Personal statement of a reformed acupuncturist

[mboaz]

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[sindadel]

I'd be worried about negativity in my personal statement. It might be better to say something along the lines of being ready to move beyond the limitations of acupuncture and being moved by the varied health need you saw as an acupuncturist.

 

[crazydiamond]

I'd be worried about negativity in my personal statement. It might be better to say something along the lines of being ready to move beyond the limitations of acupuncture and being moved by the varied health need you saw as an acupuncturist.

I agree with this. Many hospital systems also run alternative medicine clinics, not necessarily because they are effective, but because that's what the public wants. Not only would your PS be negative, but you don't know who's going to read it. For all you know, the person reading it is a firm believer in acupuncture (and yes, there are many physicians who are).

 

[DrMidlife]

Agree w/others.

Nobody who is in a position to review your med school app is really going to question the reasons you want to move from acupuncture into medicine. You don't have to preach to this choir. Don't put any energy into comparing/contrasting acupuncture & medicine, beyond highlighting things you learned as an acupuncturist that are going to make you a better doctor.

Also, do some digging into why you view acupuncture as health fraud, because that's a very black & white perspective into a necessarily gray area.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Scottish Chap]

So I'm looking for some advice regarding my personal statement. My "angle" is that I'm a licensed acupuncturist, but I don't practice because, frankly, health fraud is unethical. My position is basically that it's the process by which I came to understand that acupuncture is ineffectual (learning how to read and interpret the literature as a whole, understanding that anecdotal evidence is not data, etc.), and my ability to accept this and alter my position in accordance with the evidence that makes me a good candidate for admission, and will make me a good physician in the future. Obviously I'm going to tell a story and include some of my relevant (conventional) medical experiences, but I'd say that the main theme will be playing off of this idea of the credulous but well intentioned kid turned critical thinker.
Can any informed person out there offer some advice? Is this a bad idea? Should I just mention my experience and move on rather than make it a focal point? Any response will of course be taken with a grain of salt, but I'm interested to hear what someone in the know thinks of this story as it is a bit unusual. My understanding is that standing out is good, but obviously not if it's in a bad way. It's a bit of a fine line to walk. . . .
Thank you.

Very bad idea.

 

[behealthy]

Showing that you view acupuncture so negatively doesn't make me believe that you're logical, just that you're close minded.

 

[mboaz]

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[crazydiamond]

I'm not sure I agree with the assertion that learning from one's mistakes is "negative," but I'll make a concerted effort to keep things upbeat. Thank you.

Oh, no I didn't mean that learning from one's mistakes is "negative", but rather if you make "acupuncture is health fraud" the focal point, your PS will have a negative tone. I think as long as you focus more on the things you've learned, particularly the abstract things like critical thinking, your PS will naturally be more positive and upbeat. In other words, focus on what you've learned that will make you a better physician and avoid "bashing" your previous profession since the last thing you want to do is offend the reader.

I think you have a unique perspective and with some careful crafting, can make your point without standing out in a bad way.

 

[mboaz]

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[mboaz]

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[DrMidlife]

So close minded that I attended acupuncture school, passed my national boards and became licensed. That argument doesn't work on me. What else have you got smart guy?

Let me reiterate that I'm looking for informed opinions. Thank you.

You'd do well to reconsider the advice given you, and I suggest that it would work in your favor to think about whether defensiveness is constructive.

With all due respect, it's necessarily gray only to someone unfamiliar with the literature.

Which includes 99.9% of the people involved in med school admissions. Do you want to use your 15 seconds of attention to get yourself into med school, or do you want to use it to raise a contentious issue about which nobody honestly cares, in order to show, um, I don't know what you'd show. That you can use PubMed? Fantastic. You'll be the Acupuncture Is Fraud guy. Your reviewers don't care if it's fraud or not. Your reviewers want to know what kind of med student and doctor you'd be. Right now you come across as somebody who likes to pick fights and belittle people who haven't (gasp) read the literature.

(btw, it's necessarily gray because the placebo effect is 30%, and because your reviewer might have a PhD in anthropology.)

Best of luck to you.

 

[sumstorm]

Just as an outsider (not human pre-med) it sounds more like you're gearing up for a subject or talk on conventional vs alternative therapies than on credulous well-intentioned kid turned critical thinker. It also sounds like you have decided that anything 'magical'* isn't relevant to medicine, and yet it is pretty 'magical' that a fungus can destroy bacteria, that drugs originally developed from plants can treat pain and cancer, and that a variety of therapies DO help patients. It kind of comes off as viewing medicine as a 'single correct path' except humans aren't replicas where the same methods work equally well on everyone. It almost sounds like you feel like you were deceived and duped and you want to shout it from the platform of your application....rather than talking about what makes you a great med student and doctor. If you think that special strength is critical thinking, I think you could find a better way of showing it than by criticizing (no matter how justified you know it to be) a field that is not currently 100% rejected by the medical community.

* magical was just the word that popped in my head...use any term that means not easily explainable by our current abilities.

 

[JoyfulMD]

You'd do well to reconsider the advice given you, and I suggest that it would work in your favor to think about whether defensiveness is constructive.

Listen up, mboaz.

 

[mboaz]

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[DrMidlife]

Look, I hardly think that refuting an unprovoked ad hominem attack is "defensive." That's all I'll say about it.

C'mon, be smarter than this. You asked for advice on themes in your personal statement. You can feel attacked all you like, but frankly, a good summary of the entire med school app process is "ad hominem attack."

 

[Barfalamule]

I would focus more on what you liked about the acupuncture and how those positive experiences have helped awaken your curiosity and helped you strive to learn more. You can talk about the research you've done and why you moved away from acupuncture, but the best time to do this would be during your interviews, not in the personal statement.
As an interviewer reading this personal statement, I would be worried about someone who had gone through all this education only to research it's efficacy after the fact. A thought that places a burden on you before you've even walked through the door.
The suggestion:
Write your personal statement as you say. Then do a rewrite with just a mention of what it has done for your critical thinking skills, with maybe patient interaction or something else as a central theme, something that doesn't criticize, then compare and contrast.

 

[mboaz]

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[Scottish Chap]

I appreciate the articulate response.

You are welcome. I interviewed medical school applicants for three years. I saw varying caliber of applicants, and I obviously read many personal statements. It is vital to stay positive at all times. It is vital to refrain from saying or writing anything negative, judgmental, or aloof regarding any of your prior experiences. This may not reflect how you feel, but keep in mind that how you articulate your feelings in person and on paper evokes strong responses and, if the person making a decision on your file does not like how you've made them feel, you're done.

It's best to stay positive, warm, convey humility and humanism, and show how your past experiences lead you to medical school. Yes, you should stand out--but make sure you stand out for a good reason. You just can't predict the background of those making a decision on your file. Good luck!

 

[mboaz]

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[Scottish Chap]

Fair enough sir. It is not my intent to portray my past experience negatively in my personal statement, or to say anything that is overtly divisive. I do believe that I can tell my story in such a way that even an advocate of acupuncture and other CAM modalities will be interested without feeling alienated. My impression from you was that you thought this was a very bad idea because you thought I'd portray acupuncture as health fraud, or inject some other negative language into my statement. Rest assured that this has never been my intent. If my assumption was incorrect, and if you'd care to elucidate on your point, I will be genuinely grateful.

Please try not to over-analyze things or people either. Honestly, the med schools admissions people have radar for any perceived issues a person might have. They're that good (most of them). Good luck!

 

[Lindindite]

For what it's worth, I had two interesting discussions during my med school interviews about acupuncture. Neither interviewer offered even a hint as to where they stood on the efficacy of acupuncture or other alternative therapies, but both stated that if a patient felt better, then the treatment was worth doing.

 

[QofQuimica]

So close minded that I attended acupuncture school, passed my national boards and became licensed. That argument doesn't work on me. What else have you got smart guy?

Let me reiterate that I'm looking for informed opinions. Thank you.

If you aren't willing to have people disagree with you, then don't ask for our opinions. Shrug.

I've been a student adcom for two years (if that's informed enough for you). I agree with the others that being negative in any way (*especially* suggesting that acupuncture is in any way "fraud") is a very bad idea that would almost certainly lead to you being screened out pre-interview. Bashing another career, especially another health field career, is always risky, and in this case at least, it makes you look naive. There are plenty of medical practices that are done without any scientific "proof" of their superiority and sometimes even efficacy. What's to say that in ten years you won't be out there denouncing medicine because it's not all science neatly wrapped up and tied with a bow? Sure, evidence based medicine is all the new rage (and I'm not saying it shouldn't be), but it doesn't permeate every area of medicine. We do plenty of things a certain way in medicine just because that's the way the current attendings learned to do them from *their* attendings.

And let's face it, a lot of intelligent, educated people do believe in acupuncture. It's not necessarily alternative medicine now; it's mainstream in many places, along with chiropractic. There are practicing MD and DO physicians who use acupuncture for themselves and their families, send their patients for treatments, and swear by it. Government grants are awarded for acupuncture research, studies on acupuncture have been published by prestigious academic medical institutions in peer-reviewed journals, and many hospitals offer it as a service to their patients (including one of the hospitals where I've done some of my rotations). We can argue that its popularity is merely due to the placebo effect, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you there. But the placebo effect shouldn't be discounted so facilely when it's such a powerful phenomenon. We could do an awful lot of good for our patients if we knew how to harness it at will.

For all of these reasons, you're much better off taking the tact of being interested in integrative or holistic medicine, and making the theme of your PS something to the effect that you need an MD/DO degree because you want to have more tools in your toolbox to help people besides just the needles.

 

[karbala72]

I completely agree with the general consensus of suggestions that have been offered here.

Having myself completed four years of full-time TCM/acupuncture school, and now about to begin med school in August, I can in some respects relate to your position, although I thoroughly disagree with your categorical conclusions about acupuncture.

Regardless of my opinion, my own advice to you, based on my experience this last year as "the acupuncture guy turned mainstream" applicant is to be extremely reserved in any portrayal, positive or negative regarding CAM. I frankly feel that, while I did finally get an acceptance at a good school, my application was strongly colored by my background in acupuncture, even though I have many other significant work experiences and tried to highlight other aspects of my application. It dominated my interviews, and you had better know how to explain acupuncture in biomedical terms. Basically, like it or not, they're going to see you as the acupuncture guy, and I would imagine you wouldn't look too clever if you were bashing a field that you spent years getting your license in.

If I were you, I would focus on why you want to be a doctor, period. Unfortunately, it's not really a good thing to be at all controversial as a med school applicant. It's really quite a balancing act to make yourself not look like either a quack or a hypocrite, especially, in my experience, at the allopathic schools. I felt like the DO schools were way more open to acupuncture, even though I did eventually decide to attend an MD school. Anyway, I personally feel like being an acupuncturist generally worked against me.

Good luck. And for what it's worth, as someone who has devoted a lot of time and energy into trying to make sense of the different approaches of the East and West to health, I've concluded that there are a great many things we do not know and it's important to remember to stay humble and open-minded.

 

[mboaz]

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[karbala72]

Interesting story. Thanks for responding. If you have a bit of time, and are feeling benevolent, would you mind if I PM'ed you about your interview experiences some time in the future? I can relate to your description of the app. process as a balancing act. I'd thought that I could explain my change in position without being perceived as a hypocrite or worse, but maybe I should reconsider. I think that an acupuncturist being critical of acupuncture is actually quite clever, but that obviously doesn't appear to be a popular sentiment in this forum. Serious "liver qi" in the premed/med student world (myself included). Thank you sir. 😉

Feel free to PM me, though I'm by no means an expert.

And yeah, if you think you have liver qi now (non-acu people, read: stress/frustration), just wait until you've been hanging out on a waitlist for a couple of months.

 

[shindotp]

C'mon, be smarter than this. You asked for advice on themes in your personal statement. You can feel attacked all you like, but frankly, a good summary of the entire med school app process is "ad hominem attack."

Ummm, was that supposed to be smart and witty or something?

 

[anon3]

That argument doesn't work on me. What else have you got smart guy?

Let me reiterate that I'm looking for informed opinions. Thank you.

I'd refrain from these types of statements too. I had several interviews this year and completely agree with karbala72. I'm not even an accupuncturist, I just happen to be chinese, over 30 and one of my smaller volunteer experiences was at a clinic that had "Oriental Medicine" in its name (It did incorporate any eastern medicine.)

The questions and statements you're going to get from many interviewers (possibly playing devil's advocate) will be much more severe than behealthy. I had one interviewer say straight off the bat soon as we sat down that he did not believe in Oriental medicine and ask why I wasted my time with it. Another said he was very interested in studies indicating accupuncture to be more effective than the placebo effect and asked for any experiences I had in that regard. Saying their argument doesn't work or sarcastically calling them smart guy is a sure way to get a rejection letter. Best to change the confrontational aspects of your personality now than try to be someone you're not during interviews.

 

[mboaz]

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[anon3]

You're going to get strawman arguments and what you call personal attacks (personally I don't consider calling someone closeminded to be a personal attack but I've gotten worse during the interview circuit), that's what alot of us are trying to point out. They're known as stress interviews/questions and in my experience, they're more common among the higher ranked schools.

They want to see how much of a 'delight' you'll be around collegues and patients, especially difficult ones. Even if they don't ask about accupuncture, you're going to get moral/ethical dilemmas where they might not call you closeminded but they'll call you something else just to get a reaction of what's underneath your 'interview fascade.' But I guess some people just need to experience it for themselves.

Obviously everyone tries to control it during the interview. Its not that easy unless you are the same outside interviews as during interviews. Not just from my experience but I also saw people clearly getting flustered during group interviews (I went to one at Northwestern where I saw a girl had really eloquent answers just left speechless when one interviewer questioned if she was self-motivated to be a doctor and not just following a formula to do her extracurriculars.)