Good Advice

I've been poking around lots of medical school websites these past few days. My self-imposed deadline for turning in this AMCAS application is rapidly approaching, and I still have a lot of finalizing to do. My list of activities (in lieu of a resume), list of schools I'm applying to, and essay all still need to be finished up and polished. It's a bit stressful at the moment, but today I'm thinking that I'm within striking distance.

When I was looking of the New York Medical College site this afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to see this excellent primer for prospective applicants - entitled Professional Development. It's informative, thoughtful, much better than anything I have read on the websites of other - 'more prestigious' - medical schools, and put some of the interesting thoughts I've been having these past few weeks to words. It also got me thinking about this whole application process in a different light. Thanks NYMC! (It also looks like they have interesting MD/MPH and MD/PHD programs!) Here's the text from the site, and the link is below:


Professional Development

We'd like to give you some advice here...

What do we mean by professional development and what does that have to do with you as a medical school applicant?

Applicants often ask what they should do before they apply to medical school. Perhaps you have asked. Perhaps what you really meant was -- what should you do to help you get into medical school? Is volunteering in an emergency room a good thing to do? How about research? How much? What kind?

Those questions suggest a "recipe" approach -- one semester of research plus a stint in an ER plus a visit to a soup kitchen equals a successful medical school applicant.

We disagree. There is no checklist of approved activities and there is no formula for getting into medical school.

So what do we want? We want you to be convinced -- and then to convince us -- that you have the aptitudes, interests, and motivation to be a good physician. We want you to be convinced -- and then to convince us -- that you've tested the waters and know that it's right for you. To do that you need to actually have done some things -- research, hospital volunteer, tutoring, shadowing, AIDS education, VISTA, Peace Corp, whatever -- and that you have:

• Learned more about yourself
• Learned more about medicine
• Learned more about people
• Learned more about science

and had fun doing it. We want you to be convinced -- and then to convince us -- that your goal is your own professional development and not simply getting into medical school.

Link to original text.