essay topics

[epsilonprodigy]

Just can't sleep, worried about the exam I took today.... so started thinking about essay topics (relaxing, I know...)

Here are a few possibilities of things I could mention:

- Being an ER/PICU nurse. Funny stuff, sad stuff? The profoundness of children and the way they inspire me to help the inner-city populations, particularly immigrants? Leading into what pushed me to learn Spanish and Amharic.

- Medical mission work, how it taught me to be resourceful and just to dig in and do the job rather than kvetching about what you don't have available

-Donating bone marrow. Really powerful experience, though can't say I *did* much besides be born with the right HLA markers

-Seeing my family muddle through the health care system due to my chronically ill grandmother who lived with us until her death when I was 12. I think this is why I have always wanted to be a doctor- practically grew up in a hospital but it wasn't a bad thing at all... strangely I love them, and learned early on the difference a caring practitioner can make.

Having a baby in college and making it anyway- how this also inspired me to work with the underprivileged, knowing what it's like to go without and the heavy realization that I am the exception, rather than the rule, for making it through Hopkins SON with a baby on my hip


*sigh* it always looks like you've done so much cool stuff, on paper. And by "you", I mean "I".... so, why don't I feel so cool?

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[bydotte]

I'll stroke you...

You have great experiences for an essay. Come up with ONE profound experience (I would pick something related to your clinical experience) and explain how it changed your life and made you want to become a doctor. Center your essay on that. It should your major theme throughout. People would rather read one good story than the same 5 paragraphs everyone else writes. Then work the rest of the stuff into your story, and WHY you did each of those altruistic things, especially why you became a nurse, and how they helped prepare you to become a great doctor. Definitely mention your child in there somewhere.

 

[student1799]

You ARE cool--but you still have to play it smart. When you wade into the world of med school apps, you'll be astonished to learn that many of your 100% genuine feelings and experiences will be dismissed as "cliches" by adcoms who have seen many thousands of applications (and, of course, rejected the vast majority of them). So you have to sift through all your potential material and try to choose what will make the best essay, as seen by an adcom/MD.

With the above in mind, I think your PICU nursing experience is the most promising topic, because you probably have some wonderful stories to relate about your dealings with patients and their families. When I was writing my PS last year, I was told by several different people--including a former adcom and a trusted MD who knows me well--that adcoms "love clinical stories," and that it's almost mandatory to have some in your PS. Their rationale was that, with so many apps to read, essays have trouble attracting an adcom's attention unless there is a colorful or dramatic anecdote that will stick in their mind. Also, these anecdotes show that you've had high-quality clinical expeience and really understand the daily realities of medicine.

I applaud you for making it through nursing school with an infant (I'm a mother of 2 myself, and much older than most applicants), but I would urge you to think twice about mentioning this in your PS. There's still a double standard out there regarding mothers in med school (see my reply to the "Optional seconday essays" thread for details), and I think you could hurt yourself by doing this. I think a better approach would be to line up an LOR writer who knows you really well, and get them to mention this in their recommendation. ("X is an amazing student, and she even had a baby while making top grades at nursing school ...") This way, you get props for your achievement, as well and the endorsement of an authority figure, without having to praise YOURSELF in your PS (which could be frowned upon).

Once you have a draft of your PS, make sure to show it to at least one MD for feedback. (A nursing person doesn't count, because it's the MD club you're trying to get into. So it's their "secret handshake" you'll have to learn.) You may find some of their reactions and suggestions to be a bit strange, but I would really take them seriously if you want the best possible shot at getting into med school.

Good luck.