Hey y'all. This is my first time posting here, and I'm really hoping you guys can help me out. I ended up writing a novel's worth of backstory on how I got to this point in my life, but figured I'd save you guys the agony and hide it under a spoiler tag in case you want to read it after looking over everything else (i.e. the important stuff).
TL;DR: I was a biomedical engineering major in undergrad and did all the pre-med coursework in anticipation of matriculating after I graduated in 2012. I decided partway through that I liked the subject matter of my major so much that I wanted to get a master’s in first it so I could be better prepared to incorporate medical device IP generation into my practice after entering the medical field. Unfortunately, I started dealing with depression during my master’s program, convinced myself I wasn't cut out for med school, and pursued an industry job instead.
Got a job a few months out of school, but after getting treatment for depression decided I still wanted to pursue med school after all. Took MCAT, but didn’t have sufficient knowledge of the application process and ended up squandering my first application cycle by submitting my application materials too late. Received no interview invites. Got depressed again, quit my job and moved home. Depression got better, and I hoped I could find a better job here, but was unsuccessful, and, after a few months, realized that despite everything I still want to try to get into medical school. This time, however, I want to make sure I do it right. Now I’m seeking advice on how to make the most of the time I’ve got on my hands to optimize my next application, whenever that ends up being.
Here are the questions I would like some help with:
1. What kind of timeline should I be looking at?
The main quantitative weaknesses in my application are my relative lack of volunteering experience and clinical exposure. I need to figure out some volunteer opportunities and start doing some shadowing, but I'll save that for another thread. Regardless, I’m not altogether convinced that beefing those up between now and the end of May 2017 will be enough to convince adcoms of my dedication to, and thorough understanding of, this career path. My current belief is that I should plan to apply next year, for the 2018-19 cycle, in order to maximize my chances of getting accepted to my target (i.e. top-25) schools. This leads me to another question:
2. Should I pursue some kind of post-bacc if I have the time to do so?
This seems like a good idea to me for a number of reasons – I can get rec letters from professors I’ve worked with recently, which I think is really important; I’m missing a genetics class, which excludes me from a number of schools, so a post-bacc would allow me to shore up that requirement; and I would have pre-med advisement as well as potential volunteering and research opportunities available to boost my application.
My only misgivings about this path are that it’s fairly late in the application cycle and a lot of them have rolling admissions, which means my chances of getting in might already be zero. Additionally, not many are geared towards people in my particular situation. As an alternative, my undergrad institution allows me to take a number of courses as a post-graduate, so I may be able to create some kind of build-your-own-post-bacc there, but I think I’d miss out on a lot of the benefits of a real post-bacc.
3. How do I explain the gaps in my resume that resulted from my depression on AMCAS or in an interview?
This is definitely a touchy subject. I feel like if I’m completely forthright about my history of depression with the adcoms, they’ll only see me as a potential danger to a patient waiting to happen. Obviously I wouldn’t be pursuing this career path if I had any belief whatsoever that that could even possibly be the case, but since they don’t know me personally, I can’t imagine any way I could bring this up without it reflecting negatively on me.
On the other hand, if I’m not open about it, then all they’ll see is large swaths of time where I appear to have been doing nothing with my life, which I imagine will make me look unmotivated or undedicated. That probably wouldn’t go down too well with them either.
Can someone give me some advice on how to approach this?
My current application strengths and weaknesses:
Strengths:
-Stats: 3.94 UGrad GPA (discounting my first year), 3.88 Grad GPA; 3.63 UGrad and 3.83 Grad BCPM GPA per AMCAS; 521 MCAT (127 Bio, 132 Phys, 131 CARS, 131 Psych)
-2+ Years research experience
-Have a master’s degree
-Worked professionally in a medically-oriented field
Weaknesses:
-Track record of inconsistent success
-Limited clinical experience, even less volunteering experience
-Haven’t maintained relationships with previous recommenders or other professors, so I’m not convinced I could get good rec letters
In Conclusion:
If anyone has any general advice for me outside of the questions I asked, feel free to share. I'd also be happy to clarify if there's anything I left out or failed to describe in sufficient detail.
If you've gotten this far, thanks so much for taking the time to read this monstrosity, and I appreciate any advice you can give me from the bottom of my heart.
I started out in college as an electrical engineering major even though I didn’t have much interest in it as a career path, and ended up failing a lot of classes due to lack of effort. After getting academically dismissed after two semesters, I spent a year re-evaluating at community college, decided I wanted to pursue medicine, and turned myself around. I got back into my original university, changed majors to biomedical engineering, and did great for three more years before graduating with high honors in 2012. During this time I did a lot of research, but neglected the volunteering and clinical exposure components of my application.
Sometime around my fourth year of undergrad (1 before graduating), I decided I enjoyed the BME subject matter enough that I wanted to find a way to incorporate it into my practice by creating my own device IP and working with the industry to bring my ideas to fruition. In order to achieve this, I decided to go get a 1 or 2 year master’s degree for more in-depth coursework and to gain a better understanding of the medical device industry.
Unfortunately, somewhere around the time I started my 2-year master’s program, I started dealing with some depression and anxiety issues that have been plaguing me on-and-off ever since. These were exacerbated by the fact that my family, friends, and girlfriend (then of two years, currently of six) were all still back in the city where I’d done my undergrad, and I was now halfway across the country.
Thanks to some ridiculous mental gymnastics, I managed to convince myself that I wasn’t cut out for a career in medicine after all, despite the success that I’d had, and despite the fact that it had been my dream since I was 19, and resigned myself to entering the medical device industry instead. Fast forward a couple of years to 2014 and I graduated from my master’s program, having done well enough in my classes, but without having put forth much effort towards finding a job, since my heart was never really in it to begin with.
I moved back home to be close to the people I care about, but thanks to the combination of financial security, worsening depression, and lack of a clear direction moving forward, I was in no hurry to find a job. I submitted the occasional application and had a few interviews, but never had any success.
I finally got help for the depression in the subsequent months, and started to get back on the right track. I realized that I had been lying to myself about not wanting to pursue medicine, and a lot of my dissatisfaction with life came from the fact that I was moving away from that goal. I started making preparation to take the MCAT and apply during the 2015-16 cycle, though I didn’t really know where to look for advice on my application or the process itself, and jumped into it without understanding my shortcomings or the seriousness of the AMCAS timeline.
In what at the time seemed like a great thing at the time but in hindsight was actually horrible timing, I finally got a job offer to start in March of 2015 at an orthopedic implant start-up. This completely derailed my MCAT prep since I had to move, once again, halfway across the country from my girlfriend (who was now out of school and working) and my family and get settled into a new job in a new city. I scheduled myself to take the MCAT that July, knowing that, it being the new MCAT, my score would be released for over a month. I figured that delaying the completion of my primary by a couple of months wouldn’t be a big deal, but boy was I wrong. At any rate, when all was said and done and I finally had all of my secondaries submitted and letters in, it was approaching October. Of the ten schools to which I applied, I ended up not getting an interview at any of them. This was obviously very discouraging, but I realized post-mortem that my mismanagement of the timeline was largely to blame.
The months rolled by and I heard nothing from the schools I applied to. Meanwhile between increasing stress at work, worsening weather, loneliness from living far away from my loved ones, and the extreme difficulty of finding a therapist in that city, my depression grew pretty severe. I finally concluded in December of 2015 that I couldn’t cope with it anymore, and decided to quit and move back home once my lease was up in March.
That pretty much brings me to where I am now. I lost confidence in my chances at getting into med school, and talked myself once more into thinking it was a bad idea to begin with. As before, I had enough money available to get through several months of joblessness, so I wasn’t under a lot of pressure to find anything right away, and held out for something that I really liked and which was close to home.
Despite having several interviews since I moved back, I didn’t have any luck in finding another job. Ultimately, this past October, after a particularly bad interview, it finally clicked again that I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak, and that I was never going to find success or happiness in pursuing a career I didn’t have any interest in. In spite of that, moving back home, in addition to adopting a more active lifestyle, has been pretty effective in combating my depression, though I feel like my continuing lack of a sense of purpose in life has kept me from actually feeling happy.
After toying with lots of other career ideas over the past few months, I realized that I still want to go to medical school, and want to try to re-apply. The conundrum I’m facing now is how to go about it. As such, I’m appealing to you, SDN, to help me plan out what I should be doing going forward. Note that as I am still jobless, I am able and willing to devote 100% of my time towards improving my application in any way possible. Given my stats and the fact that I’m hopelessly ambitious, I intend to aim for a top-25 school if that’s realistically still within reach.
Sometime around my fourth year of undergrad (1 before graduating), I decided I enjoyed the BME subject matter enough that I wanted to find a way to incorporate it into my practice by creating my own device IP and working with the industry to bring my ideas to fruition. In order to achieve this, I decided to go get a 1 or 2 year master’s degree for more in-depth coursework and to gain a better understanding of the medical device industry.
Unfortunately, somewhere around the time I started my 2-year master’s program, I started dealing with some depression and anxiety issues that have been plaguing me on-and-off ever since. These were exacerbated by the fact that my family, friends, and girlfriend (then of two years, currently of six) were all still back in the city where I’d done my undergrad, and I was now halfway across the country.
Thanks to some ridiculous mental gymnastics, I managed to convince myself that I wasn’t cut out for a career in medicine after all, despite the success that I’d had, and despite the fact that it had been my dream since I was 19, and resigned myself to entering the medical device industry instead. Fast forward a couple of years to 2014 and I graduated from my master’s program, having done well enough in my classes, but without having put forth much effort towards finding a job, since my heart was never really in it to begin with.
I moved back home to be close to the people I care about, but thanks to the combination of financial security, worsening depression, and lack of a clear direction moving forward, I was in no hurry to find a job. I submitted the occasional application and had a few interviews, but never had any success.
I finally got help for the depression in the subsequent months, and started to get back on the right track. I realized that I had been lying to myself about not wanting to pursue medicine, and a lot of my dissatisfaction with life came from the fact that I was moving away from that goal. I started making preparation to take the MCAT and apply during the 2015-16 cycle, though I didn’t really know where to look for advice on my application or the process itself, and jumped into it without understanding my shortcomings or the seriousness of the AMCAS timeline.
In what at the time seemed like a great thing at the time but in hindsight was actually horrible timing, I finally got a job offer to start in March of 2015 at an orthopedic implant start-up. This completely derailed my MCAT prep since I had to move, once again, halfway across the country from my girlfriend (who was now out of school and working) and my family and get settled into a new job in a new city. I scheduled myself to take the MCAT that July, knowing that, it being the new MCAT, my score would be released for over a month. I figured that delaying the completion of my primary by a couple of months wouldn’t be a big deal, but boy was I wrong. At any rate, when all was said and done and I finally had all of my secondaries submitted and letters in, it was approaching October. Of the ten schools to which I applied, I ended up not getting an interview at any of them. This was obviously very discouraging, but I realized post-mortem that my mismanagement of the timeline was largely to blame.
The months rolled by and I heard nothing from the schools I applied to. Meanwhile between increasing stress at work, worsening weather, loneliness from living far away from my loved ones, and the extreme difficulty of finding a therapist in that city, my depression grew pretty severe. I finally concluded in December of 2015 that I couldn’t cope with it anymore, and decided to quit and move back home once my lease was up in March.
That pretty much brings me to where I am now. I lost confidence in my chances at getting into med school, and talked myself once more into thinking it was a bad idea to begin with. As before, I had enough money available to get through several months of joblessness, so I wasn’t under a lot of pressure to find anything right away, and held out for something that I really liked and which was close to home.
Despite having several interviews since I moved back, I didn’t have any luck in finding another job. Ultimately, this past October, after a particularly bad interview, it finally clicked again that I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak, and that I was never going to find success or happiness in pursuing a career I didn’t have any interest in. In spite of that, moving back home, in addition to adopting a more active lifestyle, has been pretty effective in combating my depression, though I feel like my continuing lack of a sense of purpose in life has kept me from actually feeling happy.
After toying with lots of other career ideas over the past few months, I realized that I still want to go to medical school, and want to try to re-apply. The conundrum I’m facing now is how to go about it. As such, I’m appealing to you, SDN, to help me plan out what I should be doing going forward. Note that as I am still jobless, I am able and willing to devote 100% of my time towards improving my application in any way possible. Given my stats and the fact that I’m hopelessly ambitious, I intend to aim for a top-25 school if that’s realistically still within reach.
TL;DR: I was a biomedical engineering major in undergrad and did all the pre-med coursework in anticipation of matriculating after I graduated in 2012. I decided partway through that I liked the subject matter of my major so much that I wanted to get a master’s in first it so I could be better prepared to incorporate medical device IP generation into my practice after entering the medical field. Unfortunately, I started dealing with depression during my master’s program, convinced myself I wasn't cut out for med school, and pursued an industry job instead.
Got a job a few months out of school, but after getting treatment for depression decided I still wanted to pursue med school after all. Took MCAT, but didn’t have sufficient knowledge of the application process and ended up squandering my first application cycle by submitting my application materials too late. Received no interview invites. Got depressed again, quit my job and moved home. Depression got better, and I hoped I could find a better job here, but was unsuccessful, and, after a few months, realized that despite everything I still want to try to get into medical school. This time, however, I want to make sure I do it right. Now I’m seeking advice on how to make the most of the time I’ve got on my hands to optimize my next application, whenever that ends up being.
Here are the questions I would like some help with:
1. What kind of timeline should I be looking at?
The main quantitative weaknesses in my application are my relative lack of volunteering experience and clinical exposure. I need to figure out some volunteer opportunities and start doing some shadowing, but I'll save that for another thread. Regardless, I’m not altogether convinced that beefing those up between now and the end of May 2017 will be enough to convince adcoms of my dedication to, and thorough understanding of, this career path. My current belief is that I should plan to apply next year, for the 2018-19 cycle, in order to maximize my chances of getting accepted to my target (i.e. top-25) schools. This leads me to another question:
2. Should I pursue some kind of post-bacc if I have the time to do so?
This seems like a good idea to me for a number of reasons – I can get rec letters from professors I’ve worked with recently, which I think is really important; I’m missing a genetics class, which excludes me from a number of schools, so a post-bacc would allow me to shore up that requirement; and I would have pre-med advisement as well as potential volunteering and research opportunities available to boost my application.
My only misgivings about this path are that it’s fairly late in the application cycle and a lot of them have rolling admissions, which means my chances of getting in might already be zero. Additionally, not many are geared towards people in my particular situation. As an alternative, my undergrad institution allows me to take a number of courses as a post-graduate, so I may be able to create some kind of build-your-own-post-bacc there, but I think I’d miss out on a lot of the benefits of a real post-bacc.
3. How do I explain the gaps in my resume that resulted from my depression on AMCAS or in an interview?
This is definitely a touchy subject. I feel like if I’m completely forthright about my history of depression with the adcoms, they’ll only see me as a potential danger to a patient waiting to happen. Obviously I wouldn’t be pursuing this career path if I had any belief whatsoever that that could even possibly be the case, but since they don’t know me personally, I can’t imagine any way I could bring this up without it reflecting negatively on me.
On the other hand, if I’m not open about it, then all they’ll see is large swaths of time where I appear to have been doing nothing with my life, which I imagine will make me look unmotivated or undedicated. That probably wouldn’t go down too well with them either.
Can someone give me some advice on how to approach this?
My current application strengths and weaknesses:
Strengths:
-Stats: 3.94 UGrad GPA (discounting my first year), 3.88 Grad GPA; 3.63 UGrad and 3.83 Grad BCPM GPA per AMCAS; 521 MCAT (127 Bio, 132 Phys, 131 CARS, 131 Psych)
-2+ Years research experience
-Have a master’s degree
-Worked professionally in a medically-oriented field
Weaknesses:
-Track record of inconsistent success
-Limited clinical experience, even less volunteering experience
-Haven’t maintained relationships with previous recommenders or other professors, so I’m not convinced I could get good rec letters
In Conclusion:
If anyone has any general advice for me outside of the questions I asked, feel free to share. I'd also be happy to clarify if there's anything I left out or failed to describe in sufficient detail.
If you've gotten this far, thanks so much for taking the time to read this monstrosity, and I appreciate any advice you can give me from the bottom of my heart.