About the MSAGs

The Medical School Application Guides

Written to help you get into medical school

What will you find in each of the Medical School Application Guides?

Each guidebook is unique in the information it covers but the books in the collection have key elements in common. During the first 2 years of their production, we have focused our energy on:

• Contacting all the medical schools to obtain complete, accurate and up to date information on 115 medical programs
• Creating partnerships with academic advisors and career services of universities who have years of experience in advising applicants
• Obtaining reviews and feedback from our guidebook users and academic advisors to improve the quality and user friendliness of the guidebooks

We have asked applicants what they would like to see in a guidebook, and we have read what is available on the internet and in other guidebooks. We have taken the challenge to go a step further with a unique attention to detail and completeness of information.

Other guidebooks do often include grade requirements for each medical school program but we have gone many steps further in our school by school section. We have summarised in a few pages for each medical school all the key information that you may want to consider in choosing where to apply. This includes for each medical program: admissions policies, selection formulae, entrance statistics, degree requirements, GPA requirements, secondary school requirements, entrance examination requirements, interview structure and interview information, extra tips, tuition fees and contact details. You will see this attention to detail and completeness in every section of our guidebooks. We do not simply tell you how many students apply to a medical course and how many get in, but instead we give you that information, we calculate the selection ratios, we write it in a summarised table for easy comparison and explain how to interpret the ratios. We are very confident that our guidebooks are very relevant to medical school applicants, are presented in a user friendly format and that they bring together valuable information that is not readily available elsewhere.

You will find not only advice and tips, but more importantly plenty of real personal statement extracts fully commented on for you to read and learn from, in order to apply the learnings in your own essays. The interview section discusses what admission committees are looking for in the interview, provides information on the new MMI format used at several schools, and gives several example answers from successful applicants to questions like "What would you do if you go to work and one of your colleagues smells like alcohol?" and "What do you think of abortion?" Interview preparation is a key part of the application, and unsuccessful applicants frequently gain admission the following year by preparing better for their interviews. The section teaches applicants how to approach interview questions, and prepares students by discussing many of the most frequently asked interview questions. These sections are not short add-ons to the main book but instead form a big part of it and are complete enough that they could constitute a separate book.

Find out the unique content that sets the MSAG Graduate Entry Medicine apart from other guidebooks on the market: Advantages of the MSAG Graduate Entry Medicine.

Find out the unique content that sets the MSAG for Undergraduate Applicants apart from other guidebooks on the market: Advantages of the MSAG for Undergraduate Applicants.

Find out what makes the MSAG Worldwide Edition the most comprehensive medical school application guidebook on the market: Advantages of the MSAG Worldwide Edition.

You can view and download the full table of contents of the guidebooks at :

• MSAG Graduate Entry Medicine UK 2013-2014 guidebook
• MSAG Worldwide 2013-2014 guidebook
• MSAG for undergraduate applicants UK 2013-2014 guidebook

Who wrote the medical school application guides?

We are both currently final year medical students who have gone through the process of applying to medical school recently. Dibah Jiva studies at the University of Nottingham Graduate Entry Medicine Program in the UK, and Bijan Teja is a student in the MD/MBA program at Dartmouth College, one of the Ivy League universities in the US.

We have been counseling medical school applicants for 3 years now, who have gained admission to some of their top choice schools in Europe and North America. In this time, we have spent over 2000 hours compiling all the information in these guidebooks for our customers. We contact each medical school covered in the guidebooks either by phone, email or direct visit to ensure accuracy of all the content. We have also asked many contacts from top universities including Harvard University, the University of Toronto and several top 10 UK universities to review different parts of the guidebooks including medical school advisors, current medical students, current applicants, career services offices and practicing doctors.
 

You can find out more about Dibah Jiva by visiting her interview page Interview with Dibah Jiva, or about Bijan Teja by visiting his interview page Interview with Bijan Teja.  If you have questions, comments, feedback, recommendations, please share with us by emailing us at admin@themsag.com. You may also find some answers to your questions by browsing our website or visiting the FAQ page.