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.

My true feelings

I've been trying to remain cheery/not slip into depression about this cycle and my position on two waitlists, but this blind optimism is slowly slipping away. Also, enough people read this blog that I should say something about what's truly going on in my head instead of leaving you to wonder and read between the lines.

I'm pissed off.

That's the best emotion I can think of to describe my state of mind.

I'm so angry with myself for screwing up my dream school interview, which I'm convinced cost me an acceptance. I'm also mad that I took so long to send in my secondary applications last cycle, because if I had done them promptly then maybe I would've had a "practice" interview elsewhere prior to my dream school and I would've been better prepared. And then maybe, just maybe, I would be matriculating in August.

But mostly, I'm pissed off that I will be spending another full year wasting time and willing it to pass faster.* After all my applications are sent in, there is nothing for me to do but wait. And I hate waiting. I wait all day for my friends to finish work so I have human contact. I'm so tired of this kind of existence that I look forward to my weekly physical therapy (I hurt myself again), which in another life I would call physical torture.

So yeah, I'm angry.

Now I'm going to go ride my bike to dissipate some of my anger and/or channel it into physical suffering. At least that'll kill some time.

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*This is if I don't get another job in the near future, which is the worst case scenario. I'm looking but it's really hard to get a job these days, especially if you misspell your hypothetical future boss' name on the cover letter. Yup, I did that. It didn't help the feeling of anger, and was the inspiration for this blog post.

Looking for other work

Since it's a very real possibility that I will have to spend another year applying to medical school, I've decided to be productive with my time and not "relax" like I did this past year. This has very little to do with my future application and/or bettering my resume, because I sincerely hope I don't have to go through this process three times. That would suck. Instead, it has everything to do with my sanity.

My current job is pretty awesome...on paper. I have ridiculous flexibility with my hours and the work is challenging enough for me. However, it has nothing to do with medicine and I spend most of my time alone, either on my laptop at home or in my dungeon of an office.

I call it a "dungeon" because it's in the basement of the chemical engineering building and my desk is separated from the deserted lab space by a cage door/wall combination. I don't even get a real wall.

It's kind of like this, except jankier, sans female model (that would mean there are other people down there), and from the 70s with many holes that have been fixed by soldering:

In other words, I can't imagine spending another year doing what I'm doing. I crave human interaction, which is part of the reason I'm returning to medicine, and I want to do something that will advance my future career even if I have to start as a research underling. The skills I'm learning now have very little application to any sort of medicine or medical research I may ever envision doing. Oh, and our funding got cut due to the sequestration, so I may not even have a job come September.

So I've been applying for other jobs, which means even more writing, and you know how much I love doing that. Cover letters are even worse than secondary essays, for the record. I also can't help but think that all this effort I'm putting into plans for next year (job and school applications) is for naught because I may still get in off the waitlist. All this writing for nothing...hopefully.

Mostly, I'm looking for something in clinical research (definitely not bench work) and there have been postings popping up here and there. It's actually fortuitous timing because most people that hold these jobs have applied to medical school and are going to be starting in mid-summer/early fall. So more positions should open up.

The only real downside to these clinical research jobs is that I'm looking at a 1-hour commute to work and another hour back since the nearest major medical center is that far way. Well, that and having a legitimate 9 to 5 that I can't leave for Happy Hour on a whim is a slight bummer, since it's a situation I haven't had in a while (I've been fortunate with my job choices).

There would be some things to give up but I think if the position was a good fit, it would totally be worth it. I would have to make sure that I'd be participating in real research at least part of the time instead of just answering phones and coordinating emails, because that's the kind of job I currently have and I'm not willing to give that up quite yet. So that would be something I'd have to ask during my interview, if I were to get one. If it turns out to be more office work than research, then I'd stick with my current job, keep looking for others, and pick up a shift or two as a medical scribe to give myself something to do during the day.

Speaking of things to do, that's another problem with my life right now: I have no reason to get up in the morning. Like, there's nowhere I have to be and nothing I have to do. While this life is fun for a while, I can't deal with it for extended periods of time and I would love nothing more than having to be somewhere every weekday. I say that now, but a few months in, if I do get hired somewhere, I may be singing a completely different tune.

Limbo is not conducive to life planning

I still don't know if I'll be attending medical school in the fall or if I will be reapplying and thus will have another year of relative freedom/little structure. While I've become accustomed to the waiting aspect of the application cycle, I'm still adjusting to having to hold off on making any concrete plans past mid-July.

I've always been a planner so the huge question mark where my future should be is mildly irritating. There are a few things coming up in late August through mid-September that I would really like to do. So although I know I'll be in the area for sure because I'll either be attending the local medical school or staying put to reapply, I have no idea if I'll have the time to do them due to a little time-sucking thing known as anatomy. And I can't imagine I'll be able to go out of town for a whole weekend in the midst of that block.

Mostly, I like to pay early bird prices for things and although it's not the end of the world that I have to wait a few months to figure out what I'll be doing in September, the added cost of indecision hurts my soul.

But more seriously, I can't give my boss concrete dates for when I'll be available for the deployment to Alaska this summer, which messes with his trip-planning and budgeting as well. I'm also going to visit my family across the pond in June/July/August (I'm foreign) so making any sort of camping plans with them and finding time between the deployment and a wedding to go over there is nearly impossible right now. Since they have kids and jobs and other vacation plans that don't include me, it'd be nice to give them some advance warning regarding my arrival.

Yes, these are all frivolous and trivial concerns compared to the big unknown regarding my future, but I've been trying to stop thinking about that and instead focus on the things that make me happy, which usually require planning and thus the problem of limbo.

I also have nothing to report medicine-wise since not much is happening in that department, so you get these kinds of posts instead.

Exciting non-medical school news

The dream school is still stringing me along like a bad relationship so I have no news on that front. I've been avoiding the school-specific thread on SDN until I hear back from them, which should be any day now, because reading other people's results just stresses me out and gives me no information on my particular application. And I don't really need any more stress in my life.

Instead of thinking about medical school admissions, I've been getting on with my life. I have a ridiculous amount of things planned between now and July and I'm getting pretty excited about what the next few months have to offer. I've become more serious about refereeing (my first big match is tomorrow...I'm terrified) and I've started to take care of myself by learning new recipes and getting outside more often.

But most excitingly, the group with which I work is planning a deployment to northern Alaska this summer and my boss recently asked me if I'd like to go because they could really use my help on-site. Prior to getting this invitation, I had planned on quitting my job before this expedition and enjoying the summer on my own terms if I was matriculating in the fall, or providing remote support from our home office if I had to reapply and keep the job for another year.

Obviously the first option was more appealing on so many levels, but the opportunity to go on this trip throws a very interesting wrench in the plans. A deployment to Alaska is not something I can just pass up, so regardless of my medical school situation it looks like I'll be spending at least part of the summer in a hangar above the Arctic Circle.

The only pseudo-problem with this trip is that the dates could overlap with my hypothetical medical school orientation and I would only be able to make it for two weeks or so before having to get back to the real world. But everything is still up in the air so there's no reason to worry about things I can't control. For all I know, the dates could work out in my favor and I will have stressed for nothing. Or I could not go at all.

So, as with most things lately, I'm cautiously optimistic about this deployment. But if I don't get into medical school this cycle, there is a very fun silver lining to spending another year reapplying. So there's that.

Right now, life is good

I tend to write when I'm feeling extreme emotions and the bad has outweighed the good lately, which has been reflected in the tone of the blog. So with all these doom and gloom posts dominating for the past month or so, I figured one positive post was in order.

For a good 90% of the day, my life is pretty awesome*. I still work only part-time (at my request) so I have plenty of hours in the day to relax, read, and hang out. When I do work, I make a significant contribution to my team's current project and I can see the progress directly.

I've begun playing the guitar, learned to ride a unicycle, took a rugby refereeing course, and am currently participating in four sports leagues. I'm going home to visit my parents for ten days in February, after having spent over two weeks with them during the holidays. I can work remotely so I don't even use vacation days for this.

I also wasn't lying to my dream school interviewer when I said that volunteering at the hospital is the highlight of my week. With the extra time on my hands, I am able to pull longer shifts and come in more often, which makes me very happy. My charge nurse gives me a great deal of responsibility and the work I do is necessary, so I look forward to it every week and absolutely love my time there.

And although I don't do any real medicine at the moment, I can see myself in the physicians I "work" with and I am SO excited to be there one day. It's days like last Thursday that make me realize that I have made the absolutely correct decision to return to medicine and I am so incredibly thrilled to some day serve my patients in a more medical capacity.

All in all, I'm taking full advantage of the ridiculous amount of free time at my disposal because I know it won't be like this for much longer.

Like I said in the title, life is good right now.

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*The other 10% of my day is consumed by stress, whether it's dreaming about being rejected from my dream school, anxiously checking my email when I wake up in the morning, or wracking my brain about how I could've interviewed better as I'm trying to fall asleep at night. Once I'm fully awake and in control of my emotions, I'm good and carefree. But as soon as I let my mind wander, all hell breaks loose up there.

Reality check

My mock interview with the Pre-Health Office went very well on Tuesday. I don't know why, but when I talk with medical people my answers get twice as long. With Career Services, I was able to communicate my path to applying to medical school in 4 minutes, while in both Pre-Health interviews it was on the order of 10 minutes. No bueno. I need to stop rambling!

Other than that, the practice interview wasn't nearly as dreadful as I had anticipated. I know what to work on and how to improve my answers and disposition so rocking the real interview is entirely doable. And the adviser assured me that it's completely normal to be rejected from the schools that I've been rejected from.

So far, I've been rejected from mostly reach schools, ones I have very little chance of getting into based on my overall GPA or my out-of-state status. So it makes sense and I shouldn't stress out too much about it.

If all else fails, she gave me pointers on what I should do to improve my application for next year in case I have to reapply. I can't really improve my GPA or MCAT any more than I already have so the next step would be getting more recent clinical experience in the form of a clinical research position.

I'm hoping I get into the school I'm interviewing with next weekend (it's my state school and I have the best chance to get in there) so I don't have to worry about balancing my current job with a clinical research position an hour away from where I live. Also, I REALLY don't want to have to rewrite all my essays for another application cycle.

Back to work and nothing to do

Today was the first day of work after a 2-month vacation. You read that correctly. With the exception of the week it took me to finish my medical school application, I haven't done anything productive in 2 whole months. It was glorious.

So now it's back to the grind, except it's not really a grind at all. I didn't put in my "I want to work more hours" notice early enough so I have another month of 10 hours/week employment until it really picks up in September. (I had gone down to those hours this spring semester because I just couldn't hack my schedule of classes + MCAT + medical school applicating + volunteering + shadowing + work.)

Without half of those obligations, I have absolutely no idea what to do with myself. Even if I go back up to 40 hours at work, I'm still not going to know what to do. There are just way too many hours in the day right now.

Any suggestions for what to do with my time? Take up underwater basket-weaving, maybe?

P.S. Because I actually have to be productive now, I will need to procrastinate as well hence this blog post. As a result, you can expect some catch-up posts to fill in the bullet point summary of my goings on.

Last preparations before the MCAT

This stupid MCAT is happening on Saturday (in two days) and I have mixed feelings about my preparedness. I had tried studying yesterday and did a practice Verbal Reasoning test after a leisurely morning. But I gave up on all of it after I got 80% of the questions wrong. I'm not joking. It was bad.

I got a bit depressed after that, thinking that I'd passed my peak and that I'd be screwed for the real thing. Maybe I should've taken it last weekend like I had originally planned. Maybe I shouldn't have left most of the studying for the week before the exam, and spread it out instead. So many maybes.

In true college fashion, I grabbed a beer to ease the pain of failure and decided to get some real work done. You know, the kind I get paid to do. It's overrated, I tell you!

Anywhos, one beer turned into two and my work turned into the 2-hour season finale of "Criminal Minds", followed by Tuesday night's 2-hour "NCIS: LA" season finale. Some sushi rice and many beers later, it was time to go to bed because after-all, I had an important test to take soon.

I woke up at 7 am this morning (on my own, might I add) bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to take on the world. I sat down for that last practice test, praying that the verbal would go better than yesterday and hoping that I hadn't forgotten too much basic science after cramming minutiae into my brain for finals last week.

And this was my score:

To say I was surprised by this result is a gross understatement. It's the highest score I've received on any of the practice tests and a welcome surprise. Hopefully the real thing goes just as well.

Moral of the story: To get a good score, take 7 beers to the face the night before an 8 AM MCAT.