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- Podiatrist
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I hate writing. There is nothing more agonizing for me than the look of a blank computer screen. If I enjoyed writing, I wouldn't have chosen a career in science. In fact, the only reason you are reading this right now is so I can vent some of my searing hatred of this application process, secondaries in particular.
I also hate lying. That doesn't make me a saint, far from it in fact. If you ask me if you look fat, I will not only tell you that you do, but in no uncertain terms I will warn you that unless you change your lifestyle, you will die blind and with your legs amputated due to your heart disease and comorbid diabetes. I simply think people have a right to know the truth.
In one of life's quirks, medical schools have combined three things that I hate (the third being beureaucratic inefficiency; can you imagine a major corporation taking 9 months to figure out if they want a job applicant or not?) into the torment that is secondary applications. As I fill these out, questions pop into my mind.
"How come it takes weeks to process my application but virtually no time to process the fee?"
"Why do you need to know that I've taken the requisite courses if you have my transcripts?"
"Is the quality of my writing that much of an indicator of how good a doctor I will be?"
Then I look at some of these essays, and I have to blend what I really think with what they want to hear into a delcious bullcrap smoothie. Here are three questions that I particularly loathe:
Why do you want to come to our school?
There isn't a profound reason for why I apply to any particular school. Basically, I applied to every school in my state, and every school in two big U.S. cities. My most important critieria are 1) will I be a competitive applicant? and 2) will my fiancee be able to find work in the area without taking too much of a paycut. From what I've been reading on here, my criteria aren't much different from other pre-meds.
In other words, I don't care if you emphasize evidence-based or humanistic medicine, I don't care if you're oriented more towards research or the community, and I don't care if your educational philosophy favors lectures over small-group discussion. Like many other applicants, my main concern is getting in. But no. I have to pretend like I care about this or else it looks like I'm not serious.
What really irritates me is that admissions have to know that we don't care. They're not stupid. Well, not that stupid. My theory is that it doesn't matter what you write, so long as you look like you've researched the school's main selling points. That way, you do the school's work for them. Say you're asked this by a school that's #4 or #5 on your list. Maybe by researching their offerings, you gain a more favorable perspective, and the school jumps up to #1 or #2.
What is your greatest weakness?
Now, I know the people in admissions weren't smart enough to make it as real doctors, but this question is idiotic. No one is going to give a straight answer. Really, is anyone going to say, "Well, I have fantasies about molesting little boys," or "I give poisoned cookies to the homeless."
I have come up with two possible strategies for this one, and neither one is very good, I admit. One possibility is to take your greatest strength and put a negative spin on it. "I work too hard. Sometimes I set goals for myself that are so high that I burn myself out trying to achieve them." I tried building an essay around that and couldn't finish because the B.S. fumes were nauseating me too much.
Another strategy I've come up with is to pick something innocuous, but nontrivial, and devote half of the essay to saying why it's no big deal in the first place. This doesn't really answer the question, though, does it?
What do you contribute to academic diversity?
Ooh boy. I don't want to get overtly political, but I have worked at a university for the past four years, and I've seen what a sacred cow "diversity" is in academia. Suffice to say, I don't care about diversity so much that it would color my perception of a university. Furthermore, I suspect admissions doesn't care either, so long as they fill their quotas and can wallpaper their website with photos of people of every color of the rainbow in an effort to portray their institution as an isolated utopia in an unjust and bigoted world.
So, what is a white heterosexual Christian male supposed to do? Well, I am a nontraditional student, and even though my "off" years were spent in a Ph.D. program I didn't finish, I'll be talking them up like the school will lose its accreditation if they don't accept me.
What else can you do? The same thing you do if you accidentally drop the N-bomb at a Manhattan cocktail party: offer sacrifice to the sacred cow. In my case, I happen to have a ton of experience working with minorities, er, ethnically and culturally diverse people of a variety of backgrounds and worldviews. It just so happens that the city I live in is 20% white, so this was not hard for me to do, looking for entry-level summer jobs. Of course, I'll give plenty of platitudes abut understanding...blah blah...tolerance...yada yada...valuable interactions...yackity yack...cultural horizons...and so on.
Anyway, I'm not trying to start a debate about the merits of diversity. I'm only saying that the question puts me and a lot of applicants in a tough spot by forcing us to act like we care about issues that are pretty low among our priorities. The amount of diversity I encounter is not going to impact the quality of medicine I practice, at least, not as much as, say, gross anatomy lab.
Lastly, if you know which school asked all three of my least favorite questions on its secondary, you get a gold star!
I also hate lying. That doesn't make me a saint, far from it in fact. If you ask me if you look fat, I will not only tell you that you do, but in no uncertain terms I will warn you that unless you change your lifestyle, you will die blind and with your legs amputated due to your heart disease and comorbid diabetes. I simply think people have a right to know the truth.
In one of life's quirks, medical schools have combined three things that I hate (the third being beureaucratic inefficiency; can you imagine a major corporation taking 9 months to figure out if they want a job applicant or not?) into the torment that is secondary applications. As I fill these out, questions pop into my mind.
"How come it takes weeks to process my application but virtually no time to process the fee?"
"Why do you need to know that I've taken the requisite courses if you have my transcripts?"
"Is the quality of my writing that much of an indicator of how good a doctor I will be?"
Then I look at some of these essays, and I have to blend what I really think with what they want to hear into a delcious bullcrap smoothie. Here are three questions that I particularly loathe:
Why do you want to come to our school?
There isn't a profound reason for why I apply to any particular school. Basically, I applied to every school in my state, and every school in two big U.S. cities. My most important critieria are 1) will I be a competitive applicant? and 2) will my fiancee be able to find work in the area without taking too much of a paycut. From what I've been reading on here, my criteria aren't much different from other pre-meds.
In other words, I don't care if you emphasize evidence-based or humanistic medicine, I don't care if you're oriented more towards research or the community, and I don't care if your educational philosophy favors lectures over small-group discussion. Like many other applicants, my main concern is getting in. But no. I have to pretend like I care about this or else it looks like I'm not serious.
What really irritates me is that admissions have to know that we don't care. They're not stupid. Well, not that stupid. My theory is that it doesn't matter what you write, so long as you look like you've researched the school's main selling points. That way, you do the school's work for them. Say you're asked this by a school that's #4 or #5 on your list. Maybe by researching their offerings, you gain a more favorable perspective, and the school jumps up to #1 or #2.
What is your greatest weakness?
Now, I know the people in admissions weren't smart enough to make it as real doctors, but this question is idiotic. No one is going to give a straight answer. Really, is anyone going to say, "Well, I have fantasies about molesting little boys," or "I give poisoned cookies to the homeless."
I have come up with two possible strategies for this one, and neither one is very good, I admit. One possibility is to take your greatest strength and put a negative spin on it. "I work too hard. Sometimes I set goals for myself that are so high that I burn myself out trying to achieve them." I tried building an essay around that and couldn't finish because the B.S. fumes were nauseating me too much.
Another strategy I've come up with is to pick something innocuous, but nontrivial, and devote half of the essay to saying why it's no big deal in the first place. This doesn't really answer the question, though, does it?
What do you contribute to academic diversity?
Ooh boy. I don't want to get overtly political, but I have worked at a university for the past four years, and I've seen what a sacred cow "diversity" is in academia. Suffice to say, I don't care about diversity so much that it would color my perception of a university. Furthermore, I suspect admissions doesn't care either, so long as they fill their quotas and can wallpaper their website with photos of people of every color of the rainbow in an effort to portray their institution as an isolated utopia in an unjust and bigoted world.
So, what is a white heterosexual Christian male supposed to do? Well, I am a nontraditional student, and even though my "off" years were spent in a Ph.D. program I didn't finish, I'll be talking them up like the school will lose its accreditation if they don't accept me.
What else can you do? The same thing you do if you accidentally drop the N-bomb at a Manhattan cocktail party: offer sacrifice to the sacred cow. In my case, I happen to have a ton of experience working with minorities, er, ethnically and culturally diverse people of a variety of backgrounds and worldviews. It just so happens that the city I live in is 20% white, so this was not hard for me to do, looking for entry-level summer jobs. Of course, I'll give plenty of platitudes abut understanding...blah blah...tolerance...yada yada...valuable interactions...yackity yack...cultural horizons...and so on.
Anyway, I'm not trying to start a debate about the merits of diversity. I'm only saying that the question puts me and a lot of applicants in a tough spot by forcing us to act like we care about issues that are pretty low among our priorities. The amount of diversity I encounter is not going to impact the quality of medicine I practice, at least, not as much as, say, gross anatomy lab.
Lastly, if you know which school asked all three of my least favorite questions on its secondary, you get a gold star!
. I think these are all perfectly valid questions. Secondaries are obviously a pain and no one enjoys writing them, but it really shouldn't be that hard to come up with three honest answers for these questions. 
We can't just start throwing around PB 2.0's now. PB is extremely hard to apprentice and has such a ... unique presence, I think it is unfair to him to pick his successor before he has left. He may in fact be irreplaceable. I don't think PB will leave, ever.
