Creating an Epic Medical School Application & Personal Statement

[Music] you all right everybody I wanted to welcome everybody here to our webinar tonight title putting together great medical school application and personal statement I'm Sol Mehta I'm the founder of med school coach and one of the advisors here and that we're really excited to host you tonight and take you guys through putting together a great application and personal statement it should be a really informative talk and you should be able to really get a lot out of this now a couple of things I just want to draw your attention to the first is the chat function we would love to hear your feedback would love to hear your questions so feel free to drop questions throughout the throughout the webinar here so that we can try to answer them at the end at the end of this we're gonna have a roundtable discussion and be able to go over a lot of the questions that you may have so I'm really looking forward to being able to answer some of those questions along with some of the other advisors the other thing that we have for you is a handout so if you're able to check out the handout page you're gonna see a couple of personal statement tips on there but without further ado kind of lips let's get started here about putting together a great application and personal statement for med school so just to introduce some of your host I myself am here is founder of med school coach I'm an interventional radiologist and I've helped a few thousand people through the med school application at this point we're also joined by dr. website dr. Ahlers and dr. Katzen all of whom have extensive admissions committee experience and will be with us for the roundtable discussion so it's gonna be a lot of fun to hear their take and and their thoughts on some of the nuances of the application and what an emissions committee really looks for and then we also have dr. marinelli with us dr. marinara is our lead adviser she has incredible expertise in medical school admissions she was a former admissions committee member at UC Irvine and she's going to be leading you through much of the presentation and I'm going to jump back on it towards the the end here and be able to leave that round tip discussion so again feel free to use that chat button down at the bottom right of your screen so that we can answer questions as we go or more likely at the end during the roundtable discussion so I'm going to hand it off right now to doctor marinelli who should be on the line here Renee are you there I am can you hear me okay I think we can so I'm going to go ahead and give me the keyboard and mouse here and he's going to take it away perfect so let's make sure this is working here okay I think so so thank you everyone for joining us tonight so we're going to cover several aspects of the medical school application this for this upcoming cycle and any cycle so this is really important for the people that will be applying in this coming June it's definitely very important and make sure that you set out a time line for yourself and then we'll also go through a lot of the common mistakes how to enter coursework your activities talk a little bit about letters of recommendation and personal statement and then also last dr. Mehta mentioned will go through the adviser question to answer okay I think you still have the controls dr. Mehta but okay so we got a poll question here to start off with so have you started working on your medical school application and this will definitely be maybe a little bit more applicable to the people that are planning to apply this summer but definitely if you're thinking about it in the next year or two please answer the poll as well and so we can get to know where you stand in this process all right so a lot of people have started that's great good job way to be prepared so a few of you have started applied are planning on applying this year and have not been started so we'll definitely talk about the timeline and hopefully encourage you to get started pretty soon here we can go to the next slide are we having any technical difficulties here dr. Marilyn you're able to see the next slide I just advanced the slide here mmm you know what I'm not for some reason it's still stuck on the pole for me but you know what I have this slide show up on my computer so I can go through the next slide myself sorry about that um so here's the timeline so every year there's a little bit of variations on these dates these are the years that these are the timelines and the dates for this year specifically as most of you probably know first the students who submit their application earlier they usually have greater success and this is because most schools use rolling admissions which means that it's kind of a first-come first-serve application process so people that submit their application first will primarily be reviewed by the medical school admissions committees first and be offered secondary applications and interviews first so as you can see am Cass is one of the primary application servers that we talk about it opens May 2nd and we it's open for submission in June it takes a few weeks for it to be processed so what that means is even if you submit it on the first day that it opens for submission June first it will take about two to six weeks for it to be processed by abacus and we'll talk a little bit about that more so schools don't really start receiving your application until about the end of June Foray a-okeh mass which is the Osteopathic application and TDM SAS which is the Texas application you can sum complete those and submit them both in May however those ones don't those schools do not start receiving them until the middle of June as well um I think we're having a little bit of technical difficulties with other scene the screen can we maybe try to advance the the poll dr. Mehta yes give me a second here sorry guys are we having a little bit of technical difficulties hopefully okay now I can I can see it alright perfect sorry about that guys I I think I just pressed one wrong button so go ahead I think everybody can now see the screen thank you everybody for letting us know that you couldn't see the slides hopefully you can see them now if you just shoot us the message letting us know you should be seeing the slides now so next we'll talk about some common mistakes that we see in the application and lots of this is punctuation or just formatting errors so even though as you see on this screen this person didn't capitalize Miami it seems like a very mild and minor mistake made on their application but this can actually be grounds for your application did not be under further consideration and even though that sounds really really harsh that is just because medical schools received thousands and thousands of applications and a lot of people are super competitive so they kind of take this as a sign of maybe that student wasn't thorough enough or complete enough and so instead of putting you in the pile for further consideration they can actually just disregard your application at this step so this is just such a minor common mistake but definitely have you somebody look over your application look it over again and again and again until you know that punctuation spelling grammar syntax all of that is correct in an order another large part of the application is putting your career coursework into the am cast application so this is a very tedious process you have to have transcripts sent to am cast from any school that you have attended and you have to enter those courses from all of those schools it's very important to try to enter the coursework as correctly as possible because if you do incorrectly enter the coursework then this can delay in the application processing so as I mentioned before when am cast is verifying your application this is one thing that takes a while is that they're actually verifying your courses you entered against the courses that are on your transcript that you were study submitted from the school so if there's any discrepancies between that what you've entered and then what is actually on your transcripts this can really really delay your application so it's important to take this part seriously and slowly enter these another helpful tip for entering courses is you and we can advance in the next slide is trying to maximize your be CPM GPA which is the courses that are generally regarded as biology chemistry physics or math you really want to make this GPA as high as possible and one way to do that is if you have a course that maybe is not under these specific titles biology chemistry physics or math but you received a good grade in it so let's say psychology let's say you got an A in psychology but the psychology course was a very heavy by biology based course you could designate at that as a VSP CPM course and that will help boost up that GPA and however on the flip side if you did poorly in that heavy biology psychology course you can designate that as all other so it won't bring down your be CPM GPA as much I hope that makes sense regardless each GPA is definitely important schools are going to look at your biology with a lot of weight because this is kind of a little bit more telling of the courses that you'll be taking in medical school but certainly they want to see how well you've done throughout your undergraduate education and also just in total all of these together how well you've done next part of the application without talking about demographics and biographical information is the activities and experiences so this is a very big part of your application you're allowed 15 experiences for an cast and three of those are allowed to be the most meaningful experiences which is a chance for you to talk about why this experience was so important and to further expand on it you can see on the left-hand side that this is the information that am cast asks you to enter some of it is actually required and some of it you just need to it is nice to have it if you don't have all information for example the contacts phone email address they're not required you have to put one but try to enter as much information as possible some of this is difficult to obtain especially if it was an older activity but try to enter it as get as much information as possible it's very very rare that anybody ever gets contacted about these activities but it's important to have as much information as you can make sure that you approximate the hours the total hours it you don't have to be spot-on but definitely be honest when you are approximate and approximating the hours for the experience description we usually recommend that people write these out in paragraph for them it flows a little bit better it's easier to read than somebody that does bullet points however you can do bullet points but usually especially for the most meaningful experience it's going to be more easy to read and a better flow if it is in a paragraph form but either way if you choose to do bullet points or paragraph just stick with that same format for all of your activities and it's really important to make sure that your activities really highlights your characteristics and your qualities you don't want to just list exactly what you did but you want to emphasize what you learn and what you gained from those activities and one final note is a lot of people will ask us do we have to fill up all fifteen activities and the answer is no you don't need to stretch and put you know an activity that you did for two hours or you know something you only did one time if it was non significant just to fill up the activity boxes if you only have ten activities but they were very significant then that's totally fine if you have 15 activities that's fine as well but make sure that their quality activities rather than just trying to complete all the allotted spaces when you get into the the activity screen and this is a close up you're able to classify the activity into the what what type of activity was sorry so try to group common activities together for example if you have several hobbies you don't need to list each hobby as an individual activity unless maybe it's very very significant for example you don't need to list running skiing traveling playing piano as all different hobbies you can just make one activity hobbies and discuss all of those and also it's very important to pick the experience type that accurately describes what your experience was however it is also it's important to be well-rounded so maybe if you have you know a community service experience that could be also considered medical but then you you know had something that was an arc trying to make this up as I go along I'm sorry teaching tutoring assistant that maybe was you you taught a diabetic class to the community but you're really lacking your teaching experiences perhaps you could classify that into the teaching experience rather than a medical clinical experience if you feel that you have sufficient medical and clinical experiences hopefully that is pretty clear another poll question here so is there one activity you feel that you're most lacking on your application and out of these options definitely all of these are very important and all of these carry a lot of weight by the admissions committee so got a lot of clinical work and research experience and you know that's what I will say is I most commonly hear from applicants to medical school and those are kind of the hardest experiences to get your hands on is clinical work where you're directly working with patients and research experience but both are very important parts of the application and definitely areas that admissions committees want to see that you have experience in this is a sample activity section I obviously won't go through and read it all but this is what it looks like when you finally have your amp cast completed it will give all of that demographical information at the top your experience description and then if it's the most meaningful experience that will go right below the experience description an important note here is the most meaningful experience remarks really shouldn't be a repeat of the description you should use this as an expansion of the description to maybe go into more depth or just different aspects of the experience that you didn't have enough characters to describe it in that first experience description so let's transition to letters of recommendation so a quick question here what is your biggest fear about letters of recommendation all right good I'm glad that people don't think they're professors hate them I've never talked to my science professor as that looks pretty common and I don't know how I asked for one so we'll definitely talk about that and definitely my professor may write something negative that is always a little something a little worrisome as well so let's talk a little bit about letters recommendation so each school will have their own letter recommendation requirement however if you get the following letters of recommendation you will generally meet most of the school's requirements so try to get to from science professors one from a non science professor and one to two from other people that you've worked with definitely try to get a physician if possible especially if you're applying to osteopathic schools most off the osteopathic schools require a letter of recommendation from a physician so it's very important to get that letter also a huge reminder here is request these letters early early early early if you haven't done so already and you're applying this year then you should do it tomorrow professors get backlogged with letters of recommendation this can delay your application same thing goes if you have a committee at your school that you'll be using talk to the committee early to see what requirements they have when they need to set up an interview with you in order to get that letter completed long before the application is due we're going to transition to the personal statement so how important do you think the personal statement is to admissions committee so very important time Wow okay 89% say very important it can make or break your application so I would have to say I definitely agree with that it can really make or break your application it is a there's my slide very important part of your application this is really your chance to demonstrate who you are tell your story list out your well not list but demonstrate your personal characteristics and qualities while telling the admissions committee why you you want to become a doctor and illustrating to them why you're going to become a good doctor it is a very difficult statement to write but you're exactly right for the most part of the polling responses is a good personal statement can are a great personal statement can really help advance your application an avid personal statement probably won't do much harm you however it won't do much to help you and a bad personal statement can really do a lot to harm you and likely stop the advancement of your application again with similar to the am cast activities really emphasize quality over quantity here so your allotted 50 300 characters in an cast which is a little bit more than a page in a Word document we really recommend keeping your personal statement to about a page definitely try to if you can say to the same thing and less words than do it that way admissions committee members read hundreds thousands of personal statements so keep it interesting keep it to the point so that they don't have to just read a bunch of information that is redundant or it doesn't really add anything to your overall essay and again here edit it edit and then edit it again have somebody look this over have somebody look it over again look it over until you just can't even read those words anymore because it's so important to make sure that there are no mistakes in this document and then again start writing your personal statement early um a couple tips about writing your personal statement and trying to make it as interesting as possible so you'll see on the right an interesting introduction is very very important so try to be creative there try not to be completely generic and talk about I've always wanted to be a doctor since I was two as your introduction try to make it something that is going to stand out and make the admissions committee member you want to continue reading the personal statement a couple of things on the left try to avoid some specifics definitely don't mention your MCAT score your GPA again no typos no spelling mistakes definitely do not make up any stories or fabricate any information be honest some relative know knows that you want to try to avoid as much as possible or list listening things mentioning an awards and then you know try to avoid these more generic reasons about going into medicine like I said about how you wanted to be a doctor since you're in preschool or talking about your second cousin who suffered a broken toe and that experience pushed you into becoming a physician some of some people will have legitimate kind of Epiphany situations that really change them and made them want to be a physician but a lot of admissions committees will consider these very generic so make sure you have somebody read through this to help decide if this sounds legitimate or if it just sounds like one of those generic I've always wanted to be a doctor kind of stories these are a couple personal statement introduction examples obviously again I won't read all of these but I really like these personal statement examples because they start off and most of them will give you illustrate a picture for the reader they interesting you want to continue reading them and see where are they going with this what is it that they're trying to tell me at the end of the one on the left in the middle you can see that that this one kind of ends and sets the stage or the theme for the rest of the personal statement so you can kind of see where the essay will be going and again you want to keep reading and this is what you need to do is make it unique interesting so that that reader really wants to keep going instead of just putting it aside in a pile where they just have maybe skimmed your personal statement another poll do you feel comfortable putting your experiences into a great personal statement so yes I'm basically Shakespeare know my writing could use work alright yeah I think most most pre-medical students feel that way I definitely felt that way when I wrote my personal statement I felt that way when I had to write my personal statement for residency as well so that's why it's awesome to ask for help and to ask other people and to really look have somebody else look at your experiences in yourself from an objective standpoint and try to have them classify what they think is going to set you apart and what makes you unique and I can tell you from my experience working with so many different applicants that is one thing that med school coach advisors do that is just so helpful is that we can look at all of your experiences and look at who you are as a person and focus the the content of your essay on unique experiences to make that interesting introduction and really help you develop the content of your personal statement but here you know these are awesome tips as well that you can use to help develop this personal statement your friend your college pre-health advisor us the advisors at med school coach and then you know we will also give you our free personal statement guide if you like us on Facebook and you'll you'll get a link to get that guide in a couple of days so finally just a few last-minute tips again start early for those of you who have already started on your application that's great a lot of people will wait until the last minute to write their experiences or their personal statement and then end up turning their application and later and this is just going to hurt your chances for admission if you're applying to you osteopathic & allopathic schools you can usually write your allopathic essay first and then just modify it a little bit to be specific for osteopathic schools maybe adding in a little bit of specifics for osteopath ii and your interest there and then the character count is a little bit different a final note if you copy and paste into AM casts or a-okeh maths just be very careful of formatting issues some things can get messed up and that just leads to the next bullet point here is proofread proofread and then proofread some more and make sure you're asking for help from those around you and from third-party sources all right so thanks dr. Mary Alice you're leading us through some of those points and the idea there was to give you guys a broad overview some of the specifics of the application and what goes into it and a few key tips to help get you to put together that great application now I think a lot of you said you were applying this year a lot of you said you had already kind of started on the application which is great as dr. Mary only mentioned the application can opens up in a couple of weeks here for both MD do as well as Texas schools the submission dates vary for each of those three different application systems but they're all coming up in May or early June so really great to get your application together now what we're hoping to do in the remainder of our time here is actually pick the brains of our advisors who we have we have here and so what I'll really encourage you guys to do is ask any questions you have within the chat function and we will be able to hopefully answer a lot of them as we go along so to get to get us kicked off what I'm going to do is I'm just going to pass the mic around to a couple of our advisors and ask them a few questions that I think everybody kind of wants an answer to and hopefully this gets your juices stirring for all our attendees and they can you guys can kind of think about the questions you want to ask so what's our gonna start with Decker eilers and just give them the question here so Steven you know what do you think is the biggest mistake you see applicants make in their personal statement in your experience of the missions committees and your experience sort of working with students at med school coach sure so thank you so Helen Rene for having me my name is Steve Myers I'm as mentioned more with University of Chicago while medical student there with the admissions committee and I read a lot of personal statements before I've interviewed candidates and I think it's one area that if it's really an interesting part it really stands out and completely agree about that opening paragraph you want to hook the reader in I've read some that just sounds so boring it's almost work to get through it and I think the biggest mistake that I see from this is ultimately people don't always answer why they themselves why Steve eilers why's the help meta wants to go and become a physician and I think that your story is really important that I've read some information about TED talks that the best ones usually tell stories in them and you want to tell your story here and even more importantly as a literary device you want to show you don't always want to tell so if you can be creative you can give good descriptions that instead of saying that I walked down the road you might talk about how you saw the leaves changing and you're experiencing it's a little bit more of a literature style of writing especially for that first paragraph to hook the reader in I think we're medical errors I noticed very often my mom reread all of my essays before fun medical school and there were grammatical errors I never saw run-on sentences and these can be very glaring if you don't have words that begin our star sentence that are capitalized things that just show a lack of effort and thought can be a great way for someone to say we can interview someone else and so I think being very careful about the grammatical errors is really important and I think just making sure it's really authentic about yourself taking time to be able to talk about the experiences that you've had highlight them and be able to wrap that together I think that a lot of people want to help as physicians and at the end you should talk about why you need to become a physician and that you cannot go any other career out to satisfy that what is it about medicine that you will ultimately find satisfying that you need to become a physician and that ultimately that's the only route that you can go I think that's important to discuss because someone may ask you if you can go into mess and what would you do and you should make it clear that your experiences show that you ultimately want to become a great physician thanks Steve so let me actually turn the table over to dr. Katzen who's one of our most experienced advisors as it's a great sort of wealth of experience helping our students through and seeing on admissions committee so dr. Katzen can I ask you how do you suggest applicants start preparing the activities and experiences section of their application when they're ready to get going thank you for having me tonight as well what I usually recommend is that they literally that the applicants who like to talk to and have advised literally just take a sheet of paper and begin to think about and write down line items of what they have done whether it's sports activity music their research or whatever and then depending on how many they have written down begin to think about them a little bit are they all appropriate are some more important to them than others not necessarily all showing just medical or para medical work but maybe showing trying and when I advising an applicant of which to use I tried to think about with them which of those activities might show show that they had leadership activities or that they they've done something for the community or volunteering and and then we can begin to work on from that list which ultimately will be the most most meaningful that are worth expanding and as dr. merrino Lee said you know you don't you don't you want you don't you want to sell yourself and make sure that the personal statement accentuates you as much as you can but but the activity section is one of the other section significant sections of the application where you can really put forth what it is you have to offer what things you have done that that have made made you different and this is where you know I think with the proper guidance either by groups such as ours or you're pre-med advisors you if you carefully choose the activities to write and and most importantly in my mind choose the three that are going to be most meaningful you're really showing showing the the admissions committee more about who you are not just what your grades are and that's the way that I usually start is just by simply asking people to write a list of what they think are appropriate activities and they usually will come up with a pretty good list and you know frequently will will work through that list and sometimes they don't realize the more you talk to somebody that they've had hobbies or sports activities that they think aren't significant but sometimes I think it's important to show sort of other sides of an applicant other than just they can get good grades and get good test grades so that's how I usually recommend and advise applicants great thanks so much dr. Katzen I think dr. lips it is actually was unable to join us so let's over this question because I know there's a lot of great questions out there one more question for dr. Marinelli and I think this is a very relevant question because a lot of students who seem to struggle with this so Renee how should an applicant ask for a letter of recommendation from his or her professors yeah this is a great question and so what I usually do is have the applicants think of a course where science or non science cuz we talked about they need letters from both of course where they did well in and that they feel that they had a good relationship with that professor so perhaps they visited the professor's office hours maybe they talked to the professor after class maybe they stuck out in the professor's mind maybe they were one of the highest test scores or they stayed after lab very often in order to really master of subject so try to think of the professors that you think you potentially made an impact on them and then just go and approach them go to their office hours tell them exactly what you're doing you know I'm applying to medical school this year I would you know I really enjoyed your course and I would was wondering if you would be able to write me a letter of recommendation then I always tell applicants to really gauge that professors response if the professor says oh you know you were an excellent student I'd be so happy to write you a letter of recommendation absolutely they would probably be a great letter the letter a letter excuse me a letter recommendation writer however if the professor's response is something to the extent of well um you know you got a B I didn't see you much in my office hours I guess I could write you a letter they may not be the most favorable letter writer and so in that case if they give you that sort of response then you should probably go seek somebody else out and that's totally okay some professors are going to know you better than others and that's totally fine if you need to go and talk to somebody else that's why I think it's so important to approach them in person as well and not just over over the phone or over the over email definitely try to approach them as much as possible in person during their office hours and again I can't stress it enough ask for them early if you haven't asked for them already go do it this week great so great news everybody dr. Lipset is actually here so I'm gonna actually go back one and dr. lifts said I'm going to open up the forum to you what do you think makes a great personal statement look like a lip sitter I think we're having a little trouble hearing yeah I can you hear me now yes we can okay great I'm glad I'm coming through Rene Sahil thanks for the opportunity to contribute Steve and Harvey that's that's great stuff for our audience yeah so just some comments about the personal statement you know I don't think there's anything that intimidates the the applicant more than the personal statement usually you know filling them with apprehension and anxiety but that really shouldn't be the case because you know I really think it's it's it's a great opportunity for the applicant to tell their story a you tell the reader who you are but before discussing content just want to talk about a few basics that that I think will be helpful first of all I I like the personal statement to have some structure usually three parts an introduction that engages the reader and introduces a theme followed by the the body or substance of the personal statement and then a nice conclusion to wrap it all up now one of the most important points I think and you know this has been discussed already but let me emphasize it you really need to write well because many file reviewers will assume that you can't write properly until proven otherwise and I think they base that to tell you the truth on either past experience or sy7 older reviewers actually have a bit of a bias they believe that writing is a lost art well prove that their preconception is in misconception grew them to be wrong the way to do that is to use clear direct language without a lot of extraneous words or cliches no empty platitudes use proper grammar and they'll Steve address that already errors either mean you can't write well or worse you're careless and not paying attention the reviewer will not assume it's just a typographical error use college-level vocabulary avoid repetition of words or phrases use a thesaurus for appropriate synonyms keep it fresh certainly don't ramble and stay on point another thing that I try to stress it's almost counterintuitive but you want to keep it simple read your work aloud if it sounds strange or bizarre it probably is make use of paragraphs to separate ideas or experiences but be sure to transition smoothly avoid the overuse of punctuation such as a lot of quote marks for emphasis or semicolons as a substitute for proper sentence structure now turn to the content of the personal statement that's been 2 or 3 minutes you know as has already stated the introduction should contain a hook that captures the attention of the reader it's the beginning of a short story about you now the task of a file reviewer is mind-numbing and I know this from personal experience so don't let the reviewer doze off encourage the reader to move on to the body of the personal statement entice them with maybe a vignette or a mildly provocative statement that sets the tone and I think Rene showed some good examples of that now in the body where the need of the statement I usually recommend that the applicant make a brief outline to organize the content they can choose a theme but but stay focused for example you can talk about motivation and inspiration how did you develop an interest in medicine but you have to be specific underscore it with meaningful experiences perhaps role models share your experiences with the reader medical or non-medical experiences are fine but clearly explain how each experience affected or changed you know you can discuss your personal strengths and skillsets and and be candid but don't self destruct keep it positive you can talk about your plans for the future your goals use your experiences and strengths to make a convincing case that you should be given the opportunity or the privilege of becoming a physician you know it's not simply what you have accomplished I mean there's an AM cast category or section in the primary to simply list what you've done and I know you know Harvey Katz and he you nicely explained that but now is the time to a takeaway message for example let's say you have high academic achievement an accomplishment the message is I can handle this work I'm not gonna flunk out if there's an experience that shows teamwork and collaboration the messages people like working with me now physicians and researchers rarely work in a vacuum so that's a marvelous trait to be able to demonstrate in a personal statement if let's say you've had employment the message is I've got a work ethic I I also have good time management skills I can handle a vigorous schedule if you have volunteer activities the messages from altruistic I really do care and I know how to listen to people finally shadowing experience what what's what's the benefit of real-world experience in your personal statement what are you sending a message I know what I'm getting myself into I'm not gonna have an existential crisis or meltdown in my second or third year and you realize that being a physician is not necessarily what you see on TV or in the movies it may not be so glamorous but despite all of that you're still in you know what you're getting yourself into but you still want in finally sometimes a little bit of biographical background a little bit of Biograph autobiographical material is a good idea you can talk a little bit about parents siblings heritage family if it adds texture to the personal statement finally the conclusion should be concise with the key message summarized and title together on a positive note it's show time it's the time to sell yourself now you could end with the personal attributes that make you especially well-suited for a career in medicine now the attributes should be supported by the body of the statement that at the conclusion at the end when the reader puts it down they should be satisfied that they almost know you are intrigued and they'd love to meet you and interview you I mean that's our goal that's our target so just just remember that developing the personal statement it's a process it often requires brainstorming and as Rene indicated multiple revisions but it's time well spent so it behooves the African to work hard and try as best as they can to enjoy the opportunity all right dr. Lipson thank you so much for going through that with us I hope you guys all got that and don't worry if you didn't get all of it this is all being recorded and so you're gonna be able to watch it again because I know that was some amazing advice that dr. lips that just gave you and I know that many of you might want to hear that again so you know well it's actually on to what I think is gonna be the most fun part here which is to get to some of your questions so keep your questions coming and I'm going to do is kind of just go through some of these questions and shooter advisors and just ask them what they think and allow them to give you some of their answers so I'm going to start with a question from Asher out there and maybe I'll throw this to you dr. Adler's there's a question from him that basically says can the personal statement mentioned more detail about an activity that was also mentioned as one of the most significant activities what do you think about that so I think that's a great question to discuss the meaningful experiences section is designed to discuss why that experience really shaped you or how it had a profound effect on you I think that the personal statement should be an area that really allows you to highlight things that aren't on your application elsewhere if it was something that was so significant that it was such an epiphany that you really need to talk about in your personal statement because why you want to become a physician wouldn't make sense without that piece of information then definitely put it in but I would limit how much you talk about it I wouldn't repeat information that you already have in the meaningful experience I think that's a great question ultimately though I would hedge on staying away from adding experiences into your personal statement unless they're absolutely necessary to be able to tell your overarching story about why you would like to become a physician all right great here's another question out there which maybe I'll throw to you dr. Katzen the question asks can we include significant high school achievements and activities in our application what do you usually tell applicants when they ask that question ideally you like to see the progress and growth and the participation that somebody has had through their college years I think that that shows to me a little bit more that as dr. lifts it was mentioning they're able to handle the workload yes yet participate in other activities on the on the other hand it was a significant experience you know that I think shows a shape to the character whether it was volunteering and showing altruism occasionally I will my my preference is I weighed them unless we just don't seem to have enough strength in the college activities to to really search into the application to me it's all about again as dr. Lipsett met mentioned that yeah I think it's one of the one of the positive one of the potential places where you you sell yourself you you end on a positive and this is part of accentuating the applicant or enhancing the application in all places one obviously is the personal statement and the other is to make yourself interesting and somebody and show that you've done some things of significance and you know I guess in summary my preference is not to go back to high school is not necessary but if the applicant seems to be weak it may be a way of enhancing and otherwise somewhat weakened application all right great dr. lipsti we have a question for re applicants and I think oh we got this question a lot so it'd be helpful to give everybody your take which is should a reapplication umber one rewrite their personal statement and how different should it be and then number two on secondary applications which we really didn't I even get hit on today but obviously an important part out of the application how difference your secondary applications be for a reapplication what is your take now that is a great question it's commonly asked I mean my personal preference is to refresh what had been submitted initially that even though the majority of the application may be similar second time around there are a number of reasons why you might want to update and refresh the application first of all it shows that you've expended some additional effort number two one would hope that second time around you have a more competitive application that you know during that gap time you have additional meaningful experiences that you know even though you may have been disappointed not getting into medical school you're not defensive about it but rather you took very positive steps to learn as much as you could to make your application more competitive next time around and you should incorporate that somehow into the application so bottom line much of the application can remain the same but I really think it should be updated upgraded and freshened alright great and and I would have to agree with that advice wholeheartedly um dr. marinelli here's a great question from croissant out there which is any tips on how to write so many secondaries in the small window oh and I think this this is a question we get all the time and it's a very relevant question when students are applying to a lot of different schools at once and all of a sudden have a lot of different secondaries to fill out so any tips for those two students who are all of a sudden have to write a lot of secondaries like normally yeah that is a great question and I guess I will echo myself again is start early so you definitely don't have to wait to receive your secondary application to start writing it so most secondary prompts are available on the Internet and we as med school coach we have them available as well so for schools that you know you're going to apply to and likely will receive a secondary and just for your information most schools don't Green too heavily on secondary applications so if you submit your primary application you will likely receive a secondary application for most schools so it if you want right after you submit your am casts or even before hand if you finish your M cast start working on those secondary applications if you know that you're applying to USC pull up that USC application and the secondary application prompt and start completing it and in that way when you do actually receive that invitation to submit that secondary in July or August then you can just proofread it and then turn it around within a couple of days which is going to show those those medical schools that you were very interested in their school and very motivated to apply if you don't have that dedication to start that early then what I suggest is try to free up the those couple of months in the summer when you are expecting a lot of secondary applications because you will get quite busy with those and make sure you're having regular access to your email so when you do receive those you can try to turn them over as fast as possible we recommend at least you know a week is ideal two weeks is where you definitely want to stay in any further than that again you're going to show a lack of interest in the school so one to two weeks is where you really really want to stay for a turnaround time and just dedicate yourself to completing those essays and making sure though that you are writing good secondaries even though you're trying to do it as quickly as possible all right great and doctor I there's a question for you and how do you convey wanting to be a physician without sounding like bragging or simply going into listing a resume like answer okay I think that a lot of it's going to be your story that your reasons for medicine you're interested in being empathetic to others having a natural curiosity to learn more about the human body or pursuing research of you'll be able to talk about how you've been able to have certain exposures that really help guide this I don't think it necessarily has to be a list but I think at the same time if you're putting in your last paragraph about why you're gonna be a great physician that it is a little bit of a selling point I don't think it necessarily has to be bragging you don't have to say for instance talk about your GPA around cash those are big no no's but you can definitely talk about how you're passionate you're enthusiastic about the research you're working on that you're interested in translating the research into coming up with ways to help patients for instance some people who I work with have a lot of experience with translational research that they're very interested in the science and how can they take this and invent something to help a patient but that without the medical degree they won't understand the disease stage or how to best help a patient but yet they also have an interest in research and that they want to be able to help on multiple levels and I think you can tie that in together about how you've had the ultimate the research experience which will be supported with more detail in the application about how this is going to shape your interest in becoming a physician I don't think you ever every said you shouldn't list necessarily or make bullet points but you can definitely talk about things that are important qualities and characteristics that you possess them discuss such as altruism empathy curiosity and just dedication to what you're passionate about alright thank you dr. Katzen here's kind of a somewhat basic question but I think an interesting one because I think different people may have different takes on this and would love to hear your take on it which is sort of revolves around grammar and the personal statement and a one person has asked should I avoid using contractions in my personal statement what is your general take on sort of the formality of the writing style in a personal statement I've kept on I think some of that was actually addressed by dr. lips today I think that and dr. marinelli actually I think you need to use proper English I think that there's some simple tools out there you know most of the applicants are using word or you something like grammerly will correct a lot of a lot of those errors in general I think the let the less contractions the more clear-cut worded wording and verbiage services serves the applicant a little bit better and makes the essay read a little bit cleaner I'm surprised at times to see you know as was mentioned sentences been beginning with small letters or beginning with prepositions or because or what not yeah and you know I think is dr. Lissa alluded to I think a lot of that can be avoided if it's essentially read out loud even even to your self a and I think that most of the contractions would probably be eliminated I I'm not a big fan of him all right thank you and doctor lips had a question for you and this goes a little bit into something we didn't discuss a lot about which is a school list there is a question out here says how do I choose which schools to apply to and and obviously I think this is a question that's very personalized depending on a student's GPA and MCAT what's your general sort of sense or how do you generally tell applicants how many schools and and how to really read out the schools that maybe aren't for them sure well you know I think it's important to be practical most students have you know limited resources and so you want to have a an intelligent list of schools numbers do count to some extent the application read the admissions process is somewhat subjective and some would argue on occasion even a little imperfect and so there is a statistical benefit to applying to a fairly large number of schools for most applicants usually twenty-five or thirty because the bottom line is you just don't know you never know exactly what qualities a committee might be looking for in any given year so there is some statistical advantage to going to a large number of schools but you want it to be a smart list and you know there are algorithms you know that we use and there are models that we use to try to focus on target schools now of course applying to some reach schools is a perfectly legitimate like I say there's there's a little element of surprise here you never know and also some schools that may be considered a little less competitive even though there are no safety schools anymore I hate the term but the fact that is that an intelligent targeted list of usually about 25 or 30 schools is a good idea also you take into account the state of residents because for many of these institutions both public and private but especially the public you know often there is state funding and there will be some some quotas on the part of a mission statement could be - you know benefit residents of a given state so you take this all into account well and also you want the individual to be happy and to be comfortable so if they have a geographic preference that's also factored in so the bottom line is an individualized list of schools for each applicant simply makes the most sense alright great and one more question for dr. Marinelli here and which is centered around is it too bold to mention specific areas of Medicine you're interested in such as a specific specialty let's say dermatology or neurology within your personal statement or do you feel like students should stay a little bit more general um I think that it's okay to mention specific areas that maybe you've spent a lot of time in and that you have an interest in and I often get asked this question during interviews however I think it's important to not be completely focused on that area or just sound that sound like this is the only area of interest medicine that you're interested in pursuing and that the rest of it is not of interest to you so I think it's definitely okay I've had a lot of people that maybe are really interested in orthopedics or plastic surgery so that's where they've spent most of their volunteer time or shadowing so that they can talk about that during their in their application especially in their personal statement but I still think they should be open to other areas of Medicine and make sure that they're just not portraying themselves as a close book on that specific area all right great so I completely agree with everything dr. marinelli said there as well so guys it's not all approximately 10:00 10:00 so it's a little bit late here on the East Coast time and we like to keep these webinars to about hour an hour long and I know a lot of you have amazing questions and excellent questions that we wish we could get to all the answers but unfortunately we can't always do that however what we'd definitely like to do is be able to number one share this webinar with you after and you should get a link to it in a couple of days number to help you along in any way you you feel like you need we've been doing this now at med school coach for about ten years and have a tremendous success with our applicants getting into school a lot of that has to do with simply our advisors sort of really being experts in the field as you as you heard from dr. Barron oh the ellipse and eilers and Katz and today they really know what they're talking about and one of the missions committee looks for and every applicant is unique and every applicant is able to make their application something that is going to stand out it just sometimes takes a little bit of work and so we're hoping to be able to help you through those aspects along with anything else you guys need in your journey to medical school we're always here for you so always feel free to shoot us an email with any questions but hopefully you can take a look at some of our services understanding them not everybody's going to sign up for our services and so there's a lot of other great resources out there if you check out our blog there's a lot of free tips right on there our Facebook page along with our Twitter account has a lot of free tips all the time and so I encourage you to check those out as you're going through the process and applying I really hope this was helpful for everybody and gave them a little bit of a framework for their application I really like to thank our advisers for taking some time out of their day and sitting down and sharing their experience I think one of the things that our advisers really love to do is things like this and just talking with students that's why we all do this because we really like to connect with students connect with pre-meds and help them through the process and develop great mentorship relationships so hopefully you guys can develop some relationship tips of your own with our advisors or with anybody else out there where you feel like has taken this path before you and can help you along so thank you again everybody for attending again I apologize that we can't get to everybody's questions however check out our blog check out our Facebook page shoot us an email with any questions and again recording of this will be available to you after so thanks again I hope you guys found this beneficial and a special thank you to everybody from our staff who was able to join really appreciate it and I know all the students do as well so good luck everybody in your application obviously it's a it's a long road from here until next March when hopefully you have a bunch of acceptances but you you can just certainly do it and I hope to be helping a lot of you guys personally through the application process as well so thanks again and everybody have a great night thank you everybody have a great night you thank you

Channel: MedSchoolCoach

Views: 5,628

Rating: 4.8064518 out of 5

Keywords: medical school personal statement, amcas application, medical school application, tips on medical school personal statement, amcas personal statement, amcas tips, applying to medical school, applying to osteopathic school, aacomas vs amcas, medical school admissions consulting, medical school admissions help, medical school application process, medical school application timeline, medical school application tips, medical school application essays

Id: sglW7j4ECxk

Length: 64min 53sec (3893 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 15 2017