Tedi Begaj, MD
Passionate about academia and ophthalmology.
Fred Bertino, MD
Medical admissions expert, budding musicologist.
Leila Javidi, MD, MPH
Strong passion for healthcare leadership and innovation, medical education, evidence based medicine, and dissemination and implementation science.
Sarah Coates, MD
Writer and dermatology resident who wants to help students tell their stories.
Alexander Dabrowiecki, MD
Focuses on direct, honest strategy driven approach to master the USMLE.
Timothy Dyster
Columbia medical student (AOA) with robust prior experience in curricular development.
Eli Freiman, MD
Pediatric resident at Boston Medical Center and Children's Hospital, and expert in leadership training and interview prep.
Joseph Hanson, MD, MBA
Over five years of medical tutoring and content-creation experience.
Jonathan Huz, MD
Ophthalmology resident at Rutgers and vitreoretinal surgery fellow at Albany Medical College.
Ryan Kelsch, DO
Expert in osteopathic medical education and testing.
Jen Kolb, MD
Internal medicine resident at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai, and expert in USMLE prep.
Nicholas Lunig
Voting member of the board of admissions at UMMS and serves on the student body committee revamping the medical school curriculum.
Arka Mallela, MS
Translational researcher, Tutor, and Medical Student.
Kunal Patel, MD
Expert in surgical residencies and couples matching.
Brian Radvansky, MD
Senior Contributor for the MST blog and member of Memorang content creation flagship team.
Rahul Raghu, MD, MBA
Ophthamology resident at Case Western Reserve University, and expert in residency admissions and curricular consulting.
Nicholas Rowan, MD
Competitive surgical subspecialty trained veteran tutor and leader at Med School Tutors.
Lauren Sinnenberg
MS5 at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Passionate about a career in Medical Education.
Michael Schwartz, MD
Internal Medicine resident at Boston Medical Center with special interest in medical education and USMLE prep.
Tzvi Doron, DO
Board certified family physician, practicing in South Florida. He has been a tutor with MST since 2011.
Leila’s unique life philosophy and approach to medicine
This holistic mentality of hers ultimately led her to further pursue her passion for Primary Care through a Family Medicine Residency. Though early in her career, Leila already has an impressive set of accomplishments having been published also in NASA Tech Briefs and the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. She currently serves on several Hospital and Residency Program Committees including the Curriculum Development, Residency Recruitment and Patient Safety Committees. She has a strong passion for healthcare leadership and innovation, professional development, medical education, evidence-based medicine, and dissemination and implementation science.
Personal Statement/CV Development and Editing
Professional Development
Medical School and Residency Admissions
Medical Content Creation
Curricular Consulting
Interview Prep
Undergraduate: The Ohio State University
MD/MPH: St. Georges University
Residency: Mount Carmel Family Medicine
Step 1: 249
Step 2CK: 258
Dr. Brian Radvansky is a well-qualified leader who is currently undergoing residency training in Anesthesiology and Critical Care at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been involved in multiple novel projects in the medical school and residency realm. These include acting as a senior blogger for Med School Tutors, developing novel content for the Memorang platform, and providing mentorship to driven medical students. His articles alone have resulted in more than 30,000 unique hits on the Med School Tutors webpage. His outstanding performance on the USMLE Steps 1, 2, and 3, combined with hundreds of hours of professional tutoring for these tests make him a skillful candidate for your consulting needs.
Having informally helped many people navigate the medical school admissions process for years, Dr. Rahul Raghu jumped at the opportunity to be a part of MST's admissions team. The road to getting into medical school is full of obstacles and hoops to jump through, and is in part intended to dissuade people from even trying. However, Dr. Raghu believes that having the right guide for the journey makes all the difference. Once he got to the other side of the medical school admissions process and was accepted into a program, he made it a point to learn as much as possible about the admissions process, and hopes to share that insight to help others achieve their dream of becoming a physician.
However, Dr. Raghu knows that the journey doesn't stop once you are accepted into a program. The rigors of medical school and the path to residency can be equally grueling. In medical school, Dr. Raghu served as Executive Vice President for the student body, was elected to both the prestigious Alpha Omega Alpha (AOA) National Honor Society and the Gold Humanism Honor Society, scored highly on both USMLE Step 1 and Step 2, founded a student volunteer organization which gained media attention, and had two first author research papers accepted for publication! He believes that excelling in medical school can seem unattainable when you are surrounded by so many other brilliant people, but with the right approach you can make the most of your medical school experience and set yourself up for your dream residency program.
Dr. Arka Mallela is a fourth-year medical student at the University of Pennsylvania, currently taking a year out to study traumatic brain injury at Penn's Center for Brain Injury and Repair. Utilizing his stellar academic background and experiences as an MST tutor and Anatomy TA, he has developed expertise in medical school curriculum development and USMLE exam preparation. Moreover, as a member of the interview team at Penn, he has developed unique insight into the admissions process at an elite institution. Dr. Mallela has a unique interest in dual degree programs and research funding and opportunities for medical students. He himself went through the process of securing funding for a research year out while applying for the selective Master's of Translational Research program at Penn, and has advised multiple student groups at Penn about these areas. As part of the MST Consulting team, he is excited to use these experiences to aid clients in achieving their goals.
Dr. Jonathan Huz is originally from Albany, NY. He earned his medical degree at the New York University School of Medicine, and completed a combined Internal Medicine and General Surgery internship at New York Hospital Queens, a teaching affiliate of the Weill Medical College of Cornell University. He then completed his Ophthalmology residency at Rutgers-New Jersey Medical School where he served as Chief Resident during his final year and received awards for both clinical and academic excellence. Dr. Huz has published manuscripts in peer-reviewed journals and has presented his original research at various national meetings.
Dr. Huz has been tutoring for over ten years, ever since he began tutoring individual students for their undergraduate coursework. He then taught several Kaplan MCAT classes before joining Med School Tutors where he has worked with over 50 students helping them achieve success on exams that at one point seemed unattainable.
Ryan is a Transitional/Diagnostic Radiology resident at Beaumont Hospital, Royal Oak. He graduated from Midwestern University Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine second in his class. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he studied Molecular and Cellular Biology and tutored extensively in Organic and Inorganic Chemistry as a private tutor.Ryan believes passing down his success strategies to future physicians is very important and is shown by his recent involvement as an associate author for the 2017 edition of First Aid for the USMLE Step 1. Ryan has a special interest in osteopathic education, and its relationship to its allopathic counterpart. Ryan would be honored to be able to serve his clients and establish better medical education however best he can.
Dr. Kunal Patel is an extremely qualified and experienced member of our consulting team. He attended Dartmouth College where he double majored in Biology and Economics, then earned admission to multiple top medical schools directly after graduating college, and eventually decided to attend Weill-Cornell Medical College. Here he won numerous awards and distinctions, including the Clinical and Translational Science Center fellowship, the American Association of Neurological Surgeons fellowship, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Research fellowship, Alpha Omega Alpha society membership, and the John Metcalf Polk prize for graduating top in his class. He published over 20 academic papers in medical school and gave multiple presentations at national meetings. He successively couples matched to his hometown of Los Angeles in neurosurgery and dermatology and is currently a neurosurgery resident at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Dr. Patel has considerable experience in translating his personal academic success to others. He has over 4 years of tutoring experience with Med School Tutors with over 35 individual students. His areas of expertise include: MCAT, USMLE Step 1, USMLE Step 2 CK, and clerkship shelf exams. He led our Step 2 CK content outline creation project and has been a integral content creator for our USMLE exam prep content with Memorang. Overall, he truly knows the ins and outs of the path to becoming a doctor and has significant experience guiding others along this path.
Dr. Nick Rowan is a veteran at Med School Tutors. Having been with MST since 2012, he has been involved in multiple facets of the company ranging from USMLE, NBME and COMLEX tutoring to content creation and advisement. As the Co-Director of Tutor Development and Medical Education, he continues to be highly involved and an integral part of our team, despite also excelling in his surgical residency in the prestigious University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Department of Otolaryngology.
As a resident, Dr. Rowan continues to excel with standardized testing on the American Board of Otolaryngology inservice training exam and is called upon as both a teacher and a leader for junior residents and medical students alike on a daily basis. He is a unique and critical thinker and is active in both clinical and translational research with four peer-reviewed publications in the last year alone. He will begin a fellowship in rhinology and endoscopic skull base surgery at the coveted MUSC Sinus Center.
As a senior MST tutor, Dr. Sarah Coates spent more than three and a half years and over 1300 hours working with medical students at all stages of development. On a daily basis during that time period, she has confronted challenges that include undiagnosed learning disabilities, resource disorganization, poor time management skills, and low self esteem. This work has also molded her into an adaptable medical educator, as it typically involves negotiating multiple ways of presenting the core content of medical curricula, as well as setting priorities for students based on their academic potential and their timeline for preparing for their USMLE or Shelf exams.
Dr. Coates’ friends and coworkers would likely describe her as a highly relational personality. She has a keen interest in exploring and describing the human condition; she is immensely curious about what motivates and inspires us, and how we can use our unique experiences, core desires and skill sets to grow into more well-rounded and emotionally intelligent physicians. She has a knack for seeing the best in people, and then using this insight to help students grow into the best versions of themselves. As such, the strong personal connections that she develops with the students form the foundation of relationships that often last long into the future. Dr. Coates looks forward to bringing this skill set to the MST consulting work, particularly in the realms of exam preparation, interview preparation and personal statement editing.
Timothy Dyster is an exceptional senior student at Columbia University, College of Physicians & Surgeons. Originally from Niagara Falls, NY, he received a Bachelor of Arts in Biological Sciences at Cornell University with a minor in music and completed several electives in writing. At his medical school, Timothy has been a key leader in curricular development. He sat on the steering committee for a medical school portfolio curriculum, and re-designed a Humanism-In-Medicine course. He has served as board member for the Student Support Network, and is experienced with developing tools for e-Learning. Timothy has presented his work at multiple conferences, such as the meetings of Northeastern Group for Educational Affairs and the Association of American Medical Colleges Group for Educational Affairs.
Timothy’s additional leadership experience includes membership on the Dean's Steering Committee, where he works alongside departmental chairs, the Dean of Medicine, and the Deans of Education. He has served as board member for the Student Support Network, and is experienced with developing tools for e-Learning. He has worked directly with several administrators on initiatives related to understanding and enhancing the clinical learning environment, and actively studies the use of psychometric tools in medical student populations. Timothy also serves as an invited member on the Junior Admissions Committee, for which he reviews applications, conducts interviews, and makes recommendations for several medical school candidates each admissions cycle.
Dr. Fred Bertino's time in medical school and beyond has been very much connected to medical residency advising. He has researched and published on residency admissions, interview techniques, and benefits of research to one's application. He has also delved into personality traits and how certain attributes of an applicant can prove successful members of teams based on their compatibility with future matched applicants, or even co-researchers. On a one-on-one level, Dr. Bertino has advised many medical students, as well as previously unmatched applicants from the Caribbean and United States, on many elements of residency applications, from coursework and USMLE prep, to personal statement editing and revising, and interview training. As an active medical school interviewer, Dr. Bertino is up to date on current trends in medical education and appreciates the trends in medical student acceptance with a narrowing bottleneck in the match. He is well-versed in what interests medical school admissions departments, what helps some students stand out among others, and how interviews should be crafted to leave the best impression upon a committee.
As a USMLE tutor, one of his personal areas of interest is learning theory and methods of integrating new ways of teaching to frame basic science into an applicable, less abstract clinical application. He has tutored many students through all three USMLE Step exams, as well as all Shelf exams in the various specialties. Dr. Bertino's students to date have had 100% reported pass rates, with the average increase in scores being approximately 35-40 points. Aside from an expert knowledge of the NBME-designed examinations, his current interests and research are in experimenting with new ways of teaching anatomical science and pathologic correlates through imaging, so that regardless of future residency choice, students may be subject to the images they will frequently order and interpret while maximizing the rapidity of pathophysiologic recall.
As a senior medical resident who has worked with many students rotating through the service, Dr. Jen Kolb has a good sense of what attributes make for the strongest medical student. She knows what topics must be mastered to honor the clerkship, what personality traits and qualities are crucial for standing out on rounds, and what strategies can achieve high scores on shelf and step exams. She loves mentoring students, helping them reach their full potential throughout their medical journey, and providing guidance on future career paths. With an undergraduate degree in English and extensive writing experience from clinical research, Dr. Kolb can help students express their goals and shine in their personal statements as well as on interviews.
Dr. Lauren Sinnenberg graduated magna cum laude from Williams College in 2010, earning a B.A. with honors in Biology. As a junior, she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa honor society. Dr. Sinnenberg played for the Williams Women's Soccer team for four years and was named a First Team All American in 2008. In college, she developed an interest in teaching, working as a peer tutor in Genetics and Organic Chemistry.
As a member of the inaugural class of Perelman Scholars, Dr. Sinnenberg received a full merit scholarship to attend the Perelman School of Medicine. She excelled in medical school coursework and standardized tests and was elected to the Alpha Omega Alpha honor society. During her time in medical school, she has pursued a Certificate in Medical Education, acting as a near-peer tutor, Student Report Facilitator and Shelf Prep Coordinator for the Medical Education Club. She has a passion for medical education and is thrilled to be on the cutting edge of the field with MST Consulting.
Nick is a current 4th year medical student at the University of Massachusetts, pursuing a residency in Pediatrics. During his time as a student, he has excelled academically, scoring above the 90th percentile in. He has also earned the highest grade of “outstanding” in every one of his third and fourth year clerkships, resulting in his invitation to join Alpha Omega Alpha, medicine’s most well-known and respected honor society.
During his time in medical school, Nick was selected as a student representative on the board of admissions. This included reading dozens of applications of prospective students, conducting their interviews, and then presenting the applicants worthy of admission at committee meetings, debating their merit with department chairs, medical school deans and other senior physicians. This allowed him unique insight on what makes a powerful personal statement, a memorable interview and ultimately a successful medical school application and he is excited to share that knowledge.
A Southern California native, Dr. Joseph Hanson earned his undergraduate degree at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where he completed a quadruple major in Neuroscience, Chemistry, Mathematics, and English. He then attended the University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine, from which he recently graduated with a dual MD/MBA degree. While there, he served as President of the Alpha Omega Alpha Zeta Chapter and managed the School of Medicine peer-to-peer tutoring program for one year.
Since joining with Med School Tutors, Dr. Hanson has worked with over fifty students in preparation for every exam from basic Biochemistry to Step 2CK. He is passionate about medical education, and eager to put his considerable skills in didactic content creation to use!
Dr. Alexander Dabrowiecki graduated Summa Cum Laude from St. George’s University in 2016, and is currently in his residency at Emory University. His passion for academics helps him consider a holistic approach to medical student education, focusing not only on the material required to pass exams, but other factors to make the most of a student’s potential. He empowers his students to take ownership of their learning, communicating this in a friendly yet honest manner. His ultimate goal is to teach all students how to maximize their efficiency, working smarter not harder.
Dr. Eli Freiman is a resident in Pediatrics at Boston Children's Hospital and Boston Medical Center, and is pursuing a career in Pediatric Emergency Medicine. He has a strong record of academic excellence including Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha awards, scoring in the top percentiles for both the USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK, and was awarded Special Honors in Pediatrics from his medical school during his final year. He has been with Med School Tutors for over two and half years and currently works as both an exam prep tutor and Associate Director for Tutor Development and Medical Education.
Dr. Freiman has a strong interest in medical education, public health and advocacy and has held many leadership and advising positions. He was elected Director of Duke University Emergency Medical Services (24/7 student EMS squad with over thirty EMTs) his senior year, and during medical school helped co-found the medical student committee under the Massachusetts Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, for which he was awarded Special Honors by the National Academy. He was also elected Chair of the American Medical Association-Medical Student Section Region 7, overseeing the involvement and outreach of more than twenty-five medical schools across New England and New York and currently sits as the Vice Chair to the Resident and Fellow Section of the Massachusetts Medical Society having also sat on the Board of Trustees of the Society for a year during medical school. Eli has mentored and advised dozens of students on USMLE examination prep, academic coursework, and how to best approach upcoming residency interview seasons. He completed a literature review on Leadership Training in Medical Education during his final year at UMass and continues that work during residency.
Dr. Michael Schwartz is a medical resident at Boston Medical Center and is pursuing a career in General Internal Medicine with a special interest in medical education. He has a record of academic excellence which includes scoring in the top percentile on USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 CK, and as a member of the MST team he has worked closely with multiple students to help them achieve their goals on their own examinations. His interest in education began as a senior medical student when he volunteered as an anatomy instructor and continues as a resident helping his medical students master the material needed to excel in their rotations. He has furthered his interest in education by participating in his residency’s educator pathway where he studies learning theory and lecturing and mentors 3rd year MD/PhD students as they re-enter the wards. In his two years with MST, Michael has sought to maximize the impact he can have on learners and has evolved his role from working one-on-one with students to focusing on content creation and curriculum consulting. He has played integral roles in the collaborations with Memorang and Rush Medical College and is excited for additional opportunities to influence the education of the future generation of physicians through his work with MST consulting!
USMLE strategy and test preparation
Medical content creation
Curriculum consulting
Personal statement editing
University of Rochester, Bachelor of Science in Biochemistry (cum laude), 2003 - 2007
University of Massachusetts Medical School, MD, 2011 - 2015
Internship: Internal Medicine, Boston Medical Center
Residency: Internal Medicine, Boston Medical Center
USMLE Step 1 – 256
USMLE Step 2 – 258
USMLE Step 3 – 244
Acing a USMLE exam neither prepares you to be the instructor and mentor students need nor the curriculum and assessment consultant schools demand; thankfully, MSTC does. In a dizzying world of Step-prep providers peddling snake oil and marketing, MSTC has created something true. MSTC has curated and systematically trained a one-of-a-kind national network of tutors and consultants whose expertise, professionalism, ethical practices, and dedication to Rush students, faculty, and administrators have helped us achieve both immediate results and prepare our educational programs for cohorts to come.
