Medical Mnemonist Podcast

Boost Your MCAT/USMLE with Joel Ramirez MD

Dr. Joel Ramirez talks about how tutoring can be a valuable resource for medical students studying for the USMLE exams. As someone who personally benefited from tutoring, Dr. Ramirez has a passion for educating and tutoring. MedSchoolCoach provides tutoring for both USMLE board exams (shelf and step), as well as the MCAT.

  • [02:38] Tutoring for the MCATs Versus Board Exams
  • [04:06] How to Determine if You Need a Tutor
  • [06:37] Pinpointing Weaknesses in a Medical Student
  • [10:00] What to Expect from a Medical School Tutor
  • [13:37] Weighing the Financial Costs of Tutoring
  • [16:46] The Focus of a MedSchoolCoach Tutoring Session
  • [20:54] How Much Tutoring It Takes for a Student to Get a Passing Score

As someone who personally benefited from tutoring, Dr. Ramirez has a passion for educating and tutoring. MedSchoolCoach provides tutoring for both USMLE board exams (shelf and step), as well as the MCAT. Funnily enough, medical students tend to enjoy sitting for board exams more than they did the MCAT, because board exams are more relevant to the medical sciences, as opposed to the MCATs, which involves topics like physics, language and literature.

Who Benefits from Tutoring?

There are two major groups of students who benefit from coaching — students who just want to pass their MCATs or board exams, and students who need a very high score because they want to get into a competitive specialty — for example neurosurgery, or want to go to medical school in a competitive geographical location — for example New York or California. And there are two broad categories of problems that students face:

  1. A knowledge or content gap.
  2. Insufficient strategy for answering questions.

Tutoring at MedSchoolCoach

The tutors at MedSchoolCoach will design a personalized coaching/tutoring program for each student to prepare them for their MCATs or board exams. All tutoring is conducted in 1-on-1 sessions.

When a medical student or a potential medical student expresses an interest in hiring a tutor through MedSchoolCoach, they must fill out an intake form in which they talk about their academic experiences, learning style, exam schedule etc. Based on this information, they are matched with a tutor. If a student is unsure that they want to commit to long-term tutoring, they can sign up for a package of five to ten hours first, or they can talk to the enrolment team, who can help them to decide if tutoring is the right option. Although Dr. Ramirez works for MedSchoolCoach, he emphasizes that when consulting with potential students, he always tries to share the best option for the student, which may not be tutoring.

Is it Worth the Cost?

Many students might be put off by the financial costs of tutoring. Dr. Ramirez argues that if going to medical school in a specific geographical location, or having a specific specialty is paramount to a student’s happiness, then the investment is worth it.

When asked about how long it would take for a failing student to reach the passing mark, Dr. Ramirez explains that this really depends on the student’s story. A high-performing medical student who simply has not begun board exam preparation yet, will have a much easier time reaching a passing mark than another medical student who has been studying for the board exam for three months, and is still failing.

Check out MedSchoolCoach for more information, or have a chat with the enrollment team. Sign up for a Free Coaching session with Chase DiMarco, sponsored by Prospective Doctor! You can also join the Med Mnemonist Mastermind FB Group today and learn more about study methods, memory techniques, and MORE! Do check out Read This Before Medical School.

Read more about best USMLE step 1 prep

Chase DiMarco

Chase DiMarco is an MS, MBA-HA and MD/Ph.D-candidate. He is the founder of MedEd University, a free medical education resource, the host of the Medical Mnemonist & Rounds to Residency podcasts creator of several medical education platforms, and CEO of FindARotation clinical rotations service.

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