I purchased this trying to figure out how to write my activity descriptions and it does a decent job of showing you how to lay these out, but the activities they describe are beyond unrealistic in many situations (because they are all fictional). They describe volunteers doing things today that would never be done, so if you are looking for "pre-med activity" ideas as a high schooler or early in your college career do not go with this. They also list shadowing as community service/volunteer (medical/clinical), when it should be listed as other (see #10). If you are looking for some half way decent examples of what to write, this may be an option. A better option though may be UW's web page that has webinars on things like this, though I believe they take a different approach to how they want descriptions written when compared to most medical schools. The SDN also provides excellent guidance on this. Here is the 2012-2013 thread, but check out your year and older ones.

I did not apply to any schools besides my in state school upon initial verification so I did not waste money. I figured I would submit as early as I could to get verification out of the way as it takes longer the later you are in the application cycle. When my MCAT score comes in on the 26th, I will add additional schools that are "in range" with my MCAT, instead of picking schools somewhat blindly. This way, I will still have my application transmitted to every school on June 29th (given verification has been completed) and only apply to schools I have a decent shot at.

So I'm going to attempt to explain how to make the map as I have had a few requests for an explanation. Please read through this before starting, as if you do not understand specific steps you may do a lot of work for nothing. Photoshop may be necessary unless you know how to convert a PDF to a JPEG or want to do some editing with another program after taking a screen shot (see Saving and Uploading).

Google Maps
1) You need a gmail account
2) Go to Google.com
3) Login to said gmail account
4) Click Maps in the upper left
5) Click My Places
6) Click Maps
7) Click Create Map
8) Name it whatever you want and make it private if you wish
9) Type in a school name in the google search bar
10 Click the pin that dropped
11) Click Save To Map
12) Click the map you just created
13) Repeat steps 9-13 for every school
14) Click My Places again
15) Click the map you made
16) Click on each school to change the pin color
17) Leave Google
18) Follow steps 2-6
19) Click on the map you created
20) Make your window as big as possible
21) Zoom so you can see the entire US (this may not look as good as mine as I'm using a 27" screen and smaller screens will limit this detail a lot)
22) Print screen (Command+Shift+3 on a Mac. No idea on Windows.)

Photoshop
I used Photoshop to match the color of the Google pins to the text background. Here are the numbers you will need later. They are not exact for some reason, but its what Photoshop gave me and they are good enough. (Red, Green, Blue is the RGB scale from 0 to 255)

Color	Red	Green	Blue
Blue	87	129	252
Red	252	99	85
Green	0	225	60
Turquoise	85	215	215
Yellow	252	243	87
Purple	126	85	252
Magenta	225	79	158

Pages
**If you do not have Pages, PowerPoint will probably work and this should give you a good idea as to what to do**
1) Open Pages
2) Click Blank Canvas under Page Layout, not Word Processing (portrait vs landscape does not matter)
3) Click File -> Page Setup
4) Under Paper Size click Manage Custom Size
5) Type in the size you want. If you have Photoshop or some other program, you should be able to figure out the dimensions of your original photo and how much you need to crop to just make it the map. If you cannot figure out how to do this, its just going to be guess and check. I have it set to 18 inches by 10 inches, so a 9 to 5 ratio is probably what you want, but figuring how many inches will take some work. You will not want it this big unless you have a large (>22") screen.
6) Drag the image in and make it its native size. ie: give it the dimensions your monitor has by clicking the image, click View -> Show Inspector, Click the Ruler, Type in your monitor dimensions. Try and center the image now so you only see them map. If you see more or less than what you want, go back to steps 3-5 and resize.
7) Add text boxes next to each school and add the names
8) Highlight the text and change the background color to match. Click the a with a diagonal line through it, click show colors, select RGB slider, enter the numbers from the Photoshop section to match colors.
9) To add the other things I have done, just use shapes, or draw lines, and add images such as the airplane (PNG files work best as they often have a transparent background)
10) The Key is just a white box w/ a text box ontop of it with each line having a different background color

Saving and Uploading
1) Save your file as you normally would
2) Now save it as a PDF (Share -> Export -> PDF)
3) Open said PDF w/ Photoshop
4) Resize image appropriately. I use 848 pixels wide cause it allows it to center in MDApps nicely w/o additional code
5) Save as a JPEG
6) Upload to your favorite image hosting site. I use ImageShack.com
7) Find the image URL and copy it into this code:
8) Put that code in your MDApp where ever you want it

Updating
1) Go to Google Maps and follow steps 14-22 from the Google Maps section (You have to click Edit before you can change anything). Google Maps always scales the same, so finding the zoom you had the first time should not be difficult.
2) Open Pages and delete the old Map Image
3) Drag this new image in.
4) Right click it and click Send to Back
5) Size it up to your monitors resolution from step 6 from the Pages section
6) Move it so it lines up with all of your text
7) Change background font colors or add whatever you need
8) Follow saving and uploading to replace the old image with this one

**If you think a step in unclear, send me a PM on SDN and I can update the instructions**