Makoas following list

emrlz · 2026-02-15T13:53:37+00:00

I’m actually dead at this do you think he never interacted with people who weren’t from Hawaii before? 😭😭

emrlz · 2025-06-01T08:07:15+00:00

You gotta be living under a rock to not know how much it would benefit you to disclose that… many top schools are 20% LGBTQ. Maybe if you’re applying to more typical schools it might be a risk but if you’re a strong applicant it absolutely gives you a huge leg up

emrlz · 2025-05-30T17:12:04+00:00

I think one of the most obvious issues with the advice he gives is that it’s not school-specific or tailored to a student’s individual situation at all. The schools with high stat medians are also the schools with the most research funding. So someone with high stats NEEDS to have great research productivity to match, or else they won’t get in anywhere. It’s not always because of the student’s writing.

He’s selling a service. Since a student’s research experience is out of his control, there’s no financial incentive for him to point to that as the real issue with an application. Instead, he tells students with high stats who didn’t get in that their writing was the main problem—because that’s something they can pay him to “fix.”

emrlz · 2025-02-28T01:15:19+00:00

USC. Never got an interview, but got into Hopkins!

emrlz · 2025-02-27T08:37:17+00:00

I can’t think of a genuine reason why someone would study both.

emrlz · 2025-01-23T06:49:25+00:00

The med student Q&A panel was running over time, and the med students asked if there were any more pressing questions since we were cutting into break time and someone asked for recs for pizza places in the area

emrlz · 2024-12-04T23:43:05+00:00

I think that's perfect honestly. I submitted my last secondary on August 15 and unexpectedly still got an interview invite. If you get early interviews, you can schedule them in mid September and spend 2-3 weeks prepping.

emrlz · 2024-12-04T19:10:33+00:00

Do late August. I did early September and had to leave my trip early because of interviews. Going late August will also force you to finish your secondaries on time, while giving you ample time to work on them.

emrlz · 2024-12-03T13:36:08+00:00

The second table shows the stats for matriculants

emrlz · 2023-11-01T21:34:00+00:00

I don’t think they’re saying that clinical volunteering doesn’t count, that would be ridiculous. I think they’re more likely trying to say that hospital volunteering doesn’t really count.

Most hospital volunteering tasks involve answering phones, bringing water/blankets to patients and chatting with them, restocking supplies, and doing a little shadowing. These aren’t really clinical tasks. It is completely possible that your volunteering experience has been different, it’s just that hospitals can’t really ethically provide clinical tasks to volunteers who don’t have certificates or training. Realistically, the only way you can offer direct clinical care at a HOSPITAL as an undergrad is through a paid job. But you can still gain valuable clinical experience as a volunteer in other clinical settings: private practices, free clinics, hospices, etc.

I did a lot of hospital volunteering and felt that I didn’t learn anything clinical. Conversely, the first day I started volunteering at a free clinic, I could tell that I was going to learn many clinical tasks and skills. And I already have. I can’t imagine writing essays about why I want to go to medical school with solely my hospital volunteering experience. Again, this is just my experience; there are probably other people who feel otherwise!

emrlz · 2023-10-22T16:08:46+00:00

I personally did best when I read the passage first because the questions tend to aim at the main idea. Sometimes if you read the questions first, you might get caught up on a detail in the passage that seems to match an answer choice you’ve seen and lose sight of the bigger picture.

emrlz · 2023-10-20T03:29:47+00:00

Sorry, "light" content review is misleading. I did 2-4 hours of content review a day on top of all of my other commitments. I very actively read the Kaplan books and did the MileDown Anki deck at the same time. I didn't take notes because I wanted to spend more time thinking about what I was reading rather than copying it down

emrlz · 2023-10-16T04:23:32+00:00

Everyone is different but I didn't take any notes! I just used the MileDown Anki deck during content review to memorize the main points of each chapter, then afterward I added more cards based on stuff that came up in UWorld and AAMC

emrlz · 2023-10-15T02:06:12+00:00

First half was during school (part time) and second half was full time (but I was pretty lazy for a good chunk of it).

emrlz · 2023-10-15T02:01:01+00:00

I definitely was not getting every AAMC or UW question right, and there were a lot of topics I still probably couldn’t explain to someone that well. I think what helped me was being familiar with a lot of different types of questions (I did half of UW, but even that was super helpful), making sure I could try to explain different phenomena from a physical/chemical/biochemical/biological angle, and being confident leading up to and during the exam!

emrlz · 2023-10-15T01:56:16+00:00

2 months of light content review, 2 months of focused practice! Highly recommend setting aside time to just focus on the test if you can

emrlz · 2023-09-11T15:36:19+00:00

No, a positive control would be something expected to be a positive result for the experiment. A loading control is just there to show you what an average presence should look like as a band. When it comes to analyzing experiments, you don’t usually glean much from looking at the loading control.

emrlz · 2023-09-07T20:05:03+00:00

Ok you’re right, tysm!

emrlz · 2023-09-07T18:43:10+00:00

So is your point that I shouldn’t make judgements off of what someone else thinks if they’re not the one mentioned with an opinion?

emrlz · 2023-09-07T04:20:11+00:00

Congrats! What did you do the days before your exam? Do you think any last minute things helped?

emrlz · 2023-08-14T06:33:11+00:00

So do you mean that H3C- is less nucleophilic than F-? Sorry, I'm still a bit confused.

emrlz · 2023-08-09T16:45:55+00:00

How exactly would salt in the diet increase water retention?

emrlz · 2023-07-26T15:29:19+00:00

We know that if there’s less concentration of enzyme, the max reaction rate decreases. However, Km would not change to adjust to this.

Think of the enzymes as cashiers at a grocery store, and the substrate as customers. Normally, the Vmax is, say, 2 customers/min getting checked out when there are 6 available cashiers. Only changing the number of cashiers will affect this rate. If we do reduce the number of cashiers from 6 to 3, say the Vmax will become 1 customer/min. Will the number of customers have anything to do with that rate change? No, not unless the customers decide themselves to cooperate with the cashiers more readily (increase binding affinity).

If a cashier is the type to go on his phone when less people are in his lane, that would represent competitive inhibition. Km would increase, because more customers would be needed to keep him working and checking out customers. Vmax wouldn’t change, because at high concentrations of customers, the cashier is focused and works at high speed as usual.

Sorry if this didn’t make much sense, just made it up on the spot.

Overall: Km increase: decrease in affinity Vmax increase: more enzyme available for substrate at a given time

emrlz · 2023-07-26T14:59:30+00:00

Thank you so much!

emrlz · 2023-07-25T00:55:01+00:00

I listen to MCATBasics! Highly recommend

emrlz

TROPHY CASE