What to Expect at Commissioned Officer Training

Now that you have heard a bit about COT in a previous post, let’s talk about what to expect. Please keep in mind that this information is from 2011. When I attended, they were really making a big effort to “toughen up” COT and make it more like the main OTS course. This included more yelling, room inspections, etc. I

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Military vs Civilian Residency for HPSP Students

A reader recently asked me a question about choosing residencies. Specifically, he wanted to know about the reasons why I chose to request civilian deferral for residency. I have also received several questions about the actual process of applying for a civilian deferral and going through the military and civilian match, and I wrote a post on that subject here. For the purposes

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How to apply for the Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP)

I have been meaning to write this post for a while, and I recently got an email that spurred me to just write it. The question was when and how to apply to the Air Force Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP). So, here goes! A basic rundown of how to apply to HPSP. Who should I talk to? You should

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Dressing for Success in Residency Interviews

There is a lot of fuss about the fourth year of medical school, and one of the things on my to-do list at the beginning of my fourth year was to find an appropriate outfit for residency interviews. Here is a bit of the wisdom I have gleaned during the interview season. Wear a suit. No matter what anyone tells you

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The Health Professions Scholarship Program, or Getting Uncle Sam to pay for medical school

As a medical student on a military scholarship, I get a lot of questions about the benefits, the downsides, and how to go about getting your very own military scholarship. As part of a series of posts about the military Health Professions Scholarship Program (HPSP), today we will be talking about the basics: what it is, what it pays for,

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How the military match works (as of 2014)

As a graduating medical student on a military scholarship, I get a lot of questions about how military scholarships and the military match work. I plan to write another post in the near future that explains how the military scholarships work in general, but since it’s match season, let’s talk about the military match process first. I’m going to assume

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