Getting into medical school is extremely competitive, and the application process is long and complex. Keeping track of the application timeline is essential because early applicants are at an advantage when it comes to getting admitted to medical school. The Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) is a particularly important part of the admissions decision, and doing well on it will greatly enhance your chances of acceptance.

Nervous about applying to medical school? There’s no need! With the right approach and preparation you’ll give yourself a head start of the competition. This Cheat Sheet gives you the key things to know about the application timeline, choosing the right school, writing your personal statement and preparing for entry tests.

You should first prepare for a multiple-mini interview (MMI) the same way you do any other; by researching the medical school and your application, and preparing answers to current healthcare and bioethics issues being debated publicly. By completing those tasks, you gain the foundation needed to excel at MMI stations requiring you to analyze ethics scenarios as well as to respond to questions at a short standard-format interview station, which is a part of some MMIs.

The multiple mini-interview is very different from a traditional one-on-one or panel interview some medical schools give. With an MMI, you don’t meet with one or more interviewers for an extended length of time and discuss standard questions such as “Why medicine?” and “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” Instead, you rotate through a series of stations, encountering a different case, question, task, or role-playing scenario at each.

In medical school, you hear so many unfamiliar terms flying around, especially on the hospital wards, that you may start to feel like medicine has its own language. In a way, you’re right; however, you won’t find translations for the many slang terms used by physicians in those sources in a medical dictionary and in your textbooks.

As an osteopathic (DO) medical school applicant, you find yourself faced with some form of the question “Why do you want to be an osteopathic physician?” many times during the medical school application process. Although DO schools have a lot in common with allopathic (MD) schools, they’re also proud of their unique history, traditions, and principles, and they seek students who are genuinely interested in attending an osteopathic medical school.

With so many things to fill out, submit, and keep track of during the medical school application process, you can easily overlook or mishandle a detail. However, every element of your application, from your personal statement to your performance on the interview, can make the difference being between gaining an acceptance and landing in the “rejected” pile.

GPA and Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) scores allow admissions committees to assess your academic potential; work, research, clinical, and extracurricular activities show your interests and the extent to which you’ve investigated medicine. However, schools also want to know about your motivation for pursuing medicine, your interpersonal skills, your personal qualities, and your character.

You may have set out on one career path and started to feel a pull toward medicine along the way. If you’re in this position, you may be wondering just what becoming a physician requires and whether making such a major change is worth the sacrifice. For some career-changers, becoming a physician sounds good in theory, but the reality of the educational requirements and the job itself lead them to decide against it.