He Applied to 24 Medical Schools and Didn't Get In | Application Renovation (S2 E11)

I'm just saying that for medical schools they want to make sure that you're in this for the patients as well because only doing it from an intellectual level doesn't make for happy physicians application renovation season 2 episode 11 how are you today I'm doing well dr. drew all right so I'm excited to have a chat with you find out kind of maybe where you went wrong where you went right with your last application and hopefully get you moving in the right direction to get in to medical school sound good sounds great all right Before we jump into your application I want to hear from you kind of your thoughts on what went right what went wrong if you had any interviews if you got any feedback what what did that process look like for you yeah so I I've been fortunate enough to get one interview out of 24 schools that original ID - last June how that interview was back in January of this year I had not heard any feedback from that interview I've not gotten any an interview since I've spoken to my pre-med advisor at the University of Connecticut I talked to him actually before I got the interview about steps going forward and he suggested to look more towards my GPA might be a pitfall with my application but that was very brief and he I don't think we had a really like in-depth conversation about other aspects of my application okay I haven't had much feedback up okay well we'll get in depth to your application now so one interview that's great that's hope let's hope you could there's still a chance to come off a waitlist or come off of whatever is holding you back but if we need to reapply let's go and take a look at your application so we're starting off here on page three just so people understand again I was like to highlight when students submitted an application so you are on top of it submitted June 9th and it still took almost a month to to get your application verified so you missed that first wave of applications going out that's okay in the grand scheme of things that didn't do anything for your application it hurting it in any way we're scrolling through your list of your grades and a lot of bees is what what stands out to me one see right at the beginning and then kind of senior year you looks like you turn it around and that's great and what I highlighted here in this grid of scores is just the continued upward trend right - 9 8 3 2 3 3 6 8 3 8 5 all with pretty decent course load of science credits you're all other GPA also followed the same suit of starting off kind of poorly and then going up and up and up and up and obviously your cumulative science and your cumulative all other and your total GPA are not amazing but for me your GPA isn't an issue because of that upward trend every year showing improvement showing growth and and just showing hey you are a normal college student who stumbled coming into college and if a medical school doesn't see that doesn't like that then too bad for them there are plenty of students who easily overcome this and that's why a lot of times I I get mad at students when they're like oh I have a 3/4 I shouldn't like I need to do something else I'm like well what does your trend look like and this is the perfect example of an amazing trend of starter off poor figured it out alright and so final GPA not amazing but medical schools aren't just looking at your final GPA they are looking at those trends now obviously your final GPA has to be above a certain number that they're screening in or screening out but you're 3 for 4 science GPA you're 3 for 8 total GPA that is going to likely be high enough for almost every school to get screened into a continued review so not a problem and then your MCAT obviously is not a problem with a 5 14 so great upward trend MCAT scores solid your stats to me are not an issue now going going back to kind of the continued trends in this application renovation series which is kind of the the core of my entire message with medical school headquarters and all the podcasts I do is what is your story students focus a lot of times on stats 3:9 GPA 520 MCAT score I didn't get into medical school what happened well let's look at the rest of your application so that's what we'll do now all right so stats for me not an issue looking at your experiences we get to the we get to your research your poster presentations and which is are great right it shows that your inquisitive your thoughtful your you're doing you're doing some some good research stuff so you have the poster presentation you have the publications you have research great something I highlighted a couple episodes ago was how students for your research lab research technician experience you wrote that kind of studying the disease of cystic fibrosis has shown you that how scientific evidence plays an indispensable of to put in that kind of a kind of statement right of course research plays an important part in a differential diagnosis that's how we have medicine in the first place that's how we know how to treat people diagnosed people is through research and science and studying this stuff so a lot of students will put in that statement and it doesn't mean anything I need something more substantial more about who you are as a person so just kind of the first note here the the responsibility side here I'm glad that you didn't continue this throughout the rest of your activity descriptions where you said briefly and my responsibilities include Mouse husbandry I don't know what husbandry sounds like it doesn't sound like a very good thing okay I get a weird picture of what you're doing with mice and I'm like whoa like hey keep your fetishes out of this application tissue culture phlebotomy like I don't like its research I don't need to know the exact stuff that you were doing that type of statement to me is just a waste of space okay the sales pitch right off the bat in your most meaningful remember that most meaningful is why is this most meaningful to you as a person and you made it a point here to kind of sell my strong work ethic did not go unnoticed alright so right off the bat I'm like I don't like blah I don't I don't need to know that it's that the sales pitch is just overdone in students applications right which goes back to the story what is the story of why you're doing this what it what are your motivations for being a physician show me who you are as a person so me your impact on this world not that you have a strong worth ethic that was rewarded okay so lots of research experience obviously something that you're interested in you get to the EMT work that you did you marked it until June of 2019 did you stop working as an EMT at that point I did or applications actually see that say that again I stopped working as an EMT when applications came around to fill out the applications and do my secondaries that summer okay so what that looks like is I'm just gonna check a box and move on okay so if you're not continuing a lot of students yell at me for this type of statement if you're not continuing to get clinical experience it looks like you're just checking a box now you may not like being an EMT I'm not saying you have to be an EMT but if you don't have other clinical experiences that show that you are interested in being around patients and other stuff then that's a question mark and you may have more here and we'll get to the rest of the list so that's just something that stood out to me as I was glancing through this right and so I try to just top of mind what comes to mind as I'm going line by line by line by line which is what a reviewer is gonna do as well just a kind of a what's the word a style thing for me I don't like initials for talking about patience right use names they're more memorable as someone's reading this like k-f doesn't mean anything to me but Jan like oh I know it Jan I can picture Jan all right it's only one extra character so that's just a style thing use quotes the first time you use it to signify that it's a fake name and then here you have some negativity which I tell students to avoid right I've been warned by other co-workers that KF was a tough person to please like the negativity doesn't need to be there and what you're doing is selling that oh look how open-minded I am look at how empathetic I am I can connect with anyone even the the tough ones all right that's that's what you're trying to highlight there and you don't need to do that yeah just tell the story of how you connected with her what that meant to you the impact you had on her how that impacted you etc okay so the trustee board of chapter advisors you have here I don't know what the impact was right I don't see really any impact it was just kind of here's the role here's what it was and that's about it okay so talking numbers if you can your TA position again the story behind the TA you have a very generic with what a lot of students do when they have these TA or tutoring positions all right you talked about it forced me to adopt a novel way of teaching well it's not novel it's just different for you all right novel is like kovat 19 it's this brand-new coronavirus so a lot of students focus on look how look how adaptable I am look at how I can kind of communicate with anyone tell me a story of a student that you helped and I can see through that story how how well you work with someone else and how adaptable you are to working with someone right on that more as opposed to saying the punch line as opposed to as opposed to trying to sell that you are adaptable right which you used at the very end tutoring gave me an insight in the importance of adaptability well of course you need to be adaptable you're gonna have to interact with a lot of people and so what you did what a lot of students do is go okay what are the skills necessary to be a physician oh you have to be adaptable to interact with a lot of different types of patients even the tough ones like you sold as an EMT and so you're like okay I'm going to use this experience as a tutor to to show them but you didn't show you you sold to me I'm gonna use this experience to sell to them how I'm adaptable because I think that's what's important as a physician and that's what they're gonna like in my application all right as opposed to just telling me the story of being a TA for little Johnny and and how you were able to help little Johnny go from a C to a B+ right and let them fill in the adjectives let them see it right let them feel it through your writing okay again much more research so at this point I'm like okay EMT experience only shown this far did it for a short amount of time stopped it tons of research are you sure you don't want to be a researcher like do you want to go to medical school or do you want to go to PhD like go to a doctoral school so that's what I'm I'm thinking at this point trying to formulate the experience that you had here that I highlighted for the most meaningful was a lot of students make this same common mistake is focusing too much on the admiration of the physician right you say while I admired most what I admired most about him was his attention to the specific needs of his patients and willingness to listen to families and staff okay he was a great guy I want to know about you all right I want to know about you and what your motivations are and why this was meaningful to you not that doctor dr. Smith or whoever this is was was awesome and the student health outreach team so you had this experience again numbers to show impact how many lifes did you impact how many students did you impact how many of these events did you hold were you organizing events were you managing people that will show impact other than just kind of generic what this activity is after reading this you mark this as medical and clinical after reading it I'm wondering if it is medical or clinical experience you talk about events and it it looks like it's mostly focused on just getting the word out about screenings or were you actually doing the screenings with patients we were at flu clinics and screenings just signing in other students we weren't administering flu shots and whatnot okay I guess it would be more of like a community service yeah so for me not not clinical right if you're you're doing administration work at a flu event or something right so a very common mistake right again of this is around a clinical thing or this is in a hospital therefore it's it's clinical experience so after reading it I'm like I don't know is that clinical is it not I probably would have given you the the benefit of the doubt reading this without being able to talk to you but but reading it doesn't signify anything to me about it being clinical so so that's a potential issue and again going back to the full story is do you have enough clinical experience and then I have this one that marks clinical and my question is a clinical that's just things are starting to add up as to this story isn't making sense yet let's let's hope it comes together at some point the student supervisor right you again have some responsibility lists in here the job duties that students like to give give give me a story supervising someone what did that look like and then I can see through that story that that you're a team leader that you're a good organizer a good communicator that kind of stuff without you having to sell that the hospital volunteer that you have listed here the hours that you did I wouldn't recommend doing this how you listed it as four different hour entries from 9 2015 to 5 2016 9 2016 2 5 2017 right just group it all just 9 2015 2 10 2018 like those small little gaps of the summers where maybe you weren't around ignore that I've heard some horror stories where where the data doesn't get pulled down properly and only see like the last entry that you have I think for those short amount of gaps I think you just combined it all and you don't need to mention that oh I didn't do this during the summers just don't worry about that kind of stuff all right but to me that's not fraudulent or lying or padding anything if you did only the 9 2015 to 5 2016 and then on here the the 1 2018 to 10 2018 and you only put that as one block from 15 to 18 then I'm like well that's that's that doesn't work really well right and so again I look at this hospital volunteering and I'm reading it and again I'm I'm to the point where I'm like is this clinical experience because you don't really tell me what you were doing other than you saw that this patient was in distress and you were able to get a pamphlet to the patient because they overdosed all right and so I'm like what what were you doing in the experience so without listing job duties show me the interaction with the patients letting go oh you interacted with patients all right tell me a story so again I'm a little confused and then your takeaway here is the volunteer experience left me wanting to do more which prompted me to become an EMT but that story doesn't really fit because you started this in 2015 right and your EMT experience didn't start until 2018 so I don't know how much that story fits right remember this I'm trying to put together who you are and what the story and so I'm still a little confused about the whole story okay you with me so far all right and then we get down more some older time painters apprentice great experience you told a little bit of story which is great I like that and then you have physicians shadowing at the very end it started early ended in April of 2019 that you have it on here did you end it again because applications and you're like okay I'm done check-check I'm done again I like students to show that they are going to continue doing activities that prove to them that they want to be a doctor that proved to the medical schools that this is what they want not hey medical schools I checked all the boxes I'm done I'm gonna go do everything else I want to go do now all right that just looks like a little bit of a red flag plenty of hours right about your your hours are great at 105 but the the stop date of April 2019 is is what I'm like well what are you gonna do now like are you are you done right actions actual project that better because I actually have shown that sense perfect yeah so a lot of times students forget that they can they can put the stop date as the anticipated start date of medical school and and and kind of anticipate and guesstimate those hours as well you have here philanthropy chairman you have impact here which is great three thousand dollars for the hole in the wall game camp so that shows me impact that's the kind of stuff that I like when I say show me numbers show me impacts for these kinds of experiences carpentry great all right getting to your personal statement this is where I hope everything comes together and I can really understand who you are as a person why you're doing this and so I get to the beginning and I see oh your mom is a nurse great that's gonna potentially be a good seed here but you don't use really your mom being a nurse as the seed you focus on the love of finding answers as more of your seed than anything and so you say as I got older I loved finding answers moving chess pieces and a difficult game building Lego projects even the second cat in an anime class right we all have our mr. bigglesworth I loves my cat in high school and so Barbara Barbara all of it when I look at that right I go oh this is someone who is just in it for the the the the the mental game of being a physician right you even focused on that and and I didn't I didn't see this last night I was reviewing this preparing for the call today but it makes more sense earlier your takeaway for one of your research things was how scientific research helps with the differential diagnosis all right and now you're here going oh I love finding answers alright so everything is pointing to you just love the intellectual side of being a physician you haven't done enough exploring the actual being a physician side of being a physician which is why your story isn't really coming together at this point does that make sense so the physician side of it the service to your patients relationships that they have how impactful therapeutic relationships are on people that part of it and not just relationships because you can have relationships anywhere but the impact that you can have on a patient the impact that you have had on a patient and maybe that's what's missing maybe you haven't had enough impact on patients because the things that you've marked as clinical experience aren't really clinical experience and maybe as an EMT maybe you were just doing patient transport and it wasn't super impactful for you and maybe you need more exposure in a clinical setting a more traditional clinical setting to see that impact to feel that impact and then be able to describe that impact in a story be able to communicate that impact in an interview ok so going to going back to the story going back to your personal statement it looks like as an EMT you had a good experience here but again you focused on the I racked my brain searching for possible reasons why this man was sick right you're focusing on the intellectual challenge of being a physician and and I had a great conversation on the pre-med years and I don't remember the episode but it was with the director of admissions of the University of Illinois right Chicago is where she's at but all of the University of Illinois campuses and and I was Leila Amira is her name don't think she has her doctorate yet but maybe she's dr. a Mary oh well we'll go with Leila at this point and so having that conversation with Leila she really told me a good story of a student who was just really disappointed through the application cycle wanting to go to Illinois not getting in getting feedback because her story was I really like the intellectual challenge I want to figure this stuff out I want to know everything I want to explore everything I want to examine everything and there really was no connection to I'm in this for the patients it was all I'm in this because I like the intellectual challenge and and her statement on the podcast which is really powerful to me was I don't want to be your testing ground for your intellectual curiosity I want people to come to my medical school who are going to care for people not who are just who just want to learn all day long does that make sense it does so when I yeah so when I read something like that yeah exactly so when I read this that's the path that I'm going down with your story now you may go but but I do love the patients great we just need to massage your story and and show that side of it okay and so we we get to a little bit more selling with Frank I'm glad you use the name here you use the the single quotes which is great you don't need to use them every time I just mark that on here you don't need to use the single quotes every time just the first time for the pseudonyms and then a little bit of a sales pitch here saying my prior training coupled to my decisiveness to act to an improvement in his condition condition right of look I'm ready for this I'm decisive I know how to get to a differential figure out what's going on and and I'm gonna be good okay that's that's not the goal of this right why medicine why are you doing this you did mention relationship here in in this story which we we just mentioned a minute ago right don't focus just on the relationships cuz you can have those anywhere you get to the end of the story here and your reflection of why was this impactful for you was the fact that it was just humbling right uh and and to me I'm still left with okay why does that make you want to be a doctor not just cuz it was humbling why does this make you want to be a doctor right that story you have this next paragraph is your cystic fibrosis research great I don't like talking about research in a personal statement it doesn't lead to why medicine it's in your activity list already I don't need to reread it in an essay form come again right your your focus in your conclusion here this the second second sentence I found getting to the bottom of that question to be captivating right going back to I I'm doing this for me so I can be intellectually challenged I like the chess pieces and Lego and all this stuff alright I'm not doing it for the patient I'm doing it for me and that's most likely not your GPA that's most likely what kept you from getting more interviews okay right again I enjoy seeking out the answers to all my questions just more of the same so we get to your school lists just glancing your school lists I thought your school list was pretty good you you had a couple out of state public schools which are usually a higher risk the the one on here obviously University of Massachusetts right next door to where you are so not not a huge issue but I think overall it's a really good school list that fit your stats the GPA may have been an issue but again I think that upward trend they they can see that and they can understand that your GPA is probably not an issue and then with the strong MCAT score I think you you would have been competitive at a lot of these schools but the story just fell completely flat and and they didn't connect with you and they didn't understand why you want to be a doctor and or they they understood that why you want to be a doctors for your own intellectual curiosity and they don't want that at their school question though let's see the list you think was appropriate yeah I think I think the list is appropriate a lot of private schools that that aren't looking at state residency a few public schools that fit who you are and where you are so that's fine so my question for you is I can go over what I've been doing since this application and then we talked about you know what's next how to improve this and really culminate my story um into something that they'd really be interested in reading okay so since graduation since applying last June I've continued to be working at the lab at MGH can't doing this mister fibrosis research I've also started a tutoring middle school student Cambridge Public Schools okay tell me tell me clinical experiences what are you doing clinically what are you doing shadowing wise so I've been shadowing I've continued to shadow my boss pulmonologist okay when she's on service I'll join her for one or two days every few months or so and then clinical experience that actually started doing Ski Patrol so I did ski patrol all winter so it's interesting it's like EMT was a lot of you know older people medicals you know I'm getting a lot of the pediatric traumas from the mesquite Patrol so it's been a very cool experience I've become a better skier for it you know dealing with patients and their families because you know when you have kids you'll stuff the parents who are you know your other patients too in a way yep so that's what I've been doing this winter as well um and you know right now I'm kind of a I hate us here figuring out what my best Nexen will be whether to continue working in the lab maybe go you know congenial work as an EMT next year or work in an ER somewhere yeah so take classes yeah so that I don't think you need classes right going back to your GPA your upward trends shows that you're capable your MCAT shows that you're capable for me for me your classes are not an issue the the ski patrol is great it's a Mt on the mountain right EMT on skis just as the ski season ends make sure you pick up something and you're interacting somewhere else I don't think you have to stop doing research I don't I don't think having a ton of research is nested necessarily a negative thing it obviously goes towards potential your weakness in your application that your inquisitive and and that you like to think and and come to the bottom of things right that just is more of to that point we just need to focus more on the patient care and focusing on patients and impacting patients and what that is like for you and then focusing better on your seed that I write about in my personal statement book of what was the initial exposure not that you're inquisitive but but what was it like to have your mom be a nurse and not necessarily like why did why does she care for the kids and not me but but what kind of stories do you remember her telling and and and have that conversation with her to say hey mom do you remember it all when when I became interested in what you were doing and I asked questions about that the patient's you were seeing and treating and whatever right and and and try to come up and and find those memories deep down in your brain to potentially spark a launching off point for why you initially became interested in health care not from I'm an inquisitive standpoint but from a this is a really cool way to impact a person's life that's a very good point go back and talk to my mom what let her learn more about her career and then so you think the continuing research for another year is okay and if you love doing it continue doing it just make sure you're getting the other experiences that show you on an emotional level not not an intellectual level why you want to do this for patients and and I'm not saying that it's it's wrong to want to do this from an intellectual level I'm just saying that for medical schools they want to make sure that you're in this for the patients as well because only doing it from an intellectual level doesn't make for happy physicians you burn out you will burn out and they're there you can just go go into graduate school and get a PhD if you love the intellectual side of it you don't have to do the patients and maybe you get to a point where you're like you know what I don't want to do it for the patients I love just the research and you do that and that's okay too so so going forward then do you think that it'd be wise to you know wait another year before reapplying it's me Turner mystery yeah if at this point reapplying right away is almost always the wrong answer especially for someone like you who doesn't have the experiences that are painting the right picture so get some more experiences figure out your story a little bit better and then reapply when you're ready now for you that means retaking the MCAT based I think on your MCAT date which kind of stinks yeah the MCATs July 2018 yep I don't know if that's gonna be good for a June 2021 it might be check with some medical schools but but just because the MCAT may expire isn't a good reason to rush an application and still not tell your story well enough I agree absolutely it's a big investment time costume everything else all right well if you have any other questions shoot me an email I hope this was helpful for you to hopefully give you some some advice and guidance to to focus in on for your next application thanks for coming on and sharing your story and hopefully helping a lot of other people along the way yeah thank you so much dr. Dre that's awesome

Channel: Medical School HQ

Views: 86,669

Keywords: why medicine, premed, pre-med, pre med, med school, medical school, med school personal statement, med school personal statement examples, medical school personal statement, medical school application, med school application, application renovation, amcas, amcas review, amcas application, amcas application tutorial, amcas application overview, med school application review, premed advising, premed advice, premed tips, ryan gray, medical school headquarters, 3.4 GPA, gpa, mcat

Id: hJxvVGsTkWc

Length: 32min 22sec (1942 seconds)

Published: Tue May 12 2020