Archive | July, 2012

The 7 Traits Medical Schools are Looking for in Applicants

Categories: Med Admissions

Imagine you are the chair of a medical school admissions committee. What would you look for in an applicant?

As a future medical school applicant sitting on the outside, it is probably hard for you to decipher what admissions committees are thinking. Most of the information you get is pretty much “hearsay” from other premeds, who have heard from friends of friends, and friends of family. You might get information from licensed physicians, but often times they are so far removed from the admissions process (e.g. they got into medical school 20 years ago), that their information may just be flat out wrong.

I myself am certainly not on the admissions committee. However as someone admitted to medical school fairly recently, and now with 3 years of medical school under my belt, I have a much better understanding of what it means to be a “doctor”. In addition, if you have read many of my previous blog posts, you know that I like to break down issues in a very objective, logical manner. It’s the same approach I used when applying to scholarships, universities and medical schools, and it’s an approach that I believe works.

So instead of blindly following the information or advice of others, I highly encourage you to stop and think critically about this information, and make your own conjectures about the admissions process. I truly believe if you do this, you can make some fairly accurate assumptions about the admissions process. Admissions committees are composed of smart people – they will think logically about the process, and so you should too.

It’s in going through this process today that I will help you predict what types of applicants medical schools are looking for, and based on that, what you should do to make yourself a better applicant.

So what are medical school admissions committees looking for?

So let’s get back to my original question. Now that I have almost completed my 3rd year of clerkship, I have a much greater understanding of the work involved in being a physician – because clinically, that’s what I’m trying to do every day in the hospital or clinic. And now that I better understand this, I can see what characteristics admissions committees are likely trying to elicit – essentially the traits that answer the question: what makes a good doctor?

Without further adieu, here are the 7 main traits I think admissions committees are looking for in applicants, and what you should do to prove those traits:

1. Intelligence

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10 Lessons for Undergrads: #2 – Start Exploring Career Options Now

Categories: Undergrad

Many of us are raised with the notion that we “go to school and then we find a job”. Sounds pretty simple, but it’s not all that helpful either. It makes it sound as if everyone just goes to school and automatically gets a job after. While I have many pet peeves with this mantra, one that bothers me the most is the lack of emphasis on obtaining a job we truly like. I really believe that much of a person’s happiness is derived from having a livelihood they truly enjoy doing.

One of the things I dream about most is having a career that I love – one that I would genuinely be excited to go to everyday. To make that easier to understand, let’s do a thought test. Take any job, and imagine you had to wake up at 4am everyday to go into work. How excited would you be?

I want a career where I would fall asleep, excited to get up at 4am to get to work. To me, that’s the dream. Of course, I understand that’s not for everyone, and 4am is a bit too early for many people. But the main point still stands – if you’re going to need a job anyways, why not strive for one that brings you genuine meaning and happiness to your life?

Finding your dream job isn’t easy. Many of us growing up wanting to be this or that, but really, how the heck do you find out and when should you start learning? That’s what today’s article is about.

How going to university relates to pursuing a career

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10 Lessons for Undergrads: #1 – How to Pick Your Premed Major

Categories: Applying to university

How many times have you thought to yourself, “I wish I could go back in time and tell myself X?”? Sadly, I think about this a lot, perhaps far too much. The cons of wishful thinking like this is that you become full of regrets, and you might spend more time fantasizing about “what ifs” instead of focusing on what you can actually change in the present. The pros of reflection are that it means you are capable of recognizing mistakes and hopefully will learn from them for the future.

Knowing what I know now, there are lots of things I wish I did differently in undergrad. In this article series, I will share with you key things I would tell myself if I could go magically back in time. This won’t really help me now (obviously), but hopefully it will get you to stop and think about where you are right now in your educational career, and whether or not you are on the path you really want.

I admit some of these thoughts will be quite radical and go against lots of traditional thinking. Perhaps you will vehemently disagree with me. But that’s good – because the only way we learn is by challenging the ideas out there and really thinking for ourselves. Far too often young people get well-intentioned misguidance because of old or unproven ideas constantly perpetuated by generations before us. But I digress. With that said, let’s get to Lesson 1: How to Pick Your Premed Major.

Biology, eh?

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Hi everyone, it’s MedHopeful. I’m back!

Categories: Life

Wow, so this post has been a long time coming. My last post was on January 30, 2012, and well frankly, that wasn’t a real post. And before that, it was a tiny post on August 11, 2011. Probably the last real post I did was on August 6, 2011 which chronicled the life of this blog up until that point.

Well, I guess that post is still pretty accurate, as the life of this blog has been pretty uneventful since then (sad, I know!). Despite the lack of activity of this blog, my life has not slowed down – far from it. In two more months, I will be done my 3rd year of medical school – my first year doing clinical work full time.

In many ways, it was both the best and worst year of medical school – you experience some amazing aspects and joys of clinical medicine, but you also finally understand some of the really crappy aspects of it. I don’t want to be cynical, but I do want to be realistic – in my opinion, medicine is not as glamorous as it sounds and many premeds will have little idea what doctors actually do (myself when I was a premed included). That’s not a knock on premeds – it’s just the reality of a career in medicine. It’s really hard to know what medicine is actually about until you do it. That’s not to say medicine isn’t a rewarding career – for most people, it very much is. You just need to be aware that it has its own problems like any other profession.

So why wasn’t I posting?

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