Any actual doctors in the house (especially med school docs)?

They are seeking genuine.

Everything else you wrote are paper tiger arguments.
You asked advice, I gave it.

 

If he really answers the way you said, he is very likely done for that school. I will let his counselor that you are hiring and other physicians chime in.

 

now you are officially alienating the exact audience you are seeking pro bono advice from. what is the point? You are not the one applying for med school, he is.

Anyway, good luck with your son, and if those really are the tenets you create for your son's mentality, it won't be good for medical school ad com eyes.

 

I think my best advice for you is to back off from your son's medical school application and just pay for a consultant. You are biased and cynical about healthcare system overall, as you stated yourself. Your views will likely affect your son's answers in interviews. Being inquisitive is one thing, forgetting one's place and challenging another person's expert view and advice when the advice was sought to begin with is a completely different matter. You obviously have a pretty fixed mind what makes a good physician yourself as you disagreed with other physician's opinions about what you wrote - how strength and physical wellness can make him a better doctor. It is not about your view being different per se as you are not a physician, of course you would not know. All you can say with basis is what you think a better doctor should be based on your experiences as a patient. But I think you forgot about that limitation of yours and our backgrounds. Of course, in a regular conversation anyone can say anything. But the premise of this thread is different. You specifically asked for physician's help for your son's medical school application, and we offered advice. We are not here to argue or defend our views. So again what is the point? Right?

So this is my last advice for you. Last thing, in medicine is an art and the tradition of apprenticeship is fundamental. If your son is how you are presenting yourself in this thread, your son will have to wake up every night when being on call to decide whether a sleeping pill need to be given to a sleeping patient.

 

I’m not familiar with that score, they must have changed the MCAT since I took it.
What percentile is that?
I presume CONGRATS! are in order.

 

Excellent! IIRC that is what I got...36 or 37...so many years ago.

 

Nice! Send my congratulations to him!

 

great! one milestone done. Now go hire a counselor service.

 

Congratulations!
Did much better than I did… I remember getting low 30’s, of course that led to a mediocre med school for me [emoji51]


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Move to sunny Florida! Past President of UR is retiring to Sarasota I believe—smart man!
I wish your son every success!

 

I'm late to the party but I thought I would chime in to give another perspective. I'm close to 2 decades in practice, currently at an academic center and program director for a subspecialty. I am currently reviewing applications and interviewing for fellowship training now. I principally agree with the comments. I would agree it's a numbers game. Even for subspecialty applications we received over 430 for perhaps 40 interviews for 4 slots. So basically one in a hundred or slightly worse. My colleague is doing the same for an even smaller subspecialty which takes one trainee per year and she received 120 or 130 applications. She's interviewing 30 I think (arghh). I look at applications by the dozens and have so many e-mails of solicitations it pains me to remove people from the list. Certain parameters must guide this. Grades/scores are a base filter. From there I look at letters of recommendation (but have been fooled in that some claim to make really strong recommendations and yet year after year I see the same author with a slight twist to the letter - tailored to a new individual). After this I put quite a bit of reliance on the essay. For me it is the person ringing through. What I can't stand (but I understand since it is so natural) is the commonly written personal story of how a medical disease affected the applicant, for example: "my father [had this disease]", "my grandmother had [that]" and "this stimulated me to go into medicine." I can tolerate it but yesterday an applicant kept going on for 5 paragraphs in their essay and then basically summarized that that is why she'd be good at this....What applicants don't realize is that 4-5 paragraphs describing a family's plight doesn't prove the point. It should be more logical. Better to say "my father had......I found it sad because....I was fascinated when....It thus stimulated an interest of....." Again describing how many times an applicant visited the bedside or went to help someone do something..."but then one day finally..." makes me drift off immediately. Also there's so much molecular, genetic, immune research going on in the past decade or so that bringing up a fascination of how the body works microscopically is (to me) paramount in showing interest - even at the medical school application level. Discussing that shows insight, maturity, drive, a call to action on behalf of the profession. I know this is just my personal point. Other reviewers may want to see applicants who want to serve communities, to volunteer in the public health arena or underserved. One can never guess the reviewer's bent. All I would say is make the essay less common but logical. Give, if he must, one small anecdote of a personal/family medical moment and then move on and draw larger arguments. I don't care where/when the idea of being a doctor started. What I more care about is what draws the applicant to it and how they want to contribute. Don't quote famous people although a saying, theme or concept could work if tied into the application's theme. Don't go into the "nobility" of the profession, etc....Right now I wouldn't worry about the quality of the school. More important is choosing the right residency. A few MDs go to small residencies that are easy and don't provide a lot of experiences and then want to do subspecialty work but will be at a competitive disadvantage. I could go on but there's probably too much here to digest. Best of luck!

 

bingo! I always asked why should I rank you higher than next person? No attending needs a Harvard grad who did not want to do guaic and lie about it. At the end of the day, high vs low risk resident and future department chief material? show me.