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Started by dr_kateb
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- How would you talk about learning from this? I can’t really see this being spun a good way
- Same
- Too old
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...
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What about challenges at work?
Any hobbies? Academic greatest accomplishment is just not memorable...
Why not? You could talk about weight lifting. Adcoms don’t expect everyone to have won a gold medal or a Pulitzer.
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deleted972488
Max squat would be better.
What do you mean? You've never had a job that pays you money?
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deleted972488
Some people haven't... a lot of premeds, actually.
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.
Well you aren’t giving us a lot to work with here... are you secretly an expert quilt maker or something?
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deleted972488
Yeah, I feel like it would have to be something specific like training for a marathon. Have you won any awards? Placed in a competition?
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993444
How much you bench?
Your greatest accomplishment says you procrastinate and don’t plan ahead. Come up with something else.
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Solid. Depends on your weight and height though. Taller guys have a harder time with bench.
Yeah plenty of my premed friends and acquaintances didn’t work.
Any clubs you accomplished something in? Research?
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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.
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.
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deleted927529
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.
You’ve never had any leadership positions? Volunteer positions where you had an impact?
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Based on OP’s responses to this thread I’m worried that he may not have enough strong EC’s to apply this cycle...
Same.
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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.
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That’s true. Not everyone’s has Peace Corps or 1st author pub.
But most successful candidates have something unique that stands out.
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deleted972488
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.)
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).
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.
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I think she was suggesting NOT applying for 3 years.
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.
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.
Why didn’t you do more ECs? You’ve never had a job. You’ve had a significant time advantage that many people don’t have. What were you doing with all that extra time?
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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deleted972488
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.
Living at home is not the same thing as having helicopter/strict parents.
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.
My parents are a little strict and helicopter-y, but I don't think it really impacted my life that much.
Right, so then LizzyM’s comment was not pertinent to you...
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deleted972488
Your answers sound fine to me.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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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.
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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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deleted972488
I don’t think the stigma goes that far.
We don't think that way
