schools book to compare rankings. This was nice to put our top schools side by side and really see who had the best rankings. We didn't go just off rankings. But it was nice to see how schools ranked.

When we found a school we liked we compared it's USA ranking and the averages from the MSAR book to see if Spence should apply. It actually worked out really great. We were able to find a lot of schools that fit our needs, Spencers levels and interests.  Just keep in mind the MSAR wasn't always correct on tuition and levels. Always refer to the school site if you want a firm answer.

So if you are applying or thinking of applying these two books are a must have. FYI if you get the online version of the MSAR book you can compare schools side by side (way awesome when choosing between schools).

I know that USA News also has ranking books for Dental Schools, Law Schools and other Graduate programs. A great way to compare schools!

Do you have any other book suggestions?

surviving the mcat

i know i know...i'm really late in posting today.
i'll try and make up for it!

like i mentioned earlier spence decided to wait a year to take the mcat. after looking into prep programs we decided that we really needed to do a program. after lots of research we decided on altius test prep. it was a great decision for us.

michelle went into the programs. i'm going to talk about how we got through the whole "mcat prep". altius has a very rigorous study schedule. with spence working full time and trying to do all other med school prep stuff we had to learn to survive.

there were times when i was so stressed that spence wasn't studying enough. and he was stressed he was studying too much.

there were other times when i was so mad he had to study or take a practice test (like on valentines day). there were other times when he just couldn't take studying locked in a little room by himself anymore.

we had to learn how to survive.

so this is what we did....

i got involved in as much as i could. i took over a the application worry. i figured out everything he needed to get together. input info as much as i could. and created timelines. i also made a very detailed calendar that was put on our wall that told us what studying needed to be done as well as application stuff that needed to be done that day.

finally i got creative. i made "coupons" for everyday left until the mcat. for everyday spence completed his mcat study schedule he got a coupon. coupons could be used that day or saved for later. they were everything from "going to the park" to "getting ice cream" and spence's favorite "back massage". it was actually really fun. spence loved getting a new "surprise" each day and i loved making studying fun.

there came a time when studying and stress became too much. so we took a break. sometimes that is just what the dr. orders. it's easy to get overwhelmed while studying for such a big test. but in the end if you are relaxed and on-top of things you'll do a lot  better.

so our advice....
1. start early, know when you are going to take the mcat and give yourself plenty (8-6) months of study time.
2. get organized. i got all the study material, application material, and md school advice books together. got them spiral bound and marked the important pages. when we were ever confused or had a question we knew right where to go.
3. find your own "relax" techniques. for spence it was "us" time where he didn't have to think about med school or mcat
4. calendar. this was what saved us. we wrote down what studying had to be done and then spence did that study and that was it. no more no less
5. rewards. this was the fun. plan little milestone rewards. after a practice test or after a hard week of studying. and then after the mcat celebrate
6. if you are a wife.....find something to keep yourself busy while your husband studies. don't just sit and feel bad for yourself that you have nothing to do. go have fun, girls nights, craft nights, family nights etc...
7. celebrate when it's all over!!!! we took a weekend off and just had fun

good luck to everyone taking the mcat this summer! keep on schedule and it'll all work out.

 the "coupons" i made each numbered for the number of days before the mcat

 spence studying....i kept myself entertained with taking pictures!

 our "prep" books. all spiral bound and ready to go

 after one of our breaks. a much needed nelsons custard 

we may have taken a little break to go to mexico 2 weeks before spence took the mcat. he did study each day though. i think this little relaxation and fun really helped me do better!

The MCAT

The all important MCAT. I will be honest, I was a crazy wife while D was prepping for this bad boy. If I was in the kitchen and I heard the TV flip on I was there in two seconds to hand him his prep book.

There are a lot of options when it comes to preparing for the MCAT. For us it came down to four main options:

1. Individual study plan
2. BYU
3. Kaplan
4. Altius

The Individual Plan: studying on your own, using a store bought prep book, maybe a friends old stuff and making your own schedule. On the plus side this plan is flexible and freeeee! It is a great plan if you are disciplined and can make yourself/husband study productively for 30 hours a week for six months. This was not the plan for us.

BYU/college supported prep: these are generally taught by a handful of professors each is there respective subjects. For BYU, the course is only about $600-700 which is nice. However, (according to the friends we had that went this route) it wasn't entirely effective because the professors pull notes and slides from their courses rather than having material designed for the MCAT. It's good in that it gives you structure and forces you to study and stay on top of it, but it is somewhat limited in real help on areas of the test you might struggle with.

Kaplan: maybe the most popular test prep program nation wide. Kaplan costs around $1600-1800 (after the discounts that are always ending...but never actually end). Kaplan is a good program. They have been doing it for a long time so they have worked out the kinks, thus they know what works and what doesn't. They know the test well so not only do they prep you in the test areas but on how the questions will be asked in that specific area. That being said, there are a lot of mixed reviews. A friend of ours did Kaplan one year and didn't do well and the did Altius the next year and saw significant improvement. Obviously, other factors are involved but he loved Altius and their program in comparison with Kaplan. And it's not uncommon to hear those kind of reviews.

Altius: maybe we are bias, but this is our favorite program. It costs between $1700-1800. Again this program focuses on not only subject review but on how you will be tested in those subjects specifically for the MCAT. They cover all necessary material but also do a good job simplifying it so you don't waste time in areas you don't need to. One thing that drew us to Altius is the small group sessions and one on one time with the same tutor the entire process. They were flexible to work with but firm enough to keep D on track. They had a lot of helpful study methods that helped D to stay encouraged and improving.

There are a lot of plans out there! It definitely depends on the person, so explore all your options and be honest about how much structure you do or don't need. For us, Altius was the best options. D had a really positive experience with them and it helped him do really well on the test. It is an expensive investment but one we still feel like was absolutely worth it!



Anyone else have a good experience with Altius or another program? What worked best for you?

Med School Journey: The Barfuss Family

our med school journey started way back in 2010. even before we were mr. and mrs.

i knew spence wanted to go to med school.  by the time we were engaged he had 1 class left to take. i pushed him to take the mcat that summer so we would be entering fall of 2012. as much as i pushed spencer didn't feel he was ready to take the mcat. considering we were getting married that summer he also felt that applications would be too stressful. he was right.

i was worried about him having a "break year". which is basically one year between undergrad and post-grad. he assured me he would be alright. so it was decided. he would take the mcat spring of 2011 and apply that summer.

we didn't wait that long to start the process though. after lots of research we found we needed to track his hours. service/work/leadership/research etc...so we started a google doc and started tracking. it was long and stressful but we were able to sit down and really remember all that he had done. we also compared what spencers activities looked like to the requirements of the university of utah. we were told that if he reached what they were requiring we'd be more than good to go. so we compared that to spence and got to work.

he started extra volunteer hours that fall. also did a lot of dr. shadowing. another thing we took care of in the fall was his letters of recommendation. it's never to early to request those. byu where spence went to school has a great pre-med program that allows for people to turn letters into them. they keep them all until the application opens and then at that point they will import them to the amcas letter program. (easy peasy).

i'll go more into this later...

fast forward. spence took a great mcat prep course and really did awesome on the test. (again the prep-course was the bomb.com). we started working on his application may of 2011 and turned it in early july 2011. we applied to about 30 md schools, 6 texas schools and 3 do schools.

started in late july he got requests for secondaries. at that point we narrowed our list to 25 md schools and 3 texas schools. spence decided that do wasn't the route he wanted to take so we veto'd those secondaries. interviews started in the fall. spence got invited for 10 interviews. lucky some of the longer trips we could bundle to save money. he decided to go to 8 of the interviews. a little more than average but we felt like it was worth it. finally in december we got our first acceptance. northwestern university in chicago. we were beyond thrilled.

1 acceptance, 1 rejection and 6 waitlists later here we are. we decided that northwestern was above 4 of the schools that waitlisted him. so we nicely dropped ourselves from those lists. so that leads us to now....still accepted and planning on northwestern but still on 2 waitlists.

we are still holding out hope that one of these two schools will come through. mainly because of $$ and location. northwestern is an incredible school and we're excited for chicago so if we don't hear good news from these other two schools we're still really excited.

so 3 years ago this time we had just started planning for where we are now. honestly we're still waiting and planning. we've decided to go full force on our own (no military though we considered it) and no government aid. these were both very personal decisions. i will continue to work full time and we'll see where we go from here.

we've learned a lot along the way and i'm excited to share a bit of what we've learned. for now here are a few sights...

fyi sites:
university of utah med school requirements
amc prep for med school site (awesome!)
student doc (great of a good overview)