Academic Strengths & Weaknesses

[daemon14]

I'm chatting with a friend of mine who has gone through the application / interview process this year and he mentioned an interesting question he encountered on one school's secondary and another school's interview, which was to describe your academic strengths and weaknesses. We've been debating about what a proper answer to this would be, thought I'd bring it up here ...

How would you answer strengths? I was thinking "I know to ask for help when I don't know the answer" could be one because that indicates humility and willingness to learn from peers but my friend pointed out some schools don't want students bugging their professors when they can't figure things out on their own. Things like "I'm a diligent worker" or "I know my personal effective study habits" could seem too cliche.

As for weaknesses -- I feel like the whole "I procrastinate" line is way overused (and it doesn't describe me -- I'll start a paper with enough time and only turn it in a little bit before the deadline because I want to use all the time given to me). I have been known to "overstudy for certain tests" (which I think is bad because it wastes your time and energy that could go to other things) and I get "easily bored in easy classes/parts of classes that review things I already know." But I feel these two thread the line of the trite "I'm a perfectionist" response.


Thoughts? Anybody want to add in their potential academic strengths / weaknesses?

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[Malice]

What medical schools want to hear:

Strength: My checks never bounce.

Weakness: Kryptonite

 

[jeff0106]

Time management is what I used as a weakness but I talked about how I was improving it. I never got to my strengths though cause we got off topic. But it ended up not mattering.

Also, would academic strengths and weakness be more like certain types of coursework? It seems like asking for help or procrastination or whatever would be more of a personal weakness because they don't necessarily apply to academics. I may be over thinking this though.

 

[necoli]

If you get a 4.0, can you argue that you don't have any weaknesses?🙄

 

[familyaerospace]

My essay for my composite letter asked me a question like that (also included nonacademic weaknesses)

Strength was I do incredibly well in interdisciplinary fields.

Weakness is that I seem to have a block in my brain when trying to learn foreign languages, but I try to make up for it.

 

[nolookpass]

^Foreign language is something my school requires me to take and I am ridiculously scared of it. I took two years of Spanish in High School because it was also required and I totally hated it. It was something I was not interested in, could not grasp, and totally shot my GPA causing me to really have to pick it up in my other classes just to get back a good GPA. I have not yet taken a foreign language, probably will start Junior Year and I am dreading it, cause I know it will murder my GPA.

 

[circulus vitios]

I hate these questions because you have to lie to make your weaknesses less severe, or lie and spin it off as a good thing. I'm applying to medical school, not law school.

 

[daemon14]

Also, would academic strengths and weakness be more like certain types of coursework? It seems like asking for help or procrastination or whatever would be more of a personal weakness because they don't necessarily apply to academics. I may be over thinking this though.

That's a good point -- I'm not sure if they want an answer based on how we learn or what we learn. I feel like saying "Science is a strength of mine" is trite even though it's true for me.

 

[Mithril]

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[PreMedder]

I hate these questions because you have to lie to make your weaknesses less severe, or lie and spin it off as a good thing. I'm applying to medical school, not law school.

/thread.