Medical School
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 before granting [...]
Rollercoaster of a Day: Queen’s Interview, Ottawa Rejection
Although the title of this post sort of spills the beans, I still think the story of how I found out about the news is still pretty interesting. I heard that Queen’s had tried to send out all interview invites as well as rejections last Friday, but many people (including myself) didn’t receive one. So [...]
Medical School Admissions: Pointless Complaining
Pointless complaining is something that we are all guilty of at one point or another. When we get frustrated or upset about things outside of our control, we often end up making it personal, and just vent and whine. Human beings are selfish by nature. We do things that makes us happy and avoid things [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Why Medicine?
When I think about the word “career” nowadays, I try to stray away from associating it with the idea of a “job”. Because the word “job” is usually concerned with the idea of “working for money”, which is a concept I am slowly moving away from. In that sense, I don’t ever want to get [...]
Essay Writing: The Importance of Writing with a Purpose
I am sure there are many extremely qualified candidates for medical school. In fact, I think there are probably significantly many more people who would make fantastic physicians than there are spots. And in some cases, I think it is possible for some of the most promising physicians to not get into medical school. I’ve [...]
Mastering Interview and Application Questions: The Art of Questioning the Question
I was sitting in my Advanced Biochemistry class the other day, and the professor was talking about a well-known scientist (that I can’t remember) who helped pave the way for some very important discoveries in biology. The professor said that the reason why the scientist was so successful was not because he knew all the [...]
Making Sense
Imagine you are a scholarship judge or admission committees, and you are analyzing an application. It could be a scholarship essay, medical school essay, or something similar. Despite the specific qualities you are looking for, there is always one underlying question whose answer will consciously or unconsciously sway your opinion: “Does it make sense?” And [...]
When should I take the MCAT?
Last month, a science counselor at my university asked me whether I felt that taking the MCAT after 1st year would be beneficial for some students. For those of you who don’t know, I decided to take the MCAT last summer after my 1st year of undergrad biology. I knew I wanted to do a [...]
MedHopeful @ Premed101