Medicine: Getting In

You may not be a medical student yet, but you'll want to visit the American Medical Students Association. It has loads of pre-med offerings including nationwide chapters for doctor wannabes, conferences, and internship and advocacy opportunities (amsa.org/premed). It'll help you polish the "well-developed humanism" that Brenda Armstrong, director of admissions at Duke University Medical School, says is key to getting an acceptance letter.

You should also know that the Medical College Admission Test has gone high-tech. Since January, the MCAT has been administered on computers instead of on paper. Content hasn't changed, but the total number of questions has been slashed by almost a third. And instead of being administered only twice a year, there are now 19 different test dates. You're also permitted to take it up to three times a year. The Association of American Medical Colleges says you can expect the total experience to last about five hours, down from nearly 10, mostly thanks to the self-pacing inherent in taking the test on the computer.