Jump to content
Premed 101 Forums

How to get into medial school and dental school without getting lucky


Hobibrian

Recommended Posts

 

1. The best predictor of getting into a school is knowing a person who goes to a school. Find someone. Make that connection. 

2. If you’re financially inferior, be prepared to work harder than your mostly financially superior peers. Best bet, use your story in the admission (if you come this far) to explain how to over that challenge. Good story.

3. Do the usual, pick 3-4 activities and stick with them. Best bet, two science related, one community service, one physical activity related. Do another activity that is interesting as a hobby and stick with that. Use that single activity to create a hook to your admission story.

4. Think of the most morally and ethically justice people you can think of, and become them. Think like them. Act like them. Speak like them.

5.  Rest time should be spent getting cultured and socializing. Don’t spend time on philosophy or art: you’ll find that it’s only as important as a hook to your app. 

6. Don’t shut in. Go out.

7. The more skeptical you are about the admission process, the further away you are from being admitted. 

8. Getting into a school is a game. Playing a game needs rules. Rules are formed by the culturally appropriated admission committee. If you know what they want, you will get what you need.

9. Time is not an issue. Play long term games with long term activities. 

10. Your app is not you, but a product of what you want others to see. 

11. Narrative matters. 

12. Social acceptability in your narrative matters.

13. Get someone who is already in the field to critique your narrative. If they approve, most likely the admin will approve.

14. Be careful of forums , YouTube videos and peers. Their pseudo-advices are mostly unwarranted.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With all due respect, I'd like to see some proof for any of these (or perhaps this is a sophisticated attempt to troll...). 

12 hours ago, Hobibrian said:

1. The best predictor of getting into a school is knowing a person who goes to a school. Find someone. Make that connection.  The best predictor are your grades (2.9+528+awesome ECs isn't getting very far), and your MCAT most places (3.9+490+great ECs is limited in application breadth), followed by your ECs (3.9+/52X people with no/bad ECs can still get in). I really don't think knowing a medical student makes a pivotal difference. Other than sharing sensitive info about interviews (which is a no-no anyway) the only real advantage is being able to talk about the kind of things emphasized in their school's curriculum, which isn't going to make a huge difference to someone who already is a well-rounded good interviewee. 

2. If you’re financially inferior, be prepared to work harder than your mostly financially superior peers. Best bet, use your story in the admission (if you come this far) to explain how to over that challenge. Good story. Inferior is the wrong word, but fair enough point about disadvantages. That noted, some schools don't give space for essay writing. 

3. Do the usual, pick 3-4 activities and stick with them. Best bet, two science related, one community service, one physical activity related. Do another activity that is interesting as a hobby and stick with that. Use that single activity to create a hook to your admission story. There is no formula. Many people will get in with no science related activities or physical activities. "Do what you like" is not very practical advice but it does ring true. 

5.  Rest time should be spent getting cultured and socializing. Don’t spend time on philosophy or art: you’ll find that it’s only as important as a hook to your app. Not true. Pondering philosophy or art will make you a well-rounded person who can hopefully show that. Also, if you don't spend time with philosophy or art what do you mean by "culture"? What's left, eating, sports?  There is also more to life than finding activities to put on your ABS. I've invested 100s (if not 1,000s) of hours of my adult life into activities I didn't put into my ABS or talk about in interviews that still shaped me. 

7. The more skeptical you are about the admission process, the further away you are from being admitted. So long as you do your best to sink the chances you are given skepticism doesn't really play a huge role. If anything, a little skepticism is a good thing to avoid ending up in a "rejected, no backup" situation come May/June.  

14. Be careful of forums (including the post you just wrote? :) Sorry, I couldn't pass up the contradiction). , YouTube videos  and peers. Their pseudo-advices are mostly unwarranted.

The truth is if you ask 100 medical students what to do you'll get some truisms (Great grades, great testing performance, be busy with ECs, be a good, likable, individual) and... 100 different stories of how they got to where they are now. These stories are, in all likelihood, not substantially different than those of the people rejected on the waitlist at their school, I don't think an offer letter grants any boost to application wisdom.

 Attempts to suss out common patterns are kinda circular in many ways. Do schools like to see club leadership or do 90%+ people have it anyway so it really doesn't matter? In the end everyone knows the basic steps (grades, tests, activities) and how you get there is really individualized beyond there. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...