This is a commonly asked question, but a very important one! As a pre-med applying with “mediocre” stats (3.5 GPA/3.3 science, 507 MCAT, first-generation college student, low-income/free lunch recipient), I found myself struggling to find the answer to this question. Here are my two cents on what I think helped me stand out, in no particular order or level of importance:
Personal Statement
A common mistake that pre-meds make is that they completely miss the big picture when it comes to the personal statement. A personal statement should be PERSONAL and it should be a STATEMENT! Nothing more, nothing less! It should not be a reiteration of your resume. Believe it or not, I made this mistake too. But a good, honest friend pointed out that I will have plenty of opportunities to showcase my vast experiences in other sections of my application. Your PS should be protected; it is too precious to be anything less/more.
I talk more about writing a good personal statement in my post Guide to Writing Personal Statements. But in general, you have to take the PS personally. The question, “why medicine” and “why do you want to be a physician” is meant to be vague and broad. But it works in your favor because it gives you more freedom to talk about your journey. Some pre-meds struggle with it because most of us do better with specific questions that we can answer. After all, we are all scientists at heart. Unfortunately, this mindset works against us here. Admission committees (i.e. “AdComs”) already know that all their students are great scientists. They want to know who you are as a person!
Really, really dive in to the question of why you chose medicine. It honestly can feel like detective work especially if you’ve always known you want to be a doctor. Tracking down the precise moment is hard. This level of introspection can take days, weeks, months, or years even. For me, it took years of me being in pharmacy to realize my love for medicine. Some people know the reason right away. But others, may need more time. If this is you, do NOT procrastinate and brainstorm ahead of time.
Was it a patient that inspired you? If so, relieve that experience and write down all the details, all the feelings you had in that moment
Was it a family member?
Was it pursuing another path that made you realize medicine was a better fit for you?
Were you pre-pharm, pre-PA, a nurse, or other health professional? Did you realize there was something missing in that profession that you felt could be met by becoming a physician?
And for the love of heavens, please do not say it’s because you want to help people, even though this is true for all of us.
That being said, sometimes there is NO precise moment and that’s okay. Talk about what experiences accumulated that led to your decision.
What is your mission, brand, and story?
You want to be sure that somewhere in your application, your mission/story/brand is evident. This can be in your personal statement, 3 most meaningful activities, or secondaries.
This also requires a lot of introspection and experience. What were your most meaningful experiences? Both non-medical and medical. I feel like the best way to explain what I mean is to share my own “brand” and statement: to provide primary care to underserved populations, specifically to low-income families and older patients. But it does not need to be as definitive as “this is the specialty I want to go into”, not at all. AdComs know that most pre-meds do not know what they want to specialize in yet of course. But they want to know what you are passionate about. It does NOT need to be related to medicine, but it CAN apply to medicine if you want it to!
Is it children with cancer? That does not necessarily mean you want to become a pediatric oncologist.
Is it tutoring high school kids with disabilities?
Is it embarking on global health brigades to provide primary care to needy communities?
Is it advocating for underrepresented minorities because you are also part of an underrepresented minority group?
Clinical Experience
Possibly unpopular opinion, but I will be honest with you. Being a scribe is more of a check-list item than anything (it does put you ahead of the game in terms of learning how to write SOAP notes later on and provides ample exposure to what a physician’s day to day looks like which is ESSENTIAL to knowing what you’re getting yourself into). It does not help you stand out because frankly, most pre-meds are scribes. I was one too. If you are a scribe, you can definitely still talk about that experience in your application! But you will have to be intentional about what you talk about. If possible, talk about an experience where you directly affected the care of a patient. It does not even have to be anything major. Simply listening to the patient talk about their old memories in high school can be one. Go into details or it doesn’t count! If you don’t have a patient experience to talk about, you can talk about your attending if she/he had an impact on you and how YOU want to practice as a future physician.
If you are NOT a scribe, that is absolutely okay. If you have another clinical experience in place of scribing, wonderful! For me, it was a medical assistant. For others, it might be a nurse aid or patient care technician. It can even be volunteering at a health fair or shadowing. Unique is good!
Many of you asked about what to do during COVID. I don’t have a great answer for this because I’ve never been in your shoes of course, but here are some ideas:
- Reach out to small physician practices (via simple Google search) by phone and ask if they are hiring virtual scribes or medical assistants without a license
- No, you do not need a license to practice as an MA. Although the trade-off is that you will be paid significantly less, which is a tradeoff that many pre-meds like me accept.
- Reach out to small practices about shadowing tele-health visits virtually! I don’t know anything about the logistics of how this would work, but I conducted many tele-health visits as a 3rd year medical student and I imagine that it would still be helpful to learn about how these visits work. Obviously it isn’t as “fun” as in-person hospital shadowing, but it’s something and I think it’s important to have exposure to this because you will most likely be asked about how COVID has affected you and what your opinions are on the COVID pandemic. It gives you something to talk about!
- This will take a lot of willpower, but to prepare yourself for a scribe job, you can buy books or read articles online about medical terminology, format of a SOAP note, etc.
- If you have the financial resources, you can spend your gap years in phlebotomy school or medical assistant school, but I would not recommend this for my friends coming from less wealthy families because it is expensive.
Non-Clinical Extracurriculars
In my humble opinion, non-clinical experiences are just as important. Why? Because most pre-meds will already meet the checkbox for clinical experiences, which means it will be challenging to stand out from that standpoint. But not all pre-meds think about the non-clinical component of your application, which can set you apart from other applicants, especially if you have a disadvantaged background that makes it challenging for you to access clinical experiences.
Honestly, your non-clinical experience can be ANYTHING, as long as quality >> quantity. It does not matter how many involvements you are in. But if AdComs see that you were tutoring high school students for 5+ years, that not only shows you are committed to teaching, lifelong learning, but it shows your dedication.
Whatever it is you are involved in that is outside of medicine, I would say keep at it if it makes you happy and if you are passionate about it! This will work in your favor.
For me, my non-clinical experience was volunteering in older adult homes (“senior” homes), participating in workshops to teach older adults how to use technology, etc. Also if you’re interested, Volunteer Action for Aging is a great organization!
Adversity
You might think adversity works against you and is a sign of weakness. WRONG! Adcoms LOVE hearing about how students overcome the challenges in life. Why? Because medical school and the path to medicine is a long, tortuous journey ESPECIALLY for those with disadvantaged backgrounds (tortuous is not the same as torture btw lol). They need to know that you will be able to handle it!
Example: My adversity was that I grew up with estranged parents and much of my childhood was spent questioning my worth as a result of that abandonment. But I overcame it by drowning myself in the gratitude I felt for my grandparents raising me as their own and how influential they have been in shaping my worldview. Naturally, my grandparents also did not have income and we lived with other family members and relied on them for financial support. Also, I started working at the age of 16 to support myself and medical school was the first time I was unemployed. Also, my entire family are immigrants and I was the first grandchild/child born in America and first to attend college, thereby paving the way for the rest of my siblings/cousins etc. I created my entire website for those who are first-generation college graduates because I felt the struggle so hard and internalized it so much that I didn’t want others to go through that alone. You are not “asking” for attention simply by sharing your struggle, though I’d argue your resilience in the face of adversity is certainly deserving of attention. Only though only those who have not experienced adversity would think that because adversity is something that is foreign to them and makes them uncomfortable. Talk about your adversity. Because adversity shapes who you are and you want medical schools to know who you are.
Everyone has encountered adversity in one form or another. Talk about them, no matter how small or how big you think they are, talk about it. Here are some examples, not exhaustive of course:
- First to graduate from college in your family (first-generation college graduate)
- First to pursue health care/medicine
- Growing up economically disadvantaged (it doesn’t matter how close you are to poverty line, but if your family was in the low-income range, it counts, especially considering most premeds come from high-income families)
- Growing up in immigrant household
- Growing up as a first-generation American
- Growing up as an underrepresented minority (Hispanic/LatinX, Black/African-American
- LGBTQIA
- Losing someone close to you
- Family member who had a health condition
- Your own battle with mental health or a health condition
- COVID
- Many premeds have expressed concern about how COVID will affect their shadowing and extracurriculars. This is an opportunity to expand on that in your personal statement and secondaries, if applicable!
- Has COVID changed the specialty you want to pursue? Has it changed how you view medicine? Has it become a source of motivation for you? Talk about it!
If you have experienced adversity, this can also be part of your branding and mission.
If you have read this far, I commend you! I hope you were able to find some of this helpful. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. GOOD LUCK EVERYONE! ROOTING FOR YOU ALWAYS!
