Why Would 25 Medical Schools Reject This Near-4.0 Student? | Application Renovation (S3 E11)

i think your application is going to be one that a lot of students are going to be intrigued about for one specific reason application renovation season 3 episode 11 how are you doing today i'm doing great how are you i am doing excellent i'm excited to chat with you about your application i think your application is going to be one that a lot of students are going to be intrigued about for one specific reason your stats you crushed it with your stats and yet we're still sitting here at the end of an application cycle with a couple wait lists but no acceptances talk about why you think potentially you're you're not having any acceptances as of yet one thing that i've thought about is my relative lack of volunteering relative to other things such as research and then i think a major part of the reason why is because i think that i presented a very formulaic and um weaker narrative what do you mean by formulaic and weaker narrative so when i was crafting my personal statement i searched for several examples of personal statements and just figured that i would put some examples of clinical volunteering shadowing and tie it all together with some core traits of mine saying this is why i want to become a physician when i think i could have been more reflective of my true self uh that makes sense right you were you were trying to check off some boxes fit a mold for a personal statement instead of telling your story that's a very common mistake that just we see on application renovation episode after episode students trying to stand out trying to be different and in the end falling flat on their face because they're not being true to who they are i i cannot say it enough you have to be true to who you are you have to tell your story your journey and not try to stand out to to do well in this process so i i'm glad you've gotten to that reflection and and definitely something that we'll see as i take a look at your application here you ready to dive into that let's go all right so right off the bat applying super early great job you can see only a three week turnaround time there which is awesome you so i'm interested you declined to comment about racial identification and ethnic identification i could i can assume why you did that but why did you do that if you if you would care to to indulge me because a lot of people do this and i had one student this past cycle where i think it actually hurt her and and she was like yeah i don't know why i did that why did you do that so i didn't have a strong preference for what i should have done but i got some input from my parents during the application and they suggested that i declined to respond and i believe it was because i am an overrepresented minority in medicine okay and so the assumption was that this would work okay a little better so so do you know the term over representative medicine is a fake made-up thing in the pre-med world i did not yeah so underrepresented medicine is a true thing that came about uh from a study of like 3000 and 2000 or so something like that that was co-sponsored by the double amc back in like 1994 or something and they developed this term called underrepresented medicine it used to have a very specific definition and now it doesn't and the pre-med world said well if there's underrepresented medicine there must be over-represented in medicine and it's an excuse to say i am i am disproportionately affected negatively affected because i'm over-represented in medicine right and that was my assumption of why you didn't put it in there because as an asian applicant you're technically over represented in medicine and you're trying to hide behind that right and it's a game that students like to play and and i don't like the game because again over representative medicine is this made-up language it's just a oh they're they're they're treating me poorly because there's lots of white people out there applying to medical school and so i'm not going to get in they're going to treat me differently right you have to be who you are you are who you are you can't change that i was told way back in the day by a pre-med advisor who believed in this whole over-representative medicine crap that i was never going to get into medical school because i was a white male there were too many of us applying to medical school right you have to be who you are you can't change that own it so that was just an interesting thing and i'm glad you mentioned that right be told why you did that because that's what my assumption was so just a random thing that's top of mind because i was actually having this discussion with a a person high up in medical school admissions and medical school administration she was looking at my newest book and i have that term underrepresented medicine and over representative medicine and we were hashing out how to exactly describe it in the book so good little talking point there all right continuing on in our journey we see no major red flags in the demographics we get to your grades and we see lots and lots and lots of a's and it shows up here in your gpa right that all other 388 you're slacking there a little bit so stats 521 mcat score stats are not your issue right you you can't get any better than that um i mean you technically can but you can't um so great job there why do you think you were so successful stat wise um well first of all thank you i as an undergraduate i focused a lot on my grades um it's just something that my family and the environment i grew up in really valued and so when i decided to go all the way out to the other side of the country i went to college in san diego but i grew up on the east coast um i didn't have any family nearby and it opened up a lot of opportunities for me but i felt the need to almost make good on the promise and all the support that my parents gave me and i think that my vision of that for them was to do well in my classes and all of that so that was a big part in my focus it shows so good job um all right so very common thread that we've had a lot the the last several episodes of application renovation is stats are not the issue and so continuing that thread here and we get into your experiences you are a tutor mentor for this coach art it looks like um uh something you picked up during the pandemic where you could virtually mentor chronically ill children looks great um 150 hours going through the kind of the start of medical school next year which is good you have this story of befriending ben right you're telling this story which is great computers and chemistry talked about his mission to build a computer smile from year to year when i shared my experience of doing the same so you have this great story so good job here this is this is about as good of a description as you can get okay and we talk about publications which is good nothing special there and then we get to your medical and clinical experience here that lasted several months um as this intern is this something that is ongoing or did it stop with the pandemic uh it went through the pandemic and i actually recently completed that and and now focusing on uh emt class okay what do you mean you completed it the internship was stopped at a certain point uh so i did volunteer there through the covet pandemic and my hours to continue supporting the nurses there but the program they basically have a graduation requirement for how many hours you have to be there and so i recently completed that okay uh all right so you you did that um so that end date isn't exactly right which is fine so things change life changes i i have lots of red on here and i wrote list on the side here because your description is basically just a list of everything you did right following your view of your initial application i like of course people apply to jobs and volunteer positions and stuff like of course they reviewed it you don't need to tell me they reviewed it so it was just a little bit weird you applied finally became a hospital volunteer prior to working completed bls which included like just super basic things here that you don't need to put in your application you studied in depth guide of regulations patient scare skills like okay you read the the employee handbook right it's like you don't need to tell me this um you demonstrated these abilities during a day-long practical exam again great got it like just super super basic things um and then occasionally i made occupied and unoccupied beds responded to patient falls like just very common list of things like not not anything that is impactful at all for you okay um and then we get to the most meaningful remarks here and you dive into a story which i i can tell right you you've taken something to heart about stories and telling stories and you have the story of this patient ed and he you talk about using the bedpan right and the way that you told the story just came across very poorly right he dejectedly expressed shame and apologize for needing assistance as we began clinical removers the room lacked ventilation and it began to notice right do you really need to talk about the smell of somebody's bowel movements in your in your application so it was just in my mind just poor form mentioning that um i don't know if you were trying to go for humor which i don't recommend because that's typically what happens it just doesn't come across right so i i wouldn't put that in there and then you have this comment here but instead of inept comments and i had to google it in abdomen because the only word that's similar to that that i know is inept and so i asked my wife who knows a lot about vocabulary she's like in-app's not a word and so i had to google it and of course it is a word and it makes sense but you don't need big words don't don't use big words um even though that's five letters it's a small word it's a small big word um so stay away stay away from fancy words right and this this sentence was weird to me right but instead of inept comments i smiled and assured him that it was no trouble at all what was the goal of that sentence for you in your mind i'm really glad that you brought that up now that we're going over it i completely see you where you're coming from i'm not saying anything yet well um i think when i initially wrote that i was probably just typing out everything that went through my mind in that moment but when you said it was unnecessary you're absolutely correct and i also believe it's unnecessary revisiting it okay so what i read into this and i i've read a lot of these essays and extracurricular descriptions is when i see a student trying hard to let me know that they are good at communicating that they aren't they don't make inept comments um that you're not gonna like go off on this wild ride of conversation which is usually inappropriate conversation usually when i see students trying hard to make sure that i know that they wouldn't do that it's usually because they do do that and so it just comes across as what are you hiding here right are you an awkward person in conversation and you're trying to hide by saying look i'm not awkward i didn't say anything weird as he was stinking up the room right and so just it comes across as like what else is going on here so i'm gonna keep reading and we'll see if anything else like that pops up okay we might see a trend i'm i'm foreshadowing a little bit okay so um you talk about kind of this discussion talking about baseball and then you have this weird comment although i was tired and hungry it was gratifying to like why would you say that of course like when you're working sometimes you're tired and sometimes you're hungry why does that need to come through on your application so just a wee another weird kind of comment there this comment here right again i also use skills that i learned in other experiences on a daily basis okay right that's what we do day in and day out we use skills that we learned the day before and we continue to move forward and build upon those skills and and go and go and go so again again just just random words and thoughts here that don't seem to be actually helping you they're just there um you talked about this demonstration about blood pressure using her bedside water cup with a straw and explained how pressure increased and so it's kind of interesting it's kind of enjoyable talking about shark tank which is cool um the the perspective taking and socialization in the clinic um uh was was an interesting kind of takeaway for that so not horrible this the second part we get to honors awards recognitions nothing much to say there and then we get to physician shadowing so physician shadowing you have a good amount of hours they were from one month several years ago and it was very interesting that you focused on the negative here right to begin with i i have never been happier to be wrong i expected to be passive in a family clinic right again why would you mention that in your application i think for me the thought process behind that initially was to show that i i love being corrected and learning in that way and showing how the experience differed from my expectations so your expectations were this is going to be super boring but i want a career in medicine where i can be bored every day i see it right so just it just comes across wrong and that's why i tell students just don't focus on negative things in application period there's no there's no need to bring that up at all talk about the good things that happened when you were shadowing right there's no need again for your agenda where you're like i was trying to show that i can be taught i can learn new things that i can be corrected right there's there's no need to do that you're watering down your story by trying to force this thing and that just comes out wrong we continue on with talking about the diagnosis invited me on my thoughts and diagnosis right you're kind of showing off here i could correctly deduce cobit at copic copd i got coveted on the brain copd and suggested steroids right i found my passion for medical puzzles and learn how to treat people not just ailments right so it's kind of generic cliche i love puzzles i like i like the thought process behind things look how smart i am already i know how to diagnose copd et cetera all right so just not needed and it's just more of a distraction um we have so so shadowing from a couple years ago do you have any other shadowing or is that the only shadowing that you have that's my only shadowing experience okay um so publications great nothing special there um you you kind of focus on a little bit of the sales pitch communication collaboration unlock our collective potential right showing like i can communicate i can collaborate right this kind of going back to i don't have awkward conversations i'm a good communicator so again maybe uh maybe a little bit more foreshadowing there uh research lab good amount of hours going on so good job with that um and then we have your ra job here so a resident assistant uh in college which again is very common kind of job that students have the uh the the thing that i highlighted here i just very similar to how you talked about basically reading the employee handbook in the the clinical experience they had very similar here we discuss responsibilities partnerships house themes i learned school policies studied equity diversity inclusion right just basic things that don't need to be here just more of a just wasted characters um i i like what you're trying to do right you're trying to tell stories you're trying to get into where you want to be you're talking about um playing dodgeball games then playing some pickup basketball basketball which is good you're trying the right thing the the things that i highlighted here at the bottom was this kind of story of shay that was very interesting right you said i withheld my pr prep prep suppicious sins like i don't even i don't even know what that word is like i don't even know presuppositions like that's just too big of a word for me i ain't that smart um right judgments biases whatever you want to call it are easier words for that um she was falling behind in chemistry consuming her time and a group of three of us i reviewed their fair concerns outlined a cleaning plan and introduced the campus campuses tutoring services i learned to avoid my personal biases and in all being an aha developed to my passion for guiding others okay so just like the sales pitch side of it to me having read a bunch of these is you are trying to show me look at me i know how not to judge people and i as a physician will be put in a position where i will have to not judge people and just treat them as they are right and so it's just you're trying too hard to focus on what you think i want you to be versus just who you are and the experiences that you had the the saber west journey saber i think comes up later on as well with your research um nothing special there some student health and well-being advocate nothing too bad there um and then student dining hall uh was good i i thought this was cute the one tater tot at a time like it was a little bit of humor that was that was mild and and that was that was cute um maybe because i love tater tots i don't know uh and then we have this research assistant project manager again kind of going into you talking about the saber thing uh nothing nothing big here obviously a good amount of hours a good amount of your time that you um devoted to this so um just shows what you've been doing again good story here using latex um the the word processor what to do and guiding you through this blah blah blah so nothing nothing that stands out as amazing or bad or anything it's just a decent experience there i love hobbies on an application which is great i would try to estimate hours for things a lot of students will just put zero for hobbies but is it truly zero like you don't do them but you wish you could do them or you just putting zero because it's just too hard to estimate um so i would always try to estimate um and then we have this sales associate job that you did for a while and you tell this story that really had nothing to do with being a sales associate but it was this medical experience this heightened kind of emotional experience where again you're focused on i'm ready to handle the situation so i'm good to go right so you talked about um the popcorn shop across the street was in flames calling 911 911 911 began gathering in the square and you feared an explosion i ran into the square right you're you're highlighting this look at me look at how i react in a stressful situation again it really has nothing to do with being a sales associate the story that you told here you were focused on let me show them a time where i handled myself in a stressful somewhat medically related situation and they're going to be able to see that i'm ready to be a doctor right don't do that for for all of you watching later on and for you in the future don't do that it's not the point of this application process i want to know who you were you was a sales you were a sales associate tell me about uh your favorite customer or something that happened on the job where you were challenged not like i'm gonna show you this medical thing that just happened to happen as well so then we get to your personal statement and i think up until this point i'm excited to keep reading you have great stats you have good experiences the shadowing was a while ago which is a bummer i would like to see more recent shadowing obviously covid kind of threw all of that off so i'll give you the benefit of the doubt and and say hello maybe you were planning on shadowing but kobit stopped you right so so i'll keep i'll keep reading and go okay please please be a good personal statement so i can invite you for an interview and understand who you are and why you want to be a doctor and i think this is the biggest fault that you have in your application is your personal statement and i want to challenge you you mentioned in the application for this for application renovation that you felt your personal statement was a little weak because it didn't really have a your whole application didn't have this kind of cohesive theme and idea and you wanted my kind of advice on how to do that and my advice is don't do that you when when students try to have a cohesive theme across their application you are forcing a narrative that may not be true to who you are but you think you have to have this cohesive theme right but if you are someone who loves public health and three of your experiences are about public health and your personal statement has some information about public health because that's who you are then yes it looks like there's a theme across your application because all you're doing is talking about who you are right it's not a force theme it's just your story okay so i don't think you need to force any parts of your application to fit with other parts because that's that's not the way the application is your experiences are experiences your personal statements your personal statement your secondaries are your secondaries you don't need to go okay well i mentioned in my personal statement this and i carried that across four different experiences and i need to continue to carry it across in my secondaries and all i better make sure i continue it in my interviews right because then you're just you're forcing a narrative that isn't necessarily who you are okay i think students try to make this process much harder than it really is it really is easy just tell your story right write about who you are why you want to be a doctor in your experiences write about what you did and the impact that you had or the impact that it had on you your interviews go have a conversation right it's really that easy but students like to make it harder all right getting back to the personal statement you you talked about what i'm assuming is is mowing a lawn here right yanking starter engine sputtered alive since the grass danced around me as i push forward i mowed each lane now i take this as a typo i'm guessing you meant like each street like but i think you meant to say lawn but it came out as lane and so right off the bat i'm like i'm scratching my head going what did he mean anyway that's that's a mild a small thing all right you smiled at your masterpiece collected 20 from my neighbor nice doing business with you i exclaimed i don't like dialogue and personal statements it's confusing i don't think it belongs you just have that one line there so it's not bad racing back home to make the first deposit of my summertime journey to earn twelve hundred dollars i wanted to build a computer from scratch before eighth grade great why the heck did i just read that this is your essay to talk about why you want to be a doctor and you just wasted four lines here probably 200 characters if i were to estimate 200 characters telling me about mowing grass and earning money to build a computer okay so again i'm gonna give you the benefit of the doubt because me as a selfish admissions committee member i want a student who has a 399 science gpa and a 521 mcat to make my stats look good so i'm going to give you the benefit of the benefit of the doubt right so we're going to continue like please please let's get better all right unexpectedly my passion for building computers taught me the value of diligent work so right off the bat sales pitch right i can work hard when students focus on sales pitches you're watering down who you are i want to know who you are and why you want to be a physician not that you're able to work diligently got it good i was finally able to fulfill my hobby for taxing flight simulators i don't know what taxing flight simulator flight simulators means but okay since finishing my machine i have exacted this work ethic towards leadership research and patient care i am super confused now are you telling me that you building a computer for flight simulators made you want to be a doctor or are you telling me that your work ethic you're just focused on patient care with your work ethic now so again you're watering down and confusing your message now because you're so focused on selling the reader look at me look how i have leadership i have research and patient care all because of my work ethic why do you want to be a doctor that's all i want to know okay so through these experiences i have unearthed which is your favorite word you use it several times so start to find other other words thesaurus does you well uh earth compassion commitment communication and respect for my four central codes and clarified my fit within medicine the humanistic practice of science i have no idea what that sentence means right again unearthed compassion commitment communication going back to that theme i mentioned earlier about people who typically aren't good at communicating trying to forcefully tell people that they are good at communicating right and i don't know you so i'm not telling you that you're bad at communicating but that's always a concern of mine right i have compassion i'm good at communicating trust me i'm good at communicating i'm writing it down in this essay that i crafted over the course of two months to tell you that i'm good at communicating you have to be careful with that the goal of this essay is not to sell yourself you have up until this point two paragraphs in have told me that you are uh a diligent worker that you have strong work work ethic that you are good at leadership that you've done research that you have patient care that you have compassion that you are committed that you are a good communicator and that you respect your four central codes which i have no idea what they are unless compassion commitment communication and respect are your four central codes which i'm guessing that's what you meant to say that is yes okay so you you you took this opportunity to tell me why you want to be a physician you're 5 300 characters and you said i'm gonna bet everything on compassion commitment communication and respect i'm gonna call those my four central codes i'm going to mention my codes throughout my whole essay these these things these four things are what i think a good physician needs to have and that the the admissions committee is going to see that i have those things and they're going to want to invite me for an interview and accept me because i have these things these are my codes right do you think you're the only one that cares about compassion commitment communication and respect not at all no not at all do you think you're the best at compassion communication commitment and respect definitely not okay so when i bring this up and i hammer this home as much as i can focusing on these things does nothing does nothing to help you stand out because you saying that you have these things means absolutely nothing i can't quantify it i can't qualify it right i don't know your compassion versus the other 10 000 applicants and nor do i care because it's not until i meet you and i see you working with patients and working with your classmates where i will see your compassion come through you telling me that you're compassionate means nothing okay so it's a waste of time it's a waste of space and it's a distraction from the ultimate goal of telling me why you want to be a physician got it and and i will tell you right i i think someone who has close to a 4.0 gpa an outstanding mcat score is going to have to overcome this potential stigma of like are you just book smart but not a people person right there's this stigma out there that if you're that smart stat wise that you're not going to be good at communicating which is why i was picking apart the different parts where you were like i'm good at communicating like are you though because your stats are really good and we know lots of really smart people who aren't very good at communicating and i know i'm stereotyping and again i don't know you so i don't know if that's who you are but just you have to you have to remember that the people reading your application don't know who you are either right they're reading it just as blindly as i was reading it making a lot of broad assumptions and stereotypes looking at different parts of your application okay and so these things stand out if you're sitting here telling me i can communicate i can communicate i'm empathetic i'm empathetic then i have to ask why do you why are you so focused on these things right are you concerned about those things for you or like most students are you just trying to sell me because you think that's what makes a good physician all right all right i think i've i've beat that one enough okay so we're not off to a good start but let's keep reading you have great stats i want to keep reading i want to invite you for an interview so we get into this story of a being an r.a right and you're getting this call in the middle of the night ra training your third year college of college taught me how to manage a body of 100 first-year students but this right a little bit too creative writing-y a little bit too like talking to the reader i just don't like this style for a personal statement that's more of a personal preference for me the the story here right you decided to focus on the story i have no idea what eclipsed her fingertip meant what does that mean uh she cut off the tip of her finger i've never heard that term eclipsed her fingertip right yeah i don't know it made sense in my head when i wrote it but clearly it wasn't a good choice yeah i i'm a doctor i've never heard that term before that's not to say that it's not a real thing and i just have never heard it i asked my wife about it she's like i don't know what that means um so so just again trying to be a little bit too fancy with your inapt uh a con word earlier here so just you you went a little bit too too wordy um you you talk about here assessing her insurance i call it an uber it's just super weird like i'm gonna check your insurance nobody does that like like you cut your finger off let me see your insurance card ma'am like just get her to the hospital right that's all that matters um so it's just weird right you dressed your wound to little a veil her pain was quite evident got it uh in an attempt to defuse the ensuing tension with small talk and check-ins right so again like this weird you mentioned it earlier with the guy whose bowel movement you you smelled um talking about this like i'm going to avoid weird conversation and here again you're talking about avoiding weird conversation so it's like are you scared of weird conversation i don't know what your your there's this trend that i've seen throughout your application that that concerns me as someone who's never met you i have a feeling that you're probably not somebody who's really good at small talk would you say when you're good at small talk honestly i'd say i'm pretty good with small talk uh but i completely see where you're coming from good all right that's my writing that's all i care right i don't care that i'm right i just want to see what i want you to see what i see when i'm reading this okay um so you again write this this wrapped in a warm and calm demeanor like i'm empathetic i can rap small talk in this warm and calm demeanor just it's just weird like you don't don't need to say that you don't need to talk like that um her affect quickly changed it dawned on me that my demeanor succeeded right like oh look at me like i i can help people just by talking to them with my demeanor and again it's just it comes off as just really strange to focus on that um and then uh what you learned right treatment extends far beyond the wound and compassion is just as if not more necessary students like to focus on i know that be to be a good doctor it's not just knowing everything it's also being empathetic and compassionate got it like good for you but do you know who else knows that everyone else who has a heart who is is a good human being who doesn't want to be a doctor too right we all know that compassion is is the start of everything right and so for you to say oh i've learned this thing right it doesn't help me understand who you are and why you want to be a doctor it's not my story which which is not your story that is the perfect response to that comment it's not your story nowhere yet have i seen who you are and what your story is i have seen what you think i want to see right you think i want to see someone who is compassionate uh committed right communicates respectful who has a strong demeanor more compassion but i don't know who you are and i don't know why you want to be a doctor i know that you're really smart but i know lots of people who are really really smart who turn out to be horrible doctors because they don't know why they want to be a doctor other than it was just what they should do right right so we we get to the end of this and we get to as a physician my patients can expect at least this level of compassion this is a completely strange comment at least this level of compassion like i hope there's more compassion like you wrote in the uber with her and oh boy you stayed until 4 30 in the morning that's amazing how compassionate of you right well guess what you're going to do as a physician you're going to be staying a lot longer right so just a very weird comment um the continuing on here with your essay early on at ucsd i struggled to root interest in our development of a new way to analyze group dynamics i was jealous of my peers who worked in cancer-related related labs right that negativity there's no need to talk about jealousy of other people in your personal statement you um get your first poster presentation poster talk okay you four years later project impacts uh develop an r interface i need i really need to look into r everyone talks about this our programming language um new students to continue our work upon my finale right so talking about research has nothing to do with why you want to be a doctor i don't like it in personal statements i want to know why you want to be a physician if the research happens to be a part of your story on why you want to be a doctor great make it work but this has nothing to do with why you want to be a doctor okay and then your your takeaway here here's this unearthed again as your your word of the day i unearthed the values of oh look what we've got here again communication i promise i'm a good communicator uh respect for other people's opinions got it okay i will use feedback from my patients and team to enhance my practice and find drive when i may need it it's all focused on the skills that you think you have that are necessary to be a good physician i still have zero idea about why you want to be a doctor zero other than somehow building a computer led to potentially being a doctor um zero idea why you wanna be a doctor my codes were indeed reflected in the clinic i shadowed what what codes oh right this is what i had to do i read this the first time i'm like what codes are you talking about i'm like oh these codes okay i would actually say that's one code the the code has four things but it's actually one code but maybe that's my comic book comic book nerd in me um so the codes right you're bringing up this code again indeed reflected in the clinic i shadowed i embodied these across 328 unique patients again i don't know why you're like did you really keep track of every single patient that you came across it's a little strange um but okay so uh brief these the these quizzes revealed my zeal for solving medical puzzles right i had uh an episode of application renovation an episode or two ago two two ago i think it was episode nine was an engineer applying to medical school where his whole application was patients are puzzles patients don't want to be puzzles patients want to be people that you take care of admissions committees don't want you to see patients as puzzles they don't care that you like puzzles okay they want you to see that you are a human being who has had experiences and knows why you want to be a doctor and through those stories i can see that you're a compassionate empathetic person i don't care that you like puzzles became clear that medicine continued after the patient left of course it does what do you what do you think happens like everyone is cured until the the appointments start the next day as just a very strange comment again it is perpetually humanistic application towards people not just an application of science against a malady students love defining what they think medicine is it doesn't help me understand who you are it's just you trying to show look i know what medicine is you talk about um [Music] this internship and getting this new uh new patient who is transferred in i i kind of chuckled at this right patients aren't transferred for a change in scenery patients are transferred for a change in care because wherever they were at before didn't have the resources for them or whatever it may be so the patient's like i'm bored of this hospital transfer me to a new one so just just i chuckled at that i'm not sure what you made what you meant there but anyway um just some some weird stuff here right she expressed her wish to go for a walk and i respected this as we prepared for ambulation right it's just nobody talks like that like hey guys i'm going to prepare for ambulation like no i'm going to go walk with my patient so absolutely right again you're you're trying to force this narrative of look i care i'm compassionate that the patient wanted to walk and i was right there with her ambulating with her right it's just it doesn't work it doesn't work well again codes codes codes codes codes just that that that theme of codes just didn't work well right strong work that strong work work ethic again love of computers has unexpectedly built my love of medicine okay so here we are i have this student who has amazing stats who i would love to have in my class who has some clinical experience who has some shadowing experience so it looks like he's doing the things to prove to himself that he wants to be a physician now i just want to know why he wants to be a physician this is my thought process as i'm looking at your application and i get to the end i have no idea why you started exploring medicine i can see that you're telling some stories of patients that come across a little bit weird because most of it is just trying to sell skills and then i see this statement that strong worth at work i can't say that strong work ethic and love of building computers is why you want to be a doctor that's what this statement says right here and that makes no sense i want to be a doctor because i love computers and i have strong work ethic and at that point i would put your application to the side and and and say to the gods for you to hear get some more experience learn how to tell your story better because i want to accept students in my class who know why they want to be physicians i've seen it time and time again from students like yourself and i'm saying this is your specific story but i've seen it over and over again that students are forced down this path because of overbearing parents right and we can stereotype asian parents all day long but it's the same with my jewish parents too and and south asian parents is is you're going to be a doctor a lawyer an engineer right and we see lots of applications coming through from students who don't want to be in health care but their parents want them to be and this is the kind of application that we see just kind of a mess of i i can't really tell you why i want to be a doctor because i don't really know but i know that i have strong work work ethic right and oh by the way i like to build computers right so just very very strange now let's assume you want to be a doctor right that's the assumption we're going with i want you to be a doctor you need to tell your story about why did you start to explore health care and from your experiences why did they continue to motivate you to be a physician get rid of all of the sales pitch you don't need it it doesn't work doesn't help it doesn't help me understand who you are tell your story about why you want to be a doctor do that in any way that's any better than this and you'll have interviews at almost every school that you apply to because of your stats and the experiences that you've had you've had enough of the experiences but you you haven't reflected and thought through them at least in the proper way to tell a story about why you want to be a doctor absolutely so we get to your school list nothing nothing real big here um you're a pennsylvania resident or california resident at this point i am a resident of pennsylvania but i think i also have residency in ohio you can only have residency in one state i see technically now that doesn't mean and i'll put a caveat on that right technically you only have residency in one state that's just how it works every state has their own laws usually when you take residency in one state you give up residency in another state that's how it works that's not to say that there are medical schools out there and the state that that the medical school operates in has kind of different rules for classifying you as an in-state resident for example kentucky last i checked i had a student who lived in kentucky moved to texas in the middle of the application cycle i told her don't move in the middle of an application cycle then you're you're like homeless you're you're resident-less the i told her talk to the schools in kentucky and see what they think and they told her because you went to high school here and because your parents live here we still consider you in state she technically wasn't a resident of kentucky anymore once she moved out and established a residency in texas where she was moving to but for residency status purposes for the school they still considered her in state and so that's where i always talk about right for for amcas she would be considered a texas resident assuming she she got her residency there but she would be considered out of state when it comes to stats looking at university of kentucky right and so i always talk about the students who are accepted as out-of-state students for public school you don't know what their stories are their stories may be very similar to this girl who grew up in kentucky went to high school in kentucky her parents live in kentucky she's technically out of state but they still treat her as in-state right she has strong ties to kentucky so random kind of thought process about public in-state versus out-of-state to look at your school list so we look at your school list we have einstein case drexel geisel georgetown keck temple loma linda are all private schools as far as i know um ohio state is public and so you were like oh maybe i'm an ohio resident right you either are you aren't depending on what you put on your application and ohio state may have some some of those technicalities where they would consider you in-state penn state is private uh university of penn penn is private thomas jefferson private stanford private brown private right so lots of private schools which are great all the california schools or most of the california schools cincinnati again this ohio potential question mark that you had as a public school michigan is public but is very out of state friendly and virginia why did you add virginia on there as a public school i added it i think i was looking for each school just to make sure if i was out of state that they did except out of state students and i also made the decision based off of uh staff at ranges okay so i highly highly highly discourage stat range picking but as long as you know that they accept out of state students at a range that it's acceptable to you that's great uh vandy's private wake is private so decent job with school lists in terms of private public um that's all i got i i think your personal statement is is what hurt you in your application a thousand percent i absolutely agree thoughts um i mean first thought that comes to mind thank you so much for taking the time today and going through everything yeah you're welcome and honestly people are allowing me to to criticize in public and again i'm doing it for your best interest so um i hope you took it that way absolutely and i'm so grateful that you did yeah um after like reflecting a lot i i feel validated that my writing is what brought me down and honestly i feel like i wrote myself out of the process i i would change that language a little bit because students i think people in general have this imposter syndrome about being a bad writer you don't need to be a good writer to write a great personal statement you need to tell your story and and you were just so far disconnected from the right focus it doesn't matter like you could you could be um uh what's his name uh stephen what's his name the stephen king yeah you could be stephen king and and be an amazing writer with a completely wrong focus and have a dud on your hands right you have to be focused on the right thing and even as a mediocre writer still have an amazing personal statement understood so that actually brings me to my next point in that my personal statement i think that my actual story i was scared to write about that at first because i felt that it was too essentially i what happened was i have a very computer heavy background right and so i you know was pursuing that all the way through high school and then i attended a research camp where i was allowed to do dry lab research at the university of pittsburgh but as a part of the camp it was very unexpected i was able to witness the surgery because they just had the medical center right there and they just let all of us high school researchers go in one at a time and observe and it was just in that moment i felt this just this very strong draw to want to pursue medicine suddenly and i just i feel that that's that's your story and that would have been so much better to focus on of like being at this camp and this fortuitous experience of being able to to go into an operating room and and how that lit you up inside to want to explore it further right that is your story you can't hide from that right why are you scared to tell that story i i was scared at the time because i felt that it would have painted me as too wishy-washy as like i just i dedicate all my life leading up to you know one point with computers and then in like a split second i'm like oh wait i really like medicine but it's it's not a split second it's a split second for this seed to be planted as i talk about in my personal statement book right this seed is planted of like oh that's kind of cool let me go explore that some more and see if maybe i am interested in that right this is this is how humans learn and explore and find out what we're passionate about so we dip our toes into lots of things and for you you were only exposed to computers for a long time and so that's what you thought you loved and then this other thing opened your eyes you're like oh my gosh there's this other thing out there that i may love too and who's to say you can't love computers and medicine we have a lot of that going on these days in case you haven't noticed so again you strayed away from your story because you were concerned about what someone would think when they read it but you weren't concerned about what they would read when you were forcing this false narrative of like oh look how compassionate and i'm not not saying you're not compassionate but this this narrative i'm compassionate and respectful and dedicated and motivated and hard-working and like i i actually was in the process uh late last week drafting a new personal statement just because you know in my mind i read through everything again and this was you know well before today where we're recording this and i was like wow i this is horrible um like i came up with some traits and you know basically just said why medicine well because like it shares those traits but that is that is what 50 percent of students applying to medical school do right i'm making that number off top my head but that is what so many students do they they list all the traits that they think physicians have they list all those traits in their personal statement and go look they match you should accept me it's not how this works i see yes i see that now good um is it possible for me to write out like basically just a brand new personal statement and i am on some wait list i still haven't heard back would it be out of the question to send those schools a new copy of that i wouldn't um it's an interesting thought and and at the end of the day would it hurt you no because they've already told you no up until this point right you're on a waitlist i i think i i typically when when kind of responding with letters of intent and updates especially when you're on a waitlist which means you've interviewed and and kind of just a random aside talking about interviews is typically when i see a personal statement like this my assumption is that the interview did both of your your interviews ask why you want to be a doctor um they didn't explicitly but they did ask me to tell them about myself okay and you worked and i feel like i went on a rant about uh how i grew up with computers how i love to see how things work and then yeah okay so that that was my my comment was typically when the personal statement is a little bit of a jumbled mess though why i want to be a doctor in an interview is still a jumbled mess because usually you haven't come to that conclusion like oh crap my personal statement's bad i need to change that for my my interviews um but at the end of the day i like to focus on weaknesses with updates and letters of intent and stuff to say i know i'm a little bit weak in this area here's what i've been doing to work on it it's it's hard to say i know i was a little bit weak when my personal statement here's a new one just in case you want to read it uh that that's probably a stretch i i probably wouldn't go there um although i if if one of those schools is your dream school shoot your shot okay maybe maybe i wouldn't do a whole personal statement but i would i would write a short statement to reflect on your journey a little bit better and a little bit more concisely to see if that potentially helps okay thank you for that yep and just a couple more questions um about the experience remarks so i know that for the most meaningful i have you know some characters and then i have some additional characters uh i was listing all my duties in that one portion for just the first part the shorter part um what do you recommend they do instead tell a story yeah i have two stories 700 character story and a 1325 character story listing of job duties is just a waste of space period anything is better than that okay great and i don't can't remember my last question but thank you so much for having me here you are welcome thank you for applying and allowing me to to pick apart your application specifically your personal statement in a public way so that lots of other people can learn from this i i think you you've set yourself up for success you just need to focus on that story in a better way and you'll be in medical school in no time can't wait thank you so much

Channel: Medical School HQ

Views: 81,239

Keywords: med school, premed, pre med, pre-med, medical school, application renovation, medicalschoolhq, mcat, gpa, bcpm gpa, medical school app, application, apply, doctor, medical, rejected, not accepted, medical school rejection, activities, rejected from med school, premed gpa, rejection, med school rejection, med school application, medical school application, med school apps, rejections, amcas, high mcat rejection, personal statement, high mcat, 521, 521 MCAT, stats, premed stats

Id: _cAK7RQG38g

Length: 64min 34sec (3874 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021