Hello y’all,
I am going to write a few tips and hints that are useful to know before you begin the process of applying to med (or pharm or other health) schools. There is something for everybody here!
First off, if you are an underclassman, long before you actually face the application itself, I would highly recommend you to look into attending one or two pre-professional conferences, such as the one for medicine held at Davis (October) or at Stanford (spring). I didn’t find out about these until last year, but I have realized that these conferences are great introductory resources. They help by giving you a wide perspective on the process of becoming what you want to be. You may find useful information, opinions, and gain knowledge from other people’s experiences. There are panels of admissions where Deans presenting their insights on the admission process, giving you perspectives on the application process to different schools.
Some advice about the application itself…aside from getting letters of recommendation, I found writing the essays to be the most challenging part. If you want to get a head start on thinking about what to write, here’s your challenge: write a personal statement of 5300 characters for AMCAS (for D.O. schools, about 4600; if you are also doing M.D./Ph.D. you have an additional 3000 just for the joint program as well as another 10,000 on your research experience; lastly, each of your activities get up to 1350 characters). If this seems like a lot of text, know that this is only an illusion that persists until you hit the last 10% of your essay. Get started writing because you will wish the character limits were twice that!
If you are a science or technical major like I am, you may find writing a bit more difficult. Let me share some tips that I had gathered over the process. First, feel free to elaborate on what things mean to you. Coming from a science background, you may want to rely on the “self-evident” conclusion from your data... but don’t expect others to make assumptions about what is meaningful! Personalize your experience and tell the reader what it means to you. Second, this acronym may help you while you are writing: CAR, for Context, Action, and Result. Use that formula to construct paragraphs to describe your experiences. Later you may have to edit the details to save space, but this is a good way to get organized and prompt your thoughts the first draft. Lastly, (something that I personally discovered too late) one school has this advice for organizing your experience/activities’ description: “Because not all schools read your entire descriptions, you may want to hedge your bets in writing about your activities. Commit your first few lines to writing a minimal description of your experience. Then you can go on to elaborate what your experience meant to you (your “value set”) and why you did them (where you got your “value set”).”
In the meantime, writing your application may be a great opportunity to improve your writing skills!
Remember that you should be emotionally prepared. Many people describe the process as “gloomy” with uncertainty... until you get your first acceptances! So I hope you will have the calm confidence and serenity to face the application process! Good luck!
Post by Health Peer Advisor Elton Chan
^ agreed. this is very helpful for starters, so thank you!
Posted by: angela | March 25, 2011 at 10:47 AM
Thanks for the specific essay tips!
Posted by: Crystal | January 06, 2011 at 08:45 PM