Why do I want to go to Temple?

[KarateGirl]

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I'm filling out the Temple secondary, and it asks the usual question--why Temple? I'm not super-familiar with the school, so if anyone can tell me what some of the good points are, it would help. In the meantime, I'm going to check out their website.

Thanks!

 

[finnpipette]

There was an earlier thread on this...but here we go

Why temple?
bad neighborhood...see a lot of trauma
their hospitals are really nice...work directly with the attendee for their childrens hospital
their faculty are devoted to teaching
students are chill
philly is fun...cheesesteaks

Why not temple?
on probation...but getting fixed
on the expensive side
bad neighborhood
their research is weak

 

[JM.]

Because I go there. Therefore - it's gotta be cool.

 

[jewishdoctor]

Because KarateGirl wants to be the BEST Kick Ass doctor.

To be the best, you need the best dojo.

Best Clinical Experience
Best Faculty
Best Students
Best City

Enough Said........

 

[KarateGirl]

Originally posted by jmwalker
Because I go there. Therefore - it's gotta be cool.

I will definitely make sure to mention that. 😛

 

[Adapt]

At Temple, you get to work on patients who have been shot. If you're lucky, you could get shot yourself.

In all seriousness, though, Temple has a good clinical education.

 

[DoctorWannaBe]

I'm having the same problem trying to write an essay about why I want to go to Temple. The main reason I applied is because I have family in the area, but I need more concrete reasons about the specific school. Does anyone know where I can get more details about the ideas listed in this thread? I can't just write an essay saying "Best Clinical Experience, Best Faculty, Best Students, Best City." Why is the clinical experience great? Is it because you see a lot of gun shot wounds? Why is the faculty great? Thanks! And good luck KarateGirl, I hope we both get interviews this late in the game! By the way, how long are you going to make your essay? I only have two paragraphs and I don't know what else to say.

 

[Lara]

Well, let me try to give some concrete examples. Unfortunately being second year I can't do so for the clinical rotations yet.

Our anatomy class has an excellent instructor, Dr. Schneck. He wrote the whole packet of lecture notes, and they're honestly publishable-worthy (rumor has it he's received offers but wants to keep it for Temple). Not only that, but the class itself has no formal lectures. What you have are conferences with clinical correlations where students are expected to answer questions. It's a great system because it gives motivation to be on top of things. There are some minor marks given for participation, but chances are you won't *want* to miss the conferences, period.

Biochem is good because it used to be taught by the late Dr. Marks, who wrote the BRS Step One review book as well as a standard textbook. Result being that the course follows the BRS book closely and you can be more confident that you're learning board-worthy material. The course really picked up for me once we got into metabolism, which I preferred to the earlier cell bio portion.

Second year, well...you'll definitely cover all of micro! And having both path and pathophys means overlapping material really gets drilled into you. Pharm exams are on the whole very straightforward and fair (unlike pathophys this morning, ugh) with good faculty.

And you'll honestly be hard pressed to find a Temple student who dislikes their classmates. I was a total loner in high school and even university. Now, even though I'm still not too social I have a group of classmates who actually care about me, and whom I can contact if I ever need help. One guy actually took the time on a late Friday afternoon to pick me up from an IKEA store when it turned out they wouldn't deliver the furniture I'd bought due to an upcoming location change (I don't have a car and had gotten there by bus).

Finally, if you're a URM this is an awesome school to go to thanks to the RAR department. If not, you'll still have the advantage of a fairly diverse class. 🙂

Hope this helps!

 

[Lara]

btw, I turned in my secondary last minute (receiving an interview invite late January), and later had an LOR snafu - it's a wonder I got in, but here I am. 🙂 Good luck!

 

[jlee9531]

Originally posted by jewishdoctor
Because KarateGirl wants to be the BEST Kick Ass doctor.

To be the best, you need the best dojo.

Best Clinical Experience
Best Faculty
Best Students
Best City

Enough Said........

haha to be the best...you need the best dojo...

that was good man...pretty clever stuff....

but anyways...
i wrote about their diversity and how important it is to have that at a med school...
their emphasis on producing top notch primary care physicians, nice student body, supporting environment....

plus the city being a historic place just adds to the richness of the experience i could have at a place like temple.

 

[finnpipette]

here is a disclaimer. like all other schools, temple isn't for everyone. if you wanna get your hands dirty and get invovled in urban medicine and really help out your community...then apply to temple by all means. if you like talking about helping out poor people and stuff, but you're in your little prep school...maybe took a one week trip to some third world country...then it might not be for you. no weak ish.

 

[LP1CW]

lets be honest, the only reason someone would want to go to Temple is because they didn't get into any other medical school with the exception of a place like Howard or Ponce. Temple takes marginal students. I know this because a friend of my dad sits on the committee there. And just this season they accepted a lady there with a 2.8 GPA and a 5,6,7 (K) on her MCAT. And you already know, before I excite a few white guys, that she was tanned, very tanned. I'm not racist, my adopted sister is black and my family is jewish, but I'm bothered by this. Explain to me how she's even going to be past her boards? She's not unique. There desire to be diverse results in a collection of mediocre students.

 

[RedHeadKiddo]

Originally posted by LP1CW
lets be honest, the only reason someone would want to go to Temple is because they didn't get into any other medical school with the exception of a place like Howard or Ponce. Temple takes marginal students. I know this because a friend of my dad sits on the committee there. And just this season they accepted a lady there with a 2.8 GPA and a 5,6,7 (K) on her MCAT. And you already know, before I excite a few white guys, that she was tanned, very tanned. I'm not racist, my adopted sister is black and my family is jewish, but I'm bothered by this. Explain to me how she's even going to be past her boards? She's not unique. There desire to be diverse results in a collection of mediocre students.

I TOTALLY disagree with this post. As far as the "lady" with the way low marks all I can say is make sure that your friend was not BSing you before make this sound like the golden standard for Temple. Temple students are not marginal by any means I know this from experience. Working at the premier health care system in Philadelphia, I know from first hand experience that on average Temple trained medical students are above and beyond more skilled than those at other medical schools. I also know that Temple students do very well on their boards. Finally, they are cool as s***, after a long night on call, ask yourself who do you want to get a beer with? I know people who choose to go to Temple over top 50 med schools solely based on these characteristics.

 

[Ischemia]

Hey,

Temple does not simply take marginal students. I don't know if I even believe the story of the 5,6, 7 K MCAT person. Someone always has to put something else down...

As far as what to write for their essay, I wouldn't be too concerned about it. Just discuss the truth. I wrote only a little paragraph about why I wanted to go there. It was nothing necessarily specific to Temple. It was more or less the same reasons I applied to every school. I was accepted as an out of state resident (don't think they have a true state preference) in their first round of acceptances.

Point is: Don't worry.

 

[Lara]

I'm a URM and my stats were 3.46 and 30Q, thank you. 🙄 I don't believe for a moment that Temple would have to go down to 2.8 and 18K in order to achieve representation, and especially not this early in the application cycle...unless of course there were substantial extenuating factors as well. btw, I'd say I'm probably in the top half but not top quarter of my class, so I'm not the cream of the crop or anything. Education-wise I'd put it up against any school ranked below the top 20 or so. The prestige factor falls off substantially at that point anyway.

But yes, Temple isn't for everyone. You have to accept the neighborhood, and the tuition fee with poor financial aid is IMO the #1 best reason not to attend (should you have a much cheaper option).

 

[LP1CW]

I wish I could prove it, but it's a true story. The decision on this applicant was made about 3 weeks ago. She had a 2.8 and 5,6,7....that's the complete truth. I wish you folks that are defending this actually knew someone on the committee that could verify this. Because I had a conversation with someone who sits on the committee, a friend of my dads. That same day, a student with great stats, a good applicant overall, a white guy, was also rejected. The reason why is this....some of the students that were giving him the tour went an told some of the folks in the admissions office/committe people that this student wouldn't be a good fit. So, even though the students aren't suppose to have some input, they do. And a better qualified applicant didn't get in the same day. This story is not fabricated. I could give you the name of the doc., but I can't for obvious reasons. If you doubt me, then ask someone in admissions for the range of scores for applicants accepted this years so far. This gal is coming. Enjoy!

Oh, and for girl that just posted that she is an urm with a 30 MCAT...well, you'd be Harvard and not Temple.

 

[jlee9531]

an example like this could be found at all schools...

but for you to say that all temple students and even this lady......as marginal is plain idiotic...

the school makes the decision whether or not they feel she can do well. maybe she had some tough circumstances during school that you can not even imagine. who knows? but for you to just look at her numbers and claim she will never become a doctor is ludacris.

please tell us about her ECs, her social skills, her reasons of becoming a physician, her humanism, etc...

please tell us...do you personally know this woman?

I'm glad she got in. Might show people that when given an opportunity we can all make things happen in the medical field regardless of our numbers...

 

[KarateGirl]

First off--Thanks, Lara, your post is really helpful. To me, the best way to find out about a school is through its students, and if I can talk about specifics it shows I actually took a moment to do some research. Philly is nice, and I'd heard the Temple students are pretty happy, but I wanted to put in more than that. And the fact that you applied last-minute helps keep the hope alive. 🙂

DoctorWannaBe--I haven't written anything yet, but for other schools I probably wrote about 1/2 to 2/3 of a page. While I think some specifics are good, I don't think you need to know everything in detail. We haven't even visited yet (at least, I haven't), so they can't expect us to know too much. Like Ischemia said, be truthful. I just wanted to know what Temple has that corresponds with what I want.

And as for the posts by LP1CW, you're completely off-topic. Whether Temple takes bad students, and whether you like it or not is not what I was asking about. I don't think it's right to bash any school. They all have good and bad points. Besides, what does it matter to me if my school took a candidate from the bottom of the barrel? As long as they educate me sufficiently to pass the licensing exam, they could take monkeys as far as I'm concerned.

 

[skypilot]

Originally posted by LP1CW
I wish I could prove it, but it's a true story. The decision on this applicant was made about 3 weeks ago. She had a 2.8 and 5,6,7....that's the complete truth.

Even if it was true, which it isn't, you are still a troll!

😀

 

[SpiritiualDuck]

Troll? Because it bothers someone that a student with grades that are subpar got into medical school. Im in, so i'm not personally bothered but I have friends that have much better numbers not getting in. I don't want this being a URM debate/ disadvantage argument. I think letting a URM in with 18's hurt all of them because it will shape the way many people view URM docs. An 18 is not going to do it. LP1CW and I often disagree, but he's being honest about this student. A friend of mine, a 2nd year at Temple, has a student in her class with a 19. But she's bright, getting a great education and loves it there. Personally, I like Temple.

 

[LP1CW]

skypilot, you're an idiot. Either your a freaky white liberal or a minority that is benefitting from the color of your skin. Either way, you're an idiot. The story is true. ANd it bothers me. Admissions is not color blind. This debate has been done many times, but to discriminate against another group in favor of a group that has historically been discriminated against, doesn't fix it. A white guy would never get into Temple with MCAT scores in the low 20s, probably beneath a 27. That's wrong. I hope that someday people are just indivdiually, not race, not color, just people. There are plenty of white women and men that come from difficult backgrounds. Ecomomics is the culprit, not race. I come from a good family, well to do, so it's not that I'm seeking a benefits. I've worked hard. I've gotten 4 acceptances, a few rejections, and haven't heard back from the rest. I just wish that schools would take the best applicants and given consideration to students that have overcome adversity....regardless of race.

 

[skypilot]

Originally posted by LP1CW
The story is true. And it bothers me. Admissions is not color blind. This debate has been done many times, but to discriminate against another group in favor of a group that has historically been discriminated against, doesn't fix it.

Hey that is fine that you are upset with the school's admissions policy. I agree that it may not always be fair; like most things in life, its not always what you know but who you know. I think judging people based on a score on a test taken on one day can sometimes be unfair too. Maybe your story is true and maybe there is a reason why the school was willing to overlook the low score. Maybe she had completed research on a new disease and founded an healthcare organization. To judge a person based solely on a number is also unfair.

You should write to them and address your complaints to them instead of trolling these boards. Alternatively address your complaints to your state representative. The students on these boards are just trying to get into med school.

You have an admission to med school so obviously no one is preventing you from becoming a doctor.

If Temple has truly accepted an unqualified student I am sure they will fail out in the first semester.

 

[skypilot]

By the way I was waitlisted at Temple. Go figure!

😀

 

[KarateGirl]

Originally posted by skypilot
If Temple has truly accepted an unqualified student I am sure they will fail out in the first semester.

In principle, it would tick me off if someone totally unqualified got into medical school and I didn't. But life ain't always fair, and I do believe that in the end we get exactly what we're supposed to. So if somehow I don't get accepted to any of the 20 schools I applied to, then maybe life has something else in store for me. It's not worth complaining about something we have no control over, unless you plan to take some action on it.

As far as putting URM doctors in a bad light, I don't see that. An unqualified doctor will not pass the licensing exam and will never practice, so there won't be a chance to form that negative impression. They probably won't last their first year of school. Getting accepted to med school and becoming a doctor are two different ballgames.