Reapplicant help

[ron_johnson]

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[wysdoc]

I thinking keeping your clinical job would be just fine during your reapplication year.

Your personal statement, though grammatically correct, uses up far too much precious word space talking about past things you decided against in favor of medicine, without making a strong statement of “why medicine”. It will help you to focus on your choice and your experiences that support it, when you rewrite it.

 

[chilly_md]

What additional hours would you have for this cycle?

I suggest continuing with the food distribution volunteering as opposed to the ESL teaching. And agree that you should rewrite your PS to focus on answering “why medicine”. Go over all your other written material as well.

What was your upward trend like year by year (especially the sGPA)? It would be worthwhile to check the MSAR and ensure you didn’t apply to schools where your sGPA was below the 10th percentile.

 

[chilly_md]

>2000 additional hours as a scribe/MA at ENT clinic
100-200 additional hours as ESL teacher (I can't continue with food dist. program because I have moved from where my college is)

BCPM upward trend is 3.09 freshman year, 3.13 sophomore year, n/a junior, 3.93 for combined summer before senior year and senior year. More than half of my BCPM credits were completed in that last summer+senior year section.

Try some other community service in your area (soup kitchen, food bank, Habitat for Humanity etc). Primary care shadowing as well to get to 50 hours since your only exposure has been to ENT.

 

[TCurlz]

I would try to make your personal statement more showing less telling and focus on stories from your clinical/nonclinical experience

 

[Mr.Smile12]

What about your work/activities?

 

[ron_johnson]

deleted

 

[chilly_md]

You had 6 activities, one of which was a hobby and the other shadowing an ENT for 15 hours. Scribing hours can count as shadowing, just be sure not to double count the same hours.

It comes across that you did not do much in college. You got your clinical experience in 1 year and your summers were spent doing the landscaping work. That leaves a lot of time leftover. With your major being CS and a lot of your descriptions/PS being about how you weren’t sure you wanted to pursue medicine and you just wanting to do something that didn’t involve a computer (which is ironic because there are discussions about how doctors see the patient as lab values and notes on the monitor), you don’t seem to have a reason for becoming a physician. More like you majored in something you didn’t like and wanted to try something else.

 

[Faha]

It is not your style of writing that is the problem, rather your subject matter. Mentioning that you slept through a chemistry class and were late for an exam presents you in a negative light. Concentrate only on the positive reasons why you choose. medicine, not about other careers you decided not to follow. You also need 30 hours of primary care shadowing before you apply. Also another 100 hours with the homeless will be helpful.
A MA position in a pediatric office is a good idea.
For schools when you reapply I suggest these:
UVA
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
Virginia Tech
West Virginia
George Washington
Duke
Wake Forest
USF Morsani
Miami
Vanderbilt
Washington University (in St. Louis-they like high MCAT scores)
St. Louis
Tulane
Northwestern
Western Michigan
Cincinnati
Ohio State
Jefferson
Temple
Pittsburgh
Hackensack
Hofstra
Einstein
Mount Sinai
Rochester
Tufts
Kaiser
USC Keck

 

[gyngyn]

You don't need to spell out ESL...

 

[ron_johnson]

Thanks everyone for the replies, very helpful

 

[DPTtoMD23]

So I read your personal statement as linked above, and I have to say I really hope you rewrite everything from scratch. The biggest thing I noticed was the utter lack of passion towards medicine, no connection with you and other people, or the humanity of medicine. Most careers in medicine are clinical and patient-facing, and you will have to demonstrate a passion for working with and talking to people. Everything you spoke about related only to academics, classes you took, and how you felt about certain subjects. I have to ask, does organic chemistry really drive people toward medicine? Will your initial enjoyment of organic chemistry keep you sane throughout the grueling hours of residency and 24-hour shifts?

You seem to have many hours working in clinical settings and specifically as a scribe. If I were an admissions committee member I would want to read a story about a time you felt emotionally impacted by a patient or did something uncomfortable or new in this setting, and how that made you feel invested in this career path. You mention how every patient is different, diverse, etc but have no specific story to connect you to these patients. Start journaling your patient encounters. If the only thing medicine means to you is “a career, I guess, because nothing else worked out” you will not be selected for an interview.

I also noticed you brought up some concerns with a career in medicine but didn’t address them. You admit you were worried about the long years of training and heavy coursework but didn’t mention that you changed how you feel about this. I wouldn’t mention any hesitation towards medicine in a way that you can’t directly address, backed up with experience, how you were absolutely proved wrong and that you know you can do it. If you don’t really have that experience I would leave out mentioning hesitation.

Please don’t take this personally, but overall as a reader, I found it very hard to ‘like’ you. Your passages made you appear as a noncommittal, wishy-washy, passionless student, just sort of letting the tide take you wherever. In your next draft, I would lead with an impactful patient story and let the rest of the paragraphs support your drive toward MEDICINE. Anything about other career paths or hobbies in the personal statement just takes away from your hypothetical future as a physician.

Good luck!

 

[Glassdyr]

So I read your personal statement as linked above, and I have to say I really hope you rewrite everything from scratch. The biggest thing I noticed was the utter lack of passion towards medicine, no connection with you and other people, or the humanity of medicine. Most careers in medicine are clinical and patient-facing, and you will have to demonstrate a passion for working with and talking to people. Everything you spoke about related only to academics, classes you took, and how you felt about certain subjects. I have to ask, does organic chemistry really drive people toward medicine? Will your initial enjoyment of organic chemistry keep you sane throughout the grueling hours of residency and 24-hour shifts?

You seem to have many hours working in clinical settings and specifically as a scribe. If I were an admissions committee member I would want to read a story about a time you felt emotionally impacted by a patient or did something uncomfortable or new in this setting, and how that make you feel invested in this career path. You mention how every patient is different, diverse, etc but have no specific story to connect you to these patients. Start journaling your patient encounters. If the only thing medicine means to you is “a career, I guess, because nothing else worked out” you will not be selected for an interview.

I also noticed you brought up some concerns with a career in medicine but didn’t address them. You admit you were worried about the long years of training and heavy coursework but didn’t mention that you changed how you feel about this. I wouldn’t mention any hesitation towards medicine in a way that you can’t directly address, backed up with experience, how you were absolutely proved wrong and that you know you can do it. If you don’t really have that experience I would leave out mentioning hesitation.

Please don’t take this personally, but overall as a reader, I found it very hard to ‘like’ you. Your passages made you appear as a noncommittal, wishy-washy, passionless student, just sort of letting the tide take you wherever. In your next draft, I would lead with an impactful patient story and let the rest of the paragraphs support your drive toward MEDICINE. Anything about other career paths or hobbies in the personal statement just takes away from your hypothetical future as a physician.

Good luck!

Seconded on almost every point. I am someone who was accepted based on the strength of my PS, not my admittedly mediocre resume, so I take mine seriously. Your application was likely shelved after the very first paragraph, where you introduce yourself as someone who:
> Wrote off medicine as too difficult and too studious
> Sleeps through lectures and shows up >90min late to class
> Believes professors write difficult exams to be PITAs to their students, not to challenge them

Even after three paragraphs of wandering around to different career paths, you were still "lukewarm" about medicine.

 

[ron_johnson]

deleted

 

[ron_johnson]

deleted

 

[chilly_md]

Don't get me wrong, I do have a lot of great memories from interacting with patients, mostly from the patients that have been to the clinic a million times and I have developed a relationship with. Maybe it's just that it feels weird to me to talk about ordinary, everyday interactions in response to the question "why do you want to go to medical school". I want to go to medical school because I really like medicine, not because I helped one particular patient and it was super epic.

It is perfectly fine to write about what you've learned from seeing the same patients multiple times and how you have enjoyed developing relationships with patients. You do not need a dramatic ED scene, and I encourage you to stay away from that kind of writing as well. That is a misconception people have since some older personal statements that were published in articles and books relied on this kind of setting heavily.

 

[Just D.O. it]

I’ve considered a lot of other options, but I think medicine suits me quite well. Subjectively, it also just feels like the right way to go. At this point it’s hard to see myself doing anything else, so here’s hoping you accept me.

I know actual adcoms have responded and haven't mentioned it, so maybe I'm being overly critical, but these last few sentences to me don't convey the appropriate level of formality and seriousness I would expect in a professional school application, especially that last bolded statement.

 

[total_tradegy22]

I think this is really a big thing that I struggled with. I can think of lots of times I felt emotional/impacted at work. Being in the room during a new cancer diagnosis (terrible feeling). Asking a patient how they feel at a postop visit and being told that they feel fantastic. Pushing a patient's wheelchair out to their car (I love doing this). One patient, an very severe older guy, told me he thought I would make a great doctor. He didn't just say it, he looked me in the eye for a solid two or three seconds and really meant it, like he wanted me to take it to heart. That felt really good.

I can also think of things that were uncomfortable - doing a nasopharyngeal covid swab on a child (feels bad). The first few times I talked to patients about their test results. Relaying a patient's history to one of the doctors and forgetting stuff.

I still haven't fully figured out how to use these experiences to answer the question "why medicine". Perhaps I am a person more motivated by feelings than facts and I have a hard time pinning down why I feel the way I do about certain things. I am going to figure it out though.

It can be hard to pin down which experiences best represent those feelings that can be hard to put into words. It might help to first just draft up a bunch of paragraphs about meaningful experiences and then see if any common themes arise out of them. Then you can try to organize your strongest narrative out of those ideas and themes. This will help you avoid falling into the "chronology" trap where you are just explaining year by year what you did.

 

[EmperorK]

After reading us PS: You got to get someone who got in medicine to help you. A lot of the issues I see are field-like. Just the tone of the PS isn't good. But like many examples, you are not looking good, just odd structuring if u want my feedback, PM me

I cannot stress that you can't do this one alone.