Hardships/Circumstances. Is it worth mentioning in the app?

[MrOrange]

What I did want to ask is your opinion on hardships/unusual circumstances. Throughout my first 2 years of college in my hometown, I dealt with depression that did carry over some from high school. Father was a terrible alcoholic and so my relationship with him and mom both was minimal at best. As anyone would know who have grown up in an alcoholic's home, feeling good about yourself and being optimistic towards life is very difficult. Along with that I did have ear surgery x2 during my last semester before having transferred to another school. A benign (luckily) cyst was eroding away at my middle ear bones of one ear and so I lost about half my hearing. Over a year of seeing a couple of docs, getting tests and all took place before getting to a specialists who found of what it was and did the surgery. The first was at the beginning of the semester and the last at the end. I still had to work some hours while taking a load of chemistry, calculus and microbiology. I missed class and sometimes work to travel an hr away to see the doc for check-ups as well as to know when it would be ok to do the next surgery. In hindsight, I should've dropped the semester altogether. But also being the first of my close relatives to go to college and being just 18 and 19 at the time, I was figuring things out on my own.

I don’t like making excuses. I like to accept responsibility for my actions and results. However, I do feel that those two problems were things I could not control and did effect my GPA and life in a negative way. Would weighing these events and taking some sciences to show recent success be enough? How do I go about explaining my reason of hardship as well as how I overcame them and what I learned?

Thanks a bunch

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[Taty]

What I did want to ask is your opinion on hardships/unusual circumstances. Throughout my first 2 years of college in my hometown, I dealt with depression that did carry over some from high school. Father was a terrible alcoholic and so my relationship with him and mom both was minimal at best. As anyone would know who have grown up in an alcoholic's home, feeling good about yourself and being optimistic towards life is very difficult. Along with that I did have ear surgery x2 during my last semester before having transferred to another school. A benign (luckily) cyst was eroding away at my middle ear bones of one ear and so I lost about half my hearing. Over a year of seeing a couple of docs, getting tests and all took place before getting to a specialists who found of what it was and did the surgery. The first was at the beginning of the semester and the last at the end. I still had to work some hours while taking a load of chemistry, calculus and microbiology. I missed class and sometimes work to travel an hr away to see the doc for check-ups as well as to know when it would be ok to do the next surgery. In hindsight, I should've dropped the semester altogether. But also being the first of my close relatives to go to college and being just 18 and 19 at the time, I was figuring things out on my own.

I don’t like making excuses. I like to accept responsibility for my actions and results. However, I do feel that those two problems were things I could not control and did effect my GPA and life in a negative way. Would weighing these events and taking some sciences to show recent success be enough? How do I go about explaining my reason of hardship as well as how I overcame them and what I learned?

Thanks a bunch

Well what I would say now maybe a little harsh, but those experiences will help you maybe on interview, but you need to get an interview first. Try to have your grades as high as possible and decent MCAT score to get noticed..without it I dont think they will look at your hardships...

 

[twohearted]

I feel for you. I had depression for much of high school and during my first year of undergrad as well. Though family life was great and I had no physical problems as described to overcome, I still faced personal adveristy that resulted in abyssmal first year grades. I beat the depression that year, but I had no adademic abilities whatsoever because I never gained them in my depressed and therefore apathetic state. When I beat the depression, I pretty much had to learn the study skills that I should have had way back in high school. This resulted in a better, yet still unacceptable second year. However, I had an attitude change and third year I did a 3.5. Since then I have been getting 3.9-4.0s, every year. This pre-med process can be difficult, for people like us. I see students at my undergrad, getting 3.6s pretty consitantly, and I know they will most likely succeed in the application process. I have to think to myself: "how are they more academically suited than I?" After all, I am currently performing much better than they are, yet their cummulative gpa will be higher, hence their more likely success rate. I think it becomes important to maintain a positive attitude, yet remain realistic. Try not to dwell on the past. It will drain focus from what can be done now. Make a long term plan, and take sci courses to up that cummulative. Get your gpa above 3.0 and have several years of excellent grades to show prowess. Dedicate an extended amount of time to ECs that truely interest you and also show serious interest in medicine. Apply broadly and someone will be reasonable enough to realize that you have what it takes to be a great doctor. Maybe they will even see that you could be a better doc than someone with a higher cummulative, yet not as good recent gpa. Don't kid yourself though. If you can't consitantly make good grades now that you have matured, or if your MCAT just can't be improved, then maybe you shouldn't be a doctor. That doesn't sound like you though.
Good luck!

 

[Kateb4]

I'm in a similar situation. I found out I had cancer in my first semester away at school. I have decided that I will address my mistakes in school, and will mention that health issues and a few other factors were a hinderance. However, I am not going to put more than a few sentences about hardships, maybe a paragraph total addressing my past mistakes/excuses. If you make a big deal of it, then they will feel that it is still a prevalent factor in your life, and my feeling is to put the past in the past, and prove who I am now and that this person can succeed in medical school.

Best of luck to you!

 

[spicedmanna]

Try not to dwell on the past. It will drain focus from what can be done now. Make a long term plan, and take sci courses to up that cummulative. Get your gpa above 3.0 and have several years of excellent grades to show prowess. Dedicate an extended amount of time to ECs that truely interest you and also show serious interest in medicine. Apply broadly and someone will be reasonable enough to realize that you have what it takes to be a great doctor.

Try to have your grades as high as possible and decent MCAT score to get noticed..without it I dont think they will look at your hardships...

If you make a big deal of it, then they will feel that it is still a prevalent factor in your life, and my feeling is to put the past in the past, and prove who I am now and that this person can succeed in medical school.

I agree with the above.

 

[MrOrange]

Thank you all for providing advice on this. I know I cannot dwell on what happened in the past and can only focus on what I can control in terms of getting the high GPA, strong MCAT, continue getting patient contact, volunteering, research, etc. I'm continually reminding myself to remain optimistic everyday throughout my journey. As they say, Whether You Think You Can or Can't, You're Right.

 

[Abby Normal]

Echoing the above: first things first. Get the grades and get the MCAT scores to get the interview.

When composing your personal statement, consider sharing with the reader only those aspects of your hardships which have shaped you into a better human being and how this will make you a more humanistic, more compassionate, more conscientious physician. In other words, if your circumstances have had the effect of making you a better student and better person, then by all means, share this with the reader, and in that context too.

I'm 39 and graduating from med school this year. Undergraduate school did not start for me until 28 years old, and I was a single parent of two, living on miniscule amounts of money. Poverty can do wonders to help a person focus on studies and what is important in life.

Earlier in my life, I had the experience of being a patient. Three different physicians over a period of time did not listen to me tell them about my symptoms, which did not match the simple lab tests. End result? Nephrectomy. What did this do for me? Makes me compelled to carefully listen to patients. These type of experiences, plus great grades and MCAT scores=admission to med school with a scholarship.

Trite as it may sound, my life was so crappy that I learned to be a professional lemonade maker. It was either that or let life ruin me. A drive to work hard and succeed is a great form of the "fight or flight" mechanism.

So do some soul searching. What were the gifts in your personal tragedies? Having trouble finding them? Read this: The Glass Castle, by Jeannette Walls. Then see what you think. Share your process with the admissions committee, but do most of the sharing in your interview. Give them enough in your personal statement to make them want to know more.

Just keep in mind that it does not matter so much what happens to you but rather what you do with it.
And so long as their is consistent improvement in your grades, a rough spot of low grades does not matter so much.

Good luck!

 

[Beau Geste]

I'm in a similar situation. I found out I had cancer in my first semester away at school. I have decided that I will address my mistakes in school, and will mention that health issues and a few other factors were a hinderance. However, I am not going to put more than a few sentences about hardships, maybe a paragraph total addressing my past mistakes/excuses. If you make a big deal of it, then they will feel that it is still a prevalent factor in your life, and my feeling is to put the past in the past, and prove who I am now and that this person can succeed in medical school.

Best of luck to you!

Same here. Back then, I thought dropping out would make me a quitter, so I trudged through my first and second year dealing with cancer and treatments, and a not-so-stellar GPA. Fortunately my junior and senior year were great and got me into a grad program.

I definitely plan on talking about my cancer, but in a more positive light. The only hardship about it was choosing not to take time off and sacrificing my grades. Oh, and the sinking feeling you get when your doctor tells you that you have cancer.

but the bright side was that I had an intimate look into being a cancer patient and being in remission, and everything that went with it.

There's so much to my story though, so I'm not sure how much it will take up on my PS (I'll know when I write it!)