The 4.0 GPA in His Premed Postbac Wasn't Enough | Application Renovation (S1 E6)

if you could have better sold your story as to why you want to be a physician they may have loved to talk to you because you're very different type of applicant what's up guys we are here for episode six our last episode in our first batch we'll call it our first season of application renovation if you are looking for application help look no further than next step test prep they are the sponsor of today's episode I have personally screened all of their advisors as their curriculum director to make sure that they have the knowledge and the skills to provide you the best information possible when it comes to providing feedback on your essays providing feedback during mock interviews and much more let's go and jump in to our final episode here in our first season of application renovation diving into another application of an applicant who did not get in to medical school this time and we'll call him John for today how you doing John I'm doing alright awesome mama let me talk to you about your your application process why do you think you haven't gotten any interviews I think you said you haven't gotten any interviews to this point right yep that's right so that that's a telling thing in of itself so why don't you why do you think you haven't gotten any interviews to this point well so on my primary application at that time I didn't have any research in my in my pocket at all so that was something that I think was missing on some secondaries I was able to add that as I did this left in the fall semester I was doing research so I think that was one glaring thing but other than that I was concerned maybe my MCAT score was too low or I honestly don't know okay so I will tell you that most likely the lack of research had nothing to do with not getting any interviews and unless you only apply to haven't looked at your school list yet unless you only applied to like top research institutions in the country it probably was not a huge factor in not getting an interview oh all right so let's just dive into your application and take a look so just looking at it right away you applied on the second day it was available right on on six one usually that's right around the first day last year 2018 it opened on May 31st so you applied the first day it amazes me still took almost a month to get that verified which is crazy yeah okay looking through nothing big in anything there so one of the things you you blocked out this is something that I think that's good for students to know you blocked out your parents occupations um but based on what you put in for occupations and and the highest level of schooling am cast will automatically calculate the SES disadvantage and that's socioeconomic status so obviously based on maybe your parents jobs their education levels they have bachelor's degrees so that's okay but maybe the based on their jobs it marked it as disadvantaged so just something good number students to know you have your brother and again no huge red flags with misdemeanors or felonies or anything like that so that's good yeah okay so let's jump into grades so you have a lot of high school grades on here from dual enrollment which is good jumping into freshman year at University of Minnesota some age you got a C in music history apparently you're not a music fan what I am just the history you are so it's all music on here is not a music history fan yeah that's funny okay freshman sophomore again is B's so decent grades throughout junior years so you are you are a music obviously yeah all music stuff so no science credits that I can see here at all and then jumping from 2013 2012 2013 you're in graduate school yeah and then 2016 you start your post back work so at some point in there that the switch was made ago no more music I want to learn about medicine hopefully you'll enjoy the history of medicine a little bit more than you've enjoyed the history of music will side of that yeah I've matured a little bit so okay what what do I have to learn from old people they don't know anything so your post bacc work in there are lots of different schools you have on your school list that's crazy and then looking at your GPA so you have a really good GPA obviously a 4.0 from your high school dual enrollment courses your post bacc work at a 4.0 27 credits so not a ton of credits at this point I'm assuming that when you applied you probably weren't done with all of your prereqs right okay and that's okay you can do that you can apply it and obviously this is weird where you have zero zero zero zero freshman sophomore junior senior science credits that's okay and so GPA wise right your your grades are great 4.0 postback 387 cumulative undergrad so strong strong grades your first attempt at the MCAT was a 500 your second attempt a 509 so great score increased what did you do to increase your score that much honestly I think it was just it was a location thing so the first time I took it I took it about a hundred miles away from where I lived so I had to stay in a hotel obviously I didn't get a great night's sleep before in a hotel whereas the second time I took it I took it in Minneapolis here and was that because when you registered for the exam there just weren't any exam dates near you yep the closest two were o'clair and Duluth Minnesota and both are about the same distance to a yeah and that's why it's it's so important as soon as you think you know the time frame of when you want to take the test go and register for that date because the seats are limited yeah good good learning experience there so great score increase and based on your application your and depending on when you were able to submit your secondaries your application wasn't fully complete at the medical schools until that second score came back at the beginning of August right so still pretty early in the application cycle you got your 509 you got your 4.0 why didn't you get an interview that's the question all right we're it's it's like a big giant game of to figure this out all right so let's look at and again I've harped on this and in previous episodes of application renovation I'll continue to harp on it until they die the the application process getting into medical school is so much more than MCAT and GPA and so you could have likely gone on to the Facebook group or the student doctor Network or to read it or anywhere and said I have a 4.0 science GPA and a 509 MCAT score and I haven't got any interviews and then all the little freshmen are like oh I guess I need a 4.2 GPA and a 519 MCAT score to get interviews and it's just not true there's just something else in your application that's missing which is why we have this okay so let's look the first thing you have on here is medical and clinical experience simulations Center helper and volunteer patient and so let's let's look what you did here you help setup run and teardown simulations for training and hospital staff by acting as patient family members I was able to help new staff members learn proper bedside manner address concerns in their training and future experiences is that clinical experience I guess I'd call it clinical because it was in a hospital but I don't think it's necessarily direct patient contact yeah it's not direct patient contact and so for me that's a check off of not medical or clinical and it's so that's confusing because there they really don't have really good classifications for what this may be and so I would still call it not medical clinical it's obviously great experience you're you're learning and you're helping and and also other stuff and yes it's in a clinical setting but it's not it's not patient care oh so right off the bat I'm I'm like are you trying to pull one over on me trying to claim this as clinical experience are you and so I would probably look even closer at the rest of your experiences because I think maybe you're trying to pull one over on me okay you got to be careful with that but great experience so I would keep doing it but just reclassify it and then we have next year we have 500 hours of experience that started where's the other one the other one started okay so so the other thing here is this experience didn't start until May of 2018 so just a month before right you submit your application so but not super impactful as far as oh look at that that the time he's been doing it okay and then the other one you have on here clinical experience started in March of 2018 yeah it's only three months before you submitted it to me reading this and we've talked about this on the last application renovation is you don't want to make it look like you're cramming everything in at the last minute to go oh shoot I need to have clinical experience let me go run out and get it right and that's what it looks like just from a date perspective okay okay so that can be kind of a red flag 500 hours is I'm assuming that was an estimate of where you started including your end date before medical school right okay which you can do I'm not a fan of doing it because I think it's it's kind of a little bit of a white lie you're too loud but I'm not a fan of it so if you have to apply again obviously you're gonna have more hours potentially maybe only put those hours although it's one of those like performance-enhancing drug things like if everybody's using performance-enhancing drugs well I can't I - if if everybody's patting there hours a little bit why can't I - and so I I wish that the application services would would not allow padding those hours you can put the date range out to that spot just to paint a picture of what you're gonna be doing but don't estimate the hours out that far as well okay that's just my perspective and so you have this thing that you've done for three months and you're claiming it's a most meaningful experience and so I'm like well is it really it's only for three months is it really most meaningful and then we look at exactly what you were doing right so you started volunteering in the emergency department and you were a patient experience assistant and stabilization room recorder mmm okay I don't know what that is but I'll keep reading and find out because you tell me um the the time in here you don't need twice twice per week for four hours per day I don't I don't need to know that information that's just wasted space okay you have that you would clean their rooms you would assist patients and their families to their rooms and you would make them comfortable while they were there bringing them food and boy Kitt's I would try as much as possible to not point out a lot of things that may be seen as as lesser experiences from a medical or clinical perspective okay I wouldn't call them out to say I cleaned rooms alright cuz that's great so you were kind of a janitor person right right so I wouldn't call that out to say look at all this experience I have of not medical not clinical okay right so I think you have probably plenty of experiences interacting with those patients getting good clinical experience that you could focus on and then just kind of remove the focus on the non clinical stuff okay and that's where you kind of fall into a trap of of writing about job descriptions if the job description is kind of gonna throw you under the bus okay she's got me careful there yeah and then you you talked about bringing the nurses and doctors to focus on stabilizing the most critical of patients that enter the IDI I don't care about them I want to know about you okay your most meaningful essay you talked about so so just for the the viewer you get the 700 characters for the description the thirteen hundred and twenty five characters for the most meaningful essay reading this when you start a volunteering excited about accruing volunteer hours right huh i I don't know how many people will come and like I'm really excited about accruing hours all right seems a little disingenuous I think great just be careful about that um as the hours accumulated so self focusing on those hours you found it more more difficult to leave the department once my scheduled shifts were over so just saying that you really liked it okay yeah I I want to get to a point where I want to know the impact that you had on this position or the impact that the position had on you not just you were super excited about it okay great you were excited to come to work every day or come to volunteer every day but let's talk more in depth and for clinical experiences for this kind of experience telling me a story about one of the patients that you interacted with telling me the story about one of the patients where you left the hospital that day and was like yes like that patient Johnny like that's why I want to be a physician okay I was able to interact with him and and be there for him that's why I want to do this so looking at it you you basically just continued to talk about kind of experiences and why it was important to you but not less of impact right I like to see that impact from a patient story would be good okay and so for me just like the first one where I'm like is this really clinical is this really clinical right you're you're cleaning rooms right so I would I would Rais another little red flag but like I'm gonna be a little bit suspicious about these 500 hours not only because 500 is really probably twice per week for four hours per day is eight hours a week for three months is whatever that is right 80 almost a hundred hours right yeah not 500 so I would subtract a lot hours so in my mind right now you're only sitting at a hundred hours of clinical experience okay as of right submission date right so let's continue looking here you have a shadowing experience eight hours in March looking at the next page here you have some more shadowing hours I typically like to lump all the shadowing into one over the fact that you have this as a most meaningful is another red flag to me because for me like just just thinking about what shadowing is I just I'm very skeptical when somebody has shadowing as a most meaningful experience that's because I know that shadowing is super boring her students and and they're just kind of hanging out and watching and trying to learn and just trying to soak it all in and write it's it's not interactive usually at all and and so for it to be a most meaningful it's usually a stretch and for only 20 hours that you're saying its most meaningful that's a really big stretch for me and so it for me it's like you're trying too hard to prove that this is what you want to do by calling it a most meaningful okay okay for date ranges that are so close together stopping in February 2018 starting again in March I would just lump those as one date range okay and put it under 20 hours just in case there have been errors where schools will only pull will only pull one of those date ranges so I would just do it all on one all right and then it's funny last week I was like it's an artistic endeavors and experience type and yes it is it is there so thank you for answering that question for me so you have South Dakota Symphony some some time they're not medical clinical obviously Symphony Orchestra here you were a flight attendant for a while so I guess musicians go on to be flight attendants but it's for free there you go you have the Royal College of Music so let's talk about this so this is one of those things where is should this be an experience all right most people classify experiences as extracurricular activities okay and it looks like potentially this is like school you're applying to we have went to yeah yeah so should school be included in your extracurricular list no that's more curricular yeah I mean this is the definition of curricular right and so I I don't think it's wrong I would just again kind of combining it with the sketchy calling this thing clinical experience and this other thing clinical experience now you're trying to Pat it a little bit with school and it's it's cool school is cool alright it's cool that there's this experience that you had in London so I don't think it's wrong I think it just may be adding up to a point where I'm like really like you're putting school in your extra curricular list if it was the first time like I questioned anything I was like all right that's fine a lot of students put this type of stuff in their study abroad things even though maybe technically they shouldn't I don't think it's not wrong I just it's one of those things just maybe maybe not I don't know okay and then you have your server hobbies world travel all state BAM Youth symphonies so music music music dominates this right yeah you have up to the point of submitting your application you have roughly a hundred hours up to your application submission you have 28 hours total of shadowing mmm and you have this kind of cool simulation center thing that you you you uh squeezed in there at the last second okay so for me looking at at your application without looking at anything else I would say the number one reason you didn't get an interview is because you lacked a lot of clinical experience to show to prove to the reader that you really want to be a physician okay okay that's the biggest red flag for me in your application okay I'm ready so let's get to your personal statement and let's see how you were able to to show the reader why you wanted to be a physician so you start out talking about music obviously a huge part of your life what you're doing the first part of your personal statement is more why not music okay then why Dennison mm-hmm right and it's why not music because basically you failed at being a musician right not your having won a position in the orchestra yet yeah right and that's that's okay but with the the point of the personal statement being why do you want to be a physician and you're basically saying I really wanted to be a musician but I failed to earn a spot and I really had nothing to fall back on so here I am right right right right and that's the last kind of story that you want to try to tell okay I I think I I think with music being such a huge part of your life obviously it's gonna be in your personal statement yeah to talk about where life has taken you obviously as a kind of non-traditional applicant that's fine but I wouldn't start off with with this okay next paragraph talking about moving back to Minnesota continuing to talk about music and then finally saying hey my passion was lost right and now you're getting into the soul-searching right and you started to look for other careers so you have two paragraphs starting out all about why not music your after speaking with my partner of seven years when i early already earned his doctorate in psychology you began thinking about the classes that you took they you had an interest in while in high school and undergraduate school and so I was like okay well my partner has a doctorate in psychology gee I like to psychology I'll be a psychologist right that's where I'm going right now okay and so right off the bat it's like you you jump back into I liked science I I liked research in chemistry and biology were easy and enough for me yes I should be a doctor right yeah so you go back to music to try to point out some aspects about what you liked the joint emotions it brought to those that listened so right off the bat I'm going to think that well you've already proven to me that you like science right and to most cliche things that you can you can't write about in your in your personal statement right the two most cliched things you can talk about in your personal statement I like science and I like helping people and it looks like you're trying to go right away with the joy and emotions it brought to those that listen to the performances is another cool new way to talk about how you like to help people write the net then the next one the sense of teamwork felt right the joining one to two hundred other musicians so you're trying to sell a little bit to the reader look teamwork is a huge part of being a musician and I know medicine is big in teamwork so I got that base covered dude all right you should accept me and so you keep going months and weeks and months of painstaking work and collaboration so more teamwork come together for harm to come together to form a cohesive whole so basically you're like dude I like science from high school my partner's a doctor of psychology so it's basically like I'm a psychologist already being a musician I like to help people with music because they enjoy it music is all about teamwork and and I'm ready to work hard because that's what composing music is all about it takes weeks and even months to do it right so I'm ready to work hard so you're like checking off boxes that you think the the reader wants to hear to go okay so let me see you like science you like to help people you you are used to working hard done right accepted right right so so we're still we're still missing the point of why do you want to be a doctor and you're you're trying to write here's why I think I'm going to be a good one oh okay the difference there you could potentially still write about a lot of these experiences mm-hmm but focused more on why you want to be a doctor so I wouldn't completely scrap talking about music again again it's a huge part of who you are I think you need the comparisons okay to say look music is XYZ and being a doctor's XYZ again that trying to make those comparisons is just trying to prove why you think you're gonna be a good doctor so you don't do that you you talk here it was obvious to me that the natural next step in my life was to bring the healing I brought two people from the stage into the operating room like how do you how do you make that leap that's a huge leap like I love music I want to cut people open and it's one of those super cliche things that a lot of students will talk about in an operating room and in a trauma room in an emergency department students love to talk about how the physician orchestrated the whole team of the nurses and doctors and everybody else right and so you're you're kind of using that kind of cliche of the orchestration of the team to now I'm gonna be a surgeon and there's no there's no thought process that you're laying out here for me to know why you want to be a physician and then I I would get rid of the theme the music theme that here though I needed help on how to choose the first note yeah that's just getting a little too fancy there so you met with the counselor laid out the requirements re-enrolled this in school to complete the science courses you don't need that kind of step-by-step and then I did this and then I did this okay right it's obvious that you had to do some things right setting for the MCAT so that the whole next paragraph is kind of all all kind of next steps you talked about your age I don't think you need to talk about your age obviously they're gonna have your age as part of the application I don't think you need to bring fears again the goal is to talk about why you want to be a physician not here are my fears about going to medical school right and again right the theme that you're carrying on here I was concerned medical school admissions committees wanted to hear the music of today Rock pop music rather than the early romantic symphony I was bringing it's hateful it's very creative but but it's it's not good for the personal statement okay you talked to some positions and you became became a little more at ease with it so the personal statement 100% tells the story of your experiences meaning you didn't have many clinical experiences to begin with right which means you had nothing to write about in your personal statement right you weren't able to draw those conclusions as to why you wanted to be a physician assuming that's was the goal of you writing the personal statement and it so look like you were leaning more towards why you think you're gonna be a good one but it's with the goal of the personal statement being why do you want to be a doctor it's super hard to answer that without having clinical experience right right it's you you can't lean on experiences and emotions and feelings about why you want to be a physician if you've never put yourself around patients and physicians at least to a certain extent to to build up those experiences right and so that lack of clinical experiences and the personal statement reflecting that lack of clinical experience is is in my mind 100% why you didn't get an interview because the admissions committee isn't sold on you really knowing you wanted to be a physician right starting off with the first paragraph of your personal statement saying I failed at being a musician mmm it looks like you're just kind of floundering for something else right and oh look my partner is a doctor of psychology so I think I should go into health care too okay and medicine is too hard it's too long of a journey it's too expensive to to risk an acceptance on a student like yourself who is going to come in to medical school and may in the first semester to go yep not for me I'm out right right even though you've shown the aptitude with your postback you've shown that you can handle the the the academic side of things with your 4.0 and then but from everything else putting yourself around doctors and patients and everything else is this the life that you want and you haven't proven it to I don't think you've proven it to yourself yet maybe you have but I think you need to prove it to yourself more and and that will reflect more in your experiences and in your personal statement moving forward okay so one last thing with your application I don't know if we we do have the school list here so you are a resident of what state Minnesota okay so if we look at your school list we have Case Western which Case Western is in Ohio right yep it is a public school is it not I forget yeah we'll leave that one off the list I don't forget if that's public or private Columbia so obviously is a super competitive school yeah that's fine if you want to put it on there and this is my thing like Columbia is super competitive school but guess what you're kind of a unique applicant with all of your music background right and if you could have better sold your story as to why you want to be a physician they may have loved to talk to you because you're very different type of applicant and so I'm completely okay of putting Columbia on there that's why I don't tell students to apply based on MCAT or GPA you don't know what they're looking for I mean of admissions maybe a huge orchestra fan right let me go into the symphony and he sees your application or she sees your application in chromic come across the desk and they're like oh that's cool let's talk to him yeah I would definitely continue to apply there if you're interested um Mayo private school Oh Hsu public school right yeah Brown private school Arizona Public School UCSD public school competitive Colorado public school competitive Minnesota State School USD public school so that your school list isn't helping you at all because you're applying to almost exclusively public schools right as an out-of-state applicant so better more rounded school lists to to really improve your chances at at private schools not public schools where their mission typically is to train students from that state that who students who are more likely to stay in that state to practice as well right okay okay what do you think I think what you've laid out is manageable yeah I mean it mostly it's just experience just time right just getting I getting more and getting better experiences to to really prove that this is what you want so yeah one of one of my favorite experiences is Haas Hospice is gonna put you front and center with patients okay that may be better than than just doing the emergency room volunteering that you're doing where you you're cleaning rooms and handing out blankets and stuff right and again next time you you write that description focus more on the the actual clinical patient interactions and less on I I clean two beds and and turned over rooms and blah blah blah right right okay what questions yeah kind of think you hit on a lot so oh as far as like as far as experiences do you think more lasts as far you know because you get the 15 do they do vesicles want you to fill in 15 experiences or like I don't want to put stuff in there that just for the sake of putting stuff in there yeah you don't want to fluff up your application it's super easy to see what is fluff and what isn't yeah I would do what you want to do oh you have time to do some extra stuff and that's why you're interested in doing great do it I would never I never recommend looking at an activity and going is this going to help me with my application well this X Emma T help me get into Medical School right evaluates things that you want to do you love music go and play music at a nursing home okay right that's you could you could turn that into clinical experience where you play music for for 20 or 30 minutes and then you go and interact with the patients the residents I had a couple students a couple years ago too they met and and got married they were PhD students in music at Indiana and both of them played music at nursing homes and fell in love with how the music was able to affect these patients yeah and and they fell in love with the patient side of things they're like I want to go be a doctor both of them and then they both got into Wake Forest I think okay which is pretty awesome yeah so yeah so use use your skills use your talents use your background to to dictate what you want to do don't do something just because you think that's what you have to do right okay do you have an opinion on do versus MD as far as like so because I'm like non-traditional do you think that non-traditional pardon apply to both apply to both okay why - both yeah all right historically do programs have been friendlier to to non-traditional students that typically is from a grade standpoint their grades are fine though so oh you don't need that aspect of things right I think your backgrounds will be attractive to both MD and do programs so I don't know I don't worry about that but at the end of the day if you want to be a physician apply to both it's gonna increase your chances of getting in okay I think your MCAT scores is strong enough I wouldn't retake it your GPA is obviously good enough it looks like you're finishing out some prereqs if you haven't already just obviously finish those strong yeah and clinical experience clinical experience clinical experience and then get that personal statement under control all right to really tell that story and if you don't have my personal statement book I'll send you a copy so that it'll help you yeah and I bought it already it's alright there we go yeah thank you well thank you so much I really appreciate this you're welcome

Channel: Medical School HQ

Views: 79,181

Keywords: Premed, postbac premed, pre med post bacc, post baccalaureate pre med, diy pre med post bacc, med school, medical school, med school gpa, premed gpa, pre med, pre-med, amcas, aacomas, mcat score, gpa premed, application renovation, med school application, medical school application, medical school apps, clinical experience, premed clinical experience, medical school list, med school list, amcas activities, extracurriculars, shadowing, md vs do, do vs md, medicalschoolhq, mcat

Id: yvdt_wNWQCk

Length: 39min 44sec (2384 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 24 2019