2014 application cycle in a nutshell

Since it's pretty much decided where I'll be going to medical school, I figured it's time for the second edition of "My application cycle in a nutshell". The first edition can be found here.

2014 application cycle, by the numbers:

• 27 - Schools to which I applied
• 26 - Schools from which I received a secondary
• 22 - Secondaries I submitted
• 7/5 - Interviews offered/interviews attended
• 4 - Waitlists
• 1 - Acceptances
• 4 - Rejections (all waitlists turned into rejections)
• 6/11 - AMCAS submitted
• 7/2 - AMCAS verified
• 7/4 - Earliest date my application was complete at a school
• 9/6 - Last date my application was complete at a school

All in all, I am satisfied with how this process ended up for me. It would've been nice to have gotten accepted to more than one school and had some sort of a choice. After-all, I still have some pride left over after two very humbling application cycles. On the other hand, I suck at making decisions for myself, so maybe it's better this way.

Honestly, though, after looking into schools in more depth, there are only one or two schools I would have considered attending over School E. I was waitlisted at one that was a complete reach for me (School A), so I got close but no cigar. The others I viewed through rose-colored glasses so I don't actually know if I would've been happier elsewhere.

Regardless, I am incredibly grateful to have an acceptance, especially to a medical school that I am so excited to attend. I couldn't have done this without the help and support of family, friends, and even strangers I met online. It is so humbling to know that so many people rallied behind me and allowed me to achieve what seemed like a pipe dream at times.

Maybe I'll write up a more detailed post about what got me accepted this time, but if I don't then the short version is the following:

1. Earlier primary application and thus earlier secondary submissions
2. Tailoring my secondary essay answers to the mission of each school
3. Putting on my happy, joyful, enthusiastic face during interviews and selling myself shamelessly

House hunting

A couple of weeks ago I went down to City E to look at apartments/houses to sign a lease for the next year. Boy, was it stressful! My current roommate and best friend (F) who's moving down there with me accompanied me on this trip.

We flew in Thursday night and spent all of Friday, Saturday, and Sunday looking at places. We ended up touring 23 apartments, duplexes, and houses, and they ranged from nice properties to slum houses. We found most of the places on craigslist, hence the huge range in quality, but we also worked with a realtor to look at some others.

Our outlook about this whole process changed hourly. We were hopeful and happy thinking of all the awesome places we planned to see, only for them to have something terribly wrong (awful neighborhood, weird landlord, cockroaches, etc.). Up until Sunday morning, we had found a few places we would be okay living in but were not thrilled about. It was very discouraging.

Sunday turned out really well, though, by that night we narrowed our list down to three places we could see ourselves living, à la House Hunters style (my second favorite show on HGTV, right behind House Hunters International).

House 1 - Beautiful house, questionable neighborhood

I fell in love with this place as soon as I walked in. Bright and big rooms, tall ceilings, very open and airy. Lots of history. It was also in the more happening part of town where a lot of other med and grad students live, in an area that is more reminiscent of the character of City E and what it's known for.

However, a couple of blocks away was a questionable part of town and the current tenant said that every once in a while you hear of people getting mugged. The unit was the right half of this house as you're looking at the picture, so the ground floor had bars in the windows. Umm...no. I'm moving from six years in a bubble. I wasn't sure if I wanted to worry about putting my nice TV in the front room because someone might see it and want to break in. The house was AWESOME, though. Not perfect by any means because it was over 100-years-old, but great in the old-house-charm sort of way.


House 2 - Good neighborhood, awful layout

I really wanted to love this place because it was huge, kind of in our budget, and located in the "safe" part of City E (that is, as close to a suburb feel as you can get there). It was a 2-bedroom 1500 sq. ft. apartment occupying the second floor of a nice house, with ginormous bedrooms and an extra study space off one of them.

BUT (and this is a big one), the kitchen was tiny. It was so small that I couldn't figure out where we would put the microwave on the counter. On the other hand, it had a fairly large formal dining room off to the side of it, so the space was there. It was the planning that was off. Also, only two of the windows in the entire house opened, the stairs to the backyard led to the front of the house so you had to walk all the way around the property, and stuff like that. It was just weird and didn't feel natural.


House 3 - Good neighborhood, meh house

This place was just around the corner from House 2, so same neighborhood and similar style. Like House 2, it was the second floor unit with 2 bedrooms, but only 1000 square feet. Unlike House 2, it had a very open layout where the living room opened into the dining room, followed by the kitchen and stairs to the backyard. There were lots of windows (that opened!) and natural light everywhere, which is what I really loved about House 1 as well.

My beef with this place was that it was a step down from our current apartment, and I really wanted to improve my housing. The bedrooms were smaller, as was the backyard. There were window units, like I mentioned, instead of central air.* The neighborhood didn't have anything happening in it with regards to nature and trees and people. The lots in front and to the side of the house were empty and the neighbor on the other side used his home as a vacation house, so it seemed rather dead. It had a very suburban feel, which I don't like too much.

Mostly, I felt very claustrophobic when I was inside and didn't know where I would put my desk because I really like studying at home. When we were actually in the house, it didn't feel too bad, but I think I remember it much smaller than it actually is.

Lastly, the landlady was around our age and really fun to talk to so we'd have an immediate friend when we moved there. She seemed on top of everything and really cared about fixing up the place, telling us she'd replace the stairs leading to the backyard before we moved in, as well as building a fence in the backyard so we'd have our own space and she hers. I would've much rather had her install central air to replace the window units she currently had or update the appliances in the kitchen, but it's not my house so I don't make those decisions.

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So what'd we go with? House? Location? Layout?

We chose neighborhood over house, and picked the more suitable of our options: House 3.

The neighborhood is actually perfect for me, even though I'm still in denial about that. Here's why:

• 3 miles from two yacht clubs (hurray sailing!)
• 1 mile from City E's equivalent of Central Park
• 3 blocks from lots of restaurants and bars, blocks I feel safe walking through

I keep thinking that I should live in the center of all the hustle and bustle of City E because it's so awesome and I should really experience it during my time there. But then I remind myself that I like visiting cities instead of living in them and I'm 10 minutes from the center of City E. That's not far at all.

Most importantly, I really won't have that much time to experience and enjoy my neighborhood because I'll have my nose stuck in a book. So feeling safe and comfortable with where I'm living is the most important thing to consider.

The main source of my disappointment is that, like I mentioned in a previous post, I was really excited to move up in the world of housing and not live in a shit-hole anymore. Unfortunately, I believe House 3 in City E is a step-down in certain ways, a step-up in others, so on average I'm moving laterally and not up. I'm comforted by the fact that the lease is only for one year so I can move next July (although I was really hoping I wouldn't have to) and our landlady lives below us, is our age, and is generally awesome to hang out with.

All in all, it won't be too bad. I just have to suck it up for one more year and maybe find a better place next summer. Or I could end up falling in love with our house and staying there all four years of medical school. You never know.

Below are some pictures of the interior of House 3. It's actually pretty nice.

Looking from the front porch through the living and dining room, to the kitchen.

The kitchen. Entrance on the left leads to the dining room.

One of the bedrooms. It looks smaller than it is.

Edited to add:
I just looked over a post I wrote before going to City E to sign a lease which lists out my requirements for a new place. House 3 has met all of the must-haves and would-like-to-haves. Geez, I really am being a brat about this new place.

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*While my current housing situation has neither central air nor window units, all the places in City E have one or the other. I would prefer to have central air because it's nicer and quieter, and thus a step up in my HVAC experience. Oh well. You can't have everything, especially when you only have five days to look for a place to live in a city you don't know at all.

Accepted medical student panel for pre-med students

I participated in a panel for pre-med students at the local university where the pre-meds could ask accepted students anything they wanted about the application process. I figured as a non-traditional reapplicant, I would have a unique viewpoint on the whole process.

Little did I know that my story is not that uncommon. Of the first 5 people who introduced themselves, 4 were non-traditional reapplicants, though none as old as me. The rest of the 15-20 panelists were either traditional students or kids (yes, they're young) who had taken a gap year to screw around. Not many of the pre-med attendees were non-traditionals so I didn't really help anyone out too much, but I like to believe that my more mature (ha!) attitude about the whole process calmed their nerves a bit.

Most of the questions were about the MCAT: How did you study? Did you get any sleep the night before? When is the best time to take it? There were also questions about choosing medical schools, the incredible debt we're about to incur, and terrible interview questions.

I was one of the few who had studied for the MCAT on my own and had also chosen my list of schools based on geography, among other things. Everyone else had cookie-cutter applications, which I guess is more in line with what the people attending the panel would look like on paper.

The "worst interview question" brought me back to that terrible experience back in November when I completely failed an ethical question. By the time I was able to get a word in (these panelists really liked to talk!) the answers had changed from anecdotes to general interview advice.

Instead of recounting the ethical scenario from hell, I talked about how my interviewer had pointed out every single bad grade I had ever gotten to start off the interview ("To say you did poorly in undergrad is an understatement. A C- in bio, a D+ in ochem, and a D- in anthropology, among other things..."). I then discussed how it made me feel really low even though I'm not ashamed of those grades. It's a part of my past that I freely discuss with others. But the way he put it was very accusatory and I had not experienced being attacked for my GPA before so it caught me off-guard.

The moral of that story was to tell the applicants to do a mock interview with someone they don't know who will grill them on any part of the application that is even a tiny bit weak, or something they are insecure about. The chances of getting such an asshole for an interviewer are very small, but it does happen and you want to be prepared for it.

Some panelists were saying that studying for the MCAT was an all-encompassing ordeal where you have to think and study for the test all the time. I completely disagree with that and made sure to say that although you definitely need to make time for school, you also need an outlet as well as a motivator. The road to becoming a physician is long and overwhelming, so having a reminder of why you're doing this is incredibly important, as is having some sort of work-life balance.

For me, the outlet was rugby. Every Saturday morning was my rugby time and school was not even on my mind for those few hours. Volunteering in the hospital, on the other hand, was the thing that reminded me of my ultimate goal in all this, and kept my eye on the prize when having my nose in a book for months at a time seemed so depressing and pointless. This definitely hit home with at least one person who was completely defeated about the process of getting into medical school, so I'm glad I interjected.

The rest of the panel was rather uneventful. Answers dragged on way too long and were repetitive because everyone wanted to get a word in. I wish we could've led the discussion in that we could focus attention on the most important and stressful aspects of the application cycle, like writing bunches of secondary essays in a months' time, dealing with waiting and the unknown, and how to tailor interview answers to the schools' mission statements.

Instead, the pre-med students asked questions about things that to them seemed like a big deal (as they did to me when I was in their shoes) but in fact were less significant for people who had gone through the whole application process. On the other hand, I'm sure there are presentations during other times of the year for those things and pre-med students rarely get to ask their peers any question they want in an informal setting. So this panel appears to have served its purpose.

As for the panelists, of course there was the kid who showed up in scrubs, wouldn't stop giving terrible advice, and didn't hesitate to announce that he graduated 1.5 years early. Congrats, buddy! You think you know everything, but you haven't lived.

The non-trads in the corner (because of course we showed up last) had a peanut gallery going every time he spoke and towards the end of the panel we'd just talk over him to negate whatever bad answer he had given without even waiting for him to finish. I love how all of us older folk can see through the bullshit and have no qualms about offering an unpopular perspective on things. We're just trying to be real.

It was really weird to be on the other side of the whole medical school application process. It's taken me so long to get accepted, with the two-year post-bacc and two application cycles, that it still doesn't seem real that I'll be starting school in less than three months. Things like this, though, hammer it home. I'm so incredibly excited!

Prepping for the move

Now that we're nearly halfway through April, the reality of moving cross-country is beginning to set in. I've begun looking at craigslist to see what's out there and it's starting to stress me out. While City E (where School E is located) has a lower cost of living than my current locale, the renting market is just as tough and just as expensive.

I will have lived in my current house for six years and although it's not perfect, suffering through its imperfections is more appealing than contemplating a move. So I've stayed here despite the house being less than ideal. For example, the price can't be beat for its location, backyard, and layout. On the other hand, it's a glorified cardboard box: hot in the summers and cold in the winters. It has so little insulation that our candles flicker inside when there's wind outside, and during the annual cold snap we have half an inch of ice on the inside of our windows.

Our living room window a couple of years ago

Designs in the ice, on the inside of the window

So pretty, but so cold

Despite all these issues, I would love to find something similar to it in City E. I'm referring to its strengths: location, backyard, and layout. Insulation would be nice as well.

Long story short, there aren't that many places in City E within my current budget that also have all the things I want in a house. I've gotten to the point where I'd rather pay more and live comfortably (within reason) than continue living in a shithole. So the budget has increased to accommodate the things I can't be without.* Even so, listings are pretty sparse in City E.

This is why I'm stressed about finding a place. I'm only planning on being in City E for several days in June to sign a lease, so what are the chances of finding a semi-perfect house in that time? It's much easier to find something when I'm living in the city and can pounce on a craigslist posting as soon as a house becomes available.

I just really hope this all works out. The future roommate (a good friend who's moving to City E around the same time as I am) is not worried at all, as she's much more laid-back with regards to these things. Since I always have to have a Plan B, the other option is to move there with a month-to-month lease and continue looking for the first couple months of school for something better. I'd like to avoid that because I really hate moving (see evidence in photos above).

I'm so envious of the 22-24 year-old crowd that doesn't care where or with whom they live as long as they have a roof over their heads. I used to be there, but with age come standards and thus these kinds of dilemmas.

Moving cross-country and being old(er) suck!

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* My requirements for a house include the following:

• Relatively safe neighborhood (no need for bars in the windows)
• Patch of grass (front yard or backyard), doesn't need to be fenced
• 2+ bedrooms, average-sized
• Bathtub
• Decent-sized kitchen (two people can stand in it at one time)
• Dishwasher
• Ground floor, or higher but with an open and covered porch

Things that would be nice but not entirely necessary:

• Washer and dryer in the house, or at least W/D hookups
• Covered porch regardless of floor
• Walking distance to coffee shops and/or grocery stores
• Off-street parking

Details of a non-traditional medical school application

I'm a non-traditional medical school applicant ("non-trad" in med speak) in that I have spent some time in the real world between graduating from college and applying to medical school. It's been nearly 7 years at this point and I have done a wide variety of things in that time, some of them medicine-related but most of them not at all.

A commenter asked me to elaborate on my activities and what I put on my AMCAS, so here it goes. I don't particularly like lists so instead you get an abridged version of my adult life story, even though it may not seem very abridged. Everything I mention below is in one way or another presented in my primary application. So you're getting essentially what the adcoms got when they received my application, with some flowery commentary thrown in for good measure.

Bright College Years:
My major was in the natural sciences, so a lot of the requirements for my B.S. overlapped with those required for medical school. At the time, it was great to knock out both sets of requirements but in retrospect, I wish I had stayed far away from any BCPM classes during undergrad. I would've had a much easier time getting into medical school that way. But alas, I don't have a time machine so the past remains unchanged as much as I wish otherwise.

As a natural extension of my academic interest in medicine, I began getting involved clinically my freshman year. I volunteered as an EMT at a 911-only ambulance service a couple of towns away from my undergrad campus. Since I was never cleared to drive the ambulance, all of my hours were spent providing direct patient care. Over the course of the three years I spent in EMS, I acquired something like 1,700 hours of clinical community service. It was awesome and is one of the major reasons I am pursuing medicine as a career. I listed it as a meaningful activity and elaborated further on the previous statement.

Other extracurriculars included rugby, which I also listed as a most meaningful activity on my AMCAS, sailing, and Habitat for Humanity, which I had been involved with in high school and continued to work with in college.

Gap Year(s):
I went abroad after graduation and spent the next year and a half sailing the high seas, working in a café, playing rugby, moving to another country whose language I didn't speak, working for food and wine, all before finally coming back stateside to work at a summer camp. Again, this all went into my AMCAS application.

For those ~18 months, I did nothing that went anywhere near medicine. I simply had fun. I learned a lot about myself during that time and a lot of those experiences led me to apply to medical school, all of which I discussed in my personal statement.

I came back to the U.S. because my money ran out (working for food and wine doesn't go far with regard to savings) and because I was tired of living out of a suitcase. I wanted my own sofa and I couldn't have that with my nomadic lifestyle. This part was not in my application, for obvious reasons. I don't think I actually told med schools why I moved back. Only one interviewer has ever asked and I gave her a more eloquent and mature answer, one which didn't involve a sofa.

The Real World:
Unbeknownst to me, the town I moved to after the summer camp experience was a Mecca for the career I had planned to pursue at the time. I hadn't come around to medicine quite yet and was instead focused on working in the industry of my undergrad major.

I got a job in research full-time at the local university and have been here ever since. While the experiences I have had as a member of this research group have been incredible (see the trip to Alaska and other deployments to equally exotic locations), I have ultimately realized that this career is not for me and that I needed to find something else to do.

As soon as I began thinking about medical school again, I started volunteering at the hospital where I've been lucky enough to have direct contact with both patients and physicians. I also enrolled in pre-med classes at the same university I work at since I had to take or retake nearly all of the med school pre-requisites.

I have continued to be heavily involved in rugby as well as with Habitat for Humanity.

Lastly, I went on a medical mission trip with the U.S. Navy to Southeast Asia for a month about a year ago. I have a well-documented interest in international outreach so this wasn't simply a box-checking activity. Instead, it was the perfect combination of the things I'm passionate about: international missions, boats, and medicine. It opened my eyes to how international medicine is really done and somewhat changed what I had envisioned as my future career in medicine.

How all of this is perceived by adcoms (people that matter):
Like I've mentioned before, my application is either loved or hated by the powers that be. I have yet to get a neutral reaction to my experiences and journey to med school. One interviewer has grilled me on why now, how I know I won't quit again, and the like, while a pre-med advisor (Ms. D) simply doesn't like me for reasons I can't explain.

For the most part, though, interviewers were curious and excited to discuss the reasons behind my adventures and wanted to know why I finally came back to medicine after so many years pursuing vastly different things.

I don't think there are any "required" extracurriculars or activities for non-trads. I've known people who got in with very little recent volunteering or practically no research. However, it seems like you need to have one or the other, or a very valid reason for being light in those areas such as family, job, or other pressures. I happened to have both research and volunteering, although I didn't have any publications even though I worked for ~5 years as a research assistant, which I know hurt me at some schools.

My advice to other non-traditional applicants is to first and foremost focus on your grades and MCAT. Those are the most important things in your application. Then, do clinical volunteering/work and shadowing, and maybe get some research in if that's your thing. Primarily, you need to show that you can handle the academic workload. Secondly, you need to be able to show that you know what you're getting yourself into and having those activities on your application will go far in convincing adcoms that you're making an educated decision to pursue medicine.

Generally, activities of non-trads are not more heavily scrutinized per se but rather the reasons behind those decisions are questioned more intensely. It's a lot harder to quit another career to pursue medicine than it is to apply to med school as a junior in college so adcoms want to know why, why, why. In your applications, but more importantly in your interviews, make sure you can convincingly communicate why you switched to medicine and have some evidence/stories to back that up.

Be prepared to discuss any deficiencies you may have in your application, even if the reason that your undergrad grades sucked was because you were young and stupid. Own up to your mistakes and let interviewers know that you've learned from them and that you're better for it.

I'm not an expert on medical school admissions for traditional or non-traditional students by any means. After-all, I've been placed on 5 waitlists and only accepted to one school after applying twice. So take everything I say with a grain of salt.

However, the above "advice" is based on a lot of research on the subject both from SDN (there really is some good stuff there if you wade through the bullshit) and from talking with a lot of people. I haven't always heeded my own advice but now I know better and hope that this helps you, dear commenter.

If you have any other questions, don't hesitate to write below and I'll try to elaborate further.

Success is the sweetest revenge

When I came to terms with having to reapply to med school last year, I went to my pre-med advisor to ask her about amending my school list from the previous year. This is not the nice advisor I like going to but the one who I'm convinced really dislikes me. Unfortunately, she's the one who knows which medical schools prefer which kind of applicant (or so she says), so I had no choice.

The words, "You should not apply this cycle," "You are at a high risk of dropping out of medical school," and, "If I were an admissions committee member, I would not offer you an interview," all came out of her mouth during the course of our 30-minute meeting. She strongly suggested I take the year off to strengthen my application and apply during the next cycle instead. To say I was surprised would be a huge understatement.

She somewhat had a point. I hadn't done much of anything to improve my application in the year since I submitted the original one. The only real change I made was that I applied early instead of super late, which could be a game-changer in and of itself. But as Ms. D (for Debby Downer) pointed out, my lack of interviews last cycle could definitely be due to a weak application and not because of the tardiness of my submission.

I walked out of that meeting unsure of myself. I hadn't had my world rocked that hard in a very long time, thinking I was doing well when in fact I was told I suck. Part of me thinks she was unnecessarily harsh and didn't need to crush my dreams so much. But there was also some truth to her comments, meaning there was a chance I wasn't going to get accepted the second time around either, which at the time was rather disconcerting.

Now that I have been accepted to medical school, though, I am so glad I didn't let her words discourage me from applying this year. Additionally, I'm glad I didn't listen to her suggestions for my school list, because School E and two other schools I interviewed at this cycle would not have received my application.

In short, Ms. D can suck it. I'm going to medical school!

This is really happening!

I'm having wrist surgery soon (I hurt myself again) and as the surgeon and I were discussing my MRI at my pre-op appointment it hit me that in 10 years, I will be in my doctor's shoes: diagnosing patients and then operating on them.* In fact, in 5-6 years I'll be doing some sort of operating with supervision. That's absolutely terrifying.

Ten years is a long time and a lot can happen between now and then. But it's still scary to have a definitive time frame for when I'll be doing doctory things on my own. This is actually happening and it's no longer just a pipe dream. It's crazy.

Also, the highlight of this operation is that I'm just getting a nerve block** instead of general anesthesia so I'll be awake for the whole thing.

I kind of want to ask my surgeon if I can watch. It'll be like shadowing in the OR but better.

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*I'm not set on any particular specialty yet because I'm well aware that it can (and most likely will) change over the next several years. However, based on how I like to do things and the way I think, I'm pretty sure I'll end up in some sort of surgical specialty, or at the very least something heavily procedural.

** More specifically, I'm getting a Bier block, which in and of itself is pretty cool. They take all the blood out of your arm through the use of elastic bandages and gravity, and keep it out with pneumatic tourniquets. Then anesthetic is injected through an IV near the wrist and sets into the tissues for about 20 minutes, at which point the tourniquets are deflated and bloodflow returns to the arm. Or, if the procedure is short enough, then they leave the tourniquets on and operate in a bloodless field. So cool!

I've never been exsanguinated before. This might be my new "Two Thruths and a Lie" truth.

I'm in!

I've been accepted to medical school!

As I opened my email to respond to yet another position on a waitlist (from the brain fart school, who didn't see that one coming?), I saw a new message in my inbox. I skipped the subject line and instead read the body of the text first. In all the mumbo jumbo of the first paragraph, it dawned on me that I'd been accepted to medical school.

I had a good feeling about this school since I had a fantastic interview and the post-interview acceptance statistics were in my favor (they take ~75% of the people they interview). But I was cautiously optimistic since I've been burned in the past, and I didn't expect to hear back so soon. So the email caught me off guard.

I was at my volunteer gig at the hospital at the time and I turned to the nurse sitting next to me and cautiously said, "I think I've just been accepted to medical school." I'm sure the confused look on my face wasn't convincing because she asked me to repeat myself. After-all, we had just been talking about the third waitlist I'd received the day before. I was still processing this acceptance so I think the nurses were more excited about this whole thing than I was.

I was simply relieved. I had always believed that I would get into medical school but so far no one that mattered (admissions committee members) had thought the same. So with the acceptance came relief: Relief that someone wanted me at their medical school and even more relief that this terrible process was finally over. As Gwyneth Paltrow said at the Oscars many years ago, "You like me. You really like me!"

Anywhos, I'm super stoked! Not only am I actually going to medical school, but this is also my top choice school (let's call it School E). The former dream school (local med school) has fallen from grace in recent months and was nearly definitively replaced by School E after my interview. Even brain fart school, which had been my top choice this cycle, was knocked down a couple of pegs after that interview. I was simply blown away by School E's program, its students, the city, the culture, everything.

So yeah, life is pretty epic right now.