We're going to talk about how to make your medical school application stand out today!
Hey BeMo Nation! Welcome to another episode of our One Question Podcast.
We have nothing to sell you during these episodes, just pure strategies and content to help you
with your application process. Now, in case you have never watched or listened to one of these episodes,
just to let you know how this works, we have 10 minutes to tell you about the one specific topic
in the world of admissions. Once the timer is up, we're not allowed to give you any more
information and this is going to force us to skip any sort of fluff and give you only the
content you need that are actionable that you could use today.
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Now, let's get back to the video! What I'm going to do is I'm going to grab my timer right now
and I'm going to start the timer, so here it is, ten minutes starting right now and first
I guess I should introduce myself. My name is Behrouz Moemeni. I'm the CEO and founder here at
BeMo. I'm joined by two of our senior admission experts, Ronza Nissan and Meng Yang.
So guys time is of the essence. How do you make your medical school application stand out?
Let's first start with Ronza. Before we get into specifics, while Meng is thinking of telling us
some specifics that we could work with, why is this even important? Can we quickly like,
tell us you know why is it so important to stand out from everyone else if every premed
has had the same experiences, same classes, same courses, same research, same volunteer -
why is this even important? Well first and foremost it's one of the first impressions that you make
to the admissions committees, right, so you want to always put your best foot forward and as we always
say here at BeMo, right, that first impression is so critical like these admissions committees are
going through countless of different applicants so making sure that you are very cognizant of how
you first demonstrate yourself, then put the time and the effort to show your personal journey
is going to be so critical to potentially getting accepted to your dream program.
Makes perfect sense. Meng, any final thoughts about the why or you want to go right into the how? Yeah
I'll say one more thing which is that if you look at the admissions stats you could see that there
are lots of schools that are in the single digits in terms of percentage of applicants
who get admitted so if you're blending in with everyone else, you're not going to be one of those,
you know, top percentile people who actually get in so standing out is going to ensure that, you know,
you're drawing attention to your application to your candidacy and that you have a chance to move
forward in the application process, at least get an interview invite, etc. If I can add and jump in
quickly because I know time is of the essence. There are numerous, I mean by thousands of
applicants that don't get an even with a perfect academic standing, perfect test scores, so this
is why it's so pivotal to really, really hone in and just make sure that your application is as
perfect as possible because sometimes it is the deciding factor. And you know what, at the end of
the day if the admissions committee is getting thousands of applications and they're spending
30 seconds on your application, that's another reason to stand out right off the bat. Okay, Meng,
how do we do this? I think one principle that you should always follow when doing anything
in your application is quality over quantity. A lot of applicants make the mistake of including
so much information that it's very hard to come away with anything at all. That's one way to kind
of screw yourself over. You want to highlight the key experiences that has led you to -
to decide to apply to medicine and you know our rule of thumb is, for example, in a personal
statement one to three, right, you might have ten, you might have dozens of experiences, but
if you can just select one to three that will really get the reader's attention,
that's something that they're gonna remember as opposed to including - trying to include all ten.
Makes sense, less is more. Ronza? I think before anything you need to make sure that you
understand the requirements so please follow the instructions, there are so many
different components to the application with limitations on word count or character count
a lot of questions that have sub follow-up questions that you need to make sure that you're
answering each and one of them, so I would say following the instructions is
first and foremost before you dive into anything so you do not miss anything at all.
Makes perfect sense. Now, we could get even more specific and then Ronza and Meng, you guys keep
adding whatever you think is relevant but this is important whether you're writing a
personal statement or essay. It's also important if you're writing, let's say a list of activities.
So how do you make this stand out? So Meng said first of all less is more, don't give
your whole life story, so for example you want to maybe give more experiences
when you're doing a list of activities but even then you have limitations so you have to find
the best. So how do you find the best? Let's say for a list of activities you want to think about
any sort of activity that shows commitment and progression and then for an essay or a
personal statement, that's where you want to talk about things you were not able to put in a list
of activities or if you're submitting also a resume or cv with this, those are the things that
you don't necessarily want to include and give it a personal touch because that's the difference. So
maybe Meng and Ronza, you guys can add a little bit of how to - when we say making your
application stand out - how to think of personal statement versus a list of activities because
the strategies are a little bit different. Yeah, absolutely. I think when it comes to, let's
tackle the first one which is a beast on its own and that's personal statements, when it comes
to personal statements a lot of students want to include absolutely everything and as Meng mentioned,
less is more, include the pivotal experiences. Now when you're also mentioning the experiences and
telling the admissions committee what you would like them to know about yourself, you have to
show and you have to demonstrate this through these experiences. A lot of time these experiences
can expand over time, you have responsibilities, there was results, you have to really be brief
in condensing what you did there and then more importantly what your role was and then what you
learned from it. So I think organizing a personal statement and organizing your experiences in that
way is going to really be helpful because you've identified it but even more so the introduction is
something that many people just kind of skim over and think that they could just do very quickly
but, as I mentioned, first impression is very critical and that means in every component.
So you want to captivate the reader right away, draw them in you want to be as personal as,
you know, as quirky as you possibly can, really to just draw them into who you are and
demonstrate the uniqueness of you know your your candidacy so I think that opening introduction
sentence, very well organized experiences with flow of transition, and then concluding with even
more of a creative, lasting, impression is going to really help you for a personal statement. Meng?
I think one of the biggest differences between that personal statement and your activities list
is in your activities list you're really trying to demonstrate as many of the core competencies that
a medical school is looking for as possible and there you have obviously less space so you really
want to be very concise in terms of outlining your roles, responsibilities, and everything you learned
and potentially how it applies to medicine. In a personal statement, this is something I like to
tell students, is you want to create an emotional connection to the reader. That's something you
may not actually be able to achieve in the list of activities or in a CV or in a sketch
right, you want to draw the reader into your personal stories that tell them how -
how you're motivated to pursue that particular career. So yeah there's a definitely a different
approach, definitely different writing styles that are involved in each one and they have a slightly
different purpose although both of them come together to kind of paint a global picture of
who you are. Exactly. So we have under two minutes and another thought that comes to my mind is
making sure to tie the most important experiences you have to how this relates to the field of
medicine and sometimes people say oh well I don't have any significant experience, I just worked at
McDonald's, how is that related? It is related if you know how to explain it
or you know I like to mostly you know play with my team this sports activity
which sometimes people don't understand that oh well that's actually very relevant.
It shows certain qualities. So it doesn't matter what actual experiences you have had, it matters
how you convey the message of whatever you had has given you the qualities they're looking for. The
more you don't have the cliche type of experiences like, hey I went to Africa built home for somebody,
or that's probably not cliche actually but those are the things that people think they need to have
to get in, or you know I volunteered, I did the clinical experience, I did - those ones remember
everyone has done that. That goes in your list of activities, don't talk about that during your
personal statement. Tell the reader who you are and why they should interview you, why you're more
interesting than anybody else and why you're a good fit for the field of medicine based on
the experience or your story, your personal story. Any final thoughts in the final 20 seconds or so?
Yes, don't be a cookie cutter. That just kind of bounces off of what you said,
and ensure that you know you actually stay true to who you are and your story.
Definitely one of the things you can do that will help is brainstorming about those transferable
skills. That's what Behrouz was talking about, the things that are transferable from any experience
into medicine and that will help. And that was time! As much as we possibly could! Thanks so much for watching
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