Interviews

The interview is one of the most coveted experiences for any premed. The interview season runs from about October to March. While most schools will tell you that even in March you are still interviewing for a seat in the upcoming year’s class (as opposed to interviewing for a spot on the waitlist, which is not too exciting), there is no denying that a November interview is much better than an April interview

The interview, while exciting because it’s the first sign of hope for admissions, is a nerve-wracking event. You might think a med school interview is like other interview processes—the applicant gets flown out, wine-and-dined, and shown around the medical school. For medical school, that is not at all the case! Applicants to med school are left to pay for everything on their own. Think about the financial investment here. You’ve already paid close to $150 per school, and now you have to pay for transportation, food, and lodging for each of these interviews... it’s crazy. Aside from the money, the stakes are high. There is no room for an ill-fitting shirt, flooding pants, or an improperly tied tie…you have to bring you “A” game.  Everything counts.

That being said, however, interviews are fun too. You walk in early in the morning to find twenty or so other students who are in your same shoes (and I mean that almost literally; we all look similar in our not-to-flashy suits that show class but not cockiness). The interviews usually consist of a tour, lunch with students, and two interviews (one with a member of the admissions committee and one with a current medical student). There are, however, some deviations. When I interviewed at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, they had use functioning like robots…seriously. Cincinnati, along with only a few other schools in the country, has switched to what is known as the MMI, or multiple mini-interviews. Without going into too much detail, you have six to eight 10 minute interviews. In a hallway with room after room, each student stands outside a door and reads a prompt until an overhead voice ushers you in. You answer the question to an evaluator who doesn’t say much, he or she just listens. Eight minutes later, the overhead voice tells you to move on. This is a funny scene. Suddenly, all ten applicants scramble out of the rooms, run to the adjacent door, and begin reading the next prompt. It’s quiet funny to watch…we look a bunch of lab mice running around in some freak experiment. I guess we just do what we have to do.

During the interview day, you get to know the other applicants pretty well. It’s actually really nice. For once you finally find yourself surround by tons of people who know exactly what you are going through. I loved getting to know some of my fellow applicants and hearing their stories. The one thing that hit me is that most of us are very highly qualified applicants. (Look for a later post about that…it’s a shame how many potentially amazing doctors don’t get into medical school simply because there aren’t enough seats. Weird, huh? There’s a shortage of doctors in the US, but defiantly not a shortage of qualified applicants. I recently heard that in ten years there will be a shortage of physicians by 20%!). Meeting these future doctors is a humbling and awesome thing. It’s humbling because you begin to see that you are one of many. However, it’s cool to see how different peoples’ passions affect their career goals. Thank God for all the different interests, otherwise we would only have one type of doctor! I’m learning more and more that medicine is a collaborative job. You never work alone; you’re always consulting with other docs. This is a beautiful thing, a direct reflection of the world God has made. God doesn’t design things to be done alone, He wants us in community. He makes each of us unique so that together, we function perfectly.

Not as great as it's made out to be?

I was surfing the net and came across this blog by some guy and decided to share it: 

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/abinazir/2005/05/23/why-you-should-not-go-to-medical-school-a-gleefully-biased-rant/

To give a quick summary, the guy gives 10 reasons why you should not go into medicine. As someone who is about to embark on a 8-12 year journey to do exactly what he discouraging, I found his words quite interesting. Granted I haven't gone through what he has, I can't help but think that with the worldview I have, my hope in something Greater, and my wonderful support network, it wont be so bad. 

At the end of his blog, the writer says:

"And the one reason why you should go into medicine:

You have only ever envisioned yourself as a doctor and can only derive professional fulfillment in life by taking care of sick people.

There’s really no other reason, and lord knows the world needs docs.  Prestige, money, job security, making mom happy, proving something, can’t think of anything else to do, better than being a lawyer, etc are all incredibly bad reasons for becoming a doc.

You should become a doc because you always wanted to work for Medecins Sans Frontières and your life will be half-lived without that.  You should become a doc because you want to be the psychiatrist who makes a breakthrough in schizophrenia treatment.  You should become a doc because you love making sick kids feel better and being the one to reassure the parents that it’ll all be OK...But woe betide you if there’s anything else, anything at all, that would also give you that fulfillment. Because pursuit of medicine would preclude chasing down that other dream and a whole lot more – a dream that could be much bigger, much more spectacular, much more enriching for yourself and humanity than being a physician..."

I cant argue his points, but thank God I " love making sick kids feel better and being the one to reassure the parents that it’ll all be OK."

The Application Process

Another topic I’d like to explain (or rather bore you with) before I start med school this fall is the application process. In a nutshell, the process is loooong. For those of you who aren’t familiar, most graduate school applications are due in December or January and you hear back around March. Med school, on the other hand, is shifted a few months earlier. The application process is essentially three steps. First is a standardized application, known as the AMCAS (American Medical College Application Service). This application can be sent to as many schools as you want, but you have to pay per school (which adds up really quickly). Second, med schools send you a secondary application if they “like” you based on your AMCAS. Now I say “like” because some schools take the AMCAS more seriously than others. These schools read it fairly thoroughly before they send out secondaries. Other schools, however, use this process (I believe) to make money because you have to pay again to submit a secondary application. The secondaries are school specific, meaning each secondary application looks different. For example, one of my secondaries asked about five questions that could have been answered in less than 20 words total, while another asked for fives essays that needed to be ~750 words each. Think about it a bit…these things take forever; not to mention you are filling them out right as classes are starting up again. I must admit though that we (and I include anyone applying to grad school here) are cleaver. Ask most applicants and they will tell you that you begin to find ways to make your essays “usable” for more than one application :) Third, if you “make the cut” academically and show potential to become a good clinician upon an initial review of your application, an admissions committee may invite you for an interview. Sometime after the interview (a week, a month, maybe even 3 months…its unpredictable!) applicants are told they are admitted, rejected, or placed on the waitlist.

The worst thing about this whole process is that the correspondence is so unpredictable. Once you submit your secondaries, it’s all out of your hands and the waiting game begins. This is the hardest part. Your fellow premed friends start hearing back about interviews and when you haven’t, you freak. You start to play that game I mentioned earlier: You rationalize why you haven’t heard back—Are my grades not good enough? Did I need to volunteer for 60 weeks instead of 52 at the clinic? Should I have majored in biology? It’s silly, but we worry away.

And then it comes. After days and months of checking your email every 10 minutes (purchasing the iPhone around this time was probably the worst thing I could have done to try to settle my anxiety), you finally get an email:

Dear Mr. Alexander Cortez,

The admissions committee would like to invite you for an interview.

And from there, everything changes—you’ve gotten an interview! You’ve joined the club….but just for now.

Hello Ft. Lauderdale

After a 24 hour drive, I think this makes up for every second of it:

We really lucked out. We initially had some "problems" with booking our place, but in the end it worked out. I have to admit, however, when we pulled up to the place, I was slightly nervous something wasn't going to work out...but it did! Our place is amazing...a beautiful view (as you can see), HUGE, nice stuff, comfy. It's going to be a great week of relaxation. No tests, no papers, no worrying about the future and med school. Thank you God! Off to make breakfast!

And we’re off!

In case you were wondering, yes, I have fun; I don’t just do school. In fact, I am currently passing through Tennessee on my way to Fort Lauderdale with four great guys: Henry Hasson, Bart Tocci, and Thad Winkle. It’s been a wonderful day…and quite spontaneous if you ask me. This morning when I was getting directions from Grand Rapids to Fort Lauderdale I noticed there were three equidistant routes—all 24 hours. And the great thing was that one of those routes passed right through Cincinnati! So six hours into our trip, which was right around dinner time, we arrived at the Nicholson household where we found a much needed meal (for which we are SUPER grateful) before the heart of our trip got underway. It’s now 2:58am and we are headed to the beach for a fun, relaxing week in the sun. It’s going to be a long ride, but what the heck, this is college.

We made it

Saturday night was a great night. To share with you why, let me cite my friend, and future world-renown dentist, Alvin's recent blog:

"I just came back from the Derby Station with my pre-med friends. This is our first time hanging out outside the lecture halls and the labs. We decided to celebrate our admission to dental and medical schools. It was good to celebrate things that we all went through: freaking out over Ochem tests, knowing that cat carcass inside and out just to ace the 20 point anatomy quiz, bombing those practice DAT and MCAT tests 2 days before the real deal, dressing up and flying out for interviews, and of course getting that letter confirming that we will be doctors. We’re all excited. We don’t know what we are getting into. The last 4 years flew by. We’re almost there. "

After reading Alvin's post, it made me think. The five of us who hung out that night aren't best friends. In fact, if I were categorizing based on how much time we spend together outside class and such, I would probably refer to them as acquaintances. However, there is something unique about this group--something that brings us together as close friends. You see, over the past few years we have gone though some rough times, times that are difficult to explain to others. If you look back to my first post, I decided to write a blog to share my experiences because I believe the journey to become a doctor is so unique and hard to share. That's why these people in my life are different than most...they do understand. Ask any of us and we love getting together to talk about where we are at—test grades, MCAT scores, recent interviews, acceptances (and rejections). We can talk to our parents, our best friends, or our significant others, but they just don't understand completely (and sometimes they don't care...which is understandable). We’ve endured a strange process getting into medical/dental school and we have made it...together. And I believe the bonds we have made over the past few years are strong. When I think about these friends, I know that 5-10 years from now, while we may not keep in touch daily, or even monthly, we will still check-in with one another to see how things are going. 

I'm thankful for these friends and wish them the best of luck over the next years as they embark on a difficult, but exciting road ahead. And though it will be tough, I don't think we will be too surprised. We’ve prepared for this for years; we know what we are getting ourselves into. So as you read my blog in the time to come, remember that it’s just my experience and that there are many on a similar path with their own unique experiences and stories to share. 

I’ve loved my time at Calvin and I’ve met so many wonderful people. However, I’m ready to move on. I feel well prepared and excited about what God has in store. I’m excited for my friends too. I can’t wait to call them up in 4 years and have to call them Dr. or to get an email from them that says MD or DDS at the end of their name.

We all have a story

Now the more important question is what is required to get into med school—and this question is next to impossible for me to answer. For one, I just did my thing and it’s worked at some schools, but not at others. To be honest, I don’t really know exactly what they are looking for. Second, every school is different—they are looking to produce certain types of doctors so they are looking for certain types of applicants…very unpredictable.

That being said, I’ll give it a shot. For the most part med schools want to make sure you can cut it academically (so here is where your GPA and MCAT come into play), but also that you can relate to, care about, and interact with your patients (and now enters the volunteer experiences, trips abroad, work, clinical exposure, research, and any other extracurriculars). I was recently asked by a junior who was getting ready to apply to med school if she needed to have research. That’s the thought by many: whether or not they need to have some specific experience or score. It’s not about whether or not you have this or that; it’s about how you “package” your this and that as a whole. A good application needs to be balanced; you can control this by building up one area if you lack in another. For instance, I didn’t do any research and my MCAT score wasn’t that great (29) so thought I might appear a little weak in the science area. So, I made for this by making sure to got good grades and adding on the biochemistry minor. I also supplemented the “hard facts” of my application by including all (I really do think I included almost all of them…) of my extracurricular experiences throughout college and really how I grew from them.

I know the last post and this may have been a bit boring, but since I’m writing about what it means to become a doctor in our country, it’s important to know the hard requirements. Let me say again, however, this “getting in” stuff is drawn from my experiences. Everyone’s story is different and getting into medical school is about having a story. Med school is so competitive that sadly most people who don’t get accepted are still AMAZING applicants. It’s simply that there are not enough seats available for the number of applicants. So you have to be sure to work hard, collect experiences, and package that well. You need to stand out and share with med schools why you are unique and how your story sets you apart from all the other students who are applying with a 3.9GPA, 34MCAT, and traveled to Malaysia to work with the poor.

Sometimes we compare ourselves to others (as I’ve done so many time throughout life and especially during this whole process) and think we don’t have anything unique about our lives…but trust me, you do. We all have a story to tell; what’s yours? 

The First Steps

You might wonder what is required to get into medical school. Well, there are really two questions: what is required to apply to medical school and what is required to get into medical school. The first one is quite objective, the second much more subjective. While some schools differ from the norm, most schools require the following:

• 1 year of biology
• 1 year of general chemistry
• 1 year of organic chemistry
• This is not “hippie” chemistry, as my dad called it; it’s more or less just carbon chemistry, which is the fundamental type of chemistry that takes place in the body
• 1 year of general physics
• the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test)

 Like I said, most schools differ in a few ways. For the most part, they differ in the additional courses they may require, usually a calculus, a social science like psychology or sociology, or biochemistry. More or less, however, this is it. Some medical schools don’t even require a degree! How do you feel about that? Your doctor might have his MD, but he or she may have never even received a BA! (It’s not really that big of a deal, so please don’t start freaking out.)

While the course load differs for everyone, most students take general chemistry (commonly known as “gen chem”) and biology (“bio”) their freshman year, organic chemistry (“o chem” or “orgo,” depending on what college you go to) their sophomore year, and physics (no fancy name for this one) their junior year. This is fairly easy (in terms of taking the courses within 3 years, not necessarily easy in terms of content) to accomplish if you are the more traditional science major such as biology, chemistry, or biochemistry because these courses are part of the major anyway. Since I switched into premed right before my junior year, and I wanted to apply to med school with my class, I didn’t have much time. I had to take bio, gen chem, and physics my junior year, and then o chem the following summer over 10 weeks—thankfully Calvin offers this unique program. (It went like this for me: school straight for a year; 3 days off; 10 weeks of ochem—which is normally a 32 week course—2 days off; 3 weeks of studying; and then the MCAT…fun!) Not everyone is a science major though. I, in fact, will be graduating as a Spanish major and a biochemistry minor.

The most dreaded “things” by premeds are organic chemistry and the MCAT. I enjoyed organic (I think most people think this class is so bad because, although it does require a lot of work, its reputation is perpetually passed on year to year—if you think something is going to be terrible, then of course it is!). But let me tell you, the MCAT really is a terrible, terrible thing. The test covers the basic sciences and is divided into four sections: critical thinking, writing, biological sciences (bio and o chem), and physical sciences (gen chem and physics). The test lasts about 5 hours, including a few short breaks, and you really have to operate like a machine just to answer all the questions within the allotted time per section. After taking the test twice, I’ve come to the conclusion that about 40% of doing well on the test is knowing the material, the other 60% is knowing how to take that specific test—the format, the question styles, the timing, etc. The test is computerized, which is stupid. We spend years taking test after test on paper with a pencil and then this thing comes along! It might sound like a minor concern, but it’s a big difference.

The test is out of 45 (each of the three sections is out of 15, except for writing, which goes J-T). From what I know, the writing section isn’t THAT important…as long as your score isn’t brutal. Now the scores range all over the place, but no one gets a 45. The highest score of someone I personally know was a 38…incredible. To help you navigate, here are some average scores at certain med schools

Wright State~28

Michigan State University ~31

University of Cincinnati ~34

Case Western Reserve University ~36

University of Michigan

Harvard University ~36

Mayo Clinic ~38

*(These are off the top of my head from back when I researched. Please don’t correct me if you know I’m wrong, unless you just can’t resist the urge.)

  

Average GPAs are all over too, I’d guess around 3.4-3.8. So this is what you need to apply and the how the “numbers” of your application work. However,getting into medical school cannot be reduced to a formula; it’s all relative to the person and what they possess beyond good numbers….

Why worry?

"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own."-Matthew 6:34

I am a worrier and for me, I need to ponder this verse every morning. Its crazy how much I let myself worry sometimes. I've recently descovered that I take my current situaiton and run with it! I'll come up with crazy scenarios of what I tihnk will come about of my situaiton in the future, only to find myself thinking the most ridiculos things. God is in control and we need to be  "confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Phil. 1:6).

So why do I bring this up? Because I caught myself doing this just these past two weeks and the events that followed were God's way of bringing light on my foolishness. What happened? Well I started envisioning my future by mentally selecting my med school and thinking of all the things that would happen...yet as of now I have no idea where I will wind up. You see, it's funny because two weeks ago I thought I was going to Case Western Reserve University, but then my application was placed on hold. Shortly after I interviewed at Loyola and knew that where was I was supposed to be. My letter that I mentioned just came in...alternate list. After those two schools fell through, I started thinking about the University of Cincinnati a lot and began to feel super good about it; a 3rd year student called me over the weekend and I really appreciated that. As I was thinking about that, I began to rule out Oakland. Then the unexpected happened, I got a call from Oakland and they offered me scholarship worth almost half the cost of tuition. (While there are tons of scholarships for undergrad, there are barely any for medical school. I think the thought is that doctors will make money, so we don't need to help them pay for their education. From the schools I've visited, most seem to offer 5-10 large scholarship to their class of 150 or so students...that's not many.) 

So now I have no idea what is going to happen, but I'm thankful that the One who is alongside me does.