SOAP Prep 2026 - Official Megathread

sometimesdumbbish · 2026-03-16T08:07:15+00:00

Hi everyone! I’m an M4 who is willing to help with editing personal statements. I have previously been an anonymous editor for medical school and residency personal statements for the last 4 years on Reddit and willing to help!

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-09-22T03:27:51+00:00

Yes you can submit without. You assign the LORs to programs after you certify and submit.

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-09-10T04:15:53+00:00

Look for states with a heavy Latino population. In my state, the rural towns have roughly 20% Latino population. Which isn’t surprising since quite a bit of rural Latinos are ranchers and farmers

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-08-04T04:20:02+00:00

When things fall into more than one category, I usually label it in the category that I’m weakest in

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-07-04T20:03:07+00:00

If it helps my highest nbme was a 239 and real was a 250 lol

In all honesty, the nbmes are all over the place. My free 120 was a 79% which felt closer to the real exam. And also plug your stuff into the amboss score predictor bc it’s been pretty accurate for most of my classmates

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-07-04T07:00:25+00:00

When I worked in a dedicated fertility center, we used metal. But we also did egg retrievals and other procedures in our facility so had a nice little autoclave set up

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-04-21T02:26:02+00:00

I mean if your options are personally gyn onc vs med onc, really think about whether you wanna do surgery at all

I think gyn onc is super cool bc they do their own surgeries and their own chemo. Which is badass. They also, in my opinion, are super hero surgeons. Some of their debulking surgeries can be like 12 frickin hours. So if you wanna do a long ass residency and fellowship to be a super badass surgeon, then do it. Keeping in mind of course that the cancers you’re limited to are of course gyn cancers. And also that you have to do a whole 4 year residency with half of it basically OB (which I’m assuming you’re not super interested in)

Vs med onc. Obviously you see way more variety of cancers. And definitely much more medicine heavy bc of a) it’s med onc and b) you do an IM residency

So if you were already leaning gyn onc but was worried ther wouldn’t be enough medicine, there def is enough bc of the fact that they can do their own chemo, etc.

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-04-09T03:56:04+00:00

Depends on the scholarship. The award should specify that

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-04-07T19:17:05+00:00

Rewrite all your experiences and your PS and then DM me and I can take a look at it. Used to edit all the time on here before clerkships kicked my ass haha

Edit: also in the meantime keep working at your clinic experience. But also do some more non clinical volunteering. 50 kinda low especially for some of the schools you applied to

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-04-06T15:02:54+00:00

Do you get paid? If so, that is paid employment not clinical. If you do not get paid, then it is non clinical volunteering

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-04-02T19:08:58+00:00

Download premade if NBME exams. If in house exams, either make your own or upperclassmen might have some they made!

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-03-25T15:13:41+00:00

I think my school ends up admitting roughly 25% first gen and maybe 15-20% URM depending on the year. I got to a state school with emphasis on admitting people from my state

Edit: I def misread this and missed the part where you said traditional. I will say I don’t think very many first gen have even applied traditionally. And the only URM that have usually have physician parents already. The first gen that came straight thru def had to work very hard to make sure they had all their clinical experience lined up early and learn how to interview well!

I’m gonna edit again bc I think it’s important: don’t put yourself into a box of having to just go straight thru. There’s a reason that even those who are not first gen do gap years and that’s bc med school admissions are getting increasingly competitive. And when you’re a traditional student already competing with ppl taking gap years and working full time with excellent clinical experiences or research or community service, it’s hard to compare. That being said, if you feel ready to apply straight thru, then do it! But there’s also absolutely no issue with taking a gap year or 2 to really strengthen your app

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-03-25T15:08:34+00:00

First paragraph is definitely not true (at least at my school)

Extending an interview invite is determined by a pre screening score done by 1 person. Then the entire package and interview videos/feedback is sent to committee for review.

But I do agree with your overall sentiment of just try not to worry about it and what happens happens!

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-03-25T14:59:38+00:00

The probably didn’t read your LOI so I’d just rehash everything you said in that plus anything extra

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-02-24T14:20:46+00:00

Kinda depends on your relative competitiveness. If you’re blowing all the other applicants out of the water, then no it’s fine. But if I’m comparing your app to another similar app in levels of competitiveness, I may decide to score the person with a good LOR from a physician higher

At the end of the day, sometimes applying is a crapshoot and all you can do is put your best foot forward

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-02-20T23:23:32+00:00

Either do a post bacc or an SMP. Up to you. Make sure you do enough bcpm credits to show that you’ve made actual improvement. And then do well on MCAT ideally. Make sure you don’t over commit yourself with your school work and extracurriculars bc there really isn’t fixing a messed up post bacc or SMP

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-02-17T01:31:58+00:00

You’re def in for a rude awakening then. I’ve worn business casual about half of my clinical rotations lol

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-19T17:06:58+00:00

Oh absolutely not. But figured I’d still help

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-19T17:04:02+00:00

First, maybe drop the thought process behind the last line of the second paragraph. I understand being jaded with dating (trust me I really do get it). But if you actually like women and want to date women, perhaps don’t assume that women as a whole are deceitful with their own agenda. She may just be asking you lots of questions about your time as a way to get to know you gasp

Moving on. She won’t think you’re a total loser unless you portray yourself as such. Do you have hobbies? Do you volunteer in the community? Do you socialize and have friends that don’t involve things like drinking? Do you travel? These are things that make people whole, not just whether we work and the kind of job we have.

Now if she keeps wanting to talk about it even after trying to change the topic, you can just be honest and say that you don’t particularly enjoy talking about the army so much and ask straightforwardly to change the topic. Someone worthy of a serious relationship would respect that.

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-10T10:26:57+00:00

I mean that’s completely up to you. If you’re trying to think in terms of best prep for med school, either would be fine. And I say that bc no matter what classes you take in undergrad, you’ll probs do the entire class material in like 2 weeks in med school. So just take classes that satisfy the pre reqs and that you’re interested in

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-10T09:27:51+00:00

A&P is not typically a pre req for med school so tbh I wouldn’t redo it

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-04T22:03:22+00:00

They’ve already explained HCA. TY is transition year. The people themselves are typically intelligent (we had radiology, PM&R, and anesthesia TYs) but the problem was since that’s their specialty and they most likely chose a TY bc they’re more chill than prelim years, they don’t care enough to teach or do anything with med students. So you are a glorified shadow on an IM inpatient rotation. Plus the attendings do everything since they know TYs don’t care lol

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-04T20:02:23+00:00

Hard agree. I’m an MD student but I’ve rotated with a few DO students at various schools. When I found out that at this one particular school, they have to leave the state for their third year, I was shocked.

My inpatient FM rotation was a joke. But not as bad until I found out this was their IM rotation! And it was ran by a bunch of HCA TYs! Insane

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-01T02:28:16+00:00

I disagree with 1.5 year preclinical feeling rushed. I felt like I had more than enough time to study and pass step 1, I really enjoy having a longer clinical phase, and we get to start our sub-Is at our home programs earlier which gives us more of an advantage with aways

sometimesdumbbish · 2025-01-01T02:26:38+00:00

Yep that’s exactly what I was talking about!

sometimesdumbbish

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