Need help with "Challenge/Adversity" Topics

[throwawaypremed143]

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[Mr.Smile12]

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[throwawaypremed143]

Thanks! I actually read through this before coming up with my topics - I just wanted to make sure I was on the right track

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Do you have prompts to help us with your feedback? It helps to know if a school is looking for something specific. And the character count. How did you answer OIE?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Hi everyone. I am planning on pre-writing my adversity essay, and have a few topics in mind. I wasn't sure which to choose and would love to hear y'all's opinions.

1. Growing up in an immigrant family, being the first one to go to college in the US and having to navigate being pre-med completely on my own

Either IMO: pick an example how you navigated and adjusted.

2. Dad dealing with alcohol addiction for the greater part of my childhood, and how I helped him realize his addiction + come to terms to seek help for it
- I don't know if talking about this will be negative, since it is personal.

It's more a challenge because you are trying to set goals to help the recovery. But for adversity, IMO you need to focus on how YOU accommodated before he realized he had a problem.

3. Dad was hospitalized for about a year due to acute renal failure because of a medication side effects. I kind of already spoke about this in "Other Impactful Experiences" because it resulted in low SES and hardships for me and my family growing up, which we are still experiencing today. I would spin this in another direction though, and talk about my dad's further hesitance about going to the doctor and learning the importance of open communication in medicine.

How does this new spin relate to you for the Challenge/Adversity prompt?

For challenges, I was thinking:
1. During a shadowing shift with an ER doc, I witnessed a 15-year-old die due to traumatic brain injuries after getting hit by a bus on a bike. Coming to terms with the seriousness of working at the emergency room was definitely a challenge for me, since everyone knows that deaths happen but when something like this happens right in front of you, it definitely teaches you a lot about coming to terms that doctors cannot save everyone.

Did the prompt ask you for a challenge you faced?

2. I had to cut off a toxic friendship after I realized that she was using me for help with homework and lab reports. While we were lab partners and thus were allowed to work together on reports, she would not contribute to the report and would instead copy verbatim what I wrote on my report. It was difficult to confront her about this and cut ties, but it taught me a lot about emotional maturity and resolving emotional conflicts.

Keep developing this. Depends on the prompt.

 

[throwawaypremed143]

It's more a challenge because you are trying to set goals to help the recovery. But for adversity, IMO you need to focus on how YOU accommodated before he realized he had a problem.

This is what I was planning on doing. I realize that the essay is meant to be about me and not him, and I was thinking about writing about how I changed the way I approach addiction as a whole, understanding that it is a disease that needs to be cared for properly rather than something that is in one's control.

Here are some of the prompts:
- Describe a significant challenge that has prepared you for the MD career path.
- Please use this space to describe any challenge or obstacle you have faced prior to your application to medical school and how you addressed that challenge.
- What makes you a unique individual? What challenges have you faced? How will these factors help you contribute to the diversity of the student body?
- What is the toughest feedback you ever received? How did you handle it and what did you learn from it?
- Describe a situation that you have thought to be unfair or unjust, whether towards yourself or towards others. How did you address the situation, if at all?
- Among the core competencies expected of entering medical students are the capacity for improvement as well as evidence of adaptability and resilience. Describe a situation or personal challenge that motivated you to evaluate your strengths and weaknesses, reassess or change your behavior, navigate an unexpected outcome and/or learn from your mistakes.
- We recognize applicants may have had to overcome significant obstacles or adversity in their lives. If you feel this applies to you, the admissions committee is interested to understand how these experiences may have impacted your personal, educational and/or professional path.
- Describe an obstacle you've overcome and how it defined you.
- We seek students who are self-aware, resilient and adaptable. Discuss a personal or professional challenge you’ve experienced and how you resolved it. Please include insight on what you learned about yourself as a result.
- Describe a time when you suffered a setback. How did you respond to this challenge?
- Tell us about a challenging problem you faced and how you resolved it. Include how the experience contributed to the person you are today.

I apologize if I added too many haha. I just want to approach this in the best way.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Here are some of the prompts:

Character limits?

I agree you should be able to come up with at least 5 different situations that can answer the aggregate of these prompts, not just one. Remember you will likely get a version of these questions in traditional interviews as well.

 

[throwawaypremed143]

Sorry for not including, most of them are around 1000 characters.

 

[throwawaypremed143]

Thanks for the advice! Could the shadowing experience be used for one of the prompts? The addiction? The friend situation?

Another thing I was thinking of was failing the practical exam for my school's emergency response team, which made me realize that I needed to reassess the way in which I approached medicine. Later that year (during the peak of COVID) I trained and received my EMT certification through consistent hard work after changing my methods of preparing.

I also could talk about not quite fitting in as a child of immigrants with my culture back home; I did not know the language properly and was bullied by my family members for it. I strived to learn the language in depth by engrossing myself in the culture (movies/songs/poetry) and am now pretty advanced; most people don't realize that I wasn't born there when I speak the language.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I had to cut off a toxic friendship

So this is a challenge, but how did you address it? You had a conversation and... then what happened? Did you just "break up"? Did you report your friend to the professor?

During a shadowing shift with an ER doc

I'm thinking how this was a challenge... it was during your observation, so it wasn't like you were actively involved in a problem, and this was a challenge you faced. IMO, challenge, approach, results, reflection... this example doesn't fit this paradigm.

 

[LizzyM]

I like the ER experience because it shows some deep thinking about what emergency medicine physicians do and what they are faced with on almost every shift. It also put the fragility of life and the horror of trauma front and center for a pre-med who had, perhaps, never seen anyone die, or been in the presence of someone recently deceased. Add to that the fact that the deceased was a teen who died of trauma and there is a existential challenge there that could make a very strong essay.

 

[throwawaypremed143]

I like the ER experience because it shows some deep thinking about what emergency medicine physicians do and what they are faced with on almost every shift. It also put the fragility of life and the horror of trauma front and center for a pre-med who had, perhaps, never seen anyone die, or been in the presence of someone recently deceased. Add to that the fact that the deceased was a teen who died of trauma and there is a existential challenge there that could make a very strong essay.

Thank you! The way I thought about it, there does not necessarily need to be a physical change - one can write about their way of thinking changing as a result of the challenge. I've had family members die before, but no one right before me and in such a tragic way. I really think this experience made the whole "doctors can't save everyone" thing a reality for me and completely changed the way I thought about medicine.