I'm a rising college senior at a lib. arts school. 3.75 gpa, projected GRE scores 1450-1500, 3 years internship experience, one year ER volunteering, excellent letters of rec. etc. I'll be applying to post-bacs for medical school this fall.

The problem:

During my freshman year of college, I was suspended for accepting a friends offer to use Ritalin one month into school. I didn't ingest it, but was caught with it when he gave it to me. I sought counseling and took a comprehensive drug evaluation, each confirming that i don't have a problem and that it was a youthful mistake. Those records are available to admissions committees. The assistant dean also agreed to send in a statement vouching that I'm not a deviant. I've written what I think is a good letter of explanation.

1) Any general advice on things I should do/not do here? Am I missing anything? Any thoughts?

2) Should my letter of explanation be short and just the facts, or longer? Currently, it is 1.5 pages, single spaced, where I give the facts and talk about how I've matured, I understand how serious it was, it was a one time mistake and not a recurring thing, etc.

Right now I'm stressing like crazy that this will really screw me over, so if you have any thoughts or advice at all, I would really appreciate it. Thanks for your time!



I would devote extremely little of an essay to this. Just the fax and move on.

From the OP

Yea, I don't plan to mention it in any of my personal statements, just the supplementary discipline explanation that they ask for.

I've trimmed the statement down to one page, where I go over the facts, and then explain what I did on my time off, how it helped me, and a little bit about how I've matured since then. Should I leave all that out? Although I can understand that a longer letter might make it a bigger deal in their minds than it otherwise would be, I also don't want to risk sounding like I'm dismissing it as nothing and leave them asking "Well, what did he learn from it, how has he changed?".
Thanks for the advice.

I wouldn't go into too much on the "how it helped, etc". A single paragraph indicating what happened, that it was a mistake and that you have learned and moved on would work. Heck, I said all that in one sentence. Keep it brief.

I see. So, from the POV of the admissions committees, why is that preferable to an explanation that goes into a bit more detail?

Well, admissions committees, despite popular SDN believe, don't have any opinion on most things. Each individual adcom member will have their own perspective. In some cases, such as this, it is important to remember this as opinions can vary so much.

Having said that, in general, it is not worth focusing on a negative that happened years ago and isn't all that relevant. We want to know what you are about and not a long explanation of the past. In medicine in general, folks make mistakes. We tend to prefer the brief explanation and "sorry, learned from it" to long stories. This, in my view, is a perspective likely carried over by many adcom members. But, not all....