6/17/2020 0 Comments The Road to Medical SchoolAs a pre-medical student, I reviewed a plethora of blogs, websites, books, and YouTube videos on how to get into medical school. I wanted to know the recipe for the secret sauce of the perfect medical school applicant. Spoiler alert: a perfect applicant is almost non-existent, but there are many nearly perfect people who apply to medical schools every year. To facilitate this process, I made spreadsheets with the statistics of the incoming classes for the nearly thirty medical schools that were on my radar. Despite having a long list of schools, one statistic was nearly identical among all schools – the acceptance rate.
Over the past decade, the number of applicants to medical schools has skyrocketed while the number of available spots in incoming classes has not substantially increased to meet the ever-growing demand. The acceptance rate at WVU is approximately 2.5%. To put this statistic in perspective, the acceptance rate at Harvard Law School is 15.6% and 9% at Wharton Business School – the schools of some of the most prominent leaders in the United States, including President Obama and President Trump, respectively. The acceptance rate at the WVU School of Medicine is not an anomaly because medical schools across the country are becoming increasingly competitive every year, with the average acceptance rate for all medical schools being a mere 7%. Mind you, these low acceptance rates include students who have passed rigorous pre-med courses (biology, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry, and biochemistry) and performed well on the MCAT (the Medical College Admission Test). Low medical school acceptance rates are not only a problem for aspiring students but also the future of our country. Medical provider shortages are a problem that will become worse, especially in rural America and inner-city neighborhoods. Evidence of this is already evident in American society with extended emergency room wait times, difficulty finding primary care doctors who will accept new patients, and long commutes to see specialists. For physicians, this shortage will result in longer workdays and higher rates of burn out. Moreover, this will have implications beyond the clinic as physicians will have less time to devote to research, which will lead to a decelerated pace of medical advancements. With less routine health care, there will be an increase in reactive medicine compared to preventative medicine. Reactive medicine is expensive (think of the economic ramifications of COVID-19), meaning higher taxes and swelling federal deficits in order to fund governmental health insurance programs. Despite all of the burdens facing the American medical system, I still worked my butt off to earn a highly sought-after seat in a medical school class. Instead of complaining about “the system,” I desire to change it for the better while serving patients in their most vulnerable moments. Therefore, after discussing my statistics (GPA, MCAT, shadowing hours) with some professors and considering finances, I chose to send my primary application to eight schools – WVU, Maryland, Marshall, George Washington, Florida International, Pitt, Penn State, and Wake Forest. As each school requested a secondary application with further essay responses, I spent many hours writing, proofreading, and editing my essays. Throughout this process, my family proofread countless essays and frankly informed me when my writing left much desired. This was a team effort. After submitting all of my answers, I anxiously awaited to learn if any medical schools would extend interview invitations. Several weeks later and after many moments of obsessively checking my inbox, I began to receive invitations (and a few rejections). While I was under the microscope at each interview, I tried to imagine myself living in every city where I had interviewed. Following my interview day at a school where I thought that I had a decent chance of getting an acceptance, I realized that this school was not a good fit for me whatsoever. My interview was on a blistering hot day, the lecture halls looked like dungeons, students seemed unusually stressed, and several fatal crimes had occurred around the school’s campus just a few days prior to my interview. Shortly thereafter, I received my first acceptance to that school. As I read the word “Congratulations” in the acceptance email, I felt elated that I had gotten into medical school and attained the goal that I had devoted countless hours to during the past few years, but I also felt torn because I did not want a “second date” with this school, let alone spending four long years there. “Conflicted” is usually not a word that describes someone’s reaction to receiving an acceptance to medical school, but that was my natural reaction – a reaction that some people might consider ungrateful, but it was visceral and representative of my uneasiness. Over the next few weeks, there was complete radio silence from all of the schools. As the autumn leaves fell and the fall semester of college approached its conclusion, I returned home for Thanksgiving Break and went to my grandparent’s house for a few days. One morning, I woke up and got a shower, as usual. When I came back into the bedroom, I saw that I had a missed call on my phone with a “304” area code – the area code for West Virginia. Instantly, my mind thought that this could be an acceptance phone call. I promptly went to the office, closed the door, sat down in the swirling desk chair, and called the number back. On the other end of the phone, I heard the jubilant voice of Dr. Linda Nield – the Dean of Admissions of WVU and a Frostburg local – who told me that I had been accepted into the Class of 2023. In this moment, I felt a sincere thrill and heart-pounding exhilaration, which was compounded by my grandma’s and then my grandpa’s pure joy (and maybe a few tears of happiness). This was the type of moment that I had imagined for my medical school acceptance. The excitement was authentic and unhindered by any reservations. Over the next two months, I received two more interview invites and an additional acceptance to another phenomenal school. After many hours of prayer and crunching financial numbers, I finally confirmed my decision to attend WVU from the most unlikely location – an Airbnb room in Reykjavik, Iceland. Looking back on this lengthy process, some people might think that my road to medical school was easy because I do well in school, but that is far from the truth. There were moments when I thought that I had ruined my chances of getting into medical school – miserably failing an organic chemistry test, encountering a large chunk of questions that perplexed me on the chemistry/physics section of the MCAT, and going several months without a medical school acceptance. Despite some figurative potholes on the windy road to medical school, I know that God was orchestrating a superb plan that He is still developing today with every twist, detour, and fork in the road ahead.
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