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Imagine you're sitting in a room. You're anxiously waiting to be called in for your interview. To your left is Susie Chung: pearly white teeth, gym rat, genius-level IQ, looks like she might be wearing knee-pads. To your right is Randy Jones: half-black and half-Cherokee, grew up in destitute poverty, graduated high school at age 13, has a LizzyM that's higher than your grandma's age. You realize you're in the big leagues now. You're at Harvard. You're at Hopkins. You're at Stanford. You may be a tad nervous, but your eyes are on the prize. Go get 'em, tiger.
OK, now stop. If your goal is to go to Vanderbilt or UChicago or Case Western, then don't continue reading this guide. Sorry, but I'm not writing this for underachievers. This is a guide for the future Susies and Randys, not the future Cheryls and Tylers. T10 or bust.
So how do you become a top dog? How do you become a big baller? How do you go from being mediocre (i.e., Northwestern-tier) to being elite (i.e., UCSF-tier)? Great questions. To answer them, I've created this guide for the SDN community. My credentials? I'm matriculating into Harvard Medical School in the fall. I'm a high achiever, and I did what had to be done. If you want to be like me, here's what you have to do:
1. Go to an elite undergraduate university: Medical schools want winners. If you go to a loser college, don't expect WUSTL adcoms to read your application and think "winner." Don't settle for less than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford. Once you start considering schools worse than those, you're taking a serious gamble.
2. Get a perfect MCAT score and GPA: Self-explanatory.
3. Be president of at least 7 clubs: From experience, I've found seven to be the magic number. (A lot of people have asked me about this, so I thought I'd respond here: No, student body Vice President does not count. Vice President might be great if you want to go to Weill or Emory, but it's not enough to get into a real medical school.)
4. Get published in Nature as a sole author: Some of you might be saying, "Ohh, but I'm only an undergraduate!" Sorry, but those sorts of excuses are for prospective Mount Sinai students. If you want a piece of the Mayo Clinic pie, then you're going to need some groundbreaking biomedical research under your belt. Start your own NIH-funded lab at your university, recruit some ambitious PhD students (whom you'll ultimately give no formal credit to), and apply some elbow grease. Do you want the T10 MD or not?
5. Take volunteering to the next level: Go to a third-world country and have photos taken of you with as many sick infants and toddlers as possible. When you return back home, assign names to the sick children in the photos and write brief fictional biographies for them. Now you have material to use for all of your essays.
6. Do not write your own essays: Spend $5,000 or so to have English literature doctoral students write and edit all of your essays for you. If the essays aren't good enough, report them to their faculty advisors and demand your money back. In the grand scheme of things, $5,000 isn't that much money.
7. Take a genetic test: There's no better time to explore your ethnic heritage than immediately prior to the medical school application cycle. Slobber into your little cup. It's time to play the genetic lottery. You're 3.8% sub-Saharan African? Start thinking about that diversity essay.
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It was honestly my privilege to create this short guide for you. It's my way of giving back. You're welcome, pre-meds of SDN, and best of luck in all of your journey toward becoming a big baller like me. (If you didn't like this guide, then you're probably a Cheryl or Tyler; you're a bad person, and you'll probably make a terrible doctor.)
Always remember: T10 or bust. Not all MDs are created equal.
(*For the purpose of this guide, NYU doesn't count as a T10 program. USNWR made a mistake.)
OK, now stop. If your goal is to go to Vanderbilt or UChicago or Case Western, then don't continue reading this guide. Sorry, but I'm not writing this for underachievers. This is a guide for the future Susies and Randys, not the future Cheryls and Tylers. T10 or bust.
So how do you become a top dog? How do you become a big baller? How do you go from being mediocre (i.e., Northwestern-tier) to being elite (i.e., UCSF-tier)? Great questions. To answer them, I've created this guide for the SDN community. My credentials? I'm matriculating into Harvard Medical School in the fall. I'm a high achiever, and I did what had to be done. If you want to be like me, here's what you have to do:
1. Go to an elite undergraduate university: Medical schools want winners. If you go to a loser college, don't expect WUSTL adcoms to read your application and think "winner." Don't settle for less than Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford. Once you start considering schools worse than those, you're taking a serious gamble.
2. Get a perfect MCAT score and GPA: Self-explanatory.
3. Be president of at least 7 clubs: From experience, I've found seven to be the magic number. (A lot of people have asked me about this, so I thought I'd respond here: No, student body Vice President does not count. Vice President might be great if you want to go to Weill or Emory, but it's not enough to get into a real medical school.)
4. Get published in Nature as a sole author: Some of you might be saying, "Ohh, but I'm only an undergraduate!" Sorry, but those sorts of excuses are for prospective Mount Sinai students. If you want a piece of the Mayo Clinic pie, then you're going to need some groundbreaking biomedical research under your belt. Start your own NIH-funded lab at your university, recruit some ambitious PhD students (whom you'll ultimately give no formal credit to), and apply some elbow grease. Do you want the T10 MD or not?
5. Take volunteering to the next level: Go to a third-world country and have photos taken of you with as many sick infants and toddlers as possible. When you return back home, assign names to the sick children in the photos and write brief fictional biographies for them. Now you have material to use for all of your essays.
6. Do not write your own essays: Spend $5,000 or so to have English literature doctoral students write and edit all of your essays for you. If the essays aren't good enough, report them to their faculty advisors and demand your money back. In the grand scheme of things, $5,000 isn't that much money.
7. Take a genetic test: There's no better time to explore your ethnic heritage than immediately prior to the medical school application cycle. Slobber into your little cup. It's time to play the genetic lottery. You're 3.8% sub-Saharan African? Start thinking about that diversity essay.
---
It was honestly my privilege to create this short guide for you. It's my way of giving back. You're welcome, pre-meds of SDN, and best of luck in all of your journey toward becoming a big baller like me. (If you didn't like this guide, then you're probably a Cheryl or Tyler; you're a bad person, and you'll probably make a terrible doctor.)
Always remember: T10 or bust. Not all MDs are created equal.
(*For the purpose of this guide, NYU doesn't count as a T10 program. USNWR made a mistake.)
