Advice for pre-meds: What would you do if you never got into medical school?

What would you do if you didn’t get into medical school this cycle? Next cycle? If ever?

Yeah, I know. Dumb question. My friends and other pre-medical students have always joked around that the answer to the question of all questions is: “I would keep trying. Not getting-in is not an option.”

It sounds like a bad punch line, but I joke you not. An MCAT course instructor also instructed us to respond this way if we were ever asked that question in an interview. It is the optimistic answer. The answer of a go-getter and the one who can’t take no for an answer. It sounds like a success story. Right?

In my opinion, it is important to have a healthy dose of optimism. It is hard to get into the medical field and most students have a hard time getting in since the applicant pool has only getting bigger over the years. It is a nail biting experience for most and if you have an easy time then you are a dime in a dozen! As a pre-medical student you have to understand that if you don’t get in this cycle, then you need to pick yourself back up and re-apply the next cycle (or the one after that). If you want it, you will go for it with all you’ve got.

However, when do you know when to stop? Or when to take a hiatus? The doctors that I’ve shadowed tell me that it’s not uncommon for an older nurse to sudden decide that they want to enter medical school (and most of them succeed!). I’ve met students who have decided to travel the world before they re-apply. Then there are the students who go complete at two years masters program before re-applying. There’s several combinations out there.

It is my belief that when you are approached with a question like that you have to show your earnestness in applying for medical school. They want to know that you know what you’re getting yourself into, it’s a gauge of how much you want it, but at the same time you need to show that you can be an adult. Make secondary plans. Think of it as if you were an aspiring actor. What would you do in the meantime if those Hollywood dreams don’t come when you first snap your fingers? Not everyone’s got the magic touch, but if you want to keep pursuing your dream you’ve got to make sure that you’re not being a burden on your parents in the meantime. Sure, it’s all dandy and fine when you’re 22 or 23, fresh-out-of-college, but you’re also a young adult and you’ve got to start thinking about your life in the long term. Your ‘future.’

“I look at you and see all the ways a soul can bruise…”

“I look at you and see all the ways a soul can bruise, and I wish I could sink my hands into your flesh and light lanterns along your spine so you know there’s nothing but light when I see you.” — ― Shinji Moon

An Open Letter to: Medical Schools and Applicants about Social Media

As I’m applying to medical school this cycle I am constantly faced with questions about my inadequacy, my dream of becoming a doctor, and what I am willing to sacrifice to achieve my dreams. I’ve never had to ask such deep questions about myself. Applying to medical school is very different from applying to undergraduate. No one asks you about why you want to pursue an undergraduate education. Questions about why you want to pursue the major that you have chosen is taken with minimal to mild seriousness. Most colleges expect you to change, to grow, and to discover yourself. Medical school… At times it seems as if they’re probing into the deepest part of me. That’s a good thing, but it’s also a scary thing.

Social media has exploded in the last few years. The invention of Google gives you much less privacy. People can search you, things pop up that you probably didn’t account for, and if you grew up with the internet like me then you probably have a bunch of internet history that you didn’t account for when you were 13 and posting things about your crushes, enemies, private life, etc. Try as you might to erase that, it might not ever truly go away. In some instances that’s okay. If you were 13, you’ve had time to learn and grow, but sometimes the sad thing is that people tend to forget that the 13 year old you is not the same as the young-adult you and that is unfortunate.

I’ve entered the applicant experience with the knowledge that some of the schools may choose to Google me. I’ve thought about it and thought about it some more and yes, sometimes I worry about what they find. I’ve certainly Googled myself to see what kind of material that they may find. I’ve even tried to examine my Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, websites, and blog through their eyes. I’ve warred with myself about deleting my Twitter, but then I never did it. I warred with myself about putting it on private, but then I reasoned with myself that it is my near-biggest social media platform and I didn’t want to lose that. The truth is, I don’t really have a lot to be ashamed about. I make sure that my Facebook (where the bulk of my private life is located) is on the appropriate privacy settings. It’s something that I’ve done since my sophomore year of college. It’s double checked every few months and even then I censor myself when I post on Facebook.

Yet, some of my friends try to convince me that it is not enough. The bulk of my friends who are applying to medical school have either changed the ‘Name’ of their Facebook or inactivated them. They say that you can never be too sure. Thinking about it has kept me up some nights. What does that say about me when I choose not to inactivate or change my name? Does it say that I have nothing to fear? Is it foolish of me? Am I being too cocky about the fact that I have ‘nothing of interest’ on the internet?

Well, in the spirit of full disclosure I’m going to let it be the way it has always been. I’m not going to change too much about the way that I’ve been present on the internet. I already try not to post crazy things where other people may find them and inaccurately judge me for it (a hard lesson that I am glad I learned when I was much younger). Maybe the fact that I have nothing to worry about is because I do not lead a super crazy lifestyle. I’ve never been a party-goer nor am I the type of person to do illegal things. Maybe if I was that type of person I would be more worried, but I’ll like to believe that we are all cautious people and more intelligent than that.

So my plea to the medical schools is this: Please keep in mind that the things that you find on the internet may be ages old. As applicants we have grown up beyond anything petty that you may find we posted when we were in our early teens. Bring it up at an interview, be good mentors and caution us, but don’t let that be your last and most memorable impression about us. Often, we are more than what we are on the internet.

My advice to applicants and other pre-medical students: You should always know what and where you have posted online. Be a good curator of your own presence. It’s not only medical school, but your future employers that will look through the internet to find you. Don’t always rely on the fact that you were ‘young and wild.’ Start now and learn to keep doing it. It might be along time, if ever, before any laws are in place that will define whether or not schools and employers are legally allowed to use internet information to make judgements about you. Whether or not you choose to deactivate your Facebook when it comes time for your own application cycle is up to you. Whether you delete your Twitter, your blog, your YouTube… it is up to you. That’s the only thing that I can say: be a good curator. A very good curator.

Remember: your body is made…

“Hey, do you mind if I tell you a story, one you might not have heard? All the elements in your body were forged many, many millions of years ago in the heart of a far away star that exploded and died. That explosion scattered those elements across the designations of deep space; after so, so many millions of years, these elements came together to form new stars and new planets and on and on it went. The elements came together and burst apart, forming shoes and ships and ceiling wax and cabbages and kings until eventually they came together to make you.” – Doctor Who

Poem found on Tumblr and it currently has no definable author.

Vision

I’ve realized how important it is to have a vision.

Once you have a vision, work toward it. Bash your way through the walls. Come hell or high water, make sure you achieve it. But just as important as having a clear idea of what you want to do: be gracious with yourself. Let yourself have leeway and be open to great things that may come into your life.

The Medical School Process (part 1)

As any person dreaming of becoming a healthcare provider, you must go to medical school. It may be an MD or a DO school, but go you must. You will first obtain a high school diploma and then your college diploma (with all the pre-medical classes completed). If your school has a pre-committee letter you might go through a pre-committee processes around January of the year that you want to apply. May 1st will signal the start of the official application processes. I began my application near the beginning of May and had it all ready to be submitted on the first day that the AMCAS application opened up. I heard somewhere that it is essential to get it in within the first wave. First of all, most medical schools participate in ‘rolling acceptances.’ Just get it in, the sooner the better. Second of all, it takes the AMCAS organization a couple of days to even process your letter. I submitted my application around 8PM the day that the application opened and it took them almost two weeks to even process and verify my AMCAS.

Around June 28th or so the schools will begin to get your application from the AMCAS. Some schools send secondary applications to everyone who send them the primary application. Other schools will screen out applicants based on GPA and MCAT scores. Some schools might even read through your primary application before they screen. It all depends and you can usually find this type of information on their school websites. Schools like NYU have a tertiary application (rare). After you submit all this you will wait for them to review your entire application.

You may or may not be granted an interview. Some schools have 2,000+ applicants and they are only seeking 100 or 200 people for their entering class. Some schools have 10,000+ applicants. All schools will choose to interview how many applicants they think they can handle. There’s no ‘golden’ ratio for all the schools, but I tend to think that they interview about 25% of the applicants (if you are looking at schools that don’t have a lot of applicants in the first place). Then you wait for an acceptance (or a rejection) letter.

It’s tiring and it takes months long. It does do a little bit of weeding. Some won’t apply unless they really want to pursue medicine. Despite all that, you still get those few students who change their mind after a few months. I seriously hope that those who are subjecting themselves to this really want it because not only is it long, it is expensive. Some people spend nearly $1,000 on their primary application and then go on to spend another $1,000+ on their secondaries. Then you have to account for airfare and hotel stays (interviews). Ouch.