Welcome to my web-page! This is a web-site that gives advice and insight into the medical school admissions process. As a Canadian student applying to Canadian medical schools, my advice may be biased in that perspective. Naturally, this is advice-only. That's my simple disclaimer.
I'm reminded of the amount of knowledge I gained from other web-pages on the internet during my pre-med times. This is my way of saying "thank you" to all the other hard-working folks that put up educational web pages. Here, you'll find hints and tips on writing the MCAT (Medical College Admissions Test), a timeline for activities during the undergraduate years, a multitude of links to explore, and sometime in the future, some additional information regarding the med school interview process.
Ian Wong
Last Updated: Apr 21, 2001
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Note: Med 2 is more than half way done! If you'd like to see articles on a certain topic, or have any questions, please e-mail me at mdpremie@yahoo.com
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Introduction
High School
PMS, or Pre-Med Syndrome
University or College?
First Year
Second Year
Third Year
MCAT
Autobiography
Reference Letters
Interviews
Med Schools
Questions and Answers
Discussion Forum
UBC Statistics
Med Links
As you emerge fresh from high school, your vision turns towards the next level of learning, the towering institution of post-secondary education. The transition into post-secondary is, to my mind, more gradual for a college attendee. There, class sizes tend to be smaller, interactions with the professors and fellow students more frequent and meaningful, and the comforting aura of a close-knit family atmosphere is more apparent. This is not so in many universities, where the high-school graduate, accustomed to knowing the names and social ranks of each member of the graduating class, suddenly finds him or herself lost in a first-year class composed of 250 similarly perplexed individuals.
Welcome, just a little bit more, into the real world.
It is here, mingling in an environment where professors and teaching assistants (TA’s) identify their charges by an eight-digit student number, that many deep and lasting friendships will be forged. It is here where a 19 year old student fresh from the sheltered regions of private school may make the acquaintance of a 35 year old Desert Storm veteran, or a 50 year old professional who has come to university in search of knowledge. Hopefully, it is here where the newly-arrived student can begin the journey of self-realisation, and discover the rewards of making and achieving goals through self-discipline, and the gifts that come from interacting with a wide sphere of individuals from different social, cultural, and economic backgrounds.
It was during university that my desire to become a doctor finally crystallized from the idea that had been flirting in my awareness since junior high school. A favorite quotation of mine is one that a past valedictorian delivered at my high school during the conclusion of our graduation ceremonies, referring to the memories and relationships we would all leave behind:
“It is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But, perhaps, it is the end of the beginning…”
Welcome, and best of luck to each of you, my future colleagues.
Ian Wong,
Class of 2003, UBC Faculty of Medicine
PMS, and how you spot it:
I'm only half-joking here folks. I like to define Pre-Med Syndrome as the overly obsessive, and unhealthy desire to do whatever it takes to enter medical school. To those that wonder how I can be so arrogant as to draw a line between being hard-working and being a PMS'er, I'll note here that I certainly went overboard during my undergraduate studies. Stressing out over my exams and midterms throughout the entire semester definitely didn't make for a fun time, and it doesn't make you fun to be around. So, following on the age-old statement that an unexamined life is not worth living, I'll start by asking the inevitable question:
"Why do you want to become a doctor?"
If your interviews are anything like mine, you'll be asked this question every single time. You'll also ask this question of yourself next time you study Organic Chemistry Diels-Alder reactions, or memorise the Biochemical structures of Krebs Cycle intermediates in the undergraduate "weeder" courses. I suspect I'll be asking this question repeatedly at 3:00 am during the perpetual long nights in medical school. Therefore, you might want to devote some serious time towards this question. I wondered about my answer ever since Grade 11 of senior high school, six years before I entered medical school.
You should be very clear about what motivates you towards medicine, because it is this compulsive draw towards the art of healing that will determine your actions and stress levels while you jump through the hoops of medical school admissions. This desire to append the letters "MD" onto your name badge may also lead you to PMS. Is this healthy? Will this prove to be beneficial to me?
A brief example: In any university, there are pre-med students who feel they've got what it takes to be a doctor, and orient their entire lives towards achieving that goal. From sitting in the front row and hand-waving to ask inane questions of the professor in an attempt to gain facial recognition to get that reference letter, to stealing lecture materials stored in the library, these pre-meds want to be called "Doctor." Sometimes, it doesn't even matter what kind of doctor they become.
I know of at least one UVic person contemplating entering the naturopathic (ND) doctorate degree versus the allopathic (MD) doctorate degree simply because the competition is less fierce, not because of any belief that the naturopathic stream is more effective. As my sister is a recently-graduated naturopath, I can attest that while the mindset of helping the patient is the same, the methods of treatment may vary dramatically. You should be very sure to be informed on the naturopathic philosophy before applying and taking a spot away from someone who genuinely wants to be a naturopath. Using the naturopathic profession as a backup to what you really want is an extraordinarily poor choice if you don't embrace their ideals.
At this time, I feel that the admissions commitees of the medical schools I'd applied to (UBC, U of Calgary, U of Saskatchewan) are becoming, if not already, very interested in candidates who possess life experience and are capable in a wide range of social situations. The attainment of a sky-high GPA and stellar MCAT scores are no longer a guarantee of acceptance. An example is a good friend of mine, who applied to two medical schools with a 34 MCAT, and an AMCAS cumulative GPA of 3.9. He did not even receive interviews at either UBC or U of Calgary. Another friend with a 38R MCAT and AMCAS GPA of 3.93 was rejected after interviews at U of Calgary and U of Saskatchewan. I can only conclude that there was some non-academic issue in their applications that led to them being stonewalled.
With that said, there is certainly a minimum level of academic achievement before you'll be asked for an interview. This will no doubt vary for each individual medical school. My advice is to contact each school to obtain this information, and then work only as hard as is necessary to comfortably achieve this threshold. Past that, devote your energies towards non-academic pursuits. That's what will allow you to excel on your interviews. Remember that not passing the interview usually means you won't get in.
I've already betrayed my bias that a good doctor must first be a good human being. Many medical school admissions committees apparently believe the same. The Dean of UBC's Admissions Committee, when asked about the grading criteria of an interview replied simply:
"What do we look for? Remember the last time you went to your doctor? What aspects of him/her did you like, and what characteristics did you dislike?"What I'm trying to bring across is that academic qualifications are not the raison d'etre of a doctor. I've met many undergraduate people whose intellectual insights I could not match even if I were to live for a thousand years. On the flip side, I sure don't want any of them to be my doctors! If my friends' poor results on their applications are any indication, some medical schools must feel the same as I. The weighting for UBC medical school admissions is 50% interview, 40% GPA, and 10% MCAT and three reference letters. Flunk your interview, and you'll never enter medical school.
This is my reason for emphasizing that undergraduate studies should not be taken too seriously. I suppose it's easy for me to say this, now that I've hopped/staggered(?) over the final hurdle in the admissions process, but the honest truth is that a super transcript doesn't necessarily yield an acceptance letter. So why fixate on it? That only leads to PMS. Instead of studying that extra hour, go join the pottery club, or intramural sports, or take music lessons. Learn another language, read up on your cultural history, and go volunteer. Broaden your learning perspective, and meet people at the same time.
Medicine is a social profession. From the time you have your admissions interviews, throughout the years of medical school, and while you are a doctor helping patients, you'll be interacting with a great many people coming from an unimaginably diverse set of backgrounds. I feel the people most adept at navigating through this sea of interaction are the ones I want to be my doctors and specialists when I become a patient. Marks aren't nearly as important as you think.
Keep that in mind the next time you are PMS'ing over a Biochemistry exam.
I only applied to two universities when I graduated from high school, and the contrast between the two could not be much more striking. The first university was the University of British Columbia (UBC), in Vancouver, British Columbia, while the second, and the one that I attended for three years before entering medical school, is the University of Victoria, in Victoria, BC.
UBC is a large university of 45,000 students in a city which has a population of 2 million. Vancouver has enough population to support (sucky) professional hockey and basketball sports teams such as the Vancouver Canucks and the Vancouver Grizzlies respectively. As such, due to its size, the diversity of both the city, and the university is great, although such a large population also leads to a harder, more competitive society.
UVic, on the other hand, is a mid-sized university with 15,000 full-time students in a city with a population of less than 300,000. Here, you pay the penalty of not being able to get really good Thai food, or go out mall-shopping much past 7:00 pm. If you want to see Sarah McLachlan at Lilith Fair, it’ll cost you a $50 ferry ticket to mainland Vancouver.
A major reason, as shallow as it sounds, that I picked UVic was the knowledge that the competition here is much less fierce than UBC. The fact that many of my high school friends also decided to attend Uvic was the biggest motivator, but as far as competition goes, I knew that heading into university, I wanted the skills and grades to secure myself a position in a highly competitive job market. Most of your fellow class-mates do as well. Because of that, there is a better chance in a larger university that people will be more desperate to do whatever it takes to get the best grades.
As a result, talking to many UBC attendees and graduates, one conversation lodged itself firmly in my mind and was probably the pivotal tie-breaker in my decision to attend UVic. He is a family friend, who had just graduated from UBC medical school, and I owe him a great deal for his knowledge. He had just finished telling me an anecdote about where he needed materials and references for an undergraduate lab report at UBC. Upon going to the university library, he discovered half of the material had been checked out, and the other half either sliced out, or defaced to illegibility. One consequence of grading on the curve is that you can not only do well by studying hard, but also by preventing others access to study materials. The truly desperate to attend med school will attempt both options. C’est la vie.
My friend then proceeded to outline his thoughts on medical school. Above all else, he emphatically stated that it was a job of interaction. Social skills are paramount in a profession where the nurse, janitor, and lab tech all play as great a role as the doctor in ensuring the quality care of a patient. Therefore, developing good personal character, and learning to socialize with diverse individuals must be the paramount priority for any aspiring pre-med student.
He concluded that this was most possible in a small university which had enough students to present a diverse population, but not one so large it fostered class-mate backstabbing, and non-existant student/teacher interaction because of immense class sizes. This is my conclusion as well.
I’ve just finished my third year here at Uvic, and haven’t regretted my decision for a minute. I’m on a first-name basis with many of the Molecular Biology faculty members and graduate students. In addition, I see friends and familiar faces each time I walk across campus. Perhaps most telling, I am friends with most of the pre-med students in the faculty; we are very self-supporting, rather than antagonistic with each other. I believe there is a genuine feeling of mutual support within this community as we pursue a common goal.
One friend of mine originally registered for first-year courses at UBC and purged her courses six days before classes, opting for Kwantlen Community College instead. For second year, she registered at Uvic and hasn’t looked back since. As you can see, I come down squarely on the side of the mid-sized university versus the large-scale university, because I feel the close relationships I’ve made at Uvic with friends and faculty are far easier to attain in a smaller, less competitive environment.
First Year:
When you register at university, a common question is: “What major should I choose?” In my humble opinion, the academic role of high school is to teach mathematical and linguistic fluency. If you’ve graduated from high school with an ability to read, and manipulate numbers, you possess all the tools necessary for further education. The role of university is to use those tools to teach you to think critically. Therefore, any major will help you to develop the ability to analyze and interpret a problem, whether that be understanding biochemical site-directed mutagenesis of the Lac operon in E. coli, or examining the philosophical dichotomy of utilitarian/deontological theory in the application of biomedical decisions.
Pick whatever major tickles your fancy.
I don’t regret one bit the knowledge I’ve acquired in Molecular Biology, but the verbal eloquence, logical coherence, and wide-ranging content of a presentation by the head of the Philosophy department leaves me filled with envy. I believe that most medical schools acknowledge that one major is not superior to another in terms of admission into medical school. Rather, a diverse medical student body is preferred. The upshot, is that since most premeds tend to be Biology / Biochemistry students, you have to be top-tier in those departments to stand out, whereas the Philosophy applicant is unique and gains recognition solely on the basis of his/her major.
As a Biology major, my first year curriculum was taken completely from the “Recommended First Year Schedule” found in the UVic Calendar under Biology. I would speculate that many universities publish a list of the courses required for a given degree, and the years in which these courses are ideally taken; this is not a bad way to select your courses.
First, as the list has been compiled by the faculty, it will contain all the required courses needed to graduate, thereby sparing you the pain of discovering in fourth year that the first year physics course you thought you didn’t need is the last roadblock on your path to graduation. More importantly, many other students will take the easy way out as well, and thus you’ll see the same faces in each of your courses. Get to know the people behind these faces! Many of these people will likely be the ones you sit with in the pub in fourth year, reminiscing about those fun times back in first, second, and third year. Seriously.
These were the courses I took in First Year:
English Literature
Full Year
Eng 121 + 122
Biology, Evolutionary
Half Year + Lab
Bio 210
Biology, Physiology
Half Year + Lab
Bio 220
Chemistry, Inorganic
Full Year + Lab
Chem 101 + 102
Math, Calculus
Full Year
Math 100 + 101
General Physics
Full Year + Lab
Phys 102
Psychology
Half Year
Psyc 100A
It’s a fairly typical first year curriculum, I feel. Tons of labs, and lots of piddling classes that I’ll never need again until the MCAT (English Lit/Physics/Inorganic Chem). Labs teach you the skill of writing technical detail in a clear and coherent manner. The fact that you’ll probably write your labs 2 hours before the assignment is due is a wonderful intro to stress management! Here you’ll also meet your first Teaching Assistants (TA’s), who are often starving graduate students. They’ll often be able to give you academic insight from “the inside”, which you might not gain from the official faculty advisors.
Finally, I entered UVic with 1st year credits from taking Advanced Placement courses in high school. I recommend re-taking those courses in university, both for your GPA, as well as getting some valuable lab experience. Many medical schools want lab experience in your science pre-requisites; don't put yourself into a disadvantageous position by skipping those labs. The fact that you should ace these courses on your second time through, with time left over for extra-curricular activities goes without saying.
One aspect to class selection which may make learning these science foundations much more solid, is to choose classes that slightly overlap and therefore interlock. I found it easier to understand, memorize, and apply some Physics formulas after I discovered how they were proved using basic calculus. Inorganic Chemistry also flows into Physiology when you start dealing with potential differences caused by ions such as in neurons, or when dealing with matters like pH and the human bicarbonate buffering system. Psychology often draws on Evolutionary Biology to explain the origin of certain behaviours such as reproduction, or the nurturing female. English Literature teaches you to read, which is the most fundamental requirement of university.
A person who goes through university without recognising the overwhelming overlap between different subjects is an unware person who has not yet realised that each subject owes many of its theories and tenets to other seemingly unrelated different disciplines. I truly believe that you have started to think, rather than memorise and regurgitate, when these inter-relationships start becoming apparent. I usually don't expect most people to develop these critical thinking skills until after a year or two at university; I didn't start picking up on this for the longest time, and now I don't know how I managed without them.
At this time, meeting professors is rather difficult because class sizes are largest in first year. However, this is certainly a good time to meet upperclassmen who are taking lower-level classes to flesh out their degrees. Here, you’ll often receive handy tips such as the best teachers for each particular course, and also which courses to take and which to avoid. There’s some incredible courses at UVic such as Human Anatomy and Biomedical Ethics, which I never would have known about without going “through the grapevine” because they are placed in the Departments of Physical Education, and Philosophy, respectively.
Also, start looking ahead a few years to see what courses you potentially may want to take, and see what prerequisites are needed. I’m currently kicking myself because there’s a fourth-year Microbiology course I would like to take this year, but I lack the second and third year prerequisites, which I might have taken just to enter this class. You’ll also want to look at a second major of interest, and hopefully try to pick first-year courses that satisfy both majors. The reason I didn’t transfer into a Biochemistry degree was that I discovered the first year Physics I took for my Biology degree did not satisfy the Biochemistry requirement; I would have had to take another different first year Physics.
It is perhaps important to recognise that many high school graduates struggle academically in their first year. Living away from home, increased freedoms and responsibilities, and a teaching environment alien to most highschoolers often combine to yield a low grade point average (GPA). Knowing this, many medical schools tend to give less weight to the first year. UBC, the school with which I am most familiar, sets the minimal GPA required for acceptance at 70%, and closely monitors yearly trends in GPA to be fair to those people who have a low first year GPA and stellar GPAs in the following years. This varies from school to school, so you should go do some research in the schools that interest you.
Second Year:
Second year is often considered more difficult than first year. First year is often the “feeling out” year, where the major goals are to become familiar in the university routine, and to pick a major that will be stimulating enough for a further three years of study. Second year is the first year where there is a real pinch to earn a high GPA.
In second year, typically you finish taking the core pre-requisite courses of your major. It becomes crucially important to master this material, as it constitutes the foundation of knowledge over which third and forth year courses are constructed. My second year courses were:
Biochemistry
Half Year
Bioc 200
Biology, Ecology
Half Year + Lab
Bio 215
Biology, Cell
Half Year + Lab
Bio 225
Biology, Genetics
Half Year + Lab
Bio 230
Chemistry, Spectroscopy
Half Year + Lab
Chem 213
Chemistry, Organic
Full Year + Lab
Chem 231 + 235
Phys. Ed., Human Anatomy
Half Year + Lab
PE 141A
Statistics, Life Sciences
Full Year
Stat 255 + 256
Once again, I was plagued with a glut of labs. However, it’s important to know that I learned a very valuable lesson here. When writing labs, or anything else for that matter, write legibly! I got canned in a lab report for messy writing, and when I went to talk to my TA about the matter, even I misread my writing! Another friend received a: "Heroic Sunday night effort, and if I could read the lab you'd have passed for sure..." However, labs again are invaluable for meeting the TA’s, and other students who share your major.
Again here, interlocking classes allowed me to learn at a deeper level than less cohesive classes. Material learned in Biochemistry was constantly re-emphasized in Genetics and Cell Biology, and vice versa. Having a Spectroscopy background helped immensely in deciphering Organic Chemistry chemical structures, as did Statistics when studying Ecological population distributions. Human Anatomy was the fun class that reminded me I needed to do well in the other classes to keep on learning similar material in med school!
After second year, you should have a desired major of choice, a fair idea of what teaching and learning styles work for you, and hopefully a few contacts in the upper levels of the department. Now is also a good time to do some volunteering in a professor’s lab over the summer. If this is your second year out of high school, it’s unlikely that you’ll have enough research and lab experience for a professor to entrust sharing his/her lab bench with you. However, although he/she probably feels you aren’t knowledgeable enough to be a researcher, you might just be qualified enough to wash glassware, restock solutions, and other menial tasks. Especially if you work for free.
Although this is tiresome, boring work that will sap your will to live, realise that you are building a relationship with a professor who may one day view you as a colleague. Even menial tasks allow you to show your discipline, scientific motivation, and personality to a professor. If you can demonstrate your reliability, you will likely easily find a lab job the following summer, if not with this professor, then with another via personal recommendation. Professors do socialise among themselves on coffee breaks, after all. After the volunteering, you will hopefully walk away with a future job, or at least one of the three reference letters you’ll need later on.
I’m currently working in one of my professors labs as a summer student. Although I am being paid, my professor needed an additional hand but lacked the funds to pay for an additional lab tech, and so one of my class-mates is also working alongside me on a volunteer basis. There is an understanding in the lab that I will not be continuing my work into the fall, and so the funds for my paycheque will then be re-directed to my classmate instead. For her, it was a great opportunity to find out whether she was interested in research, secure a future reference letter, and guarantee an impressive and decent-paying part-time job in the fall, for the cost of four months of volunteer time.
Also, in my opinion, the summer after second year is the time period where taking the MCAT is ideal. At this point, I had completed the courses that I felt would benefit me most for the four MCAT sections (Verbal Reasoning, Physical Sciences, Essay Writing, Biological Sciences). I felt it was to my benefit to take the MCAT as soon as possible after completion of those courses to maximise retention of material. In addition, this gives you the option of repeating the MCAT in April or August of your third year, as Canadian medical schools generally require your applications to arrive in the fall of fourth year.
1. Is there a field of study which interests me particularly?
I hope each person reading this finds a subject that excites them, where an hour of lecture seems to pass by in minutes. I’ve been riveted to my seat in my Biomedical Ethics class, yet have also fallen asleep in five minutes in Physics classes (and even that five minutes was too long!) When you find this subject, the interest will often be sparked by a persuasive and interactive teacher. It’s up to you to take that spark and kindle it to a passion.
2. Does this major offer a back-up plan of employment to medical school?
Biology majors are a dime a dozen. Many of us think med school is the place we want to be, yet despite the very high rejection rate, we make no alternate plans in case we are rejected. However, student loans don’t magically go away, and debt repayment must be planned to avoid drowning in interest fees. You’ll need a job after graduation. Engineering, Business, and Computer Science are the Uvic faculties generally acknowledged to have graduates with a bright employment future. Co-op programs that mix work and study semesters will give you job skills in interviewing and teamwork, not to mention money. You'll need to do well in interviews before you'll ever be accepted into a medical school. I hear UBC’s pharmacy program is clogged with med school hopefuls using pharmacy as their back-up plan. I don’t deign to say whether this is abuse of another faculty, but I can’t believe that a physician trained with the additional pharmacy background would be a disadvantage in a clinical setting.
3. Are the upper level students happy with the professors, and the courses offered?
In this time of budget cuts and tuition freezes, universities are forced to educate more students using less money. Government grants and funds often operate in a trickle-down fashion, with each faculty receiving their portion of money based on student body size, and required lab and lecture teaching material. The upper level students and TA’s are the best-placed to answer these questions.
I find as a third year student, I am now very opinionated on the matter, and would not hesitate to give advice. Engineering and Business currently occupy the newest buildings on campus, while I’ve taken Chemistry and Biology classes in the university movie theater to accommodate class overflow. I’ve also had labs and courses cancelled due to underfunding, and have seen the Chemistry TA’s consultation office hours cut in half to save funds. Did I mention multiple choice Calculus, Economics, and Biochemistry exams where theory and understanding were emphasized in class, but were then marked via multiple choice because the funding was not available for the grading of essays, or paragraph written answers?
You deserve a faculty that can support your education and garners your trust.
4. Will I still have the time to complete the pre-requisite courses for medical school?
I have to say, I’m glad I’m not a Physics or a Chemistry student trying to enter medical school. The required Biology courses usually contain labs. Since your majored courses constitute the bulk of your classes, the medical school pre-requisites (ie. Biology, Organic Chemistry) will usually show up as your electives. I for one would not like to take a full suite of Chemistry lab courses, and then take on additional Biology lab courses as my electives. I don’t know that I would have the time to really understand the material, and that might well prove to be fatal to both your GPA and MCAT results.
5. Can I see myself being happy in this major until I graduate?
Ultimately, this is the most important criterion to satisfy. If you are happy with the faculty and fellow students, are highly motivated and interested in the subject, I feel you will perform far better than if you select a major you dislike because you feel it may be impressive to med schools or other outsiders. After all, if you really hate a field of study, do you really want a career in that field, assuming you graduate and don’t get accepted to medicine? Take the major that interests you most, and excel in it.
Third Year:
Welcome to the upper level! Here, you will start taking courses that really focus on your major, and you’ll start marvelling at the naivete of the first year students. Yeah, you were once just like them. Now you're old, jaded, and have been chasing after that dangling carrot for several years. Don't you feel lucky?
Here, you’ll start seeing smaller class sizes, through the natural attrition of students over the years, and the increasing specialization of the lecture material. These were the courses I took in third year:
Biochemistry
Full Year
Bioc 300
Biology, Cell
Half Year
Bio 360
Biology, Genetics
Half Year
Bio 361
Biology, Neurobiology
Half Year
Bio 409A
Biology, Molecular Epidemiology
Half Year
Bio 439
Economics, Micro/Macro
Full Year
Econ 103 + 104
Philosophy, Biomedical Ethics
Half Year
Phil 331
Notice the complete and utter lack of labs in this third year! Yippee! An extra twenty free hours a week! Of course, I need to gripe at this time that the lack of labs is due to the fact that the courses I had selected would have been prohibitively expensive to offer labs for the 100 or so students per class. The fact that the courses that interested me most had no labs is, of course, just a coincidence. Heh. :) As you can see, there is a considerable emphasis in the coursework towards my major of Molecular Biology. However, I made certain to add some diversity to my transcript.
By third year, your courses should certainly inter-lock and be inter-related simply by definition of working towards a major. However, the value of taking some outside courses cannot be understated.
I would rank the Philosophy course “Issues in Biomedical Ethics” as the most enjoyable, enlightening, and fulfilling lecture of my undergraduate career. In this course, various ethical theories are discussed and actual cases in Canadian law are examined and dissected with respect to these ethical theories.
What do you do if a 14-year old female enters your office and requests birth control pills? Do you give high doses of morphine to a terminally-ill cancer patient to relieve excruciating pain, if that may shorten the patient’s life? What if they are in unbearable pain, but not terminally-ill? What are the limits of informed consent, and how much should the patient know? If two gravely injured people enter your emergency room, who do you treat first? Does it matter that one is the robber, and the other is the cop that shot him? Should couples who already have one child with a genetically-inherited disease be allowed to have more children? Should senior citizens be given less priority for organ transplants based on their age? Should a current alcoholic be put on a transplant list with other people, knowing that the drinking problem initiated the first liver failure?
With the learning of ethical theory comes the ammunition to deal with many of the situational questions you’ll encounter in your medical school interview. You’ll also perhaps gain a deeper appreciation into the difficult choices a doctor faces on a regular basis. Hopefully, you’ll gain a solid ethical foundation from which to make logical, reasoned decisions rather than being swayed by emotional arguments.
The Economics course came out of my realisation that one should not live in a world of scientific abstraction. It’s all well and good to memorise the structures of the Krebs’ Cycle products for a Biochemistry exam, but the real world focuses on money, and the distribution and allocation of scarce resources. Perhaps this is a bit of a cynical view, but I felt it was important enough to use in one of my MCAT essays.
Economics provides a numerical basis for evaluating the suitability of decisions that compete for the same resources. Economics often asks the question: "Should I invest that last $100 dollars, or should I spend it?" This type of cost:benefit analysis finds its way into many healthcare questions. For example, "Should I place $20 million of tax dollars into reducing surgical waiting lists, or into bolstering drug addiction education?" Even here, the parallels of scarce resource allocation ring true in medicine.
My Biomedical Ethics professor is fond of this saying:
“What you give to one, you must take away from everyone else.”
Take note of these words, and never forget them, because they form the underlying reality of all medical decisions. Each medical budget, each available organ for transplant, is limited. Since there is a limited resource base, it stands to reason that helping each one person leaves that much less in the resource base to treat everyone else. This manifests itself in Biomedical Ethics situations such as allocating the last liver transplant, or the last bed in the emergency room. It also emerges internationally such as China’s infamous “One Child” policy.
Both Economics and Ethics attack the same problems of resource allocation, but using fundamentally different selection criteria. Both disciplines have something important to offer when it comes to making decisions regarding the allocation of medical treatment. Do yourself a favour and learn a bit more about them both. As a doctor, you will certainly find yourself in a gate-keeping role, as you apportion your time, and society's resources to each of your patients.
Here, the inter-relationships between such seemingly disparate disciplines as Philosophical Ethics and Economics begin to materialize and become apparent. If you'd asked me a couple years back whether a numerical science like Economics and a theoretically-grounded art like Philosophy could have anything in common, I would have laughed in your face. Not any longer. And it is at this time, this realisation, that marks the ability for critical thinking which is so crucial for evaluating problems in a clinical setting.
At this time in third year, you should hopefully know some professors fairly well. If not, this is the time to start, as reference letters for medical school must usually be written by the December of fourth year or undergraduate studies (if you intend to enter medical school the next year). Therefore, if you only start to communicate to teachers in September of fourth year, you only give the professor four months, at the most, worth of your personality from which to write a strong and convincing reference letter.
Possible ways to make the acquaintance of professors include going through their graduate students, who are likely your present and past TA’s. Soliciting volunteer positions in their lab may also open a few doors. It also wouldn’t hurt to show yourself to be an attentive student. As a former tutor, I’m always gratified when I’m asked questions for clarification, as it shows the student is actively trying to learn, rather than passively copying material. Of course, be reasonable, and make certain you’ve honestly tried to understand the concept before asking. There’s a fine line between genuinely wanting to understand, and appearing like a ladder-climbing suck-up. Finally, NSERC offers Canadian undergraduate scholarships to subsidize a professor to hire summer students. While you need to have good academic credentials to access these scholarships, you’ll receive decent wages while gaining research experience, with the possibility of even publishing a paper.
While the process of making yourself known to the professors might seem like a colossal headache, it ultimately returns rewards. You’ll gain a bit more insight into the university and its functions. More importantly, you’ll make many contacts and meet people who may share your ambitions and can contribute advice. You’ll also gain the reference letters from faculty members that you often need for medical school admission. Naturally, this type of networking will serve you well throughout your career.
"Oh Sh*t." "The mother of all tests." "My future depends on what I get." "Why isn't anyone else as freaked out as I am about this test?"
These are all potential thoughts you'll have before taking the MCAT, whether that be in the months before you actually write, or perhaps in the 30 minute period when you're actually inside the exam hall waiting for the test adjudicators to finish processing the paperwork for your fellow test-takers. I think, and hope, that you'll find this pre-test anxiety disappear once you actually immerse yourself in the test.
If you have progressed through the years of high school and undergraduate studies necessary to make an attempt at the MCAT, you've clearly had a great deal of experience in test-taking, and you know what attitudes and emotional viewpoints work for you in test-time. Never forget that the MCAT is, after all, just another test. The last action you'll want to commit on this day is to freak out, and to fixate on the importance of this test to your career, instead of the far more productive goal of answering the questions! Remember, doctors have to work well under stress. The MCAT is a perfect situation to rise above your anxiety and perform under pressure.
The MCAT will test you on the four following categories:
Verbal Reasoning:
85 minutes
Break:
10 minutes
Physical Sciences:
(no calculators!)100 minutes
Lunch:
60 minutes
Essay Writing
60 minutes.
Break:
10 minutes
Biological Sciences
100 minutes
Party time!
Well into the night...
With that said, good doctors are always well-prepared, and knowledgeable about clinical details. And if they aren't, then they go look up the information and make themselves informed. Consider the MCAT as the training ground for developing these good habits. Therefore, you should realise that even in a best case scenario, the MCAT is not going to be side-splittingly easy, but if you go in unprepared, you'll find it to be several magnitudes more difficult than it really has to be. Preparation is key. So, here are some of my recommendations.
Early Preparation
Start your preparation early. Here, you'll find that on average, pre-med students allocate 3 months to studying for this exam, with some extremes ranging up to starting one year in advance. Bully for the people who can muster the time, and patience to study a year early for a test. I personally think 3-4 months is ideal, in that I tend to forget details after time. For me, studying a year in advance would be futile, as after 6 months, I would have forgotten what I had studied in the first month. Don't believe me? Flip through some notes from last semester and see how much fine detail you remember.
Take a lesson from me, and try to give yourself some free time to study. I wrote my MCAT in August of 1998, while I was working a full-time job during the week and a second part-time job on Sundays. Trust me when I say that the extra few dollars you make by working are not worth the increased stress and mental fatigue you encounter as you discover just how little time you really have to study. Med school and residency will be stressful enough; don't add any extra worries before you get there! Beg, borrow, or save to give yourself the finances to study without worrying about the next month's rent. It'll be worth it.
When to take it?
Along the lines of early preparation, consider taking this test in the summer after your 2nd year. In my course selections for 1st and 2nd year, I pretty much followed the recommended curriculum set forth in the Uvic calendar. By the end of second year, I had completed full-year courses in Physics, Inorganic Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, and English Literature, as well as half-year courses in Anatomy, Physiology, and Biochemistry. This was my major preparation for the 4 MCAT areas tested: Verbal Reasoning, Physical Sciences, Writing Sample, and Biological Sciences. This was my reason for taking the MCAT a year earlier than the typical "summer after 3rd year" date. After all, my 3rd year is clogging my brain with genetics, and DNA manipulation, topics not extensively covered in the MCAT. So why would I allow all that precious 1st and 2nd year knowledge another year to dribble out of my brain? Take the MCAT whenever you've just recently covered the relevant material in university. For a student taking a "typical" curriculum like myself, that time is in the summer after 2nd year.
A question that often comes up for Canadian students, who apply to med schools much later than the AMCAS-led American schools is whether to write the exam in April or August. For Americans, writing the exam in April allows the MCAT scores to be available by June, when rolling admissions typically start. This is not as significant a requirement for Canadian pre-meds, as Canadian schools typically don't operate on rolling admissions, and the deadlines for med applications are much later in the year. I received my August MCAT scores in mid-October, which was cutting very close to the Ontario medical schools' application deadlines; however, this was well within the December 1 application deadline for UBC. I liked the idea of writing in August because I was focussed on doing well in my April final exams.
If you have already graduated, or have an easy spring workload, my advice is to write the exam in April. Shrewd thinking reveals that since your MCAT is graded relative to the applicant pool, your results will be improved if the applicant pool fares relatively poorly. I personally believe that many undergraduate students are burned out when writing the April MCAT, after a full year's worth of courses. If you are refreshed and energetic for the April exam because of an easier or non-existant course-load, you may likely receive a higher MCAT score simply by sliding further right along the grading curve.
Another advantage to writing the MCAT a year early (just after 2nd year) is that if you end up re-taking it next year, you'll have already had some experience with the format, unlike the "green" people taking it for the first time. With that said, make sure you're prepared for the exam whenever you write it. Don't approach the first writing as a throw-away that you can redo the following year, because a flubbed MCAT score is never an advantage when applying to med. It may not hurt you, but it certainly won't help.
From personal experience, a friend of mine wrote his MCAT after 2nd year, and did well in all of the sections except for his essay samples. He re-wrote the MCAT after his 3rd year, in August 98, did very well for himself, and is now applying for medicine in his 4th year. For him, writing the MCAT a year early was vital, as he learned that his essay skills were not up to par, and he had a year to improve them. In addition, had he written the MCAT for the 1st time in 3rd year, and flubbed that essay section, he would have had to re-write the MCAT in April of 4th year, which is extremely difficult to do. Now, he's sitting pretty in 4th year with the MCAT in his back pocket, only needing to concentrate on finishing out his degree.
Another friend wrote his MCAT after 2nd year, and did well in all the sections but Verbal Reasoning. He declined to re-write his MCAT until after he graduated, which he did in December 1998. He has decided to re-write in April 1999, and has been frantically studying to improve his Verbal Reasoning scores. His major hurdle is that he took all his Physics and Chemistry courses in his first two years on study, so he is essentially re-learning his physical sciences from scratch. Moral of the story? Do the MCAT early, and do it well, so you don't have to repeat them later. If luck deals you a bad hand, repeat your MCAT the very next year, so you minimize the "leakage" of information. Life is tough enough without making it harder on yourself.
Test Preparation and Study Materials
I did not have access to any test prep courses, and in fact did not even know of the existence of the Kaplan's course or other such prep courses. I don't think it hurt me, but if you've got the cash, and independent learning doesn't float your boat, then by all means, sign up. However, try to find out more from people who have taken such prep courses; it never hurts to have the wheat separated from the chaff before you make a large time and money investment. I relied almost exclusively on my 1st and 2nd year knowledge and textbooks, and "The Gold Standard MCAT Text" by Dr. Brett Ferdinand. In my opinion, The Gold Standard is a must-have, with comprehensive review notes on all the MCAT topics including sample tests and answers. In addition, the sample questions tended to be of a slightly higher caliber than the actual MCAT, which means you study to a higher level than is really necessary. I believe this to be ideal, as you are less likely to encounter a "just where the heck did that come from?" curveball-type question.
The other MCAT prep book I bought was the ARCO Supercourse, which I would possibly use as an additional source of questions. However, I found a lot of the questions/answers in the sample tests to contain errors, and in general, I didn't feel as comfortable using it as The Gold Standard. It's definitely a tier below, in my opinion. My biggest regret is not purchasing the sample exam booklets from the AAMC. This, along with The Gold Standard are the two items I don't think you can do without. The AAMC sample exams are the only exams that you can be absolutely sure are representative of the type, and format of questions you'll be facing in the MCAT exam room. Get them, and do all of the questions, and then study the answers to find out which subjects need review.
I've also heard enough rumblings through the internet that the Betz/Flowers Guide by Betz Publishing is the best thing going, that I'd inquire and check some shelves if I were to re-write the MCAT.
It's test day!
Also, there are several versions of the MCAT exam, so it's very unlikely that your table neighbors will be writing the same exam as you. With that in mind, pick the table and seat that feel the luckiest. You did remember your good luck charm right? I've heard rumours that the tests are not of the same difficulty, and the results are accordingly differentially scaled. So even if someone comes out of the exam proclaiming it was the easiest thing going, it just might be that his/her exam will be scaled harder because of it. You should not assume anything about your MCAT performance until that slip of paper comes through the mail.
Oh yeah, don't be like a fellow MCAT test taker, and bring in a stack of cue cards so you can study while you're waiting for everyone else to get processed. It only stresses you out, and really, if you didn't know your stuff by the morning of the exam, you haven't put in the work, and I don't believe you deserve to do well.
This section tests you on the ability to rapidly read, and comprehend the meaning and implication of an essay. As a result, good literary skills are paramount, as the more time you spend reading, the less time you have to answer questions! I think the only way to improve your literary skills is to challenge yourself to reading novels and short stories of increasingly difficult comprehension levels. Trying out speed-reading techniques is also probably not a bad idea. These are ways of improving your reading skills. Alternately, (and what I did!), is to improve my test-taking skills! Here were my strategies for the MCAT, which I followed on the assumption that I have average, to slightly higher-than-average reading skills.
- Practice bucketloads on past exams. Remember I told you above to buy those AAMC sample exams, and prep books with practice exams. Do them. All of them. The old saying: "Practice makes perfect." has stuck around for a reason.
- Don't just blindly do the above exams. Practice using different strategies for exams and see which one works best for you. Some possible approaches to this section are to:
- Read the questions before the passage to get some insight on what parts of the passage you should be especially vigilant.
- Rapidly skim the topic sentence for a paragraph to see if the material within is relevant to the question you're trying to answer.
- Underline key words like: except, without, define. That way you don't answer the exact opposite of what you're asked to find. You can and will drop fast in your rankings if you make silly errors.
-Underline the parts of the passage where you've obtained an answer, so if you have time to check questions over, you can quickly find the source of your answer. My exams are always hacked up like the victim of an English prof gone amok. What can I say? It works for me.
Finally, if you're unlucky like a fellow Biochemistry friend of mine, and get a sample passage written in old English about medieval history, don't freak out like him, and spend 25 precious minutes trying futilely to answer 7 measly questions. Skip them and answer the easy questions. The AAMC markers aren't dummies, and chances are that if everyone else messed up on those questions, they will be omitted when calculating your overall score. I'm told each MCAT has a number of "calibration questions" to assess the level of difficulty, and which aren't scored. My friend is repeating the MCAT this year because of his verbal reasoning score, but this time he's keeping the idea of skipping hard questions firmly in mind. Get all the easy questions you can.
The Break:
Go to the bathroom, and maybe grab a light snack. The exam room is not the place to be thinking "Oh damn, now that coffee's hitting me." Try not to discuss hard questions with your friends, as I found that just freaked us all out even more. Just chill, discuss a cool movie, or your plans after the MCAT. You want to re-enter that exam room as relaxed as possible. Don't forget that eating carbohydrate-laden foods (eg. pop, candy) may cause your insulin levels to spike later, thus giving you the low blood-sugar blues.
Most biology students aren't especially comfortable around inorganic chemistry and physics, so if you happen to conform to the stereotype, this section should be the one you've devoted the most time to studying. As a bit of negative motivation, just remember that if you study this section really well, you'll perform well on the MCAT, and will never, ever need to vomit the physics again.
However, there is one advantage in the biologist's favour. A very large proportion of the 77 questions are actually derived from passages. The Gold Standard states that 62 of those 77 questions are based on passages, which jibes with my MCAT experience. This means that the answers to the questions are either located in, or can be derived from information in the passages. So, the Physical Sciences section is nothing more than a Verbal Reasoning in disguise, using physical and chemical formulae and principles. What this means when you are studying, is that understanding of the test material is far more crucial than raw memorization. You'll get much farther ahead if you can explain why CO2 is a linear molecule while H2O is a bent molecule rather than just memorizing them as facts. Know how to interpret data in tables and graphs. Again, do all the test questions. The Gold Standard is invaluable as it provides reasons for its sample exam answers.
Finally, as with all the multiple-choice sections, don't forget about the calibration questions. Don't waste 30 minutes trying to derive Einstein's Theory of Relativity in order to answer a single question, when you could be answering several easier answers. In the MCAT, as with all silly standardized tests, he who walks out with the most marks wins. Since the easy questions are worth the same as the hard ones, make sure you get all the easy marks first.
Lunch
Go outside. Eat lunch. See your boyfriend / girlfriend. Relax. You're half-way through, and the second half is going to be draining, so you want to conserve as much precious energy as possible. Again, I feel discussing your answers isn't likely to help anyone, so why raise the stress level unnecessarily?
Of crucial importance is that you remember that this section is being graded by human beings. Imagine yourself to be one of the MCAT graders, locked in a room with 20 other people. You've already plowed through 200 essays today based on the exact same topic, it's Friday afternoon at 4:45 pm, all you've done this entire week is read essays, and the weekend is crying out for attention. Also, you spend a maximum of 2 minutes per essay before assigning a grade. As the grading is holistic, the mark you assign is based solely on your overall impression of the essay, rather than an individual numerical breakdown of spelling grammar and content. Yeah that sounds pretty harsh, knowing that the mark you receive depends on how the examiner is feeling at the time. You can use that knowledge to your advantage.
Therefore, keep that MCAT grader in mind when you are writing your essay. Keep your handwriting legible, use black ink (have you ever tried to read green or red inked essays?), and put clearly defined spaces between your words. Try to link your paragraphs together with leading phrases such as: "In addition to," "A counter-example to," or "The
In addition to the technical aspects above, don't be afraid to be creative and make your essay stand out. Attack the problem from an atypical point of view. I believe one of my MCAT essay topics was (loosely paraphrased): "Money gives an individual power in society." Then you needed to define the statement, and propose examples for, and against the premise, and finally rationalize the apparent contradiction.
I'm willing to bet 50% of the MCAT answers to that question defined power as the ability to purchase tangible goods. ie. "He who has the most toys wins", so the richest guy clearly wins. Now, this is the beginning to a perfectly solid essay about money, power, and capitalism in general, but it falls into the trap that lots of other people have written about the exact same topic. The human eyes reading and grading your essay with fall asleep before finishing the introduction because he/she has already seen hundreds of nearly identical variants of the same thesis in the past week.
As a result, I decided to approach the problem from a different tack. This, I believe, showed the grader that I am a little bit more special, and worthy of a closer read. My introduction went along the lines of:
Yes, this essay began rather tenuously, and in fact, was just a piece of fiction. However, it's quite likely that the grader will be able to relate to some part of the introduction. Perhaps his/her memories will be stirred back to his undergraduate days, and the stress of exams, or perhaps he/she was lucky enough to make the acquaintance of a Janitor Bob. In any event, the grader is likely more involved in your unique essay as opposed to the cookie-cutter capitalism essays I've described above. Remember that the mark you get depends on the grader's mood.
I should caution that searching for a special viewpoint is more difficult than simply using the first idea that pops into your mind, so you'll need to practice your brainstorming. Take a practice exam philosophical statement, and see how many different ways you can come up with for attacking the problem. Friends will often be able to supply valuable divergent points of view. However, it goes without saying that an adequate, completed essay is worth a lot more than a brilliantly insightful incomplete essay, so don't waste a tremendous amount of time looking for that unique viewpoint. Make sure you've got something to hand in when that 30 minute timer goes off.
Break:
Here's where you might think about hitting that vending machine for some candy. I know I mentioned the insulin spike and accompanying low-blood sugar blues, but if you're sneaky, you can time your candy ingestion during the break and in the Biological Sciences section so the blues don't hit and drag you under until after the MCAT is over. In the meantime, you'll get some badly needed glucose into your poor overworked brain.
I do however, remember a particularly hellacious biology passage question where I was introduced to some kind of fungus that had two nuclei in one cell. One was called a macronucleus and the other a micronucleus, and they reacted differently in meiosis and mitosis. I have never seen, heard of, or otherwise been aware of a cell that has more than one nucleus. So of course, the questions were on what genes would go where in mitosis/meiosis, and this is where understanding the course material, rather than memorizing trivia, becomes invaluable in spades. I was able to apply the idea that in this fungus, meiosis was used to create haploid spores while mitosis was for growth and differentiation, and use those principles to determine what nuclei needed to go where after cellular division.
The MCAT tests principles, so make sure you know them. The best way to check up on this is to find an MCAT buddy, and try to explain concepts like mitosis/meiosis. My acid test for understanding is that I know the material well enough if I can fully explain it to others after defining, and then using, the correct, widely accepted terms and jargon. You'll also be presented with diagrams, graphs, tables, and other visual methods of representing data. Be sure to read the data carefully; lots of easy answers are botched by simply not reading the damn question properly.
After:
Take a break. Do something non-related. Go to the bar for a cold one if that's what will get you relaxed. Several colds ones will surely relax you, but having two miserable mornings back to back is never fun. Trust me. Spend time with the friends, or significant others. Hopefully, you'll never have to face the beast again. In any event, you've got a two month reprieve from the MCAT before that manila envelope from the AAMC folks crosses your mailbox. Until then, get on with the process of enjoying yourself, and living life to the fullest. In order to be a good doctor, you have to be a good human being first. Have some fun; you've earned it.
Well, I’m a single, 5’ 8” Asian male. Black hair, brown eyes. With my bulging athletic frame, I have often been mistaken for Arnold Schwartzenegger, until people approach me and realize that I’m much, much, bigger. I enjoy cooking, and taking long romantic walks on the beach… Oops! Wrong bio. :)
Despite the manner of the above bio, which you should never, ever, use in your med application, the essay that you do submit should mirror the above in one simple, direct way:
Sell yourself.
Sell yourself. Because if you won’t, and don’t, who else do you think will? Think back to each time that you meet someone, how first impressions form within minutes. Be honest. A basic reality for most people during an initial contact, is that they start to form a stereotype to classify neatly each person they meet. That initial pre-conceived idea, no matter how inaccurate it may be, will often colour and influence the conversation for some time to follow. Since your biographical essay is the “first impression” that the med school admissions committees (and interviewers) will have of you, it’s crucially important to develop a strong, concise essay that hits all of your major positive points without losing them in a sea of less important details.
Beyond that, the most important aspects of a biography are to make it engaging and interesting. Your transcripts and MCAT scores will determine your academic standing; use the autobiography to highlight your personal side. The exception here is that while you don’t mention your MCAT scores and GPA, if you receive any, you should definitely note any academic or social awards you have received. If the admissions committee isn’t anxious to meet you after reading your essay, then you have to look at whether it’s the presentation, or the content of your submission.
With that said, it’s obvious that the grammar and spelling of your essay be absolutely impeccable. Word-process the document, and have it printed in a professional manner. Don’t try to fit an extra 200 words by shrinking the font size and decreasing the margins to infinitesimally small limits. It makes reading the paper incredibly irritating, and is dead-obvious after you’ve read a few hundred essays or so. Try not to over-use the dictionary/thesaurus in a false attempt to sound over-educated. Unless you usually write that way, in which case it will look natural, you’ll look like an ass. Imagine that other people are reading your essay and grading it, because they are.
And if you fail you have to wait a year to re-apply. That’s the breaks; when you have your one shot, you have to make it count. Make the presentation neat and professional. Enlist the help of many friends and adults to read the essay and check for possible improvements in organization, grammar, and spelling. You control the content of the esssay; your friends, as proof-readers, should decide the presentation.
It should be obvious by this point that the essay is not something you should start at the last minute. I recommend leaving a minimum of two weeks to go from start to finish. Ideally, I would start two months ahead, as that gives sufficient time for you to do some really good brain-storming, to write the essay, and to solicit lots of feedback from friends.
As far as the presentation and essay format, I feel there are two major styles. Some people prefer to use a chronological style of writing, listing and describing their achievements by dates, and linking their personality to those anecdotes. This has the advantage of being an easy to follow system where the reader can easily visualize your personal development. However, it can be easy to get sidetracked using this method by focussing too much on each particular experience. It’s also very easy to see any gaping holes if you have an unproductive period in your life.
A quick example of the chronological system:
Another method of presenting the content is to list 4-5 of the major personality characteristics that you feel you have, which are crucial to becoming a good doctor. Then, you describe experiences in your past where you have exhibited, or have worked, to develop those characteristics. As I feel that every good doctor is a good person first, generating this list is particularly easy. In good people, I look for honesty, reliability, dedication, and patience. There are obviously many, many, other characteristics out there.
Pick whichever you feel are most relevant. Then, look towards your curriculum vitae to find experiences that relate to each of these categories. This system forces you to spend equal weight on each characteristic, which will make you look more well-rounded. A disadvantage is that you may have to exclude experiences that don’t fit into the personality criteria you have already selected.
Here’s a sample possibility:
“Oh this beaker Mr. Fisher? It’s not acid, it’s just water.”
“Oh reeeeally? Are you sure it’s water? Let's test that.”
This experience in grade 12 chemistry has stayed with me to this day. I had just filled a beaker half-full of hydrochloric acid, and was walking it back to my lab bench, when I stopped to chat with a class-mate friend. My teacher had watched the entire episode and had confronted me as I stood gabbing, completely unmindful of the 10 molar HCl in my hand. As I steadfastly denied the beaker being filled with acid, he produced some sodium bicarbonate (baking soda), and dropped it into the beaker. The fizzing bubbles of carbon dioxide indicating an acid solution sunk me with the force of a capsizing ship. It took a great deal of work to regain his trust and confidence in me, and it’s been an experience I will never forget.
I believe that the above two formats are the most common ones used to write autobiographies. You can either focus on listing your experiences chronologically, or you can group them into specific personality traits.
See? An autobiographical essay isn’t really that difficult. It’s not as mind-bending as trying to wrap your head around the formula for calculating the volume of a vase using calculus, nor does it require the draining memorization of biochemical structures. What it does take however, is an acute and detailed examination of your personal life. Everyone always mentions that each person on this planet is unique and special. What makes you special? What experiences have you had that make you a more desirable candidate than the next person?
Have you travelled? Do you play any musical instruments, or are you involved in sports? Have you worked or volunteered in any interesting jobs? What hobbies do you pursue in your spare time?
My simple rule for writing such essays is to use honest anecdotes that high-light your personality. You’ll notice in the above examples that I backed up my statements with events in my past. Just as in the reference letters section of this web-site, examples and anecdotes count. If one premed described himself as a natural teacher, and another applicant stated that after tutoring, his student increased her test scores by 25%, who would I believe more? Always give examples to back up your statements. Without examples, statements aren’t much more than hot air. Your application to med school deserves better.
Next, you’ve got to decide what to include in your autobiography. My personal recommendation is to avoid the negative details, unless you mention them in the context of having changed them for the better. An example would be like the above sample paragraphs where a negative experience is used to convey the importance of honesty. I've certainly said it enough times, but be honest, because chances are good that you will be asked questions in your interview regarding your autobiographical essay. Don’t write that you enjoy pithing frogs at midnight for extra-hours research unless you really mean it. Liars are usually pretty easy to spot, and they get weeded out, as they rightfully should be.
So what are the main points? Sell yourself honestly, because if you don’t you’ll be hard to notice. Use the essay to focus on non-academic qualities except in the case of awards. Give examples from your past history to lend weight to your statements. Once the skeleton of the essay has been built, send it out to your friends for proof-reading and improvement suggestions. On each revision, you’ll probably find difficult sections that you want to edit, in the process often creating a new batch of problems that need to be edited.
After you’re done the proof-reading, check it over one last time. Your essay should be engaging, visually-appealing, and grammatically perfect. Now, you should probably sit on the essay for a week or two, and then look at it again to see if you remember any additional material that you could include. Now, it’s time to proceed to your reference letters, the next major hoop to jump.
So, there you are sitting in your first year biology class. At UVic, a university of about 15,000 full-time students, there are approximately 250 freshmen in each class. Of these, at least half of them (125 people), are toying with the idea of medicine as a career. Tough odds. In addition, while your professor may have been hired strictly as a teaching professor (there are certainly examples of this at UVic), it’s far more likely that your teacher is a researcher, as most lecturers tend to have their doctorate PhD degrees. These researchers are hired by universities for their scientific expertise, but buried within their contracts is a stipulation to teach a certain number of undergraduate courses. Teaching isn’t usually the reason these researchers come to a university. As such, your teacher’s mind is often occupied with the latest technical glitches occurring in the lab, or in keeping up with the current research published by other authors working on similar projects. Therefore, teaching often becomes a lower priority.
So, among this sea of fellow competitors, and apathetic teachers, how are you going to obtain the three distinctive and unique reference letters you need to enter medical school?
The first trick, of course, is to use reference letters from other people. However, for people who have not done graduate work, it seems that most medical schools want at least one reference letter from a representative at your undergraduate university. As I didn’t go to graduate school, I don’t know what procedures are commonplace in that environment. Since your entry into medical school is utterly dependent on receiving a reference letter (you can’t get in without it), you should devote a significant amount of energy into this endeavour.
This is my hard and fast rule on obtaining the elusive university reference:
In this scenario, the tenured professor who vaguely knows you as the hand-waving student in the front row, and writes a stale, boring letter consisting of: “This student displays tremendous aptitude in the field of Biochemistry, and receives my recommendation” has actually cost you. Why? Because using that reference letter has squandered the opportunity for you to hand in a glowing letter from the Teaching Assistant whom you’ve met by being interested and sincere in lab. That TA could have provided the range of positive insights and endorsements into your personality, which is what each admissions committee looks for in a reference letter.
I say again, medical admissions boards use reference letters as a judge of an applicant’s personality. I hadn’t considered the depth of this point until after I’d undergone all of my medical school interviews. My current impression of the interview is that afterwards, each interviewer must complete a form ranking the individual on a scale on personal and social characteristics. ie: “On a scale of 1 to 10, rank this individual’s ability to perform competantly under stress.” As my longest interview was a mere hour and fifteen minutes, with the shortest interview being exactly half an hour, where I only answered four questions, I expect that many interviewers will be unable to accurately complete their feedback forms.
As a result, many of these interviewers will turn to your reference letters as a guide to help them complete their interview sheets. After all, your interviewer has only known you for a short time, while your references have presumably had long periods of time and environments in which to familiarize themselves with your quirks and characteristics. Who knows you best? Therefore, while UBC pools the reference letters and MCAT scores together as a puny 10% total of your admissions criteria, good reference letters may inadvertantly boost your interview score, which at UBC is worth a whopping 50% of your application. If you’re an honest and straightforward person, obtaining brilliant reference letters should be a piece of cake.
So, should I use a big-name professor as a reference even though he/she doesn’t know me very well, or should I proceed with a lesser-placed individual who really knows me as a person?
For me, it’s a dead-obvious choice to use a letter that is rich, and vivid in personal detail over one that has all the personality and warmth of a dead fish, despite the quantity, or lack thereof, of letters after the name of the author. What you want is a reference letter that relates past situations in which the author has witnessed you demonstrating your compassion, patience, and honesty. If you don’t have those characteristics, my knee-jerk reaction is to question whether clinical medicine is the right choice for you.
Giving situational examples showing these characteristics is always better than just stating them outright. If you read one reference letter relating an incident where a premed selflessly raced into a burning house to rescue a baby, and then saw a second letter where the author simply states: “This candidate is genuinely heroic/unaware of danger”, who would you believe?
As I’ve already mentioned in the undergraduate timeline in the first, second, and third years, your best bet for obtaining a great reference letter is to work closely with your teachers, and then to volunteer for entry-level positions in their laboratories. You can make these connections via communicating to their graduate students, who will often be your teaching assistants for your lab courses.
You can also facilitate obtaining these positions by researching your professors to find one who is studying in an area you find interesting. Then, approach him or her about the practicality of volunteering as a dishwasher or solution re-stocker under the understanding that you will receive advanced duties as your technical skills improve via your lab courses. If I’ve learned one thing about research at a Canadian university, it is that money is tight everywhere, and no lab has as many hands as it would like. What you have to convince them is that you’re competent enough for them to entrust spending the time on your training. After that, since you’ll work for nothing, they continuously collect the rewards on their investment.
If working for no money doesn’t sound appealing, well, that’s tough luck. In a competitive environment, the job goes to the lowest bidder. You can’t go much lower than offering to work for free. However, if working for free is not an option due to student loans and such, don’t forget about looking into undergraduate scholarships and grants from NSERC, MRC, and possibly SSHRC, the “Tri-Council” of granting agencies in Canada. These agencies may offer to supplement your income, allowing your professor to hire you extremely cheaply.
With the current “brain-drain” of Canadian researchers re-locating to the United States where money for wages and research capital is significantly more plentiful, the Canadian government is looking into ways to recruit undergraduates into the research field. Your professor may also be eligible to apply for work-study positions which similarly supplement your income. In British Columbia, there is a government-funded program known as Student Summer Works, where the government pays an employer to hire students during the summer months. Researchers are qualified to apply to this program, at least at UVic Biology. This can easily be a doorway into a lab position.
Finally, you should go talk to your professors during their office hours. Do this even if you have no intention of asking them for a reference letter in the future. Don’t fall into the premed trap of “What’s in it for me?” and only working towards polishing your application. Often, except during exam times, the professor spends a lonely, solitary hour with the office door open, playing Hearts or Freecell on his/her Win98 computer. These people are at the cutting edge of their respective field, taking decades to amass their knowledge. As a student, you get to talk to them for free. You’d have to pay big bucks to do the same attending conferences. You’re studying to learn about the real world aren’t you?
I learned a great deal about Canadian politics through my first year Economics teacher. Strange eh? I’d originally gone to his door to ask about a difficult problem, and it turns out of the 300 students in his class, I was the only one to see him that day. After solving the problem, we talked for half an hour about the economic situation in healthcare (his wife is a nurse), and I learned about the slash in transfer payments from the federal government enacted in the mid-eighties. This drop in transfer payments to the individual provinces is at the heart of why healthcare in BC is a major issue, with healthcare workers burning out, and waiting lists burgeoning. This was useful information to know, and I found it from a most unlikely source. Talk to your professors.
For the other two reference letters, I recommend choosing people who know you well, and can comment strongly on your non-academic qualities. Again, if you don’t have these qualities, you might want to reconsider clinical medicine because your interviews will eat you alive. My recommendation for the other two reference letters is to choose a physician, and a layperson with whom you have had a long and trusting relationship.
If you are lucky, your parents will already know a physician as a family friend. If this person knows you well enough to write you a long and glowing letter, nod a silent “thank you” to the admissions gods and proceed to your next letter. For most people, it will not be that easy. You may want to consider your family physician to determine if he/she knows you well enough to be a reference. If not, look towards a nearby hospital for possible volunteering and doctor-shadowing programs.
Here, you will have the opportunity to interact with a multitude of physicians. Of course, if the bureaucracy is anything like in my experience, these programs leave you performing menial tasks well insulated from the physicians and nurses. I folded several thousand cardboard vomit receivers, colloquially known as “puke trays”, in my months volunteering in the Emergency Department. It is up to you to find and meet the professionals. Be sincere and honest in your intention to enter medical school, and ask them for advice. You’ll only get out of a volunteering program what effort you put into it.
For that third, elusive reference letter, I suggest looking towards a layperson who has placed in you a significant level of trust. Naturally, you must have earned that trust and respect. Some suggestions would be the parents of a child you currently tutor, or perhaps used to babysit. If you happen to volunteer as a coach or assistant in a children’s sports league, your experiences in organization and patience will go a long way towards an excellent reference letter.
Another excellent possibility is an old or current employer. I considered using the manager at a store where I had worked for four years as a reference. In my favour was that after working for such a long period of time, I was responsible for handling the store at either opening or closing, and so I had access to the free cash in the till. I also defused numerous arguments and complaints with irate customers in that time, to ensure their repeat business. Being entrusted with the keys to another man’s livelihood is a great responsibility indeed.
In closing, here’s my current perspective on reference letters. Pick people who know you well, and can relate easily-visualized situations demonstrating your personal qualities. Your transcript will relate your academic skills; this is not the place to brag about your marks. Try to form relationships with your professors for the mandatory letters, and health care professionals as they will be able to provide reference letters recognizing your suitability for a career in medicine.
You’ll first have to accumulate the names and addresses of each medical school. I recommend heading to the Canada Post post office and buying the 8.5” x 11” mailers for XPressPost. These mailers will each set you back approximately $5. So, at three letters per medical school, each school you apply to will cost you $15. Don’t be stingy, and pay the extra amount requiring signed confirmation that the receiver has actually received your envelope. Do not, under any circumstances, go cheap here and send your materials by regular mail without a tracking number.
I used XPressPost because I had heard horror stories of application materials being lost, and with XPressPost, you automatically receive a tracking number. Wouldn’t you know it, but both myself, and two friends of mine had application materials lost along the way. Good thing the receipt had a tracking number, proving I had sent the materials, or else the medical school would likely have cancelled my application altogether. Make sure you call the medical schools to ensure that your materials have been received; the tracking number can be used to determine the current location of the package.
Now that I’ve expounded on the very useful tracking number, you should pre-address each mailer and give these to your references. That way, they can just drop each reference in the mailbox. They’re already doing you a huge favour; make their time as painless as possible. Be sure to include the dates by which the letters are due, and approach them well in advance of this deadline. This gives them time to write a decent letter, and gives you the flexibility to approach another potential reference should they procrastinate or refuse outright.
I feel that including a curriculum vitae along with your request is very useful. It gives your referee additional ammunition to include in the letter, and may help to refresh events he/she may have forgotten. Needless to say, each individual medical school can receive duplicates of a single reference letter; it’s unreasonable to ask your reference to craft a unique letter for each school. Make sure they save additional copies of this letter in case the first letter is lost in transit. Nothing is worse than discovering your letter did not arrive and you have a week to re-submit it, except that your professor must first write a new letter. This actually happened to me.
Finally, don’t be afraid to remind them to write the letter, and by all means request that they notify you when the letter has been sent. While you really are totally reliant on your referees to complete the letter, know that it is, after all your future and not theirs, and being reliant does not mean acting meek and submissive. While this may be your top priority, it is likely not theirs, so make sure it gets done.
Afterwards, a thank you card, and perhaps a small gift would be appropriate. Your referees have done you a huge service, and you should definitely acknowledge your thanks. Of course, it goes without saying that you should keep them up to date with your progress through admissions. Yet another hurdle jumped, now it’s time to wait for that interview notice.
I have serious doubts about the wisdom of making this section available. While it's one level of advice to provide tips on study techniques, it's entirely another to give advice that "falsifies" your personal characteristics in an attempt to portray someone you're not at the interview table. Hence, I'm going to keep this section very short, and confined to what I feel comfortable telling my classmates about the interview process. For anything else, look at web-pages authored by other individuals.
The most important rule I have, which applies very strongly to the above paragraph, is:
BE YOURSELF!
The medical school admissions committees are all concerned with answering a single question: "What kind of a doctor will you be, and is there a niche available for you here?" To lie, and pretend to be someone you are not in an attempt to curry favour from the committee is to possibly take away a spot from another more-deserving individual. Lying is a trait that is absolutely out of line with medicine.
This means that if you are interested in research, you should say so, and not state that you like primary care simply because you heard that "This school is really big on primary care." If you really like classical music, then answer truthfully if you are asked. However, if your CD rack is filled with R&B music, then pretending that Beethoven's Symphony No. 5 in C minor is the greatest thing going is not a good strategy.
On the other hand, in order for the admissions commitee to make an informed decision, they need to know your strengths. Be prepared to explain what personal characteristics you exhibit that would make you a good and effective doctor. Do not be afraid of "selling yourself" just because you feel you should be humble about your achievements. In the short period of time (usually an hour or less) for an interview, if you constantly downplay your qualities and accomplishments, the interviewer is unlikely to determine whether you are acting humble, or whether your curriculum vitae is simply deficient in content!
Don't let that happen! As well, however, there is a fine line between being forward with your successes, and appearing to be an arrogant over-achiever.
This is the mandatory Geocities insert to avoid those annoying pop-ups...
"In the hallway, Janitor Bob works tirelessly to keep our university spotless. For the past 3 years, on passing him, I have been greeted to a warm smile and friendly wave. I talk to him frequently about the advances in genetics, while he espouses stories of solid common sense, learned as a result of being a high-school dropout. He is mopping the already glowing floor, visible through the windows of the exam hall, as I write this MCAT, in a sparkling university building established and maintained by government grants. Beside me, fellow students, funded by student loans, frantically eke out answers to an exam that will help determine our future careers, so that we may send our children to university, and start the education cycle anew. Clearly, money is of great importance to the individual."
Biological Sciences
Well, here you go. It's the last section of a very long and draining day, but you can't let your attention down until after it's over. It's only 100 more minutes, hang in there! Just like physical sciences, you've got 77 questions, 62 of which are derived from passages. In this section, you'll be examined on biology, biochemistry, and organic chemistry. Personally, I don't recall much biochem or orgo, on the August 1998 MCAT.
Autobiography
Tell me about yourself:
“That’s yours Phil… Yes! We won! We won! We won!” In 1996, our school reached a new milestone. For the first time in its 90-year history, we had won first-place in the Provincial badminton championships. I was honoured to be a member of that triumphant team. The award was a simple brass medal, but its faux-gold glitter bespoke countless hours of training, and heartache for the team members. We encouraged each other, always giving smiles and hugs after each grueling game, never allowing a team-mate to falter. It was here that I truly learned the value of team-work.
The following year, I devoted my extra-curricular time to tutoring. While sports have their place in a healthy life-style, student loan debts don’t disappear without hard work. However, when working with my learning partner, I discovered there is a great deal of team-work in the student/teacher relationship. The same encouragement , smiles, and jokes are as crucial for competing in tournament-level badminton as they are for succeeding in high school mathematics. I was able to bridge the gap between our skill levels by showing my partner the importance in dedication and discipline, with the occasional break to relax. In turn, she showed me the value of humour and mutual co-operation, and I take those tools into every environment I encounter. To learn is to share, and I hope to have the opportunity to do this as a doctor.
Honesty:
“Excuse me young man, but where do you think you’re going with that acid?”
I realise now that I could have easily injured a friend, a comrade, with my bravado and false assurances. As a doctor, lying or deception could easily lead to the serious harm, or death of a patient. I learned my most important lesson in chemistry that day, and I believe that a good doctor must always be honest with his working peers, and his patients. I have endeavoured to achieve this trust with each new relationship I help create.
Reference Letters
Interviews
Interviewing, just who are you?: