I think Inuranic hit the nail on the head though. There are no right or wrong answers. Just be mindful, be honest, and answer in a manner that accurately reflects who you are as a person/student/scientist.
Here is what I wrote. I'm not suggesting they are either good or bad, just obliging your request to see some samples...
1. Why do you want to go to medical school?
I first became interested in a career in medicine when I was quite young. As a child, I experienced my father being disabled in an on-the-job accident, and I also lost my grandmothers to cancer and cardiovascular disease. I remember being keenly interested in what was wrong with them, and what could be done to make them better. I also remember watching the way in which the various health professionals cared for them, and admiring the knowledge, compassion, and prowess by which they performed their jobs. I was a pretty good student as a child, and I always thought that if I was given opportunity, I could also contribute something to helping others become well.
As I aged, I developed into quite a curious youth. I spent a great deal of time experimenting with my chemistry set and circuit board, but I didnt realize at the time I was preliminarily training for a future career in medicine. I found that not only did I have a great interest in science, but that I was pretty good at it as well. Around this time, I also began working with elderly residents after school at the nursing home where my mother was employed. I really enjoyed this experience because I found working with the residents to be very rewarding, and they always seemed grateful for my help. I realized that caring for others was an awesome responsibility, but can also be very fulfilling. I began to realize that I wanted to pursue a career in health care.
Throughout my adolescence, I continued to foster my enthusiasm for science and medicine by enrolling in advanced placement courses in high school, and entering a pre-medicine pre-professional program as an undergraduate in college. I also sought out opportunities to heighten my exposure to the medical field; such as, shadowing programs with physicians I knew, and volunteering at the auxiliary of my local hospital. I also began to consult professionals I knew, and expressed my interest in becoming a clinician. All of these experiences served to crystallize my interest and desire to become a physician. Through the practice of medicine, I could both develop my inclination as a scientist as well as find satisfaction through working with others to improve their lives and health.
One of the aspects of a career in medicine that appeals to me the most is that it is a life-long learning process. I am reminded of a quote by Mortimer Adler, The purpose of learning is growth, and our minds, unlike our bodies, can continue growing as we continue to live. The opportunity to continually challenge myself throughout my career and constantly add to my knowledge and skills is very important to me. Medicine is a vocation which I believe would bring me great satisfaction, and one in which I would excel. The more I become immersed in medicine and biomedical research, the more strongly I feel compelled to the field.
Since entering graduate school, I have pursued a course in medicine with vigor. Quite simply, I find the pursuit of science and medicine to be very satisfying to me on all levels as a student, a professional, and as an individual. Deciding on a career path may be one of the hardest decisions an individual has to make, and I believe my calling is to practice medicine. At this point I feel as though I have the mind and heart of a physician, now I am ready to commit myself to the necessary training and diligence that will be required to realize my goals.
2. Why do you want to enter an M.D./Ph.D. program?
I have chosen to pursue the joint degrees of M.D./Ph.D. as a result of my interest in laboratory research that goes beyond a clinical setting. I have prepared for a career in medicine from the beginning of my post-secondary education, but towards the end of my undergraduate career I was invited to join a research group by my biochemistry professor, Jenq-Kuen Huang, Ph.D., of the Western Illinois University (WIU) Department of Chemistry. Although I had already completed the chemistry requirements of the pre-medicine pre-professional program I was enrolled in, I agreed to work in Dr. Huangs laboratory as a way to better prepare myself for medical school. I believe the principles of medicine begin at the bench, and the strong foundation in research fundamentals I gained through this experience makes me a strong candidate for your program.
Once I joined Dr. Huangs group, I flourished as a research scientist and scholar under my new found mentors tutelage. I discovered that scientific investigation greatly appealed to me, and that I had the desire to pursue research, in addition to a clinical practice. I remained a member of the Huang group until I graduated, as well as participating in independent research in a number of other laboratories and reporting on my findings at a number of conferences.
After graduation, I decided to continue a scientific course in graduate school until which time I would be accepted to medical school as well as an M.D./Ph.D. program. During this time, I have taken coursework from the Graduate Education in Medical Science (GEMS) curriculum through the College of Medicine at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) and am currently seated in the Ph.D. program for Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics.
I was also hired to work as a graduate assistant in the medical mycology laboratory of Peter R. Williamson, M.D./Ph.D., in the Section of Infectious Diseases at the UIC College of Medicine. Working with Dr. Williamson and his research staff, some of whom were also M.D./Ph.D.s, I was able to get a better understanding of just what a career as a physician scientist entails. While continuing to see patients, I would still have the opportunity to actively conduct research and report my findings so that they could be applied to the better practice of medicine overall.
These experiences have helped me to realize that an M.D./Ph.D. curriculum would allow me to reconcile my deep interest in scientist research, as well as my desire to work in the clinic. Such a career is an ambitious undertaking, but it is one in which I think I am a strong candidate for success. By committing to train in this very unique and rigorous manner, I would be better able to care for my patients, as well as better serve the scientific community through my contributions to translational research.
3. Describe your research experience.
My research experience began in earnest the senior year of my undergraduate coursework at Western Illinois University (WIU). During this time, I worked on two independent research projects as part of my curriculum, as well as joining a third laboratory group upon invitation by the principle investigators. Through these investigations, I developed a strong interest in biomedical research, and have continued my pursuit ever since.
As part of my pre-medicine training, I worked for a semester each in the laboratories of Jeff E. Engel, Ph.D. and Richard O. Musser, Ph.D at WIU. In the flight physiology laboratory of Jeff Engel, I studied the giant fiber escape response in Drosophila melanogaster using a variety of electrophysiology techniques. In this experience, I learned to use an oscilloscope and micromanipulators, fundamentals of D. melanogaster as a model system, practical applications of electrophysics, and proper care for animals. These data were then used by Dr. Engel to design experiments for his own research. In the molecular ecology lab of Richard Musser, I practiced a range of molecular biology techniques, including purification of total RNAs, microarray analysis, as well as additional principles of plant and animal husbandry. This work was used to present a poster at the annual WIU Department of Biology research symposium.
Additionally, I was invited by my biochemistry professors, Jenq-Kuen Huang, Ph.D. and Lisa Wen, Ph.D., to join their research group on an extracurricular basis when space became available in their lab. Under Dr. Huangs supervision, I authored a scholarly activities grant which was funded by the WIU College of Arts and Sciences and WIU Department of Chemistry. Under this grant, I conducted research entitled Purification of lipoxygenase-like enzyme from Psuedomonas aeruginosa 2HS. The U.S. Department of Defense has determined ricinoleic acid to be a substance of strategic significance, as it is consumed in a number of manufacturing processes and there is no domestic source. Through a series of chromatography protocols and enzyme activity assays, I was able to isolate a protein from P. aeruginosa which catalyzed the conversion of oleic acid, a waste product of soybean oil production, into 10-hydroxyoctadecenoic acid, a precursor of ricinoleic acid. Discovering an economically feasible method of isolating this enzyme would prove to be of great industrial significance. The results of my study were presented at a number of research conferences, including the 16th Annual Illinois Student Research Conference and WIU Undergraduate Research Day.
I went on to graduate in the spring of 2005, and in the fall I enrolled in graduate school at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). At that time I began working as a graduate research assistant in the medical mycology laboratory of Peter Williamson, M.D., Ph.D. in the Section of Infectious Diseases at the UIC College of Medicine, where I remained until October of 2006. The focus of our investigation was the genetic basis of pathogenesis in the pathogenic fungus Cryptococcus neoformans, the primary causative agent of meningitis and encephalitis in HIV patients and other immunocompromised hosts. My time there allowed me to work directly with the post doctoral research associates, assisting them with experiments in microbiology, cell biology, molecular biology, confocal microscopy and many other techniques.
Much of my work involved examining how several genes of interest, such as VPS34 and CUF1, contributed to disease progression of Cryptococcus infection in a mouse model. By inoculating our model with various knockout strains of the pathogen we were able to compare how these genes affected tissue distribution and proliferation of the fungus in vivo as compared to wild type controls. This information is to be used to better elucidate the mechanism of pathogenesis by C. neoformans.
In October of 2006, I joined the molecular genetics laboratory of Bradley Merrill, Ph.D., as a part of the laboratory rotations component of the UIC Graduate Education in the Medical Sciences (GEMS). My project in Dr. Merrills lab involved developing a recombinant green fluorescent protein under the promoter control of the transcription factor Nanog, and then expressing this construct in a transgenic mouse strain. The transcription factor Nanog has been shown to play a critical role in maintaining a balance between differentiation and self-renewal in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESC). A GFP construct which recapitulates Nanog expression would allow us to quantify expression of Nanog and follow its cellular localization in the ESC during embryogenesis and help to identify the mechanism by which it determines stem cell fate.
Upon completing this rotation at the end of 2006, I had transformed GS1 embryonic stem cells with this construct, in addition to having the construct recombined into the ESC genome and observing expression of the recombinant protein through Western blot analysis and immunoflourescent microscropy. Transformation was confirmed through continuous neomycin selection, and recombination was insured through a diphtheria toxin suicide gene on the construct upstream of the 5 arm of recombination. Using primers of my own design, PCR analysis of 300 colonies revealed no positive colonies for homologous recombination of the construct at the Nanog locus; however, six cell lines were chosen which potentially recapitulate Nanog expression due to non-specific recombination and may prove useful to the investigation.
At the start of 2007 I began my second GEMS rotation in the laboratory of Steven Ackerman, Ph.D. My project in Dr. Ackermans lab focuses upon examining the molecular and genetic regulation of differentiation in hematopoetic progenitor cells -- specifically transcriptional regulators responsible for terminal differentiation of the eosinophil lineage. Briefly, I am expressing the 14 and 27 kD isoforms of the CAAT box enhancer binding protein epsilon (C/EBP?) as a TAT fusion protein using the pTAT-HA expression vector. Once purified, the TAT fusion proteins will be used to transduce AML14.3D10 eosinophilic myelocytes, and then a panel of genes implicated in eosinophil differentiation will be assayed for alterations in transcription levels using RT-PCR and RT-Q-PCR. The purpose of these experiments is to characterize the repressor activities of these C/EBP? isoforms in regulating eosinophil gene expression during terminal differentiation.
Additionally, I completed UIC radiation safety training in September of 2006, and have completed research methods modules in separation techniques, basic molecular biology, immunological methods, discovery bioinformatics, and bio-imaging through the UIC GEMS program. I have also completed confocal microscropy training through the UIC Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, and am currently taking an experimental animal techniques laboratory course through the UIC graduate college.
, I'll rephrase the question...
