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  1. How would you talk about learning from this? I can’t really see this being spun a good way
  2. Same
  3. Too old
Try to think of a non academic accomplishment, also procrastinating and then doing well isn’t great.
 
doctorcocter said:
Greatest accomplishment
1. For a personality psychology class my very first semester in college I had a 10 page paper due the day of the final and both were worth 25% of the final grade. The night before it was due I had only finished 4 pages and haven't started reviewing the final. I pulled an all nighter writing the paper while listening to recordings of my professor's lectures and pulled out with my first A (93%+) in college. This was my own fault obviously and it's considered academic, but it's all I can think of right now.
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I don't think an example of a time you procrastinated and then crammed for an important assignment is the wisest choice for your greatest accomplishment...
 
doctorcocter said:
Having helicopter/strict parents isn't particularly conducive to exploring and mastering non academic interests. Makes for a fairly easy challenge essay, but I'm not joking when I say this is all I can think of right now.
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What about challenges at work?
 
Any hobbies? Academic greatest accomplishment is just not memorable...
 
doctorcocter said:
Yeah, but I don't know if they're particularly impressive. Not particularly sure if talking about my supercar collection on GTA online or my max squat is any better than what I put down.
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Why not? You could talk about weight lifting. Adcoms don’t expect everyone to have won a gold medal or a Pulitzer.
 
EmbryonalCarcinoma said:
Some people haven't... a lot of premeds, actually.
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Damn, my dad made me get a job at 16. "If you're old enough to work why would I pay for you to do ****?". Lot of tough lessons at Stop n Shop..wouldn't have it any different though. People having their first job at 25 for residency where they are in charge of human life is terrifying.
 
doctorcocter said:
Nope. Not completely against it, but totalling a car and having to walk everywhere makes it a bit of a hassle.

Still kinda hesitant about using fitness as an accomplishment though. It's something I assume most people do and the rest of my hobbies are pretty stereotypical "bro" hobbies.
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Well you aren’t giving us a lot to work with here... are you secretly an expert quilt maker or something?
 
doctorcocter said:
I'll be the first to admit that I have lived a painfully mediocre life with not many peaks, but no major sinkholes either. This is making these secondaries pretty hard to write so looking for some feedback and hopefully this thread might help me remember things I can't recall right now. Also please don't quote.

Failure essay ideas
1. Fired from a volunteer position - probably rings a bell for some of you because I made a thread about this. I'm a pretty introverted and mellow guy when interacting with strangers and had a nurse and a kid's mom think I was rude a couple weeks apart. Not particularly something I want to disclose. Happened in 2018.
2. T-boned a parent's car when I was driving to park my car because I was tired and wasn't paying attention. Happened in 2015 when I was a senior in high school. I broke the axle of my car, and because my car was really old it was technically totalled and I couldn't drive anymore.
3. Embarrassed myself in front of most the school because I forgot my lines in a play. Happened way back in 8th grade of middle school so around 2011/2012.

Greatest accomplishment
1. For a personality psychology class my very first semester in college I had a 10 page paper due the day of the final and both were worth 25% of the final grade. The night before it was due I had only finished 4 pages and haven't started reviewing the final. I pulled an all nighter writing the paper while listening to recordings of my professor's lectures and pulled out with my first A (93%+) in college. This was my own fault obviously and it's considered academic, but it's all I can think of right now.
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Your greatest accomplishment says you procrastinate and don’t plan ahead. Come up with something else.
 
Any clubs you accomplished something in? Research?
 
It doesn't necessarily have to be about an award....

My biggest achievement was tackling a project I was given at a marketing company I worked for for several years. The workload was high but I was able to develop an insight to certain aspects of the project that other departments could have helped us on. I used my team-work skills to seek out two of the IT guys to help me develop a mini-software program to process the information I needed about 70x faster, effectively making 3 months worth of work shrink down to about 2 days.
 
Working out/bodybuilding is fine I think. Think of the times you've been proudest of yourself (or others have been proud of you) and see if you can write an essay out of it.
 
doctorcocter said:
I’d say I have more than enough volunteering and shadowing. Not particularly proud of either though because neither are that remarkable. I had the time, and I could show up a couple hours a week. I had a leadership position just by virtue of being there a long time.

In high school clubs were mainly resume padders so I didn’t bother with any.
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That’s unfortunately not enough. Unless you have some insane volunteering (Peace Corps) or insane research (1st author pubs) you need to stick out through something that most pre-meds don’t do.
 
doctorcocter said:
Dunno man. I hear lots of cookie cutters get.

I think most med schools realize most college age kids don’t have the most remarkable experiences and accomplishments, which is why they don’t ask for them on secondaries. This accomplishment essay is for 1 school (UA Phoenix) at least for now. I haven’t seen another school that asks for this.
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UCLA does. But you're right that you don't need anything extraordinary.
 
You don’t need anything extraordinary, but you do need to be able to sell yourself (and your ECs) well, which it sounds like you’re struggling with. Can you not find anything positive about your volunteering or find anything you personally/emotionally struggled with? Are you proud of how long you stuck with your volunteering activity (regardless of whether it was only a couple of hours a week)? Did you ever have to sacrifice something (even something small) to continue to do so? You mentioned having helicopter parents; did you ever find them stifling in terms of personal growth and was there ever an activity or interest that you branched out and worked on in spite of them? Or was there a time that you wished you had and instead missed an opportunity to stand up more for yourself and do something that interested you? And even the part about you getting fired from the volunteering activity (which you don’t necessarily have to mention unless you think it would come up later): did you learn something about putting yourself in others’ shoes more after the two encounters where you perceived your behavior differently than them? (You also don’t have to necessarily describe your behavior has being perceived as “rude”... I’d maybe find a euphemism for that.)
 
doctorcocter said:
Used strict parents for the challenge essays, which I feel is distinct from failure essays.
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For secondaries that don’t ask for both a challenge essay and a failure essay, there is no reason you can’t rework that challenge essay into a failure one by picking one time that you failed to stand up for yourself or pick your own path versus your parents/their strictness and what you learned about yourself after that moment (assuming you can think of one).
 
doctorcocter said:
Having helicopter/strict parents isn't particularly conducive to exploring and mastering non academic interests. Makes for a fairly easy challenge essay, but I'm not joking when I say this is all I can think of right now.
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If this is your response, you aren't ready for medical school. Leave town in such a way that your parents can't reach you to helicopter, get a job, get an apartment, then apply 3 years from now.
 
Like many others have said, it doesnt have to be an award or that you cured cancer. My biggest achievement was gettibg a job at 12 and taking care of my mom (Who was agoraphobic at the time) and my 3 younger siblings and still making it to where I am. Think outside the box.
 
doctorcocter said:
Sounds like bad math to spend another 3 years applying just so I have material for a 1000 character secondary essay. If it really comes down to it, I'll just not apply to UA Phoenix. Plus I think my home state's weather is hot enough already.
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I think she was suggesting NOT applying for 3 years.
 
LizzyM said:
If this is your response, you aren't ready for medical school. Leave town in such a way that your parents can't reach you to helicopter, get a job, get an apartment, then apply 3 years from now.
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I can't tell if you're being totally serious? I commuted from home for college and have some good volunteer EC's ( especially my senior care one) that I can talk about but I don't have any interesting hobbies.Do I need to wait 3 years , or am I less adult for living at home? As a young muslim woman, living at home for college is very much the norm. And because I am in state, live at home, and have a merit scholly I didn't have to work, either.
And OP, what were your EC's total?
 
mwsapphire said:
I can't tell if you're being totally serious? I commuted from home for college and have some good volunteer EC's ( especially my senior care one) that I can talk about but I don't have any interesting hobbies.Do I need to wait 3 years , or am I less adult for living at home? As a young muslim woman, living at home for college is very much the norm. And because I am in state, live at home, and have a merit scholly I didn't have to work, either.
And OP, what were your EC's total?
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Living at home is fine, but if you are unable to come up with good answers to simple secondary prompts, you probably also aren't going to interview very well. Not saying you don’t have enough life experience, but it sounds like OP might not.
 
EmbryonalCarcinoma said:
Living at home is fine, but if you are unable to come up with good answers to simple secondary prompts, you probably also aren't going to interview very well. Not saying you don’t have enough life experience, but it sounds like OP might not.
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Okay. Not to thread jack but really just seeing if I could answer this prompt:

Greatest accomplishment: For non academic, does it have to be any one instance? I'm def gonna talk about the senior care volunteer work I do and how the residents there really like me and how I made a direct difference in their lives being one of the best things I've done in college.

For challenge: When I first started volunteering at the ED I volunteered at, I felt totally useless until I started actually interacting with patients, and then started taking initiative to interact with them myself, not being so shy ( similar to OP), etc.
 
mwsapphire said:
Okay. Not to thread jack but really just seeing if I could answer this prompt:

Greatest accomplishment: For non academic, does it have to be any one instance? I'm def gonna talk about the senior care volunteer work I do and how the residents there really like me and how I made a direct difference in their lives being one of the best things I've done in college.

For challenge: When I first started volunteering at the ED I volunteered at, I felt totally useless until I started actually interacting with patients, and then started taking initiative to interact with them myself, not being so shy ( similar to OP), etc.
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Your answers sound fine to me.
 
ThrowawayShmoaway said:
Right, so then LizzyM’s comment was not pertinent to you...
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Okay, okay sorry. I just couldn't really see how OP's parents made them have less med-school relevant experiences so I was like " Wut"...nvm. I see what you mean now. I guess bc I had kind of an atypical college experience that I wonder if that makes me less ready for med school.
 
mwsapphire said:
I can't tell if you're being totally serious? I commuted from home for college and have some good volunteer EC's ( especially my senior care one) that I can talk about but I don't have any interesting hobbies.Do I need to wait 3 years , or am I less adult for living at home? As a young muslim woman, living at home for college is very much the norm. And because I am in state, live at home, and have a merit scholly I didn't have to work, either.
And OP, what were your EC's total?
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I think OPs problem is that he has trouble thinking of any achievements or challenges outside of academics. I think if you can express these things and reflect on your journey with maturity you are ok.
 
mwsapphire said:
I can't tell if you're being totally serious? I commuted from home for college and have some good volunteer EC's ( especially my senior care one) that I can talk about but I don't have any interesting hobbies.Do I need to wait 3 years , or am I less adult for living at home? As a young muslim woman, living at home for college is very much the norm. And because I am in state, live at home, and have a merit scholly I didn't have to work, either.
And OP, what were your EC's total?
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I was being totally serious if a guy blames his parents for not having had any outside interests nor any successes or failures up to this point in his life.

As a Muslim woman, will your parents permit you to live away from home for college? With few exceptions, this is going to be necessary when attending medical school given the low likelihood of being admitted to a medical school in one's hometown (there being a few exceptions where there are a number of med schools within a metropolitan area (NY, Philly, Chicago)
 
LizzyM said:
I was being totally serious if a guy blames his parents for not having had any outside interests nor any successes or failures up to this point in his life.

As a Muslim woman, will your parents permit you to live away from home for college? With few exceptions, this is going to be necessary when attending medical school given the low likelihood of being admitted to a medical school in one's hometown (there being a few exceptions where there are a number of med schools within a metropolitan area (NY, Philly, Chicago)
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Yeah, of course. I am applying closer to home, ( think 6 hr drive radius), but living away from home at 23 is different then when 18. I just wasn't ready for it for UGrad. It's not like my parents forced me, I was just making a point that cultural norms don't consider 18 y/o's old enough to not live with mom and dad anymore and be "out on their own like, real adults" or whatever.
 
Tenk said:
Do lifting for two reasons:

1) I know you’ll be able to talk passionately about it.
2) nobody can really justify being anti-fitness. Fitness is considered a universal good thing so to be anti-fitness is basically to be anti-science and pro obesity/heart disease.
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The pitfall with writing about weightlifting, however, is the eating disorder that OP mentioned. I’m very passionate about mental health. But it seems like med school admission committees are avoiding applicants that mention mental illness like the plague.
 
TRexLife4 said:
The pitfall with writing about weightlifting, however, is the eating disorder that OP mentioned. I’m very passionate about mental health. But it seems like med school admission committees are avoiding applicants that mention mental illness like the plague.
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I never said he should mention an eating disorder. He shouldn’t.
 
Tenk said:
I never said he should mention an eating disorder. He shouldn’t.
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Great!
Is it unwise to bring up a family member’s mental illness? I’m worried that an ADCOM would think that I’m prone to mental illness by genetic influence.
 
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