James Martin, PhD

I spent three years on a medical school admissions committee, reading the same kind of file you're about to submit, and I came through the process fast myself: college at 17, a molecular biology PhD at Princeton at 19.

Medical school. For the last few years I've been faculty at Rowan-Virtua School of Osteopathic Medicine, directing a physiology block and running problem-based learning for a 300-student cohort. I advise applicants to both DO and MD programs, and I start with the choice most pre-meds skip: which one actually fits. Having read complete files, I can tell you what a personal statement or a secondary needs to do, and where applicants lose the room.

Graduate school. Having been through it, I know graduate admissions turns less on grades and scores than on research fit: whether your interests line up with a specific lab, and whether your statement of purpose shows you can do the work. Through Princeton's ReMatch I helped more than 25 undergraduates build those applications, from choosing programs to framing their experience. And I don't disappear once someone gets in, I keep mentoring students after they enroll through GRADFutures.

Undergraduate. I've spent three summers teaching high-achieving students in Princeton's W.E.B. Du Bois Scholars Institute, so I know what selective colleges read for well before the application opens.

The research credentials, a first-author paper in Cell, a cancer biology postdoc at Chicago, my current work in learning science at GW, are background. What I'm good at is taking a strong candidate who freezes up talking about themselves and helping them write an application that finally sounds like them.