Movement to Remove Med Students from the Interview Process

[drcave]

When asked about a time they had helped a colleague through a difficult time, one applicant said his friend did not want to do the rural family med rotation... so he went instead and impersonated his friend!!! The scariest thing was that he told us about this in the interview...

 

I love it! Too funny. Where's your sense of humour ffp

[vip_138]

they seemed to select for spoiled rich kids who had taken music lessons, gone on parent-funded trips overseas every summer, etc., but really had NO worldly experience. So... I guess that maybe their interview WAS designed to select for a specific type of applicant.

 

Well i feel i have to give my 2 cents here and i hope tallguy408 will forgive me.

 

This is also veering very offcourse from the topic but i really felt i need to give a response (and this is actually my response - not playing devil's advocate).

 

I have noticed that people have gotten into their head that money is bad and that anyone who has money is bad. Now this isn't an attack on ffp since maybe these other applicants were 'spoiled rich kids' who 'had NO worldly experience' but more on attack on the idea that has generally amassed in the premed public (general community too). Morally, i think people like to take some stance that those with money obviously had no hardships in their life, learned nothing from their experiences, and are money-driven, cold, materialistic, insenstive people who don't understand the value of money. This is ofcourse a massive generalization but i've noticed this crop up a number of times. From the way this sounds you might correctly think, i'm one of these people with money. You are right. My parents have money, and as a kid i did take music lessons, but i took it becuase i wanted to and since then, my music has branched into several instruments, bands and teaching these skills to kids. Now i understand that those from less financial backgrounds may not have the oppurtunities that i had but that doesn't mean that they couldn't do anything. Most of my music spawned from being in band-class in middleschool and highschool, and I've always used my money to buy any instruments or other things i wanted. Now one could say that that fact that my parents are paying for my education allowed me the freedom to buy these things/do other things instead of working a normal job to pay for school and that's correct but i'm not about to hold myself as a lesser person becuase i've had those advantages (nor am i going to hold a person of lower financial background a lesser person).

 

Even on the idea of traveling, yes, i have been to many places on my parents bill, but just becuase i've gone to lots of places doesn't mean i haven't learned anything. When we travel, we've taken local buses, public transport, and trains, walked around, met locals and actually experienced the culture (i didn't sit on some resort beach for a week).

 

This has probably been fairly random and disjointed but my point is that MORALLY, people assume that if you have money you're somehow bad or morally lower than others. Who you are and how you've grown from your experiences is completely independent of your financial setting. I think people didn't like the idea when there was an association with money = better (and correctly so), but now i think people have just pushed this to the other side of the spectrum, when there shouldn't be any association in the first place. What i'm basically trying to say, its just becuase someone's rich, doesn't mean they're a 'spoiled rich kid' and just as one shouldn't make superficial assumptions about poorer people, you shouldn't make superficial assumptions about richer people.

[Jochi1543]

Haha, true....it's especially funny for me to hear jabs about my family's financial situation (my father has an 8-million dollar home) and how I'm a spoiled rich girl because we used to be VERY poor (one meal a day consisting of canned beef kinda poor). It didn't turn around until I was in my teens. It's quite hard to make friends, both with people from poorer families than mine and those from families like my father's, but who actually live the same lifestyle as their parents - i.e. own posh condos in London and New York as opposed to my renting out a modest 1-bedroom in a small town in Alberta.....the jealous comments are my favorite. I remember one time I decided to fly to Phoenix for a weekend while I was in school, and my "best friend" (we don't talk anymore) felt compelled to say something about my "luxury lifestyle." The irony of it all was that it was my first trip in a year, and she had already gone away SIX times....but somehow, MY trip was a luxury, and her six trips weren't. And honestly, I'd rather spend my money on a trip than on booze and weed like she did. And everybody thinks you live like freaking Paris Hilton - yeah, my father helps me out to some extent, but I still work and still had student loans....I have friends who come from MUCH less affluent parents and they walk around with $800 Coach handbags. My most expensive handbag was $25!

[ploughboy]

Comment to the OP (though I'm a little leery about responding to controversial threads initiated by posters with very short posting histories)

 

Trust me, you *want* a med student on your interview panel. The med student remembers what it's like to sit where you are, and is probably your biggest advocate on the panel.

 

pb

[lostintime]

I don't know, it's a hard question. I know of some people who got into med whose opinions and way of thinking I completely disagree with, and I for sure wouldn't want them interviewing me. I'm not sure how they presented themselves in front of the interviewers, but I've heard some stuff said by them that really questions their motives for getting into med, but I won't go into that. But I guess it's one of those things you can't predict.

[chemgirl]

I'm a third year student. I tried so hard during the interviews to make the students feel comfortable. I remember what it's like... all the failed interviews when you feel like a dork

 

I tried to ask questions off the CV... hobbies, etc. It's nice to get people talking about extracurricular activities that they are passionate about, and I had some really great discussions.

[doctorbetty]

The student who interviewed me made me feel really comfortable. I didn't even realize she was a student until the end of the interview.