There is a ton of diversity across Canada (let alone the world) when it comes to medical school admissions processes. The following is what I would do if I ran a medical school. If there are any medical school admissions committees seeking advice, you know how to reach me .

GPA / MCAT

I’ve said before that if I were forced to only use one item for selecting candidates, it would be GPA. So there’s no way I could leave it out if I got a chance to re-design the entire process. GPA is useful because it shows a candidate’s academic ability over a fairly long period. Due to the nature of GPA calculations, you need to be consistent to score well. You need to be able to work hard for several years. Qualities like intelligence, work ethic, organizational skills, etc. are highly suggested from a good GPA, and you need those skills to be a good medical student, first and foremost. If you don’t have the ability to learn well and study hard, you won’t be able to acquire the knowledge you need to be a competent doctor. GPA is one of the only ways for students to prove that.

Of course, one of the problems with GPA is that everyone takes different courses from different programs in different institutions. This is where the MCAT comes in, to standardized the process a bit. The MCAT allows us to compare certain abilities of students from many different programs and backgrounds. The drawback to the MCAT is that it only represents a single event, which students study a few months for – which does not tell us much about the student’s ability to be a learner for a much longer period of time. In addition, the material tested on the MCAT and its relevance to medicine are debatable, and it is problematic in the sense that it is organized by someone else and limits the medical school’s ability to control what type of skills should be tested.

As such, I think using both GPA and the MCAT is important. However, I disagree with the strict cutoff method that some medical schools use. It doesn’t make sense to me for someone scoring 14/14/8/T with a 4.0 GPA to not have an interview, while someone with a 10/10/9/Q and 3.7 GPA to be guaranteed one.

I think it makes much more sense to use an algorithm that combines the GPA and MCAT into a single score, and then rank applicants that way for the interview.

Scrap Personal Essays and Autobiographical Sketches

The problem with personal essays is that they are subjective (because you wrote it and of course you will say good things about yourself) and they are often only as good as they are written (that is, people who are better at essay writing will be graded better – the problem, however, is that you want to find doctor candidates, not essay candidates). Not to mention that no one really knows how much of the writing is yours versus that of your family, friends, or any other outside help. You can write that you are a great leader and that you’ve developed good communication skills, but committees shouldn’t just blindly accept that as true.

Autobiographical sketches (that is, lists of your experiences) are similarly problematic. Someone listing that they were the president of X club does not tell the admissions committee anything definitive about the skills actually developed – the only thing committees can conclude with certainty is that you won the election. Two individuals with the same item on their list could have vastly different experiences (i.e. one person could’ve worked their tail off, while the other could’ve done nothing). What skills and traits you actually possess now is what committees need to know, not what skills/traits you “might” have based on the experience you “might” have.

In a perfect world, committees would see candidates in action, and evaluate them on traits like compassion, problem solving, communication, etc. Unfortunately, admissions committees aren’t going to waltz into your club or volunteer program to see exactly how you are in your environment (and even if they could, unless they could become invisible, what they see of you would obviously be a biased sample).

So, what can we do? The closest thing I can see for a medical school’s own evaluation of a candidates traits at this moment in time is through the Multiple Mini Interview, which is why I think that should be used, and essays/lists, etc. should be scrapped completely.

Multiple Mini Interview

I would probably interview a number of candidates around 2.5 times the number of seats in the class. Interviews would be made automatically to the top X candidates based on the GPA/MCAT algorithm. Once you make the interview, I wouldn’t make GPA/MCAT count anymore because in my opinion, once you’ve meet that standard of academic scrutiny, it’s more than good enough to be a good doctor. From here on out, I would want to see whether you possess the skills, traits, and potential to fulfill the other aspects of being a physician (the non-academic side).

The traditional interview style has a lot of variance (since you are often only evaluated by 2 or 3 individuals, who are just a few of many interviewers – so how do they fairly compare all the candidates?). While variance still exists in the MMI format, it’s reduced because each candidate is being seen by 10 to 12 different evaluators. In addition, the ability to test specific traits in the traditional interview is very limited. For these reasons, I would go with the MMI format all the way.

Unlike with personal essays or autobiographical lists, the MMI allows evaluators to evaluate various traits in real time. While the MMI is based on a smaller sample size, it gives medical schools a closer, more objective look at your traits than an applicant saying what they know medical schools want to hear. Given two individuals with identical autobiographical sketches, the MMI will provide some information on which applicant actually has the traits they claim to and which don’t. It is of course not perfect, but I think it is both better and more relevant than relying on essays and item lists.

I personally would suggest MMI stations that focused on problem solving, decision making, compassion, empathy, and ethics/professionalism. I wouldn’t want stations testing specific healthcare and medicine knowledge because, well, isn’t that what medical school is for? (I have actually heard of Canadian medical schools asking candidates about factual medical knowledge and I think that’s pretty “huh”?).

In addition to that, I would want one longer station with the simple question “Why medicine?”. The focus of this station will be to tease out the candidates motivations for pursuing medicine, find out whether they have actually attempted to explore the profession, and etc. It will be a bit more intense, challenging the applicant’s motivations to get down to what’s real. Do they really want to be a doctor? Are they actually ready? The answers to these questions will likely affect the type of doctor they would be.

Reference Letters

I think reference letters are somewhat useful because I think if you can find 3 individuals to say you would make an awesome doctor, that’s saying something. Of course, it too has the problems of variability among letter writing skills of referees. For those reasons, I wouldn’t weigh the reference letters to highly, but I’d way them a decent amount because I think there is good value in them.

Cliff Notes

In short, I would use a combined GPA/MCAT score to select interviewees, and then I would choose the medical school class primarily based on MMI scores, with a touch of reference letters.

But those are just my thoughts. What do you think? How would you do the admissions process, and why?

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Sometimes people ask me what my goals are in life, to which I answer, “To be happy.” I know it’s a cheap answer because it lets me avoid saying anything concrete and specific. The real truth is that I don’t know exactly what I want in life. I know I want to be happy, and I do have some ideas about what can get me there.

That being said, getting into medical school (May 15 2009) was possibly one of the happiest days of my life. I still remember the morning, almost one year ago, where heart pounding, I clicked on an email with a subject title of “University of Toronto – Co…”

May 7 2010

One year later, last Friday night, I was studying with one of my best buddies from class and we often study together on campus. Since the undergrad students were off school, no campus libraries were open past 6 pm on Fridays.

Unphased, we decide to set up shop at the Medical Sciences Building cafeteria for the night. To say the least, it turned out to be a funny but sad situation. Here were two burned out students, with huge coffees and highlighters sprawled over the table, studying a thick pile of neurology notes. To top it off, there was no one else there, save for occasional loud partygoers who walked through the building (and gave us stares) and the janitor who noisily cleaned around our feet. The thunderstorm flashed at us every so often, and, of course, we both had headaches. I chuckled every time that he sighed and said “This is so sad.”

The question now is – how did I get from extreme happiness one year ago to this?

Winning the lottery

This is how I rationalized it to myself – I used a study that compared the happiness of people before and after they won a medium-sized lottery. The study had found that the people’s level of happiness increased significantly for the year after the win, but after that, their happiness reverted to approximately the baseline level that it was before. It wasn’t that they had finished spending their money, but it was just that the money became a part of their life, they took it for granted, and it wasn’t a source of happiness anymore.

After May 15 last year, it was almost as if I had won the lottery. I would have given up anything to get into medical school, and when I got in, I was so happy. I spent the rest of the summer busily filling out admission forms and wearing rose-coloured lens. And, like the people who won the lottery, I thought that maybe I was starting to feel the end of the ‘year of happiness’, and reverting back to my baseline. (It’s not like I was unhappy about medical school. I was just starting to get used to the whole thing, and like the lottery winners, it had became part of life.)

May 13 2010

You may know the significance of this date – it’s the day when all Ontario medical schools email out their offers of admission. I know this date because I have a few friends in the admission process, and I was waiting for their news. This morning, one of those friends texted to me: “guess who you’re going to see a lot of next year!!!!” (I’ve faithfully reproduced the number of exclamation marks.)

At that moment, vivid memories of my own application process rushed back – me screaming “I GOT IN!” at 7am in the morning, clicking on the admission offer email with a pounding heart, attending interviews and sweating during them, writing the MCAT, my first day of undergrad… And then, I suddenly realized how extremely happy that I’m in medical school. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do and I’m actually where I want to be. I’m definitely above the happiness baseline again, and this time, I plan on keeping it this way.

Just before I get back to studying for my finals, let me say this: for all those who got good news today, enjoy the ride, it’ll prove to be a lifelong one. For those who are still waiting to get there, it’s worth the wait, I promise!

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Last night I was at dinner with a couple of friends. A good friend of mine from class was sitting across from me, and at one point, the topic of generosity came up. The discussion helped elucidate a concept that I’ve always believed, but never really put onto paper, so I guess now is a good enough time than ever.

I have always been really big on kindness. I like kind and courteous people. A lot.

The basic concept I want to propose is that when it comes to success, being nice and kind goes a long way. I think more so than we often realize.

Appreciation

I have to admit, it’s nice to feel appreciated when you do a good deed, like when you help someone. It actually really annoys me when I help someone out and I don’t get a simple thank you in return – thanking someone for taking their time to help you is so simple and makes such a huge emotional difference, that it boggles my mind when people don’t do this.

I remember one time in an undergraduate biology class a complete stranger asked me if I could send them the notes I had typed up that day since they came a bit late. I said sure. I emailed them to her and never heard back.

I receive quite a few emails here at MedHopeful and while I’m more than happy to answer questions and provide personal advice, it leaves a bitter taste in my mouth when nothing comes back in return – not even a simple thank you.

What happens? The next time you email me, I’m going to remember you as the person who wasn’t even courteous enough to say thank you – and it would probably be naive to think that wouldn’t consciously or subconsciously affect any advice I provide in the future.

And I’m sure you might be a nice, great person, but look at the impression that was left behind instead. Not saying thanks implies being ungrateful, even if you were in fact grateful.

When you get help, take the time to say thanks. All it takes is a second, but it goes a long way to building good, strong relationships.

Generosity

This was actually what my friend I were discussing last night. The conclusion we came to at the end of the discussion was basically that while being selfish was good short-term, being generous pays huge dividends long term.

When you give, people want to repay you back, often with more than you originally gave. I’ve learned the most about generosity from my close high school friends. They are insanely generous with me without ever asking for anything in return. All it makes me want to do is figure out a way to be just as generous, if not more so, back to them for years to come.

Contrast that with being selfish. While being selfish helps you out tomorrow, it burns bridges for years to come.

Just Being Plain Nice

I remember when I was in high school, and a friend of my brother’s was running for student council and he had been successful in elections every year. While talking to him, I remember thinking to myself “wow, he’s so nice. I can’t even find one reason to not like him.” I bet he got my vote that year.

We think with our emotions more than we’d like to admit. We also find it easier to look for reasons to dislike something as opposed for reasons to like something – that is, we tend to go for “process of elimination”. It’s just easier to single out things we don’t like than point out things we do. And the same goes with people.

Look at how patients rate their physicians, for example. Recall that last physician who ticked you off – was it because of their attitude, or because of their quality of treatment? Or remember your favourite physician – are they your favourite because they are nice to you? Pretty sure the physician I dislike most provided me with sound advice but was extremely condescending.

So take the time to be nice. It’s not that hard, and it’ll go a long way.

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Taking a simple case, you get lucky when your medical school interview is conducted by a physician who turns out to be life long buddies with one of your referees, or perhaps you get unlucky when you realize your interviewer and you are complete opposites.

Or maybe you were lucky (in the way that I was) to only have two organic chemistry passages on your MCAT when it was your weakest area. Some people in my situation may have gotten unlucky with three passages. Some were luckier with just one passage.

I would say that most medical school applicants realize this type of luck and only refer to these recent type of events when discussing the luck involved in applying.

However, the actual reality is that “luck” runs much deeper and much further back, to the point where it is hidden to many of us.

I’m lucky that I never got into a serious accident or developed a serious illness. I’m lucky that I had certain experiences in my life that helped develop an early interest in medicine and led me to where I am today. I’m lucky that I have had very supportive family and friends. Change any one of these things, things that we don’t normally consider “luck” related, and I might not be in medical school. In fact, changing any of these things would have prevented medicine from even being an option in the first place.

I hope this post doesn’t make you cynical about life and make you think you have no control. It’s true that you can’t necessarily control luck, although it is true that sometimes you can manage/reduce the variance involved. For example, if you study hard, then it shouldn’t matter whether you get one or two or three organic chemistry passages on your MCAT.

I like luck, variance, and randomness because in a way it’s beautiful and I’ve learned to embrace it. I embrace it because it’s a powerful concept, and it’s powerful because it’s misunderstood.

Understanding the existence of variance helps you detach yourself from emotional situations that were out of your control. It helps you realize that sometimes no matter if you put your best foot forward, some things are out of your control. And if you understand that, what’s there to cry about?

For instance, say my expectation for passing my previous exam was 95%. And let’s say I fail. Why should I be surprised? I knew I was going to fail 5% of the time. Sure it sucks if it happens, but it’s easier to take in when you accept the reality of the possibilities that can happen and how often they happen. Many people seem to have difficulty coming to terms with the idea that supposed to getting something 95% of the time doesn’t equate to deserving it 100% of the time.

Don’t just accept it – embrace variance, and you will learn to live with reality much easier.

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While I don’t have any specific role models that I look up to, one of the things I have come to admire are people who are masters of their trade – those considered “great” in their respective fields.

One of the things I have come to realize is that a key characteristic such individuals have in common is that they are fearless. To be more specific, what I mean is that they are not scared to lose.

I think it’s important to make this distinction between being fearless of losing and simply being fearless because fearlessness is all too often misconstrued as foolishness when it need not be.

Yes it is true that there is foolish fearlessness. For example, a fearless person who takes a test without studying is foolish. Fortunately, that’s not the type of person I am talking about and clearly not the type of fearlessness I am advocating for.

A master who is fearless is one who recognizes the failures or losses he may experience, but chooses to not focus on them. Instead, he focuses on succeeding.

There are many reasons why being fearless is critical to being successful, but there are two that stand out to me.

Focusing on Failure Prevents you From Taking Advantage of Opportunities to Succeed

For many of us, our upbringing is one focused on being as cautious and risk adverse as possible. The problem with this perspective is that this it often causes us to overemphasize the consequences of potential failure and ignore the upside of success (thus leading to missed opportunities). Sometimes this occurs to the point where it leads us to make irrational decisions because we’re so foolishly obsessed with being safe and secure, even in situations where risk is relatively low and can (and should) be managed.

Imagine if I told you I’d be willing to make you a wager on a flip of a coin giving you 4:1 odds on $25k. That is, if you win the flip I give you $100k, but if you lose, you give me $25k.

Some people are going to focus on the loss and instantly decline, imagining how much it would suck to lose money they could have spent on a new car. And that’s all they focus on.

Successful people will look at this situation from a more objective view. They will realize that there is a 50% probability of losing $25k, but a 50% probability they will win $100k. Since successful individuals are also awesome at basic probability, they will further realize this wager has a long term positive expectation of $37.5k ( 0.5x(-25k) + 0.5x(+100k) = +37.5k). That is, if you were to keep making this wager over and over again, you would on average win 37.5k with each bet.

But it doesn’t stop there. They will ask, more questions: Can I afford to lose $25k the 50% of the time it will happen? If so, will the benefits of winning $100k half the time outweigh the negatives of losing $25k half of the time? How much value do I place on having another $75k at this very point in time?

By focusing on the true expectation of the situation, and realizing that both successes and failures are natural processes of life, there’s no reason why we can’t theoretically succeed every time.

However, that is where managing risk comes in. My point is that you can’t let fear of the consequences of failure or losing prevent you from making good decisions. If you only looked at the consequences of losing, you would miss out on the potentially balance-altering benefits of winning.

It’s easy to see this when I lay out numbers for you. However, our fear of losing often shrouds our ability to accurately assess the probabilities of outcomes and what our long term expectation for going forward would be.

Often, visualizing losing accelerates the process from learning about an opportunity to not trying – even before a real assessment of expectation can be made.

For instance, I frequently get emails or comments from students asking me if they should apply for X scholarship because they think they don’t have a shot at winning. Already, they are picturing themselves losing. But let’s look at the possible outcomes. They don’t win the scholarship, and lose some time putting together the application. Or they win win the scholarship and help cut a chunk of their post-secondary expenses out of the way. I mean, to me, as long as you have the time, the decision seems pretty clear. Yet I still see numerous students obsessed with potential failure. Remember, you can’t win if you don’t apply.

Or imagine you are a guy walking down the side walk and notice a cute girl you’ve never met before. You think about stopping to talk to her, and if the conversation is good, maybe ask her out. But you visualize how embarrassing it will be if she gives you a weird look and walks by, or if she talks to you but eventually kindly rejects you. You imagine failure and end up walking by. At no point do you stop to compare the outcome to potential success. Instead, consider the possibility she’ll be super cool and say yes and you end up having ridiculously awesome chemistry with her. If you lose, you feel like an idiot for a few seconds with a girl you will probably never see again. Or if you win, you feel awesome and meet someone who might eventually be someone really important in your life.

In either of these situations I’m not saying there would be a positive long term expectation for someone in your shoes. All I’m saying is don’t miss out on making the assessment simply because you only see failure and not success.

It Does You No Good to Expend Mental Energy on Visualizing Failure

Simply put, it does you no good to waste energy thinking about losing when you could be using that energy to improve your chances of succeeding.

You can either spend that half hour today thinking about how sad your life will be if you bomb that medical school interview, or you could spend that time thinking about how to better approach the “Why Medicine?” interview question.

While taking the test, you can either visualize yourself repeating the course, or you can give your full attention to tackling the difficult calculus problem right there in front of you.

Some people argue that thinking about failure helps make the fall less painful if you indeed do lose. If that’s true for you, then you need to improve the ways you accept loss – thinking about loss over and over again isn’t going to do that for you. You need to realize that failure and loss is a natural part of the process. Everyone is going to have cycles of success and failure. You’re often going to need to fail a bunch before you succeed. Recognize potential failure, but don’t dwell on it.

If you’re going to spend time visualizing the consequences, at least visualize yourself winning. It’s difficult to win when you don’t actually believe you can. I mean, what’s the point in trying if you can’t win, right? You will naturally not try your hardest if you don’t believe you will win.

Do what I do. Delude yourself into believing you are capable of succeeding so that you see purpose in trying your best. Of course, this does not mean deluding yourself into believing your are destined or certain to win (remember, we have to still be realistic).

Fearing Loss is Not a Motivator, but Hating Loss Can be a Good One

“I hate to lose more than I love to win.”

The above is a famous quote by Jimmy Connors, one of the greatest male tennis players in history, and a feeling that strongly resonates with me and probably many of you included.

In fact, studies have shown that we experience up to twice as much pain from a loss than the pleasure we gain from an equivalent gain.

For me, nothing motivates me more than losing at something. If I lose at something, I want to know why, and I want to prove I’m capable of succeeding. If I win, then well, it just validates what I already believed before hand.

You see, thinking about losing can be a healthy and helpful thing, as long as you can use it to your advantage. If you’re going to think about losing, use it as a motivator to help you succeed.

Don’t avoid failure by not trying. Avoid it by succeeding.

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Open vs. Anonymous?

One of the things I thought about when I started this blog was whether I should be open about who I am, or whether I should be anonymous. Of course there are pros and cons to being open about my identity. The pros of being open is that people who know me will find it interesting, I get credit for any ideas I write about, etc.

But some cons are that it will influence the way people view me without having met me or immediately before meeting me. For example, during my orientation week, I met two people who told me they saw my blog. Immediately I start thinking, “oh crap, what does this mean? Do I come off as an okay dude when I write, or do I sound arrogant and like a jerk?” I honestly feel like my writing is only a small extension of who I am, and that the way I come off when I write is not all that close to how I am in person. I think I write in a pretty blunt, purposeful manner, but I don’t really conduct myself that way in real life.

Another con is that having an open identity forces me to be careful about what I write. I am hesitant to write negatively about anything or anyone because I know words and ideas can be misconstrued and really bite you back hard. Some of you will be upset about that, because I know I try to come off as honest as possible – but I’m sure you also understand I have to be cognizant about who might end up reading this and what the ramifications could be. On the other hand, if I were anonymous, I’d probably be a lot more open about any less than happy thoughts or criticisms.

Once I got into medical school was when I actually started worrying a bit about this blog. Would it alienate some classmates who saw it?

Friends

As it turns out, nothing bad has happened yet, fortunately. In fact, a few of the friends I’ve made found out about it. One in particular has kept prodding me to mention her on this blog as an example of a really awesome friend I’ve made thus far. I’m not sure if she’s being serious or sarcastic, because she tries to be sarcastic like 90% of the time, but I guess be careful what you ask for…

Well I guess I’ll say I really enjoy my conversations with this friend. She’s very open-minded, which is a good thing, because I think people sometimes jump to conclusions with a lot of preconceived notions, but she’s willing to take a step back and look at things objectively. Which for me is good because I take maybe a radical or unconventional standpoint on something and I know she won’t instantly judge me because of it.

She’s also pretty sarcastic and not all that sensitive, which I like. I think I’ve mentioned several times here that I don’t like taking life to seriously, so it’s nice to have a friend who you can poke fun at or make a sort of “inappropriate” remark in a joking manner and not be looked at like an insensitive jerk.

I’m not sure, but I also get the feeling she understands people well. Like she is good at recognizing why people are doing what they do, what their motivations are. I could be completely way off base though with this one, it’s just a feeling I get. At the very least I think she’s interested in it.

It’s also kind of funny that we share some of the same interests when it comes to medicine. On of my UofT medical school essay, I ended with “Nothing would make me happier than being a pediatric neurologist…”. One our bus ride to some event during orientation week, I was talking to another friend about how I read that there was just one pediatric neurology residency position at UofT every year but no one made it their first choice last year. She turns around all excited when she heard this, and say, “don’t tell anyone else!” or something to that effect. Turns out she is interested in neurology, studied neuroscience in undergrad, and likes kids too. Unfortunately she doesn’t realize that single residency spot will go to me . (Actually, while I really do see myself doing something in pediatrics, I’m not so sure if neurology is for me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up somewhere completely different).

It’s also weird how small the world is. When I found out which high school she went to, I immediately asked her if she ever went to the science fair (her school is notorious for doing well at it). And sure enough, she went to the Canada-Wide Science Fair the year before I did. I take that to mean she’s a tiny bit geekier with science than I am.

Of course, we are not completely similar. I would say the biggest difference is that she seems to have a really good work ethic while mine is terrible. I think she has reviewed a fair bit of the material already, while I’m still on Page 5 of last week’s notes. Uh oh. I think I should still get some major props for actually doing some studying the first week of school. I have never done that in my life, so this has got to be a pretty good sign.

Anyways I promised to write this, so here you go! On a related note, I actually really like the friends I’ve made so far, and I hope the trend continues with each new person I meet in my class. Although I realize I won’t click with everyone in my program, I feel pretty lucky to have met quite a few friends that I’ve clicked well with so far.

It’s crazy how many friendships are due to chance though. I met the friend I wrote about today because I had two hours to blow in the afternoon on the first day of orientation week. I saw a few people talking, and I said what the heck, I’ll go say hi and introduce myself. Lo and behold, I now sit with these same people in class everyday so far.

Reminds me of how I met one of my best friends at York. It was my second day of calculus, and I sat next to this dude. I noticed he was listening to some music. I asked him if he liked Death Cab for Cutie (because I did at the time) – he told me he thought their lead singer was terrible (though he denies saying this, I really do remember this). In any case, somehow we became really good friends. Funny how these things happen.

What’s next?

Tomorrow I’m going to head for lunch to catch up with some friends before they start school again, and then I really need to buckle down and study so that I don’t look like a complete moron in front of my lab group on Tuesday.

Hope everyone had a good long weekend!

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I woke up at 7:50am on this beautiful Saturday morning after sleeping at 2am. I was exhausted from the entire first week of medical school, and I was looking forward to finally sleeping in. Of course, my biological clock is apparently broken now, and I woke up around the same time I normally would to get to class. Damn. I actually turned on my laptop to write a blog entry complaining about this, but then the internet wasn’t working, and I realized I should probably at least try to “sleep in” or else I’d be grumpy the rest of the day.

So what to say about the first week of medical school. I think I said this last time, but the days are long. I’m not used to being in school for 9am to 5pm with only a one hour break. But more than that, it’s the fact that I’ve been in lecture most of the time that’s getting to me. I’m going to be frank and say that I don’t think I’m a school person. I think I used to be when I was younger, but something changed, and now I find it hard to sit still in class. It’s one thing if I was extremely fascinated with what we were being taught (for instance, I guess I could watch TED lectures for seven hours a day if I have to), but I’m going to be honest and say that I’m not interested in, for example, human anatomy. I guess that’s okay though – I mean, even one of our professors came in and said he hated anatomy when he took it here.

But it didn’t make me feel better during our anatomy labs, where we are dissecting cadavers. Some of my peers are more into it, excited about learning some of the different veins or arteries, and walking around to check out the other cadavers. Me, I’m not as excited – I’m just not all that passionate about the human body. I’m just trying to get through the lab if I’m being completely honest.

And so for a short while, I started to feel a bit bad and it made me start to question why I’m even here in medical school. I am clearly not at all interested in the basic sciences they are teaching me so far, and some of my peers clearly have an enthusiasm for the human body that I do not.

But the more I started thinking about it, the more I realized it was okay. I remember that I didn’t come to medical school to learn histology or anatomy. While I knew I would have to do those things in my journey to be a physician, that’s not what I was looking forward to. Maybe I’m looking too forward, but I’m excited about being a physician some day. That’s what excites me more than anything else in this whole process.

I mean, we all have different reasons for wanting to be a physician, and along with those, we will have different interests. I want to be a physician for the intellectual challenge, for the dynamic team environments, and for the privilege to impact people’s lives in a positive way, among other things – but needless to say, a genuine interest in the human body is not at the top of the list.

What does this mean? Honestly I don’t think it means anything, and I don’t think it should. Do I think I will be a good doctor? I believe I will, or else I wouldn’t be in medical school right now. I wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t genuinely think I would be happy being a physician and that I would be good at it.

I think sometimes we forget that there isn’t just one way to look at something or go about doing something. We get too caught up in trying to figure out the right or wrong way to frame something that we ignore the reality that sometimes there is no right and wrong and there is just different.

So I don’t like sitting through lecture learning human anatomy and I don’t get excited about identifying the location of the lateral thoracic artery – that’s okay. I still believe I will make a darn good doctor and a few months of anatomy isn’t going to discourage me from trying to live up to those expectations.

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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?). Imagine your opponent is playing scissors. Now also imagine that you’ve never played the game before, so you enlist the help of a friend who has. This friend has defeated this opponent before and tells you to play rock because it worked for him last time. If you listen to him and play rock, you’ll win too. Great.

But what if your opponent decides to play paper instead? Of course your friend comes along and again tells you to play rock because that’s what he did last time and it worked for him. But if you play rock, you’ll quickly realize that it doesn’t work this time. So what went wrong, and how could your friend win at this game but fail to help you this time?

Short-Term Success does Not Necessarily Equate to True Understanding

The reason why you lost is because you assumed that your friend understood the game simply because he was successful at it once. He played one game of rock, paper, scissors and got it right, and you both jumped to the conclusion that he knew how to play. But once the situation of the game changed, it became clear that the value of his advice was limited – and the value of his advice was limited because his actual understanding was limited.

One of the mistakes we tend to make is being too results oriented, particularly when it comes to attributing the success of others to genuine understanding. This can become problematic if we spend more time asking for advice and less time actually thinking about it. If the main character in our little hypothetical situation spent time thinking and figuring out rock, paper, scissors, he would realize that the advice he received was bad. He would understand that the justification of “it worked for me last time” isn’t enough to guarantee success in the future.

So how does this relate to medical school advice, and well, advice in general? Sometimes I see successful individuals view their short-term results as evidence for the idea that their strategy was correct. But instead of thinking about why their strategy may have worked, they just assume it was a good strategy because everything worked out. But like I explained, unless you can actually explain why your ideas are good, you are taking the risk of actually being quite wrong.

For instance, there are some students with a resume a mile long who get into medical school. So when they see a medical school applicant list a shorter resume and ask what their chances of getting in are, these students chime in and say it probably isn’t long enough, since they got in with a longer one. I hope you can see the logical problems with this line of thinking, and while it may seem obvious, it’s amazing how often we don’t realize it at the time.

This is precisely the reason why I don’t like answering the questions like “what courses did you take and what things did you do to get into medical school?”. Instead, I like to write articles that take a more analytical approach to the admissions process and aim to provide an understanding of the process.

Common Pitfall: Projection

One common mistake we make when providing advice and thinking about it is projecting the way we think onto other people. It’s a mistake to think that other people or groups both should and do think the way you do.

For instance, let’s visit the claim that medical schools prefer students who have studied at more “reputable” universities. For the sake of discussion, let’s assume it’s true that these more reputable universities have, on average, more challenging undergraduate programs. Some students take this idea and think to themselves that it would only seem “right” to take this information to account, and thus, they propose that medical schools prefer students who go to these more challenging undergraduate programs.

However, such students are making huge and unfounded assumptions, primarily that medical school admissions committees think the way they do. That is, they are projecting their own model of thought on the admissions committees for no apparent reason. To students, if they have to work harder than others for the same grades, they deserve to have some sort of advantage in the admissions process.

Instead of assuming other individuals or groups think like you, it’s better to picture yourself in their shoes, and try and figure out how they would perceive the situation, concept, or idea at hand. Imagine you are on a medical school admissions committee. Even if you knew that certain undergraduate programs must be more challenging, how would you react to that? How would you know which actual courses were harder at which universities, and given that the student populations are different, how could you adjust the marks submitted to you? Moreover, how could you do it in a fair, objective way?

It’s really hard if you think about it, and personally, I haven’t been able to come up with a solution myself besides just leaving things the way they are.

Are You Saying I Shouldn’t be Taking Advice from Others?

Oh no, I am definitely not saying that. In fact, I take advice from others all the time. However, what you should do is not accept advice blindly. You need to spend the time critically thinking about advice you’re given, and whether it’s logical and makes sense. You are definitely doing yourself a disservice if you accept anything I say blindly.

Imagine if a lottery winner told you to pick the numbers 3, 14, 16, 22, 31, 44 because it worked for her. You would quickly realize that’s absurd – yet for some reason it doesn’t seem so absurd to many students when they hear from teachers, parents, guidance counselors, or older students that medical schools actually care which university you did your undergraduate studies at.

If you’re given advice that could seriously affect an important decision of yours, make sure you understand the reasoning behind the advice. And if you’re not sure, ask the person giving the advice. If they can’t provide a reason that makes logical sense, you should be wary of it.

However, keep in mind that not understanding the advice is not a justification for viewing a piece of advice as bad. It’s easy to shrug off things you don’t understand, but from personal experience, some of the best advice I’ve received were things I just didn’t understand at the time.

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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 that don’t. We look at situations primarily from our own perspective, and approach situations with the overall goal of keeping ourselves happy and improving our lives.

The problem with this selfish perspective is that it often prevents us from seeing the “whole picture”. By being selfish, we look at a lot if ideas or actions as being “right” or ‘wrong” – usually, we believe our ideas or action are the “right” ones. Often times, if you step back, you’ll realize that right and wrong are simply relative – that quite often, two opposing sides are merely different (and that no one is absolutely right or wrong).

I see it a lot of the time when students argue about the medical school admissions process. Every medical school has a slightly different admissions process. Queen’s medical school has GPA and MCAT cut offs – once you meet them, you are guaranteed an interview and your GPA and MCAT do not matter anymore. Schools like the University of Toronto have a more holistic approach where they look at your entire application before granting interviews – that being said, they are very academic-based, and your GPA is weighted heavily.

For example, I often see students with lower GPAs complaining that Toronto’s system is bad because GPA shouldn’t be as important – that there are more important qualities for a physician to have, like communication, patience, and a good bed-side manner. And that these qualities are better evaluated through the interview, which should thus be worth more. However, I often wonder if the students would be complaining at all if they had high GPAs and had an advantage in the Toronto process?

Conversely, there are students who vent about schools who use the MCAT in their admissions process. They argue that the MCAT is a single test, and therefore, is full of variance and should be trusted way less than GPA, which a student works on for years. Not surprising, these comments often come from frustrated students who did very well in university but for whatever reason, just can’t pull it off on the MCAT.

I’m not saying that these arguments have no merit – in fact, the arguments do have merit. That being said, so do the counter arguments, such as the fact that the MCAT is standardized, and therefore, allows applicants to be compared in the same arena. There are a gazillion arguments that can go back and forth.

Yet I can’t help but feel that many of us choose the arguments that help our cases the best – it’s just human nature. However, having these biased perspectives prevent us from looking at situations objectively, and subsequently, prevent us from providing helpful analysis.

For instance, on this issue of admissions, we often end up complaining about how the admissions process does not fit our own strengths, instead of seriously analyzing what would be best for the application process as a whole – i.e. what process would really be best for developing the best physicians possible? While we think we are making constructive criticism about the process, we are often only giving our criticism because we are hurt by the truth.

Perhaps the good news is that there is no obvious “best” admissions process for producing the “best” physicians. The fact that medical schools have such different philosophies on admissions increases the likelihood that there is a medical school out there for each type of good candidate.

Instead of complaining that the process is so varied, it might be wiser to appreciate the fact that this variety is what allows so many different types of great candidates to be accepted. Am I saying that we should never criticize, or that we should not try to improve the system? Of course not – seeking improvement is always good. But whether we can make a promising difference depends on what fuels our motivations – if it’s frustration and anger, we’re not going to go very far.

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I don’t claim to know the meaning of life because I don’t know whether such a thing exists, and even if it does, I don’t know how one could discover it. Every type of opinion on the meaning of life is essentially a belief – an idea that you might live your life around but not necessarily have concrete evidence to prove that it is true.

What can I say? I am a scientist by nature. I believe in logic. I like rational arguments. I like having reasons for things.

And for those reasons, I find it hard to believe that we could ever find a true meaning of life: Why are we here? What is our purpose?

To believe that there is a true meaning of life implies that this meaning must be universal and applicable to everyone – yet how could we ever find such a thing?

Fate

Some people believe in fate or destiny – the idea that everything that is going to happen was meant to be.

I don’t like to believe in fate because it implies that I really don’t have free will. It implies that I am not really making decisions because it was already pre-determined that I was going to take those actions.

If you believe in fate, how could you ever blame someone? A criminal could argue that it was fate for him to commit a crime, and since all of this was pre-determined, it’s technically not his fault. Yes it would be fair to jail him since he is a danger to society, but if you believe in fate, how could you justify blame?

If you believe that everyone on this earth was born with a set purpose, does this not suggest at least some aspect of pre-determined events? Then again, I guess you could argue that we may all have a purpose but we don’t necessarily all complete our “life mission”.

If you were to vanish right now, would your life have mattered?

I am content knowing that I will never know what the true meaning of life is, if there even is one. What I do know is that if you choose to, you can lead a meaningful life.

It seems by nature that humans are social creatures. So to me, we have the most meaning by impacting the lives of others. And in that sense, it’s hard to lead a meaningful life if you live a solitary life.

If you were all alone on an island, with no contact with other humans, how could you ever impact someone’s life? To the rest of humanity, you essentially never existed.

Thus, you can’t lead a meaningful life if you live a solitary one. That being said, at least for humanity’s sake, leading a meaningful life is not necessarily better than leading a solitary one.

Positive Impact

It’s true that many of history’s tyrants have led meaningful lives, though their actions are not things I would personally encourage. And although it would be wrong to downplay the impact of their lives on humanity, it doesn’t mean they led lives we should aspire to.

Personally, I want to live a positively meaningful life. I want to impact people in a way that makes them happy and improves their lives. If I am ever remembered for something, I would want to be remembered for doing something positive.

I think deep down everyone wants their life to matter. Not necessarily that they existed for a reason, but that their existence mattered.

And if you choose to positively impact those around you, then your life definitely matters.

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