Medical Schools Said His Application Was Not Unique | Application Renovation (S3 E17)

he said your gpa wasn't a problem it never came up your mcat wasn't a problem it never came up where you fell short was you failed to separate yourself from other applicants during your interview application renovation season three how are you doing today i am doing good how are you dr gray i am doing a wonderful i first want to thank you for coming on being vulnerable it was a few episodes ago where we released a video and and the youtube comments went crazy of like i can't believe that kid like allowed dr gray to rip him apart like that my goal i hope you know and for everyone watching is to really help you understand mistakes that were made hopefully good things that were that happened as well so that you can improve your application moving forward so thank you for coming on and letting me letting me pick apart your application a little bit but no absolutely i i have a feeling based on the conversation we had before i hit record you kind of already know where things are going to be going because i i am i am fully fully prepared to be ripped up one side down and down the other yes uh it it came out that you didn't really find me or my material until after you applied and then looking back through your application you're like oh lord okay now i see um so we're gonna dive into that before we get into the application though part of the conversation we had before hit record was kind of your journey in terms of the application applying md only for specific reason and it'll show later on that you're very interested in neurosurgery and not wanting to apply to do because kind of your own bias or stigma that like if i go to the do route i can't be a neurosurgeon and delaying your application to do schools but once you did apply to do schools the applications started rolling in right off the bat why do you think they were going to switch there uh yeah so i mean the big thing for me was i was such a non-traditional applicant and we'll probably get into this a little bit but you know my my journey into deciding to do medicine was so was so drawn out and and i and i just have no um really i had no concept of of what medicine entailed when i really decided to do it and i found out over the past few years um and even i'm still learning today what what all goes into this and so for me with getting into medicine i knew that i that i wanted to get into and the only person that i had had contact with was an md uh surgeon he was a family friend of mine and you'll see that that's where a lot of my observation has done is is with him and i i think that being so fresh to it just all the resources and all the all the um um like reddit and everything that you look at will say like if you want to be a surgeon you want to get into a competitive residency you have to go allopathic like you're you're selling yourself short if you go d.o because so many residencies are allopathic they're going to pick the allopathic students before they pick you um and so i had automatically written off dl in almost every aspect i was like no that's to me um even even a few months ago when when i got the rejection from my in-state school the allopathic in-state school my immediate reaction was well if i applied do am i settling like is this settling if i apply do i don't want to settle if that's what it is and when i dug deeper into it and we'd talked a little bit about this before we started recording but my pre-med advisor one of the best pieces of advice that he gave to me was to look deeper into the do philosophy because i do have a background in exercise and nutrition as we get into my application you'll see that i have a one degree in kinesiology and then i'm finishing my biology degree this semester but with that background it it kind of fosters the the do philosophy of mind body and spirit being able uh to utilize that for self healing and and so that philosophy really lines up with the way that i do want to practice medicine because um i have um some of my life experiences um with a couple of my grandparents that i was really close to who passed away from neurodegenerative diseases i want to figure out things that help help prevent that from happening or or even be be a pioneer in in curing or solving those issues so you don't have to worry so much about prescribing things and so when i looked deeper into the do um i got really excited about it and so and then as you said i i applied d.o it was really late but i've still gotten a fairly positive response up to this point looking at the rejection that came from your in-state school you got an interview your in-state school is very favorable in terms of uh who they interview they typically will interview everyone who applies as in-state which is great gives gives lots of experience to to those students who who need the experience of going through an application cycle you got to the interview but were ultimately rejected have you gotten any feedback from them where do you think your application fell short for them yes i've actually uh spoken with the admissions manager there uh twice on two different occasions post my post interview post rejection um and the biggest feedback that he had and again i i even said this to you before we started recording was all along the way i had said if i can just get in front of the interviewing committee i'll show them how passionate i am about medicine and oddly enough when i the two times that i've spoke to the admissions manager about what exactly didn't pop on my application was the interview he said he said your gpa wasn't a problem it never came up your mcat wasn't a problem it never came up where you were where you fell short was you failed to separate yourself from other applicants during your interview um and so that was something that for me was was was really really jarring because i i didn't expect that at all when i had called him i fully expected him to say your gpa is is lacking especially in the sciences um your your mcat is a little bit lower than our average so if you could do those bring those two things up then then you'll be and so when he was like your interview was garbage i was like man so it was really just weird i i will tell you that i have talked to multiple students who have interviewed at that school and the feedback is almost always the same that it's the interview and i don't know if that's just like they just use that as the excuse so they don't have to dig deeper or if they have a weird interview process where they're looking for something very specific that students just don't happen to elaborate on i don't know why that's very common kind of a critique that comes out of the process i even worked with one of the students myself over the course of a few sessions they went to interview and still got that same feedback and and was ultimately rejected and so i'm not sure what's going on there interview wise to uh to give you any specific feedback but with that said let's go and dive into your application take a look and and see the mistakes that were made and so just right off the bat this is application number two for you that we're going to look at yes sir okay all right so let's go and dive in first thing right off the bat is submission date you submitted your application in august why so late uh so that was because i took my mcat on august 10th and because of covid we had two weeks so i got my score back in two weeks and you can see that i submitted literally the day after i got my mcat score back before taking the mcat and and waiting on that score um i guess for me a lot of it honestly like i've said finding your uh channel uh has been an eye opener for a lot of different reasons um but for me it was i i guess i just never thought about it i i was just like i'll submit it when i submit my mcat and you'll also see i've i've taken the mcat four times uh and we'll talk about that when we get there um but two of the scores that i had on there i guess maybe for me it was like well if i submit it and they see those mcat scores i might get written off immediately rather than them waiting i'm sure i could have probably contacted them to let them know that i was taking the mcat but but that was the reason for submitting solely okay all right so late submission again very common students don't understand the importance of rolling admissions and applying early and and what they do is they delay submitting an application until they get a score back or until after they take the mcat so they can work on essays and other stuff it's a very common mistake that's made there um we get into your disadvantaged explanation i want to talk about your disadvantage essay because i think this is a great opportunity to just say hey like here's my story this is what i've had to deal with and from that story i can see a lot about you and and we'll look later in your personal statement more of your disadvantaged essay kind of comes out in your personal statement but here in your in your disadvantaged essay number one i find a typo right away and so typos are like uh oh gotta be careful i don't know if you've seen this have you seen this hypo here i i did have a cell phone yeah we didn't have a cell phone versus i did not have a cell phone so just small little things like that automatically making me go hmm like what's going on here that the student didn't catch this are they are they reckless are they just trying to rush through this what's going on um so just super small thing if it's the only thing it's not going to matter if it's the start of a trend maybe something else going on so something to look out for but what i didn't like personally about your disadvantaged essay is the comparison right at the at its core that's what the disadvantage essay is it's a comparison of like here's my story compared to what the quote-unquote average or typical student has gone through the resources they've had the time to dedicate to certain things that they've had that i haven't had right at the core that's what the disadvantaged essay is and so i don't think you're doing yourself any favor by bringing it into the essay and and saying here it's a large advantage that financially well-off students have as they do not have to work through college and can solely focus on their studies right it it just makes it look a little bit petty and that's a very strong word but no it's just how it rubs me a little bit of like focus on your story you have an amazing story and and most of it comes out in your personal statement i'm reading it going like why wasn't this in your disadvantaged essay because because it shows me a lot of everything you've had to overcome and yes i understand that you compared to someone else who does have those financial advantages is going to be completely different but for you to focus on it is is a distraction you don't need to do it and i can even from from rereading it myself when i went back through it was like it was like holy smokes like i think the woe is me attitude kid like just just tell the story it was when i reread it i was like that's such a a wallowing and self-pity woe is me type of mentality instead of just saying you know and like you vote like you've said throughout all all of your videos is just tell a story that shows how how you were impacted by it instead i came and basically complained about it and and that i don't think was helpful at all yeah and that's the best way to put it is that what was me a lot of students fear um kind of uh not an unnatural it's not the right word but uh an unfounded fear of like i don't want people to pity me and sure and that we always say like you have to try really hard to have someone pity you in a disadvantaged essay and i think you're starting to cross that border of like you should pity me because look at all these other people they don't have to do anything so all right exactly you you understand that which is great um all right so we keep going and we get to your transcript and it looks like it starts off pretty well some a's some b pluses some a's and then we hit a brick wall sophomore year yeah there's a a transfer in here that happened actually a couple potentially it looks like you're you started off at oklahoma wesleyan kansas wesleyan and then wichita state and then washburn so lots of schools going on like what's going on here kind of confused not super important a lot of students fear going to a lot of schools that's not a big deal but when i see lots of school changes and a huge dip in grades i'm like okay what happened here and yeah i think you talk about it in your personal statement again could have been potentially better we'll we'll look at that in a second when we look at your grades one of the things that stands out to me potentially is you have physics 2 here as a d-plus it's not listed as a repeat you did repeat it here okay it's not listed yet but because it's a different course um so that's okay uh cause that d plus definitely isn't passing for medical school so that would definitely need to be redone calc 2 usually isn't a prereq so that's not a problem intro to programming c minuses aren't passing for medical school but because those aren't prereqs those aren't important um chemistry 2 here again is a d so i would want to see it's not marked as a repeat so i just want i would want to see to make sure that you did take it again and you did which is great okay um so you have this rough patch and then all of a sudden a's i'm like okay so something bad happened potentially and you fixed it right and so when you look at this grade chart you go uh oh right 296 238 213 but then 4040. huge upward trend over 50 hours perfect right there's nothing that you can do gpa wise that is going to rectify your lower 335 cumulative or not cumulative your bcpm your science gpa and so this is just something for everyone out there when you go on to reddit or student doctor network and say hey i have a 335 gpa what are my chances this is the exact reason why every first comment after that post should be what's the trend in your grades because if it's the opposite trend right if a student started off 40402132 that tells a completely different story than your trend your trend tells the story of wasn't a super stellar student really fell off a cliff and then picked it up something changed whether financial stability something else something changed you figured it out good job you've proven academic success nothing more that you need to do okay um we get to mcat you talked about it earlier you took the mcat four times finally broke that 500 barrier what was it what was it like to get that score back i was super disappointed actually um so you'll see the 499 on there and the 505 um that are within eight weeks of each other um so when i started studying for this mcat i took my diagnostic my diagnostic for that one was a 503 and i had actually worked up all the way to i took 16 practice exams prior to these mcats and i had worked it all the way up to consistently scoring in the 512 the 515 uh region and so to get these scores back was actually super crushing for me um and and i still don't know what happened on the on the june 20th one that you see that the 499. um i i don't i and one of the weird little trends here is that the 491 that you see is in topeka where i took it in topeka the 499 i took in topeka and these are so the 498 and the 505 i took a testing center in kansas city and so i'm not sure if there has something to do with traveling an hour in the mornings to get there that allowed me to get the wheels turning that allowed me to score six points better and seven points better on those exams um but it i don't know i don't know if there was something to that or not um with the 505 score you'll see 127 was pretty normal for me on chem fizz cars was always all over the place for me it could have been anywhere from one 124 all the way up to i've scored 129 on that section before biobiochem was typically in the 129 area and where i really disappointed myself was in this that psycho i know he scored lower than a 128 on a practice exam on those and then just i don't know ran out of gas i guess uh when it came to the real deal yeah but that was it was super crush yeah all right so mcat obviously 505 isn't outstanding not amazing but it's good it's a good score right it's a it's a solid score uh and and definitely at being interviewed by your state school again whether or not they thought it was good enough they seems like they told you it was good enough uh yeah a 505 is a good score and and definitely is enough to get you in right this is where i talk about is it good enough and you have a great story there in your trend line of your mcat as well of four from 491 to 505. that's a huge yeah yeah and those first two that i took two should have never even been in the vicinity of an mcat to take both of those so that was also another mistake that i learned so all right and then we get into your activities and i i think the the first two in my mind these shouldn't even be on your application right the first two are this was going to be research that yeah this is going to be research that i'm doing in the future and and the second one is this was going to be a trip that i was going to take yeah but these don't these should not be on your application period i will say the only reason that i put them on there was i went to ku's open house and they said due to covet if there was anything that was canceled or if there's anything that you're doing during coven they were like put it on there and so that was because i i would have been in the same camp of being like well i didn't go on the missions trip so that i don't have the experience of the missions trip but the only reason that i did put that on there was they were like if you had something that you were going to do that was canceled due to covid they were like put it on there so that was the only reason that i had that did did kansas have a uh secondary essay that asked about covens yes yes they did that's where it should have gone for that most likely that's what they were talking about okay maybe not but um yeah all right and then we have conferences attended so you have this open house and you have a pre-med conference these are typically not activities that i see on a daily application why did you put those on here um well the big reason that i put them on there was that my pre-med advisor had said you know if you go to these conferences you know my goal was to attend my in-state school and he said they like to see that you've attended their open houses and some of their conferences and so he was like make sure you put those in your activities section okay so remember your application goes to every school yeah right yeah and so it's it's really hard and silly to try to craft your primary application to one school when it goes out to every school right so if if you want to go to university of kansas you went to their open house you went to their pre-med conference and you want to highlight that well that's potentially again for the secondary essay not for your primary application okay and at the end of the day for me the activity section is is who are you what impact have you had on the world in the activities that you've done what has been filling up your time and yeah two hour open house and a a six hour pre-med conference those are things that every almost every pre-med student is doing and so i don't really need to see that on an application i just assume that students are doing those things and it's not going to impact one way or another the application hopefully what's happening is kansas on the other side is keeping track of who's coming to these things so that they can oh yeah i remember that student they came to our open house right sure okay all right uh next one here presentations posters this washborn transformational experience you say this is a semester-long activity but it's only 20 hours how do those two connect so yeah it honestly probably was a little bit so it was actually um during a class we had the option to um so this was in a kinesiology current literature and kinesiology was the class and we had this semester-long presentation that we were building up to and so we worked on it throughout the entire semester and then at the end of the semester if you wanted it to be a washburn transformational experience which you get a medallion for when you graduate you have to present it to another class and so i had i basically what i was putting on here was i was estimating that i probably spent around 20 hours outside of class working on it up to giving the presentation and the presentation was 30 minutes so that was how i calculated yeah got it all right um all right so not super impactful there we get to your um wu moves clinic uh you talk about this clinic being open to the public mostly working with geriatric patients who are post-op or just the general public so basically everyone yeah it's for so so the reason for it is for disadvantaged people so you actually have to go through a whole application process where they screen you for your socioeconomic status and if you meet the criteria for disadvantage that they have then you're allowed to exercise the facilities great um story right again i i'm a big fan of stories if you showed me your impact through a story interacting with one of these clients or patients um that would have been much more impactful here yeah your next one is shadowing lots of shadowing hours here great job getting getting some showering shadowing shadowing hours the experience description for this is very short if i were to try to calculate it it's probably close to 250 characters um versus the 700 that you're given but don't short change your character count just because it's shadowing or just because you marked it as most meaningful and you're going to put all the important stuff in the most meaningful don't lose an opportunity to show your impact in one way or another yeah shadowing is kind of a broad blanket that i have is typically shadowing shouldn't be marked as most meaningful and that's because in my mind shadowing is a very passive experience right now there are what students will say well during shadowing i was able to do patient histories and do this and do that and then i say well that wasn't shadowing right that was something else which is great and and and definitely talk about that but for me shadowing while very exciting i i i very very much still remember my shadowing experiences and how how mesmerizing they were and how exciting they were but are they most meaningful no they they weren't mostly meaningful in my life and remember most meaningful on the application is most meaningful to you as a person not most meaningful to you on your journey to be a physician okay i'm sure and a lot of people confuse the two and and they say most meaningful should only be shadowing clinical and research those are the three most meaningful that you should mark it's just i can't tell you what's most meaningful to you okay yeah um so what typically happens when shadowing is marked as most meaningful is something that happened in your essay where your most meaningful experience remarks are all about the doctor they're not about you sure okay and so very common thing that happens because again shadowing is passive there's not a lot that happens and there's really nothing else to talk about except the doctor yeah uh one so one question on on these so one one of the little pieces of feedback that i got so i didn't even get interviewed so i went to high school in arkansas so i had strong ties to arkansas um and didn't get an interview i requested some feedback as to why not one of her um biggest remarks so i got i got completely differing things from arkansas and ku with with arkansas they said your mcat's not competitive your gpa is not competitive and you don't have enough diversity in your shadowing um and so is is that of your opinion as well when you only see shadowing under one physician and one specialty as being an issue yeah it's a common fear and i think some medical schools like arkansas will have that sort of um pushback especially for a state school potentially where their mission maybe is to pump out primary care and they say yeah and that was our biggest your application is all around neurosurgery and and maybe they just they don't have the bandwidth to support that maybe they don't have a neurosurgery residency at their school and i don't know if it's on my head um yeah and so maybe they look at that and they go well you are not a good fit for our mission and our feedback is you need more diversity in your shadowing when really what they're saying is we don't think you're interested in primary care because all of your shadowing is around neurosurgery yeah right and so you have to parse words a little bit when you're thinking about it sure my my take on this it's a very common question that that we get in terms of should i shadow more than one type of doctor more than one doctor etc my response is always it's hard enough to find one person to shadow one physician me as a medical school right if i were to say i'm a medical school i wouldn't want to burden a student to say no you must shadow three different specialties one in a surgical specialty one in a primary care specialty and one in whatever else right um and it's just ridiculous to expect that from students because again it's hard enough to find one and who are the students who are finding shadowing easily well they're already privileged students who mommy and daddy are doctors or in healthcare yeah and and all their neighbors are doctors and they could just go knock on some doors and say hey like johnny's parents can i shadow you tomorrow so right that's that's my my take on diversity and shadowing again my take on it is probably they didn't like neurosurgery specifically and they wanted more primary care exposure to to make that yeah that was the big thing that she said she uh because she i remember distinctly her saying we really like to see shadowing under primary care physicians because we don't believe that you get to encounter the physician-patient relationship um in in a surgical specialty as you would with a primary care physician and so yeah right that that's just because well because surgeons see patients outside of the operating room right surgery have clinic days where they see patients yeah that's silly well that was always one of my things because i was thinking back you know i i i was with him on one of his clinic days and you would see patients that he had done surgery on that were following up with him and i was like well that doesn't because they seem to have a relationship and that you know one of the things that i always remember is how much they appreciated what he did for him and so i was like i feel like it's there but maybe maybe i don't know maybe i'm missing something yeah that's that's some ignorance that's okay so and then one other question on this um so since then i have diversified and i am i am for i am in a fortunate position that this neurosurgeon that i observe as a family friend and so i was then able to ask him hey do you have any uh family care physicians that you would recommend do you have any um sports medicine docs that you would recommend and he has a pretty wide network and he was able to put me in touch with four different physicians and four different specialties and so i was able i've been able to diversify that over the past few months and so with that if i end up going another application cycle do you recommend putting all the shadowing in one section or okay yep one activity just list it and say dr smith dr johnson doctor whatever this specialty this many hours these dates just list it you don't need a story you don't need explanations yeah we have community service this easter seals capper foundation eight hours again it could have been a story it's very common for students you have this listed as medical clinical and yet you said half of the day was spent uh sending out new year's letters i'm like don't focus on non-clinical things another and another just minor thing here exclamation points don't put them in your application this this isn't an informal blog post like i'm so excited exclamation point they they okay getting into your complete nutrition general manager so you have your experience description responsible for overseeing staff how many staff responsible for regulating inventory how much money in inventory you could have shown and you have three numbers in that way and that would have been good and then you you have for your most meaningful remarks here the sales pitch right and i don't know if you saw this but it was all based around hey i was doing this while i was studying this was a learning experience because i had to do i was in school so you're repetitive a little bit you talked about um how to encounter people effectively how to run a staff how to schedule things responsibly how to handle uncomfortable situations how to interview people how to communicate how to run a successful business but lots of how-to's in this really long run-on sentence where it's like yeah i have all of these skills and it's really important okay hard work and dedication interaction with people uh very confusing sentence here i mostly love the interaction with people the other owners were not present most of the time yeah it was very confusing yeah yeah um so again kind of that sentence along with that lack of i did not have a cell phone until 18 i'm like uh maybe this student didn't really do a good job looking over their application yeah yeah agree um we continue on your football experiences here football and basketball your football experience doesn't really talk about football you talk about we did a lot of volunteering to help clean up small cities in the surrounding area hey talk about football talk about like yeah your most memorable game or whatever right your most memorable practice um sure and then the basketball one same thing right it was like uh in terms of the experience description itself it didn't really talk about basketball it talked about complaining of like well the school i was from didn't didn't prepare me well enough so i quit yeah right so there was a little bit of a red flag there as well um and then we get to your personal statement and this first paragraph i'm not sure why this paragraph is here well i had like i had talked to you about i i had rewritten this personal statement about 14 times i had seven different people look over it um and the most common feedback that i got because i tried to originally pack so much into my personal statement that it came across as really shallow you're i the most feedback that i got was you're trying to touch on so many different things that nobody can connect to anything and so one of the one of the people that i got the most feedback from um was he said find something that happened that impacted you and wash it out he was like he said start start with what's impacted you a lot with your first paragraph and wash it out and i came back i i think he he's he's talking about be more detailed with it show how it impacted you um rather than trying to touch on so many little things that you can't give enough detail on how it impacted you pick one thing and elaborate heavily on it so and i you know when i look back on it that this person was actually a phd student currently um [Music] and i'm just not sure if if the feedback was necessarily appropriate for obviously for this i you know when i go back and re-read it i i think it's a flawed approach yeah we get because the personal statement is why do you want to be a doctor not let me tell you a story about an impactful moment in my life unless that impactful moment led to you wanting to be a doctor and so right off the bat in my mind we have this distraction paragraph of like what's going on here why am i reading this we keep reading and then we have more of this disadvantaged essay right like yeah these are a lot of the disadvantaged at parts of the disadvantaged essay that should be up in the disadvantage essay um and then the sales pitch of developed my work ethic and running a business while in college taught me how to address confrontation lead and communicate effectively right this sales pitch like look i have all the skills necessary to be a doctor um above all i fell in love with bringing joy to people's lives by enhancing their quality of life through health okay so i shifted my academic focus from engineering to biology in order to further my knowledge of the human body and rededicated my energies to performing better in my coursework okay great so now i see that you're interested in health wellness biology helping people eat you haven't told me anything about being interested in medicine yet although yeah the sentence specifically says when medicine became my new focus i'm like whoa like where did that come from yeah and why um so very very good pick up on that why right um and then this whole next paragraph is basically your transcript like oh i did better i got four o's i majored in this i went to this school right this is all your transcripts so it doesn't need to be in your personal statement yeah and then we get to i participate in 100 hours of shadowing under dr so-and-so a neurosurgeon right that's in your activity list i don't need you to rehash that here during this time it was not his skill or brilliance blah blah blah right again it's all about the doctor again yeah and then we get to just this summer i had planned a volunteer trip blah blah blah right again that was in your activities list shouldn't have been your activities list it doesn't need to be in your personal statement either so so just lots of rehashing stuff that's already in your application and then this next paragraph again is oh i have a mature mindset i have leadership hard work understanding the body from a functional perspective down to the chemical and biological levels right you're basically saying like dude i don't even need to go to medical school i already know how the body works give me a chisel and a hammer i'm good to go just give me my white girl so just very common mistakes here yeah and as we said before we hit record you looking back at your essay you're like i didn't even talk about why i want to be a doctor i didn't didn't even talk about it it's it and it's alarming to me that seven different people that are in a health profession read this and not one of them was like hey maybe talk maybe tell why you wanted to go into medicine i will say one of the things that i didn't listen to was so one of the people that read this was the neurosurgeon that that paragraph is about and he said he said the personal statement's pretty good although i don't think that the paragraph about me is necessary i would take that out and i was like i was like nah but what is he though uh right and then we get to your your school list so so personal statement obviously didn't give you do you any justice yeah your school list you have uh one two three wait where to go one two three four five six seven eight nine ten public out of state schools actually nine because one of them is your your in-state school why so many out-of-state public schools yeah because i did the mistake that everybody does i went on emsar and i split everything to where my mcat was and where my gpa was and and i thought you know what i'll and then you would go and look and and you'd look at how many out of state applied 2 000 and how many were accepted 17 you're like guess i'm going to be one of the 17. so you're saying there's a chance yeah exactly so i you know i ended up applying there and then obviously arkansas is out of state but i have strong ties to it so that was that was the only reason for that one um minnesota i i don't know if if it's considered strong ties this was something i probably should have dug deeper on i do have family that lives in minnesota it's not immediate family but they they do live there one of them that i was kind of surprised of was new mexico so my sister-in-law she actually went to unm for law and she practices in albuquerque and that wasn't even a strong enough tie for them to to even allow it they they were like nope unless you went to high school here or you've lived here for the past year that's the only only appeal that will accept if you're out of state and so that one was that one was kind of shot down west virginia um i have extended family that lives out there um so but then the other ones were really just like yeah i mean i could see us living there so and then the other one that i didn't put on here um and for me it's probably just the bad experience is that i grew up 14 years of my life was in michigan um and i didn't apply to any michigan schools even though i have pretty strong ties there just because i think a lot of my memory of michigan isn't so great yeah all right so some things to work on for next time but hopefully you don't need to work on it with these interviews that are coming in for do schools and and hopefully um to it to a do school um yeah yeah any questions um yeah so i did have uh if i do go another application cycle um do you recommend taking the mcat again uh do you want to take the mcat again no no i don't yeah so a 505 is a good score a better score will only open more doors for you do you have to retake it no i probably would try to retake it again with that 124 in the psych soaps section yes uh you you left a lot of points on the table there yep um if i do end up not getting in anywhere this cycle um what would be your advice for what i should do over the next year i know for a lot of people you say do it do what you want to do whatever you would enjoy doing you know and so i'm trying to figure out you know for me i didn't have a lot of clinical experience and so i i thought that maybe it would be worth it to to get in as a in into any sort of clinical role where i can get more patient uh contact yeah um that's my that's my go-to is your lack of clinical experience is is that pretty profound and so i definitely try to get some clinical experience okay um last one that i have i read your book over interviews um and i read your personal statement book um i have a new one too that i can send you yes i know i know i know i i was going to pre-order it and then i forgot um but so so the interview style of the school that i interviewed with on monday was mmi um what is your recommendation is it is it even a possibility to mock interview for an mmi it is and and yeah i i recommend doing at least one only actually only one mock interview for an mmi uh i i think the mmi is actually a very easy interview because yeah i i at the end of the day it's it's just a game and if you can allow yourself to role play and be part of that game it's very easy to go you know what it's just like the way i've been explaining it lately it's like going to thanksgiving dinner and crazy uncle johnny comes right everyone knows crazy uncle johnny he's a little you know he's a little out there um and he always brings up the most crazy things about ufos and aliens and and the covet vaccine being microchipped and you have this you're talking you're talking about uncle david [Laughter] but the the conversation is basically hey the scenario is you're sitting down at thanksgiving dinner and your your family member says x y and z how do you respond right that's that's what the mmi is is here's this random scenario what are your thoughts i thought that it was uh felt really good when i went through it um because working at complete nutrition with with training we do role-playing all the time or we did role-playing all the time when i was there and and so i i felt like that side of it wasn't as awkward for me when because i only got one breakout room where i was actually supposed to role play with somebody um but when i did it i didn't feel like it was super uncomfortable for me um so i i hope that that was went all right yeah good yeah the the mmi book is is on my list of to-do's because the current mmi book is not very good all right well good luck to you hopefully again uh some of these schools pull through and you don't need this feedback but uh hopefully this feedback will be useful for other people well and it's it for me yeah for that that was a big thing for me it's like you know what if i can if i have the third because i know how helpful it was for me to see people who were in a similar similar situation that i was um and and for me it was you know if they're if there's somebody that's in a similar spot that i'm in i hope that they can learn from from what i did even if even if this cycle does end up working out and then it was you know a double positive for me because i was like if it doesn't work out you know i need this help so well thanks for coming on yeah no i really appreciate it dr gray thanks for having me

Channel: Medical School HQ

Views: 49,022

Keywords: med school, premed, pre med, pre-med, medical school, application renovation, medicalschoolhq, mcat, gpa, bcpm gpa, amcas, medical school app, application, apply, doctor, medical, rejected, didn't get in, not accepted, medical school rejection, activities, activities section, activity, rejected from med school, premed gpa, 516, 516 mcat, rejection, med school rejection, med school application, medical school application, med school apps, 3.54 gpa, 3.5 gpa, 505 MCAT, 491 mcat, 498 mcat

Id: owL1Vzd8OfI

Length: 45min 56sec (2756 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021