Hey guys, TwoSteveSquared and Harbindoc, I'm only too happy that I can be helpful to you. Come on ppl, we're in the same pot! We're fighting for the same ideals, and hopefully share similar aspirations - to make the best of this profession.. Idealism aside.. I'm starting at Davis, and yes one could surmise, I've had to apply more than once. But in my simple mind the process had never mattered what mattered was my view own philosophy of life. You know, to put it crudely, the road of earning yourself a place in MedSchool is a vicious process, You know what it's like. And oftentimes, in an attempt "to select the best" we get an unfortunate tendency to dissuade really good and capable people, who could make excellent doctors. If there was anything I could change, in their process I would erase prior "failures" upon "retake" of a class, and I would place that more emphasis on an interview and human side of a person than there is today. The concept of competing with oneself is useful to one's emotional and professional growth; the competition in professional setting is a code of life in our western world; but the "cut-throat competition" among medical students is a "wrong, misplaced" idea. We're all-- a family, we've chosen this path for good or for bad b/c we share the same ideals. And whatever we make it of it, we're the servants for the People and we're their guardians. Of anything in else in life, you won't find a more rewarding and noble profession…
You see, I've always refused to compete with Others, only with Myself.. At interviews, and I've had a few (something like a dozen) there were certain types of questions that I despised.. but in retrospect about my performance, I've had it all, an "F" in my first semester of O Chem, a plethora of C's and on the whole enough "excellence and premed appeal" that when I went to see an academic advisor at Cal (I did my undergrad at Berkeley) he looked at me with a quiet fascination and inimplicitly hinted that I would only be Smart to consider other occupations besides medicine. I cared not in the least, for his words, nor the words of others –the whole academic community, the Berkeley faculty, or the whole world combined, ..I've never in my life allowed others to tell me what I'm capable or not to be. I've simply never cared for what they thought… I was on a quest of my own, the rest hardly mattered. And had I been rejected two hundred times instead of a hundred times result would've been the same. So, yeah I guess it helped that I had attempted too much at Bereley-- like awful hours in the lab and tutoring O-chem to others, which had impacted my own academic performance, for the simple fact that there are only 24hrs in a fricken day…But please, believe me , you will always have a chance to compensate for the prior misdeeds by later improvements…the medical committees respect strong people and they respect determination in all of us, this is by far the dominant quality of a future doctor… The kinds of questions I've had to address in the interviews,.. I've had it all : the seeming weaknesses in my academic record, the please explain why you're any good questions, why you're applying here for the second time, when we've got thousands of capable candidates applying today and so forth you name it. Interviewfeedback.com is an excellent source as well as these forums to acquire a taste of what it's like. You see, I've never moped with interviewers about my "lacks of strength" , I've never "compared myself to other applicants" even when the interviewers pushed I only spoke about myself. I told them simply, "I hope you find responsive, open-minded, noble people to admit to your medical school; and if you decide that my classmate who's in the hallway with me waiting to be interviewed is better able to answer those objectives, I'd be the very first person to withdraw my application and tell you that he's First!" Also, I've never yielded to interviewers' imbecilic querries about "objective weaknesses" in your character. I had took issue with the way it's phrased, for it had appeared nothing less than perverse to suggest that one is "objective in recounting what he did "wrong" in life" Don't you think that there isn't anything more preposterous than the notion that in recounting your mistakes somehow you acquire motivation to move foreward.. How many battles were lost by Caesar and how many stones where laid into bricks before we heard about the Greatness of Rome. People grow through learning and their mistakes, but to emphasize the later and say thay your "insufficiency"defines your character, to me had appeared nothing less than perverse.. Believe in Yourself, for anything they tell you, your "weaknesses" are actually strengths, and if you have made it this far in your studies I'm confident you will succeed.
Sorry, it had come out so lengthy…if there's anything specific I could offer please let me know. You Will make it!
) Despite that, my overall is competitive and my MCATs are strong. 
