The Stupidity of Admissions

[EndSong]

Long pensive post ahead, forgiveness please...

I wonder if there's really a point to the admissions process. I want to ask, to what end does this admissions process serve?

You may say it is to get med school. That is very true from the applicant's perspective. But what about the medical school?

Medical schools have a large number of highly qualified applicants applying to their school nowadays. And possibly many more applicants who think that they can get in with mediocre or poor numbers/stats.

It makes me wonder why we have the admissions process? How exactly does a secondary and, if lucky enough, a 30 minute interview determine one's fitness to be a good physician?

At best, this battery of diagnostics can only determine that

1) The candidate is intelligent to speak English and communicate some form of abstract ideas, i.e. "why you want to be a doctor"
2) The candidate is not insane and doesn't have weird, offensive, strange ticks that would alienate patients and co-workers
3) The candidate is so seriously interested in medicine to put his TIme and Money where his mouth is, enough to sit down, write a bunch of redundant essays and shell out 50-100 bucks to tell a school to "LOOK AT ME" and then shell out another couple hundred to fly off some place, buy a suit and look and act nicely

Other than this, the secondary and interview can determine nothing else. It makes me wonder what the other small battery of tests is actually even there for. What does it matter how long it takes for you to ask for help in opening a window that is impossible to open? What does it matter if you forgot to smile and say hello to someone who was walking about the hospital?

So if an interview/secondary can only tell so much, why do we stress so much over it?

Be polite, mature, kind, yourself, and you should be fine.

The only logical conclusion I can come to is that

The application process only exists to give a justification for rejection based on purely arbitrary terms. In other words, as so many have said, it is a crap shoot. It allows medical schools to discriminate without being blatant about it. It allows some schools to say they have too many Jews and they need a few more blacks for class diversity. It allows interviewers to reject someone just because that person resembles someone they hate.

But does it make the entering class any better? I don't believe it does. Despite the numerous hurdles they place, a given medical school class is inevitably filled with slackers, people who quit med school and no small number of people that will become very tired, angry doctors.

I wonder if making people write essays and fly out for interviews has truly improved the woeful quality of doctors that existed in the past - some of whom discovered useful things like the vectors for yellow fever or the benefits of washing hands.

I question the system. Is it working? If so, whom is it working for?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[drmota]

it always makes me wonder what things would be like if we interviewed people for more menial positions. like the last time i was at the barbershop i was asking questions like:

"why did you want to be a barber?"
"did your parents pressure you into being a barber?"
"how dedicated ARE you to hair?"

or if you got to interview waiters before they served you...

"so, during your sophomore year you dropped a plate or two, how can i trust you're not gonna do the same thing with my meal?"
"what are the largest problems facing waiters today? how do you resolve we fix them?"
"what attracted you to work at IHOP?"
"why specifically do you want to serve ME? you want my telephone number? do i look easy to you? no, YOU're the slut. whatever lets make out"

-dr. mota

 

[gary5]

Adcoms can tell by GPA/MCAT if you're qualfied. So, they use the secondary to decide if they like you. Then you have the interview and they decide if they STILL like you. Then they make offers.

People who really blow their interviews do so by focusing narrowly on the questions. It's not about the questions.

 

[Depakote]

I just love that I'm supposed to neurotically call schools repeatedly in order to show interest.

As if filing secondaries and primaries didn't convey that in the first place.

I figure they'll tell me when I've got an interview, my status isn't going to change, but I still have to call or they're not going to think I care.

This is worse than dating.

 

[RxnMan]

it always makes me wonder what things would be like if we interviewed people for more menial positions..."why did you want to be a barber?"

I never question someone who's standing over me with clippers in one hand and scissors in the other aimed at my head!

or if you got to interview waiters before they served you...

...wouldn't the serve time increase?

 

[NikkiFSU]

you know what this reminded me of...this article in the october 2005 college playboy magazine that's randomly sitting in the living room. It's called "earnest goes to college" or something and is super long but it is a really good comparison of college in the 1970's and 80's to now, in terms of students having a decent college experience, going to school to LEARN not to get grades, students having a life, stress levels, ridiculous acts of administration to stop all fun, streaking on campuses, etc. It mentions hypercompetition and WVU and another school graduating their first QUINTUPLE majors and all kinds of crazy stuff.....people busting their @ss doing all kinds of EC's because they don't wanna fail in life not because they like them, and the relentless battle to be the best in everything. You should try to read it....it's a great story.

I finished it and immediately thought to myself, anyone applying to medical school understands this more than everyone else. Seriously when people say applying is DEMORALIZING they are not lying and I now understand that. From day one of deciding to be a doctor we go through a weed-out process and I don't believe for a second that anyone reading this hasn't gotten pissed about an A- before ...or felt like no matter WHAT they do, there will always be so many people ahead of the game more than they are. I mean COME ON people post on here worried about PETTY things that college time should not be wasted on. "Should i retake the MCAT with a 33? Am I competitive with a 3.9? Is an B+ acceptable for organic?" I think some of this competition and weeding-out is obv. good (we can't have dummies in charge of people's lives) but I think the process creates a ton of nervous, anxious, overworked, stressed, snotty or insecure people, especially since we do the same thing all over again applying for residency.

And to the OP, I agree about the "tired, angry" doctors. More than 75% of doctors I have been to SUCK. My GP is one of those "a pill fixes everything" people, go figure his wife is a pharmaceutical company rep. He is always in a rush to get me out of the room so he writes another Rx. He got really pissy when he found out I had interviews (this past summer he goes, "You really think you will get interviews here" I think he is bitter about going to NYCOM bc D.O. was a last resort) My neurologist is not that bad but completely rushes through the appt. making me feel bad for wasting his time. My new OBGYN, even though I've seen him like 4 times in the past 3 months, has no recollection of my medical problems, situation, or how we were supposed to treat them and likes to pass my ?'s off to someone else for me to contact. None of these doctors ever take the time to really EXPLAIN what is wrong/why it is happening, but thankfully I understand the concepts but what about everyone else who doesn't study bio and leaves the appt. more confused than they came? There are lots of other doctors I haven't liked, a few I loved, but I'm sure people getting denied every year could do better than them at this.
The schools asking for secondary essays....I admit they SUCKED to write but those are the schools who are more interested in your personality and what not, vs. a school asking for $100 and "who are you related to that works here?" Maybe if schools weren't putting us into a formula, scrutinizing our B+'s and obsessed with 4.0's and 38 MCATs they would not pass off as many capable, truly passionate people just because they weren't killing themselves every moment of every day trying to be PERFECT. And while some people are academic and extracurricular gods on paper with little effort, most people achieving this have gone way out of control with their work effort and sacrificed a lot of sleep, sanity, social time, and just general college experience finding their identity because the admissions process has convinced them they will never measure up.

 

[Saluki]

I was at IHOP the other morning, and I heard these two men talking and the following question

"So, give me three reasons why I should hire YOU to work on this construction job"

I almost started laughing right there...

 

[RxnMan]

Long pensive post ahead, forgiveness please...

I wonder if there's really a point to the admissions process. I want to ask, to what end does this admissions process serve?

You may say it is to get med school. That is very true from the applicant's perspective. But what about the medical school?

Medical schools have a large number of highly qualified applicants applying to their school nowadays. And possibly many more applicants who think that they can get in with mediocre or poor numbers/stats.

It makes me wonder why we have the admissions process? How exactly does a secondary and, if lucky enough, a 30 minute interview determine one's fitness to be a good physician?

At best, this battery of diagnostics can only determine that

1) The candidate is intelligent to speak English and communicate some form of abstract ideas, i.e. "why you want to be a doctor"
2) The candidate is not insane and doesn't have weird, offensive, strange ticks that would alienate patients and co-workers
3) The candidate is so seriously interested in medicine to put his TIme and Money where his mouth is, enough to sit down, write a bunch of redundant essays and shell out 50-100 bucks to tell a school to "LOOK AT ME" and then shell out another couple hundred to fly off some place, buy a suit and look and act nicely

Other than this, the secondary and interview can determine nothing else. It makes me wonder what the other small battery of tests is actually even there for. What does it matter how long it takes for you to ask for help in opening a window that is impossible to open? What does it matter if you forgot to smile and say hello to someone who was walking about the hospital?

So if an interview/secondary can only tell so much, why do we stress so much over it?

Be polite, mature, kind, yourself, and you should be fine.

The only logical conclusion I can come to is that

The application process only exists to give a justification for rejection based on purely arbitrary terms. In other words, as so many have said, it is a crap shoot. It allows medical schools to discriminate without being blatant about it. It allows some schools to say they have too many Jews and they need a few more blacks for class diversity. It allows interviewers to reject someone just because that person resembles someone they hate.

But does it make the entering class any better? I don't believe it does. Despite the numerous hurdles they place, a given medical school class is inevitably filled with slackers, people who quit med school and no small number of people that will become very tired, angry doctors.

I wonder if making people write essays and fly out for interviews has truly improved the woeful quality of doctors that existed in the past - some of whom discovered useful things like the vectors for yellow fever or the benefits of washing hands.

I question the system. Is it working? If so, whom is it working for?

Ahhh...it's that time of year again...where the taste of despair is fresh in the air, and pre-meds freak out about the process. I can feeeel your anger!

Just be cool. Use SDN to vent, and realize that there's still going to be riff-raff no matter where you go: http://theunderweardrawer.homestead.com/twelvemedstudents.html

 

[NikkiFSU]

Yeah the only problem with using SDN to vent about admissions is that the adcoms live on this board. You wouldn't want to give them the impression that you are not a well-adjusted outstanding person and that you actaully experience stress, right? God forbid anyone vents

 

[NikkiFSU]

sorry double post

 

[RxnMan]

And why not? It's the ideal place. Everyone who reads your post will either identify with your feelings/situation, or learn from it. I get rid of most of my stress by being active. But there are some days (like last Monday, when I got two rejections,) when that isn't enough. That's when I turn to SDN!

 

[NikkiFSU]

lol I was being sarcastic....yeah the rejections tend to made us bitter and discouraged. And... angry about the whole process we go through & money we shell out to get them. I was just saying that after experiencing the scrutiny of admissions firsthand, I wouldn't be surprised if an adcom reading a post like that would figure, "oh they cannot handle this, how can they handle a rigorous medical education" but if I really cared I wouldn't even be in this thread you know

 

[Hawkeye Kid]

you think IHOP is bad? Hang out in a coffee shop. I've heard interviews for (surprise) Starbucks, newspaper distribution, house painting (in WI in December), among other things. It's really kinda fun listenting to a 17 yo tell why she's qualified to make my "frozen coffee drink."

OK, back on point--I really do believe that, at MCW at least, the admissions process works. The interview really does weed out the people that you don't want to be around which I think is incredibly important. We want people that will come in and contribute to the community and if you won't do that then I'll give you a lower recommendation. Do people slip through? Absolutely. It perpetuates itself because, unfortunately, the freaks interview applicants too. Do good candidates get turned down in favor of some jerk off? Probably. BUT, by and large, I think the process works and is necessary. (Note that I never said it doesn't suck--I did it too, and it does.)

As for Nikki's problem: I'm really sorry that you feel that way about most of your physicians. Not knowing them or your situation, I obviously can't comment specifically, but consider the possibility that, rather than being bad doctors/people, they've simply adjusted their practice to meet current requirements of the health care climate (lower reimbursement, higher overhead, etc). Remember, you can always *fire* your doctor in favor of someone who's been recommended by a friend (or someone else you trust). Keep that in mind--there's no reason to go to a physician that you don't feel comfortable with.

 

[.edu-MD]

.

 

[ND2005]

I certainly get that the admissions process is frustrating, but at the same time I think it is necessary. There are twice as many candidates out there as there are spots in US MD schools. Unless you want admissions to be an automated process where someone with a 3.89 trumps someone with a 3.88, you need some sort of "personality" component to the process.

And as I'm sure our SDN interviewers can tell us, they aren't usually looking to rip you apart in the interview process -- they just want to learn more about you and see if you are personable.

One of my interviewers gave me a pretty cool breakdown of his thought process behind his interview style, that made me feel better about the whole deal:

When he interviews someone, he's trying to do two things, (1) learn about them and (2) help them strengthen their application. So if he sees something that looks like a weak spot in their app, or something confusing, he's going to ask about that to try and learn more/clarify. So sometimes when you get what seems like a "hardass" question, it's really the interviewer giving you a chance to help your own cause by addressing head-on a weakness that the adcom will pick up on when they read your file.

 

[SanDiegoSOD]

Interviews are really important. You can make yourself look good on paper, and you can have someone else write your personal statement, but you can't fake personality. The interview is the only place in the admissions process where you and only you are on the spot. Even letters of recommendation can be cherry-picked to perfection by an applicant that asks for 20+ letters and then chooses the ones that presents the applicant in the best light. In an interview, you finally have to articulate your reasons for pursuing medicine and a career in which peoples lives are in your hands. You can pretend to be genuine and fake enthusiasm, but unless you're really good, you'll probably look like a tool. Although I dislike the initial few stages of the application process, I'm a big fan of the interview

 

[Shredder]

many business and law schools dont conduct interviews and base admission heavily on work achievements in the former and LSAT in the latter. arguably these are as good or better than medicine in america, relative to where medicine stands in other parts of the world compared to world business and law. i think medicine has somehow gotten deeply subverted. aside from grad schools, docs are perhaps the most one sided professionals, especially academic docs who are stuck in schools for their whole lives and have forgotten what real life is like. i guess it makes their day to wield power in the adcom and have students grovel for spots. really, is there psychology behind it?

can anyone compare medical apps to law and business apps? ive spoken to law friends and it seems infinitely better.