Building a strong health professions application is a labor of years. Some students know that they want to have a career in a health profession early on and others come to this conclusion as college students. In any case, the life that you have lived up to the point of your application will be examined and evaluated by members of an admissions committee. It is your responsibility to tell a compelling, consistent, and cohesive story about your journey. I hope that this information will help you along the way.
Personal Statements
Your personal statement provides one of several elements that you will use to convey a sense of who you are as a person, why you want to pursue a health career, and what about your life, education, and training make you qualified to join those ranks. Simple right? And you have to do this feat of expository writing in 4600-5300 characters. One of the things that may help you as you think about how to develop a personal statement is to look at it as one of many components. You cannot say everything that you might like to say to convince an admissions committee of your abilities and qualities in such a short space. Therefore, you have to be strategic about what is said in the personal statement and what is neatly sprinkled throughout other parts of your application. A well thought-out strategy will allow you to carve out some of the gems of information that you had in the first draft of your personal statement and strategically place it in the 100-200 word space of the Experiences part of your application. Check out the personal statement workshop for more information about the personal statement and the autobiography we make you write for the Health Professions Recommendation Committee.
Letters of Recommendation
Another key element of your application is a set of strong recommendation letters from professionals and supervisors who know you well. Faculty members who know you well, will find it easy to write strong letters of recommendation. They will be able to tell a story about you that reveals something to us about you that you wouldn't necessarily reveal in your personal statement. They can talk about your struggles and your successes: both are important.
If you have simply attended class, answered an occasional question in class, and performed well on exams, your professors will likely have enough material for an okay letter of recommendation. (And they will certainly do their best to provide a good letter.) It is not clear that it will be a strong letter with these somewhat limited interactions. So, help your writers out by getting to know them and letting them get to know you. Even during pandemic days, you can meet with instructors to talk about science, life, advice, and careers. Office hours? What are these things called "office hours"? We have office hours for you, so use the time that is offered. Make good connections early and regularly. Do it with genuine interest and courtesy though.
Ideally, your letters will complement each other and your overall application. This may be the toughest part of the process for you because you will not really know what is in their letters about you. Asking each recommender to focus on a particular area may work in your favor. They can write what they choose, of course, but most writers are glad to provide what is asked. Check out the workshop on letters of recommendations for more information.
Experience
Almost all applications provide space for candidates to list and write about their most meaningful experiences related to their health profession career goal. This space provides you with an opportunity to fill in gaps, use edited-out sections of your personal statement, and provide context for your career goals. Once again, the theme here is complementarity. You want to list and write brief statements about the activities that complement what your personal statement says, what your letters of recommendation may say, and what that particular institution may focus on. For example, if you expend some of the precious characters in your personal statement on your goal of reducing homelessness in your city, you can be sure that the admissions committee will be looking for evidence that you worked toward that goal in other parts of your life. This is where you can show that you talk the talk and walk the walk.
Research, Shadowing, and Clinical Experience
How should you spend your time?
- Should you seal yourself in the library from 7am to midnight every day to study?
- Should you join three clubs and start 2 more to show that you are involved?
- Should you try out for the rugby team to show that you are a team player?
- Should you work 40 hours in your professor's research lab developing a new assay to measure evolutionary change in bacteria?
- Should you spend 24 hours every weekend working in a local hospital to get "facetime" with real live patients?
- Should you spend 24 hours a week working for the United Way?
I hear slightly less extreme versions of these questions pretty regularly. My answer is usually some version of --beats me. Why? Because all these activities are valid, valued, and sometimes even required for your application and career goal. Each of these activities will tell the admissions committees something about you. They will demonstrate what you chose to spend time on and they reflects something about your genuine, authentic challenges, goals, and desires.
I recognize that not all of us start on the same starting line of the race of life. If your parents are physicians or dentists, chances are you will have had a few opportunities to shadow and see the life of a physician. If your folks never went to college, like mine, your road to shadowing and clinical experience might be a bit more circuitous. What you do with those challenges and that adversity will say something about you too. So, keep good notes about your life. Trying and failing, then learning, then failing again, then learning may be your trajectory for a little while until preparation and opportunity finally align.
A note about moderation
Figuring out what is important to you is often one of the major challenges of your pre-professional life. My advice is to think strategically and realistically about your time, your goals, and the things that make you happy. Do more things that make you and the people around you happy and less things that may you and the people around you sad, anxious, or frazzled. Find a middle path as best you can. If you ask me what medical school want to see, I'll tell you that they want to see mature, earnest, bright, and well-balanced people who have compassion for others and themselves. If that is you, add good grades in science and good scores on some standardized tests and you have a good shot.
Standardized tests
- Take them when you are prepared.
- Develop a plan early and do your best to stick to it.
- Get help when appropriate.
- Avoid taking the exam too early.
- Consider how your test preparation aligns with your course requirements.
- Consider what you need to know and skills you need to have early.
Academics
Choose your courses carefully.
Take challenging, laboratory type classes.
Take classes that inspire you.
Where possible, avoid taking science classes at another institution.
Be realistic about the workload.
Getting the right fit
I get to hear from and talk to admission representatives to medical programs every year and one of the things that they frequently comment on is "fit". This is not a one-sided issue: does the student fit in our program. It is two-sided: does the student fit here and do can we provide an environment that allows them to succeed.
For example, if you spend a portion of your application space on your dedication to reducing homelessness in your city but the medical school that is evaluating your application is known for their laboratory-research programs and biomedical sciences, it is possible that the fit isn't right. It is not a certainty that the fit isn't right and perhaps they will be looking for a few more social medicine-minded students in their class but you should do your homework before you plunk down your money and time on a list of programs.
Admittedly, "fit" is a challenge because your primary application is general to all programs (usually) and students typically apply to between 10 to 17 programs. So, all you can do is know yourself, be honest about what you care about, and be confident that the schools that you have chosen will see elements in your application that will intrigue them enough to interview you.