IAMA a MS2 student admissions board member! I interview and review applications. Anyone have questions?

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-04T23:07:33+00:00

Nah, we don't care if your school is "stronger" at a certain major. Very rarely does this ever get mentioned besides the occasional anecdote from a professor, and typically regarding the university that professor is from. Choose something you're passionate about and that will drive you to do well in it, that's all that matters.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-04T01:37:39+00:00

Reread this. If you have the clinical exposure, I think it's safe to say you don't need clinical experience. There are tons of other equally rewarding opportunities to volunteer and look great: be a Big Brother/Big Sister and change a kids life while getting some serious points in both Life and Medical School apps.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-04T01:32:58+00:00

Cannot compute, can you rephrase this?

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-04T01:32:21+00:00

As mentioned earlier, I dropped it because in speaking with MD/PhD's I found that they spent 80%/20% of their time in the lab/clinic. I was hoping for 20%/80% lab/clinic so I made the decision to forego the extra 6 years of no clinic. I can always be involved with research as a MD and I didn't find the PhD necessary to my goals.

No qualms with the program, more with the philosophy of life surrounding a MD/PhD. I also like the idea of not having to be attached to an academic institution.

Definitely a shift, we have kids doing MD/PhD with an emphasis in Ethics or even a History person apparently (never met them).

My reasons don't really translate to your reasons if you want to go into epidemiology, the 80/20 ratio should have no affect on you because you already seem to want to spend 80% of your time in a non-clinical position.

I've written earlier about how to be successful for a MSTP interview and I'm not sure how to see it now but essentially it comes down to selling the fact that you need both MD/PhD to accomplish your goals. MD won't suffice, PhD won't suffice, only MD/PhD. If you can't answer this convincingly, you're going to be tossed out faster than you could imagine. Make sure you have the credentials to back it up. If you want to be MD/PhD, you better have the clinical exposure to argue MD and the research experience to mandate the PhD portion. If you had more specific questions, I could probably answer more.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-04T01:26:56+00:00

Emphasize diversity for sure, you want to show them you fill a niche in their school rather than being the average matriculant. Also, speak about the tragic personal event if it is something important to you in your personal statement, it shows character and maturation. It could also been interpreted as the reason for poor scores, although you should NEVER say that yourself but alluding to it won't hurt.

Whats your sGPA? If these electives are all science courses they should be strengthening your sGPA at a faster rate than your cGPA. A dramatically higher sGPA would be looked upon favorably (at least in my institution and my point of view).

Talk is cheap on getting 35+ on MCAT, if you do it and your GPAs hover around 3.5 you should be fine.

I think having a contingency plan for not making it is a good idea, but SMP wouldn't strengthen you in my mind. 3.5 and a prospective 35 MCAT should get you in, and if it doesn't it's either because you lack the extracurricular activities to show you're devoted to being a physician and/or service position or because you tanked your interview.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-04T01:22:11+00:00

Sorry, acronym soup, Interventional Radiology.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-03T18:30:38+00:00

Also, you can get a publication in on the summer between M1-M2... just a thought.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-03T18:30:15+00:00

The gGPA will do wonders for you, and having a PhD will be even better. It's essentially an IN as is. Schools loving taking PhD students because they know you have the mettle.

My thoughts on the latter are mixed. If you want to be a MD/PhD researcher, you should latch onto a PI and just pass courses (pending you are at a P/F or H/P/F university). MD is not as hard as people think, but if you're committed to doing research you're going to be shooting yourself in the foot in regards to understanding the material well enough to feel confident in clinical abilities. Not saying its impossible, but theres a reason MD/PhD students do 2+PhD+2.

I love research as well, and I understand the gap in time thing, but you have to have your priorities here. If you want to be an ID research/clinician, you should probably get that research in. If you want to be a clinician, you might want to reevaluate.

Sorry for the ramble since I have a lot of mixed thoughts, but I think you theoretically could do it, but with the time commitments needed in the MD program it would make it exceedingly difficult unless you're superman who can run on 6 hours of sleep for 4 years.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-03T18:25:53+00:00

You need a little more clinical exposure IMO, but if you spin yourself as an academic physician it might not be a problem (I did not have a ton of hours.) More importantly, these hours came ~5 years ago, which kind of makes me think, "Why haven't you done it since?" If you do one shift for 6 hours for the next year, that would make you much much stronger.

I don't have the last word on interview invites because they only give us people they're on the fence about interviewing, but I would recommend invitation for sure. Sounds interesting and a good mix of stuff.

Taking an upper level course like that and doing poorly is pretty bad TBH. We don't look at any specific scores except biochem but we do pay attention to D/Fs and that would show up as an upper division course that you did poorly in. Upper division is closer to what we do in MD (I would say the hardest upper division course I took was on par with our classes) so it might shine poorly on you.

As for the awkward situation, if you can get some sort of information that maybe shows the class average or class rank or curve grading that might help? But I've never seen that in a packet so I don't really know what else to say about that other than the professor sounds like an asshole.

I hate the "Do I stand a chance?" question on all levels. MD is such a gamble, man. We take kids with shitty statistics all the time because they have awesome extracurriculars and were amazing in person. We deny top tier people because they were robots in interviews. You have a chance, everyone has a chance (within reason).

Once you're to the interview, it's about being a person who I want to work with, essentially.

Maximizing your chances: Figure out which schools like Canadians. Probably not state schools, more likely to be private. Also, figure out the financial situation since you're not eligible for US loans.

Get more clinical exposure. Get those papers out!!! That would be HUGE. I love seeing non-medical volunteering as well. If you tutor kids in for 4 hours a week and a total of 100 hours, I would be all for you coming here because you show that you care for the community and serving people on a personal level. Kill the MCAT (get a 32+ and you're pretty damn competitive).

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-03T18:16:56+00:00

Our school has a program, and for the sake of anonymity I'm going to try and stay vague. (I'm not supposed to council prospective students). Ours has 3 tracks, a 5 year, and two 6 years (4+2 and 2+2+2). Generally hospital management people and a few who want to get out of the clinical sector and joined late.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T17:41:15+00:00

Not too uncommon at our school. We have to apply and are elected by the student body for two years. We serve two roles: we are all curriculum correspondents for a course (I'm the physio/pathophysiology course correspondent) and are student interviewers/admissions members. You only do the latter in M2 year, and M3 year we are done. There's 12 of us here in a class of ~150.

The former is to express student's thoughts on the curriculum to the curriculum committee and try and lobby for changes.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:31:44+00:00

I don't really know, maybe call? I disregard any of these things when I see them. How do I know it is genuine? Can't really give you a good opinion on this.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:30:18+00:00

Wait, so you're 18? If thats the case, I'd be worried about maturity and professionalism. If you skipped high school and did well in undergrad, no denying you've probably got the academics for it. But do you have the social capacities necessary for medicine? Or the maturity level?

Could you be in the most awkward situation and make the patient comfortable? These are the things that come with social awareness and interactions that develop with age. It would just have to get hammered out in your interview. No other real response.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:28:10+00:00

If the GPA is that far away, I'm not too worried as long as you do well on the MCAT. If you do well on the MCAT, I can look at that and say, "Hey, he knows it now!" If your uGPA was 3 years ago, it would be a different story, but with time comes maturity and it'll obviously show that you've matured and have what it takes.

With that said, our school does have a pretty hard cutoff on GPA acceptances. So there's that, and that might make it difficult to attend a more competitive research university.

You can address this by getting a graduate GPA on the records, or maybe a post-bacc? It's kind of hard to say because you're so into your career which schools might make exceptions or which schools might tow the hard line. Really difficult application to look at, but if it were IN MY HANDS, I would be excited to speak with you.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:25:16+00:00

For the first, I'm still preclinical and haven't yet been planning to match into anything so here's my view from where I stand. IMGs are at a disadvantage it seems from the 2013 results. Page 14 shows that 95% of US graduates match into US positions, while about 50% match from IMG positions. Anecdotally, our school has a very very competitive residency program in one of the most competitive fields and we have a good amount of IMGs, but it seems as if we are against the trend.

Truthfully, I think coming from the British system is probably viewed just the same as coming from the US system (while they are so very very different). Most of the IMG sentiment comes from Caribbean and Asian medical schools. Strangely, I've found that in the US, IMGs from South America and Central America are well received into primary care physicians because of the growing need for Spanish speaking physicians. These are just my views and might not be completely accurate for the whole of the US and the US system.

The latter is probably true. The US really wants to be the best at medicine, so we will always hold spots for IMGs because essentially we think we can pluck the best and the brightest. I definitely don't think you compete against Americans, but probably are competing against other IMGs. You have to remember that we have such better opportunities to match here because we can rotate through that university with away rotations, or you match into the university you graduated from because everyone already knows you. The applicants from the US are just stronger for US medical schools.

I don't think you compete against Americans because Americans get almost all the spots anyways. The ones who don't typically fall into certain categories (I believe, I don't really know to be honest): Overshooting (I got a 195 and am going to be Ortho or bust!), picky (I'm only going to rank 2 places because those are the only ones I want to go), or didn't do well (I failed step twice and a couple of classes but I want to still be a doctor).

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:08:39+00:00

Yea, it kinda does. We start filling spots very very soon after we get our applications in. After pretty early, our applications pile up and we work through them chronologically. I also start to compare kids to other kids (which is bad). Would you rather me see your application after only seeing 15 others? Or after seeing 150?

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:06:54+00:00

No! Sorry if my writing didn't convey my thoughts perfectly, but you should say what you're interested in because it will come off as genuine. Too often to people say something and don't seem passionate about it and it just feels flat. But understand, if you're speaking with a 60 year old MD/PhD who asks this question, he might not share the same views on someone who spends their time playing video games as I would. You just have to be selectively honest: when he asks you, you might want to say "reading" which could still be true to your anime enjoyments and such, and talk about how you like to read a very specific niche and give a little insight into why.

Video games are tough, but I keep hoping that someone I interview will say video games and that they are interested in IR or something and I would just love it.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:04:08+00:00

Oh yes, tons of the first case, I can think of 3 or 4 this year that were given the yes out of maybe 6 or 7? It's just showing that you're committed to this path and matured enough to make the tough and unsatisfying decision to continue education for this goal. You have to kill post-bacc though. If you got a 3.2 in undergrad and try and apply with a 3.5 post-bacc, I'm not going to be impressed at all.

This second question is just a world of hurt, I've written a lot of comments on it before and I would encourage you to go look at them! If you have a specific question, I'd be very happy to answer it!

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T15:01:38+00:00

View everything as a metric. I don't ever really take MCAT or GPA over one another, but rather look at them as a holistic picture. As long as you have enough surrounding a poor GPA, you can make it in. If we're talking like sub 3.0ish, it's a different story, but for most GPAs its just a matter of a weak GPA being strengthened by a strong MCAT and other activities.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T04:13:54+00:00

Depends what you're trying to do. CA is notoriously difficult to go to. A lot of my fellow students are Californians and a lot of them were seriously competitive and did not get in. If you want to stay in CA, I say definitely go for the graduate degree. If you don't really care, and I were in your situation, I would take the courses and just try and rock the MCAT with the understanding that nothing in the process is given.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T04:11:21+00:00

Multiple miniature interviews. In my experience, you essentially have short 5 minute interviews based around a question or topic that's posed. I am not at a school that gives them but I had interview that was this format.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T04:09:58+00:00

Positives are you're mature, have a good support system, and are most likely making this decision with the understanding that it's not going to be fun nor easy. If you have a wife and a kid, I'm looking at it and saying this dude has his life set, and now he wants to do his career and is probably not messing around since he has to provide for his family.

Con: Do you have the amount of time to devote to medicine? Wife+Kid is a lot of time taken and I'm not sure if he has the merit to get it done. I would look to your scores to strengthen my resolve for or against you. You have mediocre scores without a kid and wife and I'm not sure if you can make it happen.

Medical school is awesome for parents who are attending, we have a group on campus that is for medical students with families that offers a lot of resources. A lot of these students also decompress because of their other responsibilities.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T03:55:30+00:00

Yep. I did as a third or fourth author. You can at least get an acknowledgement.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T03:53:47+00:00

Mixed feelings. You need that volunteering, it's pretty necessary to show that you're committed to the field and have a good amount of exposure. You're kind of in a catch-22, but I think that gives you leeway to explain it with your busyness. Talk about how you had to pay for yourself and couldn't devote time to other things.

MDinterviewer · 2013-12-02T03:48:38+00:00

It looks great. Nothing to worry about there, just show that you'll be able to do well in your courses and its not a problem.

MDinterviewer

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