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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: