Over a year and a half ago we bought the gold package from MedSchool Coach to help our daughter with her med school admission process. This was after she had already taken MCAT. She scored in the 97.5% and had a 3.95 GPA.
We talked to Dr. Metha directly about her goals to make sure that she gets assigned an adviser who would help her get there. On a positive note, Dr. Metha is accessible and willing to talk with you. The main aspects of medical schoool application process any student would need help with are the following:
1) College selection.
2) Help refining primary and secondary essays.
3) Help selecting and defining skills, activities and experiences most appropriate for each school from the wide range of activities every student applying to med school has done.
4) Help with interview preparation - general interview skills, suggestions for proper interview attire, mock interviews, etc.
The adviser my daughter got paired with was not someone who had the people skills to be doing such a job. His response to questions were slow, perhaps within the boundaries of what was in the contract, but slow, nonetheless. Frustrated, we complained to Dr.Metha and he promised to assign her another adviser who might be more familiar with the schools she wanted to apply to. But nothing changed after that - she continued to try to work with the impersonal, irresponsive adviser.
We understand now that the most important aspect of the process is selecting which schools you apply to. Wanting to go to one and having the posted credentials to qualify for it is not at all enough. One can find out the demographics of the incoming students in each school. Med School Coach does not do anything to help candidates with that. MedSchool Coach adviser did nothing in terms of figuring out which activities demonstrating her special abilities would appeal to an admission counselor and hence worth listing or elaborating in the application.
My daughter's adviser made minor edits to her essays - no help in terms of what would make her stand out among the applicants or anything like that. About the time when her secondary essay writing was going in full swing, her adviser let her know that he was no longer going to be available to work with her. One can imagine the frustration a college senior goes through at that point. Once again, after talking to Dr. Metha, we were promised that this person will continue to be available, and was to a much less extent.
My daughter got two interview calls. MedSchool Coach conducts mock interview. She did one, and the interviewer told her that she was excellent and did not need to change or improve on anything. She did not get admitted to either of the two schools.
Our gold package included help with application process second time around if the applicant didn't get admissions the first time. But Dr. Metha or his organization didn't follow up in any manner to see what happened. Perhaps if we had reached out, we might have received help from another such uninterested adviser, but we didn't waste any time on that.
We did all the work ourselves in the second go around. Our daughter did a mock interview with Kaplan who was extremely helpful in explaining to her what she needed to work on and what interviewers are looking for in a candidate. She got 7 interviews, 2 admissions and wait-listed in 2 others. I wrote this review on our way back from her white coat ceremony.
We approached MedSchool Coach because we are totally in the dark on the process and needed guidance. We are extremely disappointed that our daughter wasted a year because we trusted this organization to provide the assistance that we needed.
We do not recommend MedSchool Coach. read more