Mark-Anthony Lingaya, M.D.

I'm an MD trained at the University of Michigan Medical School, where I attended on a full-tuition merit scholarship, and I've spent the last several years teaching the USMLE rather than just having taken it. As a USMLE tutor and course instructor with Kaplan, I've worked with 20 students across Step 1 and Step 2 CK, which means I've seen most of the ways a study plan can go sideways — the student who's done 3,000 questions and still can't break 60%, the one who knows the content cold but bleeds points on second-order reasoning, the one whose real problem is a dedicated schedule built on wishful thinking. I diagnose which problem you actually have before we start fixing it. My approach is built around the way the exam actually tests: not recall, but the ability to move from a messy clinical vignette to a mechanism to an answer under time pressure. So we spend our time on your reasoning process, not on re-reading First Aid together. I'll push you to explain why the wrong answers are wrong, because that's where the score gain lives. I also work as a medical subject-matter expert evaluating AI systems for clinical reasoning quality, which has made me unusually precise about what a correct chain of reasoning looks like and where students' logic quietly breaks. Outside of test prep, I've done clinical training at Virtua Health and research in urology and orthopaedic surgery at Michigan, and I advise pre-medical students on admissions — so I can situate this exam in the larger arc of where you're trying to end up. I grew up in a rural community with limited access to care and no roadmap into medicine, and I take seriously that a lot of students are navigating this without one either. My students get direct, honest feedback about what's working and what isn't, and a plan they can actually execute.