Posts tagged application

The Biopsy: Medical School Essay Edits

I was recently contacted by Roheet from the Biopsy. A prospective medical student who has been maintaining a beautiful blog that reflects on the process of medicine in the digital age, he is offering to help anyone who is applying to medicine with reviewing their personal essays.

The deadline for submissions is May 20th, 2013. Submit here.

Many thanks to Roheet for his kindness and generosity in offering this service to other student hopefuls.

can you reccomend any websites or oublications to read which cover recent medical progessions or whatever? im applying in the UK and they require you to do alot of reading whilst applying! — Asked by Anonymous

That is a very broad question. It really depends on what you are looking for. Off the top of my head, I am thinking of possibly the British Medical Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Canadian Medical Association Journal, and the Journal of the American Medical Association etc.

For websites, you could maybe try the Science Daily or Medgadget.

There is more information than you can handle out there and if you know where to look they should be readily accessible to you. 

Do you think going to a community college then transferring to a four-year university affects one's chance of getting into medical school? — Asked by Anonymous

I get this question quite often and I feel that this might be a geographical thing. As far as I know, going to a community college should in theory have no impact on your ability to go to medical school in the long run. The caveat here is any course that you take that you are using as a pre-requisite course in your application to medical school must be comparable or compatible with their requirements. In other words, the syllabus should meet the standard of whatever they require from you. In a community college setting, this might be the main issue you might run into. Otherwise, there should be no effect. There are strict criteria that medical schools will look at when considering you as an applicant and it is not so much where you come from that matters but who you are as a person, as a student, and as a potential colleague that matters.

Here is Dr. Cranquis from experience: I did 1 year of basic college classes at a community college before transferring to a 4-year university for the remaining 3 years, (I did most of my basic science pre-reqs at the university, but my A&P community course transferred just fine).

Hi Tom! :) I know you mentioned your late father in your application but did you have to prove it by producing a death certificate or anything? I received some poor grades this year due to an elusive yet very uncomfortable illness (still haven't figured it out!) and I'm afraid I'd have to 'prove' it by producing various medical records (most of which are scattered across the country). Thank you so much! — Asked by Anonymous

No, I did not have to produce a death certificate. There are legitimate, legal scenarios where this would happen but it was certainly not the case for my application.

If you are applying to medical school and the application has an essay component, you are welcome to discuss it if it is relevant to the essay subject. For me, my father’s death was an important factor in the essay topic: “why have I chosen medicine?” In your case, it sounds like you would like to explain why your grades have been less than expected.

Truly, your own medical history is private and confidential information; unless you wish to voluntarily disclose that, they cannot ask if you are ill or not. If you were to disclose and they thought the information may be important going forward, they may or may not ask you for a doctor’s note or written letter explaining your situation. Again, due to confidentiality purposes, I highly doubt they would ask for your medical records.

Good luck to you and take care.

What did you do in the year between the time you left your pharmacy program and applied to medical school? — Asked by Anonymous

I applied while I was in the pharmaceutical sciences program. There was no downtime in between the two. Perhaps the hardest bit there was finding time to go to the interview on the verge of an exam. The interview process itself takes the better part of a day and that was time I sorely needed to study. In hindsight I had chosen a bad time slot but such is life: you work with what you have. In this case, everything worked out fine. :)

Will they look at your records ((Such as police records/school records, etc)) before hiring you to be a doctor or surgeon? Because I got into a couple of fights through school, as well as had the police called on me multiple times for things I didn't do, because the neighbors hate me. :/ — Asked by Anonymous

Acceptance to medical school is contingent on getting an educational license from the college; part of the requirements for receiving the license is to include a criminal record check. 

I am not exactly familiar with how a record would work but my understanding is that the juvenile record is not quite the same as the adult record. I obviously cannot comment on your own records or to what extent of severity they are, but I do know a few classmates who admit having a record for some minor misdemeanors and small infractions in their past. It seems like it might depend on severity of your charges.

How tough was it to get into medical school? What type of university did you attend before med school? — Asked by thebearfetus

The short answer is: very tough. The process of applying to medical school takes a year to complete, and the preparation, the experiences you gain before hand takes many years to accrue. There has to be some planning long in advance as the machinery must be set in motion and brought together for the application. Academics, extracurricular experiences, and exams all had to be competitive over the course of my post-secondary education. When I was able to reach the interview stage and finally see the brilliant and amazing people who were also vying for a seat in the incoming class, it really put into perspective the diversity, the competitiveness, and the challenge of getting in.

Once I was accepted into medical school though, it became clear that the challenges were only just beginning; medical school is a tougher process in its own right.

Out of respect for privacy concerns and my faculty’s social media guidelines, I can no longer answer the second question. Sorry. :(

What opportunities did you partake in during your undergraduate years to make your undergrad experience more enriching and thus more appealing to medical school? — Asked by Anonymous

I kind of address this topic in my page here as a general overview of experiences that are most commonly pursued. The activities I was engaged in include:

  • Volunteering at the hospital and the public library;
  • Working at a community centre, and in other areas in a musical capacity;
  • Participated in various clubs, societies and organizations at school and in the community, including charity work and helping to grow a community orchestra, and;
  • Assisted at a research lab for two years.

This is of course just one example. Everyone has their own story of how they got into medicine and what sort of experiences they had leading up to their application. For those of you out there who would like to share, you can leave a long-form addition in the comments below.

What Makes a Medical Student
Academic Demographics

In my first post about the constitution of a medical student, I talked about population demographics, looking at the biological side of a future professional. Here, I talk about the academic component.

First, let us take a look at the education level of medical students, which like the population demographics can vary from region to region, school to school. Correlating with the age of the majority of applicants, roughly three-quarters have Bachelors degrees. Given the scientific nature of medicine and the fact that many of the required courses are from stem sciences like biology and chemistry, most come from a Bachelor of Science. As I have often mentioned, it is quite possible to enter medicine through other avenues so long as all of the requirements are met. The bachelor of arts and others are proof of this.

The older the population, the more likely some higher levels of education are in place. Again, the most common Masters degrees are in science; Doctorates are less common.

Overall, a typical medical student has an average between 80 and 85 percent. While the marks will favour higher numbers, lesser averages are possible as well. In these cases, a student may have shown improvement during his or her application cycle or may have a well rounded application in other areas.

(The data used to plot the above charts came from my faculty’s admission statistics. As a matter of privacy and with respect to my faculty’s social media guidelines, I have refrained from naming my university)

Do you think it's too late for me to enter med school? My major was in psychology up to my 3rd year, then I decided to change because I really didn't find the passion in it until I learned about the biological sciences, so I changed to Biology, but now I'm 24 and I'm taking my last pre-med courses and I'm gonna prepare for the MCAT,the thing is, all my friends are already in med school, or entered recently,some too are still waiting. I don't if it's too late. but it's what I really want! thanks — Asked by Anonymous

If you saw my recent post about demographics you will see that it is not too late to enter medical school. I have friends in medical school who are in their 30s and a few in their 40s. What brought them here was a passion for medicine and a hunger for learning. If you feel that medicine is what you want to pursue, I think you should give it a try.