For the last few months, I’ve been reading through every entry you’ve ever written. A lot of your advice is encouraging to pre-med students, and sometimes not-so-encouraging, but practical and good to know nonetheless. I especially enjoyed your flow chart (funny and very aesthetically pleasing too, btw). Obviously, I can’t speak for the hundreds of pre-med readers who come to your site, but I’m sure many of them are just as grateful. Most of your readers, being the busy pre-med students they are, are probably not regular bloggers and don’t know what to comment on, and sometimes they (myself included) don’t realize how valuable a simple “thank you, your advice was very helpful” could be.

As someone who has tried blogging before, I can sort of sympathize with your lack of satisfaction (erm… if not financially, at least the emotional part), especially since so many people read and don’t leave feedback, but you should still feel the same sense of accomplishment, as if you did get the amount of feedback you expected! I mean, you have about a hundred really fantastic entries–you probably got something more out of this blog than just the readership.

But if you haven’t, then you shouldn’t feel obligated to keep this blog running. As some readers already suggested, you might consider moving the entries to a free blog provider and just leaving it at that… this blog being the masterpiece that it already is. Future med students will still be able to access your past advice and you won’t need to spend the time and money maintaining this site. I’m sure many of your readers will understand.

First off, whether or not you decide to continue this blog, thank you for all the fantastic posts you’ve made so far. I’ve only gone through a couple of posts, but I’ve found them extremely enlightening and useful.

If you need the money or think that a financial incentive will help to motivate you, I think offering some consultations is a feasible idea. I personally don’t see why charging for consultations is so unethical. Some people want the one-on-one help and it doesn’t make you a greedy person if you want some sort of tangible reward for your efforts.

Money doesn’t seem to be the biggest problem though. You probably just need to take a break from updating and stop forcing yourself to add more content when you’re in a slump.

I hope you find the joy in writing this blog again.

You don’t know me; I’m currently studying an MBA in Australia and happened upon your blog by chance a few days ago; am considering going to med school myself, so this blog is awesome, and thanks for doing it.

Obviously there’s a market for info like this; people pay thousands of dollars for MCAT review classes, etc, so I think they’d definitely be willing to pay $50 for an hour of your time, especially given that you’ve done interviews. If you do it right and build up enough of a following, I think it could also lead to speaking arrangements, for instance, but that may not be what you want to do.

Of course, in med school, your time is probably worth more than that, right? I mean, is it worth it to you to spend an hour of your time with a stranger, even for $50?

More than that, is it worth any of your time maintaining this blog? If not, it’s definitely worth thinking about whether you want to keep it. Even if you make $1000 / year from the blog, that’s still a pretty low hourly wage, and it’s not going to make you any happier.

It’s also OK if you don’t have the time to maintain. You won’t be any less of a person because of it.

Thanks for what you’ve done so far and I’m sure the silent masses appreciate it.

As for being qualified, I would like to believe I know a fair bit more than an average medical student. I’m on the admissions committee, I’ve been on the interview committee, I’ve personally interviewed students, read their profiles, read many reference letters. I know the difference between a good and bad applicant. I’ve tutored students before, taught an MCAT class, studied for the MCAT on my own. Believe me, I don’t want to “charge” people for information. That is the last thing I want to do… like I’ve said before.

Maybe I just need a break from this for a while, to get a different perspective. I’m sure you have experience too with this, with your CD review site. But all this feedback is definitely appreciated. I am happy to see that many people share the same sentiments as me. Thanks!

That being said, this doesn’t mean there can’t be medical school admissions consultants who are worth that much in terms of the value they can provide to applicants.

For what it’s worth, as someone who has personally been very successful in many student application/admissions processes including some of the most competitive, I can say with complete confidence that Medaholic is one of the few people I’ve met who understands some components of the process much better than I do. In fact, Medaholic is the only person I know who I would consider paying for consulting in this type of stuff, and I’ve never had to consult with anyone ever.

The two are not remotely comparable, and the notion that one should charge for advice which requires no particular qualifications (hey, I got in too – I guess my time is worth $50 an hour too) is laughable. I charged only half that as a tutor, and at least then I was teaching undergrad (and PhD!) students basic biostatistics.

Just about any med student will be asked by applicants for help or advice, but I tend to restrict this to, ya know, actual friends. The information is otherwise very much available on school websites and a wide variety of commercial study guides, school counsellors, etc. I’m not clear on what “knowledge and experience” you have to offer that differs markedly from anyone else who got in, much less the various free resources available. Add some ads if you wish, but I can’t see it helping much – $80 a year is not exactly a lot either way, and my own blog costs me nothing on Blogger.

I should add that several years ago I ran a CD review site. I never made much of any money off my Amazon links (maybe about one free CD), but I did get a lot of free promo discs, since labels have an interest in, well, promotion. Correspondingly, I put a lot of time and effort into my reviews, but when it got to be too much, I retired from it and informed my promo contacts. It’s still up somewhere. What’s my point? Don’t expect to make money off something that you have previously offered for free, that is offered by many others for free, and that does not serve anyone else’s financial interest. There are lots of premed keeners around, but I think it is decidedly unethical to charge them for simple advice, especially in light of exhorbitant application fees.