I'm in the process of writing an update letter and I was hoping you could assist me a bit.
I interviewed almost two weeks ago, and unfortunately I don't think that I was able to articulate clearly why I liked Columbia. To be honest, at the time I wasn't so sure myself.
Anyways, after the interview I finally got to find out what makes Columbia special (I was the first person to interview). As such, I'm writing a letter now to express why I'm really interested in this school.
At some point during the interview day, one of the tourguides mentioned some sort of program where a student could watch a transplantation surgery from the beginning (like actually fly on a plane to collect the organ) through the end...I think this program also involved opportunities to do other things, it seemed really interesting. Anyways, I was wondering if you knew what this program is called and if you could explain it to me a bit better (I forgot to pick up the sheet with the tourguides emails on it- I was severely sleep deprived).
Also, I think I was told that Columbia is very responsive to student feedback about their program. Is this true? (Again, my brain was very addled).
Thanks in advance!
Yes, as mentioned before this is a program where essentially the intern is too busy and so pages you to take his place. You join the resident and transplant fellow/attending on the trip down to remove the organs from the donor. I want to emphasize that it isn't just shadowing, they wouldn't pay for your plane ticket if they weren't getting something in return. You act as the second assist and get to help with the removal. Granted, you aren't being handed a scalpel and hacking away, but it is an experience that you won't get to do again until you are an intern, assuming you go into surgery. Almost everyone signs up for it because it is a very interesting look at medicine regardless of your career goals.
Yes, Columbia is very responsive to feedback
🙂.
I recently interviewed at Columbia and got some interesting impressions and vibes. I don't know how well my interview went, so maybe there is no use in trying to even sort out what I think about the school, but I would appreciate any opinions from current students or others who have interviewed here.
We only met four students "officially" - the tour guides + students at lunch. These students were very involved in the arts and said some things such as "it's great that it's a P/F school, if it wasn't, I'd have to study more and that would mean I couldn't participate as fully in extracurriculars." Such a large part of the time these students spent with us was spent talking about the P&S Club and various, mostly fine arts-centric extracurriculars that I left without nearly as good a sense of the students' views about the academic aspects of the school as I typically get from an interview day.
Add in the fact that first-years live in a dorm (albeit a pretty nice one with single rooms), and it seemed like the students who interacted with us were living a very college-like life. The enthusiasm they had for the school and all the non-academic activities available closely paralleled that of many college freshmen, but when it came to academics there were more sly comments about how great it is to slack under a P/F system than anything else.
I'm all for living a balanced lifestyle and do not want to be a miserable study machine in medical school. I want to attend a P/F school because I want to be friends, not competitors, with my classmates. But I don't want to go to the other extreme either -- I already had a great experience in college, with dorm living and having many different activities compete with academics. I think I'm ready to be a bit more focused in medical school.
Would this mean that I wouldn't fit in at Columbia? Or it it just a sign that 4 first-year students can't give a good cross-section of what an entire school is like?
I'm doing a poor job of describing a "vibe" I got because vibes are hard to describe in concrete language, but if what I'm saying resonates with anyone (in agreement or disagreement, or anything else) I'd appreciate hearing your views. This is a second account since my main SDN account has a bit too much personally identifiable detail for a post like this, but I will be checking PMs as well.
First I would just like to say that there are a lot of non-arts ECs as well. We have two student run clinics, public health advocacy programs, tutoring/teaching for middle schoolers to medical students, a squash club, a full rugby team, a running club, interests groups that do cool things such as above, etc etc. The arts tend to get emphasized, especially around the time of a play coming out (which was fabulous, btw).
Now, as far as academics go I think that you perceived something quite important. You said that you felt that Columbia students live a very college life like, and that is absolutely true. Dr. Frantz, the admissions dean for some thirty years, laid down a philosophy that medical schools should still be a university experience, with access to yes university level extra-curriculars, but also university level academics. At Columbia you are allowed to take up to two free classes in any school or department every semester, for example. People do take academics here very seriously, and I would say that we actually don't have any more free time for extra curriculars than other schools. What I do think, however, is that the Columbia curriculum is designed to take as much stress out of the education process as possible. What this does is not promote a culture of slacking off, as our exam scores remain the same as in past years when we were not p/f (I would also comment that a slacker's level of effort in medical school is still probably summa cum laude level effort in undergrad
).
It instead promotes a feeling of confidence to say "I have mastered this material", and then go and take advantage of the free time built into all pre-clinical programs across the country. You don't have a little voice in the back of your head nagging you that if you don't sit down and memorize random tables of information that are clearly out of scope that you might get a 99 instead of a 100 and not be able to get into plastics at harvard someday. That, I feel, is the strength of Columbia. The education system is based around the idea of choice.
You decide when you are comfortable with your knowledge level, so it isn't as if you will be criticized if you study more and do ECs less. You decide how you want to study, do you like lectures or pbl or both? You decide where to study, online or in person? You decide how you want to spend your 4-5 months of time during your fourth year, do you want to do research, write a sonnet, do an international program, do a second degree? Columbia picks students that they feel are high achieving, academically responsible, and independent enough to forge their unique path towards being a doctor. That doesn't mean they aren't there to help you, we have advising deans, free anonymous counseling and even psychiatric visits (up to 10 or 20 a year I believe), free review sessions for every hour of lecture during the first year, free tutoring, etc. It's just that, while this is a university environment, it is not a undergraduate one. The school treats us like the graduate students that we are.
I would also emphasize that the Columbia admissions committee intentionally does not patrol SDN and that none of the posters here have any affiliation with the admissions making process.
