rant about current admissions process

[Goro]

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ECs are not a replacement for poor or substandard grades; they tell us four really important things:

• that you know what you're getting into,
• that you are altruistic and humanistic
• that you're going to like being around sick or injured people for the next 40 years.
• that you know what a doctor's day is like

Here's another way of looking at it: would you buy a new car without test driving it? Buy a new suit or dress without trying it on??

I've seen plenty, too many actually, of posts here from high GPA/high MCAT candidates who were rejected because they had little patient contact experience.

What are you going to say when asked how you know you are suited for a life of caring for the sick and suffering? “That you just know”? Imagine how that will go over!

This is really dumb. ECs are not very informative. They aren't standardized and anyone who went to college in the past 15 years knows people who have terrible ECs but make them look great on paper. I know a girl who got funding to go to India and helping build an "electronic medical record." Sounds great, but in reality what she did was chill out and work on her med school essays while the NGO did all the work installing computers that will soon break down.

Of course, some med schools will see BS for what it is--but others won't. And since med schools don't share information on applicants you get the bizarre phenomenon of schools ranked 2 7 and 15 admitting someone while 3,4,5,6,8,9,17,19, 22 don't. If ECs were so informative wouldn't people, you know, draw the same inferences from them?

When I talk to people about this i wonder if they are rationalizing or really believe what they are saying.

 

[Afford]

The problem is that there are many biomedical engineering majors who have very high grades. At my school about 25% of biomedical engineering majors graduated with a 3.8+ GPA. Granted there is grade inflation.