The mission of VTCSOM is, in part, "to educate physician thought leaders through inquiry, research, and discovery. . ." Thought leaders are individuals who are recognized for innovative ideas and who demonstrate leadership in sharing, promoting, and implementing those ideas. Therefore, we are interested in learning how you've demonstrated the two primary traits of a thought leader: innovation and leadership.
As you complete the required essay, personal experiences you might consider writing about should portray: medical motivation, community involvement, scholastic achievement, leadership, research, or lab experience. Specific personal experiences could include: volunteer service, Peace Corps, mission work, business experience, military service, team sports, research experience, scholarly activity, entrepreneurship, artistic endeavors, or political involvement.
Note: For the following required essay, please limit your response to about 2 pages (using 1-inch margins, 12-point font, single-spaced -- approximately 7000 characters) and leave one blank line between paragraphs. We suggest that you compose, edit, spell check, and save your essay in a word processing document, and then import it into this application to ensure that all your information is transferred. Your essay will not be saved until you hit the "Save" button at the bottom of this page. If you wish to change or edit your essay after it is uploaded, then you will need to edit your original word processing document and then reload it into the appropriate essay section of the secondary application. Be sure to hit the "Save" button after reloading it in the secondary application.
Life Experience Essay involving Innovation, Leadership or Teamwork:
Describe an experience in your life that was instrumental in shaping you as a person, and how this will help you to contribute as a medical student and to develop into a future physician thought leader.
Update Essay (optional):
Use this optional essay opportunity to update the information you provided in your AMCAS application on your recent experiences, such as medical volunteering, shadowing, community service, research experience, leadership or teamwork experience, and work experience. Please do not repeat information already reported in your AMCAS application. For the optional essay below, please limit your responses to about 3500 characters (1 page, 1-inch margins, 12-point, single-spaced) and leave one blank line between paragraphs.