High School
Why You Should Job Shadow
The other day, someone asked me if I could write an article on shadowing. While I don’t have any real advice for finding mentors to shadow besides “just asking”, I remembered an article I wrote a few years ago about my experience shadowing a physician, and why I thought job shadowing as a whole [...]
Why You Need to Think Critically about Advice and Who You Get it From
Sometimes I read advice online for medical school admissions from medical students that I think is fundamentally wrong. Of course this would seem counter-intuitive – how could someone be wrong about advice if they got in?
Consider a game of rock, paper, scissors (yah yah, how many times have I used this example now?). [...]
Interview Advice: The Importance of Being Memorable and Telling Stories
I was once asked in an interview to talk about an accomplishment I was proud of. Prior to the interview, I had come up with a list of practice questions and what my general approach to them would be – the “accomplishment question” was one of them. I had planned on mentioning my [...]
Why Reference Letters are Important and How to Pick Your Referees
Every medical school has a different philosophy when it comes to evaluating applicants. Some schools, like Queen’s and Western, look at your GPA and MCAT scores first, and pretty much guarantee you an interview if you meet certain cutoffs. Some schools, like the University of Toronto, look at your entire application package first [...]
Video: Tips for the Scholarship Application – University of Western Ontario – National Scholarship Program
Series: Tips for the Scholarship Application
Name: University of Western Ontario – National Scholarship Program
Length: ~13 minutes
Requires: Adobe Flash Player
Important Links: Scholarship Website,
Video: Tips for the Scholarship Application – York University Awards of Distinction
Series: Tips for the Scholarship Application
Name: York University – Awards of Distinction
Length: ~25 minutes
Requires: Adobe Flash Player
Important Links: Scholarship Website,
The Power of Marketing: Because Perception is Reality
“What is real? How do you define real? If you’re talking about what you can feel, what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals interpreted by your brain.”
This is a famous quote from the character Morpheus of one of my favourite movies of all time, The Matrix. [...]
Tips for Multiple Choice Tests
I love multiple choice tests more than any other type of tests. They’re great because you don’t even have to know the answer to have a shot at getting a question right!
Especially when it comes to courses where you are expected to know a lot of information (e.g. biology), it helps when you only need [...]
Where Should I Go for University?
A lot of students have asked me why I chose to go to York University to study undergraduate biology. I get this question a lot, and the reason for this is quite obvious – a lot of people have the impression that York University’s reputation in science and engineering is not as strong as [...]
Why I Don’t Post Any of My Past Essays
Some students have been asking me if they could get a glimpse of my previous scholarship and application essays. But to be fair to everyone, I’m going to be consistent, and my decision is to not ever post or give out any of my previous essays.
Plagiarism
There are two main reasons for this. The [...]
