What should I study in college if I want to become a doctor?

Whatever you love. I have classmates who majored in everything under the sun, including:

• French
• Biochemistry
• Piano performance
• Material science engineering
• Math
• Biology
• Chemistry
• English
• Neuroscience

Take courses in whatever you’re interested in. I would push more for classes that teach you how to think rather than memorize copious quantities of information, but that’s a personal bias. At the end of the day, as long as you have the pre-med requirements fulfilled, it doesn’t matter all too much[1].

A few recommendations on stuff to consider taking:

• biochemistry: It’s not required by a lot of schools, but I’d recommend it as an intro to the intricate meshwork that is organic chemistry and how the human body functions. This subject is often doled out in bits and pieces in med school, and in some ways it’s given short shrift, so a formal course can be rather valuable.
• ethics: A very difficult course in terms of thought, but so, so valuable in real life. A 1-year-old baby comes into the ER from near drowning and the attending physician realizes the mother is mentally unsound due to untreated schizophrenia–no easy solutions there.
• computer science: It’s amazing just how technologically incompetent the average medical student is. And by amazing I mean completely f***ing scary. Don’t be one of those people. Please?
• immunology: It’s rapidly becoming a pretty hot field in terms of research, and the extent to which the immune system can mess up the body is just as much cause for concern as how to maintain the integrity with which it defends the body. Probably not super-high yield, but I feel like this is a rare exception to the rule below that’s worth having a formal introduction to.

Stuff to avoid (in my opinion):

• physiology, anatomy, pathology…basically, stuff that you would take anyways in med school. It’s pointless to waste tuition to learn the same material twice. And no, the fact that you’re reviewing the material generally doesn’t make it any easier the second time around–med school will require you to learn so much more than the collegiate version of a course that the disparity makes it doubly useless.

[1] That said, there are schools that have requirements beyond the basics, so check with whatever schools you plan to apply to and make sure you can get those courses in.

~~~~~

“Hey Jae” is a series that publicly answers questions from pre-med students. I get these from time to time through facebook, e-mail, etc., so I figured if one person’s wondering, more likely are too. Feel free to pose a question of your own through my contact page! As always, best of luck.

1. You really have to love medicine. If I offered you $100 million to quit medicine forever, you should be able to say no without looking back. I realize that sounds absurd, but my point is: if any amount of money will sway you, chances are you’re doing this for the wrong reason. Keep things in perspective: you beat out thousands of other applicants to win your spot in your class. Why did you bother fighting for a spot that would keep you out of the money-making world for 7+ years if you’re either a) after money or b) not really passionate about it? Never forget why you applied.
2. Most of the people who enter med school are a little behind on maturity. I’m definitely guilty of this, and chances are, you are too. Think about it–most med students are hardcore nerds/smart-alecks who spent time studying when they could’ve been hanging out with their friends and learning social norms. Generally speaking, we have a bit less overall “life experience”. I’m not joking when I say I have classmates who complained about seeing penises in anatomy because they’d never seen one before and wished they’d had a gentler introduction. Take-home message: be understanding of classmates–at some point you’re going to seem immature too, and you’ll have to rely on someone to be patient with you. A healthy tolerance for drama (particularly of the romantic variety) helps.
3. You have to find new ways to study. The chances that the same study habits that carried you through college will work in med school are slim–there’s just too much material, and the first step is accepting that, honestly, there’s no way you’re going to know it all. That’s a sore spot for people who’ve been academically successful all their lives, but it’s the plain truth. So find what lets you memorize and understand the high-yield material. Above all, don’t be afraid to reach out for help!
4. Try not to piss people off. I don’t care how tempting it is–take the high road. When you enter med school, you become a professional, and you are judged as such 24/7 regardless of the situation. You just can’t afford to upset someone with more authority than you this early in your career, and for that matter, annoying your future colleagues is an obvious bad call as well. If you disagree with something, bring it up through tactful channels. Request relatively private meetings (but don’t be afraid to ask if people can come with you!), be cordial in e-mails, and re-read everything from multiple angles to make sure it can’t be taken the wrong way by someone in a bad mood. Practice good communication skills, and it’ll get you far!
5. It’s easy to forget the human aspect. Drowning in information all day, it was easy to lose sight from time to time of the fact that all this book-learning is being done for the sake of helping others. Don’t let being a social butterfly take away from your studies, but don’t be the lone wolf either! Take the extra effort to say hi to everyone, give them a hug/high-five, ask them about their day, etc. Med school’s a tough experience, and you want as much mutual support from friends as possible. Who better to understand what you’re going through than your classmates?
6. It’s hard to take care of yourself. Eat healthy. Exercise. SLEEP. Everyone tells you to do this, but shoots, it’s not easy. Hint: it helps a ton if you learn how to time-manage properly! It seems to me like medicine is ironically a field where its practitioners have to fight to find the time to practice what they preach, and as a student adjusting to a whole ‘nother city, culture, and schedule, to call it tough would be giving it rather short shrift. I guess when it comes down to it, just remember to have fun with the whole experience, or else it’ll drive you up the wall. Make time to hang out with friends, call up old pals to catch up, etc. Part of taking care of yourself is keeping your sense of humor, so remember to laugh and love life. Being a med student is a very blessed position, don’t ever forget it!
7. Open-mindedness is key. I came into med school all gung-ho about going for ER residencies, and while I’m still really in love with the field, I’m starting to consider trauma surgery too, and for 10 minutes at a time when our ophtho prof shows us a sweet operation video, I consider ophthalmology. Seeing my neurology professors lecture is like experiencing poetry in motion, and after finishing that class I’m utterly in love with neuro too. You might know what you’re interested in, and that’s great, but just remember how broad medicine is. A wonderful professor gave me this piece of advice: “When you’re on surgery, be the best surgery student you can be. When you’re on peds, be the best pediatric student you can be. And so on and so forth. It doesn’t matter how little interest you walk into a rotation with, you owe it to the patients and the rest of the team to be at your best. Besides, how are you going to figure out how much you like or dislike something without giving it a legitimate try?”
8. Hacks and resourcefulness will save time, effort, and money. Don’t wanna blow your dough on textbooks? Find out what your library carries. Interested in research? Introduce yourself to cool profs right after their lecture and then e-mail them while their memory of you is still fresh. Food budget getting tight? Search your e-mail for local events with free food. Stayed up late at school studying and don’t feel like going home? Remember where the comfy sofas and shower facilities are and keep a change of clothes at school (some deodorant helps too). Don’t want to spend $100+ repairing your cracked iPhone screen? Get the local tech nerd to do it for you with a $13 replacement off of eBay. You get the idea.
9. People will automatically trust you, and treat you differently. Family will start bombarding you with medical questions, friends will text you with ailments even though they’re thousands of miles away and you can’t even do a basic physical, and strangers will approach you with a trust that you will probably find shocking. Get used to it. Everyone sees you as a professional, and really, the best you can do as a medical student is to tell them what you know and humbly admit just how much you don’t. Don’t abuse anyone’s trust. Don’t act like you know something when you don’t, it’ll just bite you in the butt later, and the stories that go around about arrogant med students trying to show up their peers are mindblowing. If one of your classmates does this, don’t bother trying to one-up them, it’s just not worth it–they’ll usually get their comeuppance when it comes to reviews anyways.
10. MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL: teach. The word “doctor” does not mean “healer”, “provider of cures”, “surgeon”, or anything specific to the field of medicine. In Latin it means “teacher”, and its origin was the verb “docre”, which means “to teach”. The first line of the Hippocratic oath is not “Do no harm”, as popularly believed–the first line pledges honor to the person who taught the practitioner, and includes a vow to teach others. So educate yourself. Help educate your classmates. Educate your future patients. If someone asks you a question about medicine, don’t just slap it off as “something you’ll learn later”. Take the opportunity to find out, review, and follow up. Be patient. Be gentle. Remember that outside of a test scenario you’re getting asked by someone who doesn’t know the answer, and they’re genuinely curious.

~~~~~

Feel free to comment and/or make suggestions!

Answer dedicated to Anna Parks, UCSF class of 2014. Best of luck, Anna, I’ll always be rooting for you.

First, some background:

• Doctors generally all clamp the cord at about the same place, so it doesn’t play off tying technique, and there isn’t time to ask for preference during delivery anyways, as it’s recommended that the cord be clamped a mere 20-30 seconds after the baby is out of the uterus.
• We generally start with bellybuttons that resemble outies, but as the subcutaneous fat layer develops under the skin around the umbilicus, they “pop in” to become your typical innie.
• There’s discussion on whether post-natal umbilical hernias cause outies; I don’t know much about this particular condition, but I’m a bit skeptical–hernias will inflate/deflate with simple breathing, and while I suppose they could increase the chances of an outie after treatment, I doubt it’s significant.

The physiologic basis is the baby’s vasculature!

Every baby comes into this world with an umbilicus that can be represented like so, where “||” represents skin and “=” represents cord:
||
=========
||

When the cord is clamped upon the baby’s birth, the umbilical arteries and veins that run its length naturally constrict in response and shrivel, causing the cord to atrophy and fall off. In most people, it ends up looking like this:
||
==
||

The cord falls off at about the level of skin, and the 2nd bullet point above takes care of the rest to create an innie:
|fat|
==
|fat|

In some people, however, a longer chunk of their umbilical vasculature stays open, keeping slightly more tissue perfused and alive:
||
=====
||

You can see how this would create an outie:
|fat|
=====
|fat|

What factors encourage that extra skin for the outie to stay, no one knows, you might as well ask why most people are right handed but some people end up left.

It’s been brought to my attention that there are numerous online services that throw themselves at pre-meds, all promising top-notch personal statement support and advice, all for a seemingly “nominal” fee. I am hereby informing you, with utmost confidence, that they are all scams.

My first tip-off to this was a comment on my post about how to ace the personal statement. Don Osborne of Inquarta.com commented about aspects of personal statements that he, as someone who has read many of them, would enjoy seeing. Nothing in his comment was anything I hadn’t already addressed in my post, and it was a clear attempt at simple link-baiting, but I figured I would give the man the benefit of the doubt and check out his website. The first thing I notice upon arriving there is that he too, has a post on “How to write a winning personal statement”. Interesting, I thought. I click through to give it a read, and to my surprise, it copies every idea I presented in my post, in almost the same order, and the only thing that’s different is the wording. And then I notice that he published it a mere 3 days after I published mine. Fair enough, I’m a believer in coincidence, maybe we just had the same brainfart. I then click through to his staff bios and suffer a sinking feeling as I come to the inevitable conclusion that not a single person working for that company has any right to be giving medical school personal statement advice–not a one had ever applied for or attended medical school. And yet their website (which is crap, btw, and hasn’t even bothered to update since 2008) offers articles with headlines like “How to become a doctor”. Incredible. What the fuck, Don, you had so little expertise on board that you stole from a med student’s blog? Seriously?

Now wait a minute, Jae, you say. Looks like Don’s worked for Princeton Review teaching MCAT Verbal, that’s legit, right?

Um, no. I worked for Princeton Review teaching MCAT orgo while my friends handled gen chem, bio, and physics (we basically ran the Palo Alto office that summer), and I can assure you teaching MCAT for a test prep company gives you about as much “expertise” in med school admissions as learning how to play the board game Sorry (see what I did there?). And at a hefty $4k for Inquarta’s package, sorry is exactly what you’ll be when you realize just how badly you got screwed. The sad part is, Inquarta’s on the cheaper end of the spectrum.

Let me break down for you exactly why you should never use an admissions coaching service:

• They’re after your money, not your acceptance. It’s true: they have no vested interest in you actually becoming accepted, and are simply preying on your fear. Remember that no one can give you any sort of guarantee, so essentially what you’re doing is throwing money at a problem and hoping that works–think this will work on a patient?
• They have no medical people. The reason for this is simple: no one in medicine has the time to sit there and read personal statements as a part-time job, we’re too busy studying or treating patients, and when we’re not doing that, we’re chasing sleep. Sure, we’ll read for our friends/family, but seriously? Someone could die if I don’t learn how to diagnose this disease, so a complete stranger’s essay isn’t even going to make it onto my list of priorities unless there’s some extremely compelling reason. So if these companies have no medical people on board, how can they possibly offer solid advice about any aspect of med school? Simple. THEY CAN’T. Whatever they tell you will be hearsay and secondhand, and it can’t even begin to compare to a firsthand account.
• Their qualifications suck. There. I said it. I don’t care if someone’s read a million personal statements, worked for Princeton Review/Kaplan, been on the admissions committee for an MBA program, has a Ph.D. in English, whatever–if they don’t have exact, personal and firsthand knowledge of going through the medical admissions process, they are useless to you. Quite frankly, the louder they tout their seemingly-related-but-not-quite credentials, the bigger phonies they are.
• They tell you to do the wrong things. Many will offer banks of “personal statements that worked”, while others will straight-up offer to write your essay for you. While the latter is obviously a poor choice, the former is a surprisingly insidious idea that’s also bad–because what you’re seeing is what other people wrote about, what other people are passionate about, what other people are driven by. This time would be much better spent figuring out you.
• Testimonials are a poor standard of measurement. Particularly on the company’s website. Of course they’d pick the best ones that make them sound good. Of course they’d filter for positive ones. Of course they could just be making all of them up. It’s the Internet. What you’re getting is their version of the testimonials.
• You’re better off using friends/family. These people care about you. These people know you. And they’re free. Surely you have at least one friend who’s talented at writing who can help you? Any applicant who trusts a stranger to give them better service than their own personal network should stop applying the moment they make that choice–because I can tell you right now that kind of attitude doesn’t work in med school. There’s an expected trust of your colleagues, and if you can’t trust them, they sure as hell won’t trust you, and you’re gonna be one lonely, pathetic student.

I’m seriously, seriously hoping this is a wake-up call for anyone considering admissions coaching. Don’t do it. You and your wallet will both thank me later.

Cheers,

~Jae

~~~~~

At this point I suppose some pre-meds are wondering, “Well what the hell qualifies you to give advice, then?” The difference between me and an admissions coach is that I fully admit to being fallible. That said, I’ve been in your shoes. I’ve made it into medical school. My undergrad mentor served on the admissions committees for both Harvard Medical School and Stanford School of Medicine. My classmates serve on the admissions committee for Baylor College of Medicine. If it’s between me and a business, I daresay I have the purer motives for giving you advice.

1. Intelligence: a gentleman should be well-read in multiple fields of literature, able to competently discourse about the news of his time, and possess an intellectual curiosity that respects the beauty of interdisciplinary thought. As a corollary, he should also be versed in language(s) to such fluency as will allow him to express his thoughts succinctly and elegantly.
2. Humor: every gentleman should have in his repertoire the spear of wit, the club of pun, and the blade of irony–for what is the meaning of a life without laughter?
3. Humility: despite striving for excellence in all he does, a gentleman will never show arrogance. He will never assume the cloak of superiority above another, instead accepting that he will always have much to learn. Vaunts are unacceptable and unnecessary, as prowess married to finesse has a voice of its own.
4. Compassion: a gentleman should be sympathetic and empathetic to the plights of others, and possess the refined sensitivity to detect discomfort even when not explicitly expressed.
5. Generosity: a gentleman should be giving of his time and efforts to others. He should be quick to offer aid of all forms without prompt, although in balance he should possess the faculties to carefully judge priorities so as not to commit beyond his means.
6. Punctuality: a gentleman is always early unless courted by such overwhelming forces as could not be foreseen and accounted for–for instance, serving as sole witness to an accident while en route to a previously planned rendezvous.
7. Courage: throughout his life, a gentleman will cultivate aptitude both physical and mental such that he may possess the daring to face challenges and tackle obstacles with confidence.
8. Wisdom: while a gentleman should be passionate, he should possess a temperament cool enough to realize there are occasionally limits, as well as boundaries that should not be crossed. He should understand that anger solves nothing, that recklessness leads to demise, that excess leads to greedy sorrow, and that human bonds should be treasured above all else.
9. Aura: the most subtle of qualities, and intangible*–a true gentleman has about him an inexplicable air of quiet strength, a chivalrous feel that commands and gives respect, and an undeniable sense that there is far more than meets the eye.
10. Love: I have saved the best attribute for last–a gentleman loves his family, his friends, and life. This love is the driving force of all his other qualities, and he will defend it to his dying day.

Disclaimer: I do not consider this list definitive, and as such I welcome suggestions!

* While many have considered visible groom and polish to be defining features of a gentleman, I cannot in good faith list it here after seeing an unshaven and unclean homeless man rush to hold a door open for a young woman exiting a store, her hands full with the spoils of her shopping endeavors. While it was in broad daylight, I initially suspected him to intend harm and began sprinting in their direction, only to be quickly ashamed of my assumption as he bowed and even held his arm out in flair as the young woman thanked him warmly and continued about her way.

If someone has a relatively low undergraduate GPA, is it better to go for a master’s degree in a science/public health specialty (and do really well) or take more science classes (to raise the GPA) prior to applying to medical school?

This is an extremely tough question, and it’s taken me much longer than usual to think about it. I’ve polled friends, and there doesn’t seem to be a consensus either way. So the truthful answer: I don’t know.

I have a dear friend who went the master’s degree route to direct attention away from his weak undergrad GPA, and it worked out well for him–accepted to an M.D./Ph.D. program, no less. Then again, he graduated with both a B.S. and M.S. in 4 years, was scientifically published, and had solid recommendations, so an additional degree was certainly not the only thing going for him. Did I mention he also sang a cappella and helped manage a free clinic for the underserved?

I have to say that this choice is best left to your judgment, and that I wish you the best of luck regardless of what you choose. Some things I would encourage you to consider:

• what’s the difference that extra science courses will make in your GPA? If it’s the difference between a 3.4 and a 3.5, this is considerably less impressive than the difference between a 2.9 and 3.0.
• how much time/money will each option take? Admissions committees do seem to have some preference for people who take a year or two off after undergrad to pursue other interests, but is it worth the extra cost of grabbing another degree?
• are you just pursuing an M.S. or M.P.H. for the sake of looking good to a committee, or are you actually interested in going in depth in the field? If it’s the former, are there other things you could do to strengthen your application, whether it’s research, other work experience, fellowships abroad, etc.?

~~~~~

“Hey Jae” is a series that publicly answers questions from pre-med students. I get these from time to time through facebook, e-mail, etc., so I figured if one person’s wondering, more likely are too. Feel free to pose a question of your own through my contact page! As always, best of luck.

Have you ever seen a med student with a disability (a mild physical impairment in which the student doesn’t use a wheelchair)? If so, what were others’ reactions/how were they treated?

Short answer: no, to the best of my recollection I have never seen a medical student with a physical impairment worth noting.

Long answer: this is a really, really broad and open-ended question. Honestly, I’m quite puzzled as to what to make of this and wondering what prompted the question–curiosity? fear? What’s on your mind?

If I wanted to be picky, sure, I could easily name several physical “impairments” I’ve seen med students possess: myopia, foot drop, lack of coordination, hyperreflexia, hyporeflexia, incomplete freedom of movement in certain joints, etc. Where I would draw the line between defining these impairments as a “disability” vs. “normal variability” is something I’ve never even thought about, because I’ve never really considered them to even be worth noting until now, nor have I ever seen a med student treated “differently” per se based on any of these so-called impairments.

I suppose the answer to your question, then, is that our (extremely) blunt reaction is, “We don’t give a shit. There’s a ton of stuff to learn, extracurriculars to do, sleep to chase, and we’ve all got way better things to bother with than giving a classmate crap about something so minor. Honestly, if you tell us something’s ‘wrong’ with you, our nerdiness makes us more likely to think you’re awesome because we can use you as a fantastic learning experience that we’ll remember forever.”

About the only thing a med student will shun a classmate for is the classmate’s attitude–if they’re arrogant or a jerk, then whatever, they’ll soon find themselves isolated and ignored. Some people shun others because they fancy themselves as intellectually superior. They also quickly find themselves isolated and ignored, and (hopefully) discover they weren’t so damn smart after all (at least socially). Physical “impairments”? Whatever.

I realize this might seem a bit glib, but I assure you I truthfully have yet to find a medical student who discriminates on anything other than personality. If there is a specific disability you have in mind, please, ask away, but this is the best I can answer without any further specifications.

~~~~~

“Hey Jae” is a series that publicly answers questions from pre-med students. I get these from time to time through facebook, e-mail, etc., so I figured if one person’s wondering, more likely are too. Feel free to pose a question of your own through my contact page! As always, best of luck.

Hey Jae!
It’s scary going into sophomore year hoping that everything will work out for premed. I have absolutely no idea what my reaction will be like to the classes. Since I didn’t take chem this year, I’m basically planning to jump straight into all the premed reqs next year hoping that I will end up going for it. I have older premed friends who recommend not using the classes to gauge whether I want to be premed or not though. It’s confusing…help?

They’re absolutely right: don’t use premed classes to gauge whether or not you want to become a doctor. Think of them more as exercises and practice in the skills you’ll need as a physician. Bio will train you to memorize lots of information, chem (organic) will teach you to be flexible and creative in coming up with solutions to problems, and physics makes you think in analytical fashion about how to apply what you know to a new situation/problem. I’m gonna be honest: gen chem can kind of suck, but think of it as the otherwise adorable child of organic chem and physics, as it were. All the pre-reqs are just hoops everyone has to jump through, and really, what you ought to be doing is taking the time to learn how to think in different disciplines.

I realize that sounds unbelievably philosophical. Let me try to ground it a bit. Let’s say you have a patient come in with a set of symptoms you think is caused by Bacteria A, B, or C (a very realistic scenario, to be honest; for any given condition there are at least 10 things that could be the cause). You order lab tests on the patient’s blood, and get back a set of data. You’ve memorized what the lab results should be for each bug thanks to your training in bio courses, so now using the analytical style from physics/gen chem, you take what you know and confidently rule out Bacteria B.

Now the problem is that you’re still not sure between Bacteria A and C. Shit. They’re really similar, and your hospital is limited in resources for lab tests, so what do you do? Again remembering from the mass quantity of data in your head, you remember that there are, in fact, multiple antibiotics that can take care of both buggers. Sweet. So how do you decide which one to give? This is where the flexibility you learned in organic chem combines beautifully with the analytical skills you learned in physics. You have to take into account the patient’s insurance, the cost of each drug, the duration of the therapy, the patient’s allergies, etc, etc. After considering a multitude of drug possibilities, you prescribe BallerDrug, a cheap solution that is fully paid for by the patient’s insurance and that only requires a week of dosing, and has a low incidence of allergic shock. Legit.

Are you starting to see what I mean? Think of each pre-med class set as training in a methodology of thinking. Does this make the classes themselves any less difficult? Not particularly, but shoots, if you think something’s hard, it’s going to be hard no matter how awesome you are, so stay positive. Rock the classes, and you’ll get a solid grounding in problem-solving, a skill for which a lot of medical students are still on the beginning end of the learning curve.

Remember this: it takes practice to master a new way of thought. Getting easily discouraged is not allowed. Everyone takes blows to their egos with bad grades from time to time (fact: my first set of college grades included a fat C+). What makes the difference between an ordinary student and a great one is that the former will say, “Screw this.” The latter will say, “Screw this, I’m gonna do better next time.” and asks for meetings with the profs/TA’s to understand where his/her understanding of the material wasn’t enough.

~~~~~

“Hey Jae” is a series that publicly answers questions from pre-med students. I get these from time to time through facebook, e-mail, etc., so I figured if one person’s wondering, more likely are too. Feel free to pose a question of your own through my contact page! As always, best of luck.

Hey Jae,
I was talking to an academic advisor and she recommended that if GPA is a concern (which it may be lol), I could major in something other than biology, but fulfill the premed requirements. With med school in mind. Any thoughts?

That advice: bull.

Changing one’s major does not necessarily imply a boost to GPA or med school admission chances. If science classes have you looking for “GPA buffer” classes, majoring outside of a stereotypical “premed major” won’t really save you–med school apps all calculate science GPA and overall GPA separately…and you can bet which one they pay a smidge more attention to.

Let’s think here: if we look at options purely from a numerical standpoint, we can break it down into the following:

• X = # units in premed requirements
• Y = # units in premed major, not counting overlap from X
• Z = # units in a completely unrelated major with no overlapping courses
• Z > Y >= X, generally speaking

This gives us the following possible permutations:

• X + Y = completed premed major, with premed requirements fulfilled. Even with other general graduation requirements, this should leave you with a decent chunk of time left in your college career to do with as you please.
• X + Z = non-premed major, with premed requirements fulfilled. Simply doing the math should tell you that this option will always cost you more time/units/planning than just going with X+Y. Is it worth it? Up to you.

Personally, I just went with a simple bio major. Why? It gave me a lot of time to work on other stuff like research, a computer science minor, social life, teaching, etc. Basically, in my case, it gave me nearly a year and a half do whatever I wanted. So much freedom after getting the do-a-major-so-you-don’t-have-to-worry-about-graduating-with-a-degree thing out of the way!

I understand this is a personal choice and I respect that. All I’m saying is, don’t listen to advice that doesn’t have at least some logic behind it. If anyone tries to sway you with the argument that having a non-stereotypical-premed major will make you really stand out and thus improve your admission chances, that’s nonsense too. Quite frankly, no one in med school gives a flying hoot what your major is as long as you’ve got the required coursework. Sure, it can make for some interesting conversation during an interview, but that shouldn’t be the one thing you’re banking on to get you accepted. For the record, we held a survey at the very beginning of the school year and it turns out the grand majority of my classmates graduated with premed majors. Admittedly, I’ve got classmates who are English majors. Another who’s a pianist. Another who somehow magically balances med school with being a mother of 4. Those are amazing parts of their identities, and I am so happy that I go to school with such a talented motley crew. But I somehow doubt that those traits are the biggest reason they got into med school, ya know? I suspect those special characteristics rounded out an equally amazing foundation. Just food for thought.

~~~~~

“Hey Jae” is a new series that publicly answers questions from pre-med students. I get these from time to time through facebook, e-mail, etc., so I figured if one person’s wondering, more likely are too. Feel free to pose a question of your own through my contact page! As always, best of luck.

(1) THINK, DAMNIT.

Allow me to wax philosophical for a minute.

When you start, do NOT immediately try to write something about yourself. I’m all for getting random thoughts and ideas down on paper, but don’t start hammering out a first draft from the get-go!

Hold your eagerness/nervousness in check and just think, damnit. This is, quite literally, an essay that can determine your future. It deserves some respectful introspective contemplation. Think about why exactly you want to spend a small fortune and nearly a decade of your life, and what you will bring to the profession. Quite frankly, if you don’t already question whether you really want to be a doctor or not, you’re either not thinking hard enough or you’re naive, neither of which improves your odds. Ignorance is not a sin, but it is one hell of an inconvenience, so let me give you this fact: over half a dozen people in my class left in the first eight months. Being accepted to medical school was what they worked for years to earn, spent thousands of dollars on–an opportunity hordes of other pre-meds would’ve been happy to take. Cogitate on that for a moment. If there is anything else you could possibly see yourself pursuing as a career, do that instead. Please?

(2) What drives you?

Start by identifying your passion(s)–what makes you tick drop everything else for the sake of making it happen? This is your hook, so don’t just reply “medicine”. What exactly about medicine makes you think its the career of your dreams? What is your vision of how you will impact medicine in 10, 20, 30 years? Dream big, and build those castles in the sky. The whole point of the admissions process is to determine whether you’ve really got what it takes to build foundations underneath them.

Please, for crying out loud, write something original. Seriously, I don’t care if it’s true:

• Don’t write about how you’ve wanted to be a doctor since you were a teenager/child/fetus. Not only is this thesis commonplace, and therefore boring, I honestly find it extremely insulting. Why? Because nothing in the world really prepares you for the emotional, physical, and mental rigors of medical school. Med school is not the heavenly ideation pre-meds often dream it is; if it was, people wouldn’t quit. If it was, people wouldn’t have mental breakdowns. If it was, the percentage of docs saying that they wouldn’t do it again (if they could go back in time) would be way lower. Honestly, it’s kind of hellish. You study more than you’ve ever studied in your life. You stress more because if you screw up, someone might actually die someday. Emotionally, something will eventually crack you as you begin to see incurable patients. The list goes on. As much as every doctor tries not to be jaded, can you see why the bright-eyed notion of “just knowing” you’ve always wanted to be a physician could be downright aggravating? Show some respect for the challenging realities of the medical profession.
• Don’t write about how you or a relative underwent a traumatic medical experience that inspired you to be a healing force in the world. I’m perfectly aware I’m touching on an emotional hotspot with this advice, and that it’s probably going to piss people off. Let’s put it this way: I did this. If I could do it again, I would do it differently. Everyone has bad medical experiences if they live long enough, so please, get over yourself (I mean that in the kindest way possible >.<). In the grand scheme of things, one physician more or less is not going to make a particularly large dent in the healthcare needs of the 6 billion+ people in the world, and if everyone who had a relative die of cancer chose medical school, the average IQ would top 130 and we wouldn’t have the shortage of healthcare providers that we do now. If you’re going to write about a medical experience, don’t make it your sole focus–weave it into the framework of how you plan to use that experience to improve healthcare.
• Don’t write that you come from a proud family of doctors and you want to follow in their footsteps. This just makes the reader think you haven’t the brains to think for yourself. I don’t care if you’ve spent hundreds of hours shadowing dozens of doctors–you’ll still sound like you’re choosing medicine because it’s what family expects you to do, instead of you really wanting it. It kills any chance you have of sounding charismatic, and instead you come off as annoyingly naive. =__=;

Basically, from the moment someone starts reading, you have about 30 seconds to impress them enough to keep reading, so don’t write on the same premise as a thousand other applicants. It’s trite, mundane, and uninteresting. If a significant part of why you want to be a physician happens to stem from a relatively common theme, fine, that’s not the end of the world–spend fewer words discussing your inspiration and quickly shift gears to specifics about you that will convince the reader they’ve got a genuinely special story in their hands. It’s your response to adversity that will make you stand out, not the fact that you’ve faced it.

(3) What have you done to fuel your passion?

So. You’ve told me what you’re really into, what gets your juices going. Maybe you’ve said you’re really interested in the evolving interface between medicine and technology. Or maybe you’re in love with the idea of joining the CDC’s crack team of epidemiologists. Or your dream is to improve the treatment of AIDS in inner city slums. Awesome! You’ve identified your mountain.

…what’ve you done to start climbing? Are you just pontificating or are you being realistic? If you don’t write about any computer science experience, epidemiology research, AIDS fundraising work, or something along those lines, my skepticism will start increasing. The medical community can be idealistic and appreciate hope, but if your personal statement and resume don’t seem to match, you can bet your readers’ bullshit alarms will start going off loud and clear.

Now, that said, a caveat: if you have extenuating circumstances that have prevented you from being able to start climbing, explain them. Put your heart into it, and appeal to your reader’s sense of compassion. True story: a student with a 28 MCAT was accepted to an extremely prestigious private medical school. On first glance at her numbers, you might wonder why they didn’t throw out her application immediately. Her statement, though, told the tale of a brave young woman who was working full time outside of class so she could support her four younger siblings. Of course she didn’t have the time to properly study for the MCAT–expensive prep books and courses were also out of the question when that money could feed a sister or brother for months. Upon acceptance, she quickly rose to the top of the class. A truly. incredible. applicant.

Second caveat: don’t repeat anything that’s said in the rest of the application. This is something I see so often, done for the sake of “emphasis”. The personal statement just becomes another resume. Fact: you’ll seem like you have nothing else in your arsenal, and at the end of the day, you’re beating a dead horse. If you’re going to write about an activity in your personal statement, don’t give away the thunder before the reader even gets there. The application process gives you so little space to squeeze in everything you want to share about your life–you don’t have the luxury of repetition. Hit the relevant high points in the extracurriculars section and then expound on those points in the essay.

(4) Unify.

I don’t want to sound like a high school English teacher, but assuming you’ve managed to intrigue the reader beyond the first five sentences and kept them furiously reading to the point where they develop nystagmus, at the end you absolutely need something to tie it all together. By the time the reader hits the end of your statement, they should have a caricature of you in their head, a distinct voice they can imagine reading the essay aloud, and the last few sentences are your one shot at combining the different elements of yourself into a complete persona. In other words, if your reader ever meets you, you want them to be saying, “You’re just like I’d imagined!” If you haven’t done this, you need to keep writing.

Loosely speaking, you utilize pathos in talking about your passions, logos in explaining how you’ve pursued them and how they’ve driven you to the field of medicine, and your ending is your biggest opportunity to show you have some legit ethos to balance it all out.

Do NOT:

• Say, “In conclusion”, or give a summary. You’re not in 5th grade anymore. Show some creativity.
• Use a cultural or cliche statement/quote to connect. First of all, this type of writing is an insult to both your and your readers’ intelligence, and second, your reader could be someone unaccustomed to your idioms–a huge chance of misinterpretation. I’ve yet to see someone pull this off, and it just makes me roll my eyes.
• Be satisfied with an essay that, when you send it out to friends/family for feedback, doesn’t elicit a “Damn, that was solid.” response from at least 2 people. “Pretty good!”, “Nice!”, “I liked it!” are not good enough; if they’re not followed by supportive criticisms, they’re actually signs you need to pick other people to read–people who aren’t afraid to jab at weaknesses in your writing.

Be brutally honest and ask yourself:

• Would I want to meet me if I read this essay?
• Do I leave the reader believing in my potential to change medicine for the better?
• Do I seem to match a stereotype, or do I really stand out as awesome?

~~~~~

This post just took ~10 hours to write. If you can spare a moment, please, leave your thoughts in the comments about whether this was helpful or not. Is there anything you wish I’d touched upon? That I could write more in detail about? That I’m flat-out wrong about? Any and all thoughts are welcome!