You’ve been tempted to bend the truth a little, maybe even outright lie on your medical
school application in order to improve your chances.
Can you get away with it?
Is it worth it?
Here’s what you need to know.
Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com.
Let’s start with the big one—outright lying on your primary or secondary medical
school applications, which can be quite tempting.
There are many different ways you can lie on your application.
You could claim to have a publication when you don’t.
You could add 1,000 hours to an extracurricular when you actually only clocked 200.
You could completely make up an extracurricular experience.
You could give yourself an important title when you didn’t have one.
You could also misrepresent yourself by claiming you care deeply about diversity and inclusivity
while posting hateful or bigoted rhetoric on social media.
There are myriad ways admissions committees can sniff out lies on your application, whether
that’s through AI, checking your social media, or reaching out to their many contacts
or your listed references.
Keep in mind that medicine is a small world, and medical school admissions is an even smaller
one.
People talk.
If you are caught lying, you will be immediately black balled by the admissions committee,
and it won’t stop just there.
It will trickle down to other admissions committees because doctors will do everything they can
to protect the sanctity of their profession.
Patients need to be able to trust their doctor, which is why ethics are taken so seriously
in the medical profession.
If one admissions committee catches you in a lie, they will do what they can to ensure
you are not accepted anywhere.
A bad egg slipping through the cracks tarnishes the reputation of doctors everywhere and makes
it harder for them to do their job.
Remember the career you’re trying to get into.
Being a doctor means having integrity and an ironclad code of ethics.
Integrity is one of the core principles of the profession.
If you’re resorting to these tactics, you should reflect on whether or not you’re
entering the right profession.
You can’t betray the core foundations of a profession in order to get into it and expect
everything to work out.
But what if you get away with the lie?
What if no one notices?
This doesn’t mean the lie is just swept under the rug.
The lie will never go away, whether everyone knows about it or just you.
And that inauthenticity will eat at you – imposter syndrome will find you for good reason, and
you’ll wonder if you got into medical school and deserve a seat based on your own merits,
or because you bent the truth.
Depending on the lie, you may have to keep up with the lie for as long as you want a
career in medicine, let alone the application process.
Lying will make it even more difficult on yourself during interviews.
You won’t be able to be your authentic self, and humans are incredibly sensitive at sniffing
out inauthenticity and deceit.
After all, this was key during our evolutionary history, and attempts to maintain the lie
during the interview will almost certainly show.
Taking an extra year to build up your experiences is a much, much better solution than lying
on your medical school application.
Plagiarizing is a form of lying; however, it’s not only lying, it’s also stealing.
You’re taking something that doesn’t belong to you, something you didn’t work for and
earn yourself.
In terms of your medical school application, plagiarizing is most likely to come up in
your essay—notably, your personal statement.
There are tons of personal statement examples out there, which means it would not be difficult
to take one and tweak it to make it your own.
However, this completely defeats the purpose of a personal statement and will put you at
a disadvantage.
Your personal statement is your story.
It’s an admissions committee’s window into who you are beyond your grades and achievements.
Using another person’s story misrepresents who you are.
Now, it’s perfectly okay to take inspiration from others, and we encourage you to do so.
Read examples of successful personal statements on our website to better understand what admissions
committees look for.
We have multiple free resources that you’ll find highly valuable, including breakdowns
and commentary from admissions committees on each personal statement - link in the description.
Plagiarizing does not work to your benefit, as you’ll be telling someone else’s story
instead of your own again and again during the course of your secondary applications,
interviews, and beyond.
Not only is this difficult to do, it could actually make you sound more generic and forgettable.
It’s difficult to stand out from the thousands of other students applying alongside you and
even more difficult to stand out from the tens upon tens of thousands of candidates
who applied in the years before you.
The more you copy someone else’s story and voice, the more bland you become.
The best way to stand out is to tell your own unique story.
Plus, it’s very likely you will be caught at some point.
Admissions committees have AI technology designed to catch plagiarism, and it gets better every
year.
It’s also quite possible that someone on the admissions committee could recognize something
or know the person you’re plagiarizing.
And remember, medical school admissions is a very small world.
Your grades and transcripts are pretty much set in stone, so you aren’t able to lie
about those things.
Exaggerating usually occurs in the Work and Activities section or in your other essays,
like your personal statement.
You may say you participated in extracurriculars that you didn’t or claim to have played
a bigger role than you did in one activity or another.
For example, if you were shadowing a surgeon and say you sutured the skin closed or intubated
a patient as an undergrad, that’s either untrue or it’s a safety risk.
Doctors know these kinds of things, so it’s a clear sign you’re being disingenuous.
Exaggerating may be hard to catch, but it doesn’t make it right.
Being a few hours off here or there won’t matter, but be sure to accurately record your
hours and experiences as best you can throughout your premed years in a journal so that you
can paint a clear picture of your actual accomplishments.
Admissions committees are not dumb.
If you’re claiming 1400 hours here, 2000 hours there, and 2500 somewhere else, they
are going to notice the impossibility of your claims.
Admissions committees have seen hundreds if not thousands of applications, and they applied
to medical school once too.
They can see through what’s authentic and what’s bloated exaggeration.
They’ll start to question how it’s possible you were able to collect so many hours in
so many different areas.
It’s okay to round up.
If you were 1 of 48 vying for a scholarship, you could round up to 1 of 50.
But if you claim you were selected out of thousands when only a hundred applied, they
will find out.
If you don’t have a published article, don’t say you do.
You can say it was submitted, but you can’t say it was published if it wasn’t.
They will notice because they will simply look up your publication.
And if you get to the interview stage, many interviewers will grill you on your research
and submitted work.
Admissions committees do not want to accept candidates who think it’s okay to lie to
get ahead.
If they think you’re being disingenuous, they will use everything at their disposal
to figure out if you’re lying.
They’ll use AI tools, social media, and their many, many contacts to find the truth.
These are expert humans with experience on their side.
Plus, it’s also important to remember that you generally don’t see your letters of
recommendation before they’re sent to the admissions committee.
If what you claim on your application doesn’t line up with what the letter writer said about
you, that’s another huge red flag.
Medical school admissions committees have a zero tolerance policy on lying, and significant
exaggerations certainly constitute lying.
So far, admissions committees haven’t said you can’t use AI technology to help write
your essays, but this could change in the future.
Be sure to check each school's specific instructions to see what is allowed and what isn’t.
Always follow a school’s rules and instructions.
If you disagree or are tempted to violate these rules, you’re likely not an ideal
fit for that medical school.
If you are allowed to use AI writing tools, should you?
And in what capacity?
While it can make writing easier, it’s to your ultimate disadvantage to use AI to write
your essays entirely, especially if you don’t have ample experience with prompt engineering.
These tools are only as good as the information they have.
We covered this topic in a previous video on the Future of AI and Medical School Applications,
link in the description.
Some of you raised some good points in the comments that we’ll address here.
Like any new piece of technology, AI writing tools like ChatGPT take time to master.
You need to practice using the tool and train it to do what you want it to.
If you have a passion for learning new technologies or have already spent ample time learning
how to master the tool, this could be an option for you.
Without providing the AI tool with extensive and detailed background information about
yourself as well as your experiences, key moments in your life, and notable traits,
even though the writing may sound good, it won’t be your unique story.
For most students, writing your personal statement and other essays yourself will result in a
stronger product because it will be in your own words.
A personal statement must come from your own unique voice.
The strongest applicants utilize their personal statement as an opportunity to further the
overall narrative of their application—something AI tools can’t do just yet.
Don’t think you’ll be able to plug in a few descriptors of yourself and have an
AI tool plop out an engaging, authentic personal statement in your own unique voice.
If you want to use AI to help write your essays, it’s best to use it for brainstorming, synthesizing
ideas, and organizing information.
Use AI to help spark ideas and improve your writing if it is something you struggle with,
but ensure you keep your voice your own.
Your medical school application is far from the only time you will need to complete a
writing assignment or cohesively weave ideas together.
You’ll need to effectively craft your own answers on the fly during your interviews
and throughout your medical education.
Just as empathy or strong communication skills are sought-after traits in doctors and most
professions, writing and the ability to craft a coherent and persuasive argument may also
become one of those traits that set you apart from your peers.
Of course, at this early stage in the evolution of AI writing tools, we can only guess what
the future will have in store.
AI technology is still very new, and how it will impact the medical school application
process will continue to evolve.
Expect to see more information, guidelines, and restrictions in the coming years as programs
adapt to the new technology.
Bottom line: Don’t use AI tools if a school implements guidelines against them, and don’t
view these tools as an easy way out of your essays.
Your concern should not be about how quickly you can write your essays; your concern across
your whole application should be authenticity and integrity.
This won’t be the last time we discuss the power and potential drawbacks of AI.
Check out our Artificial Intelligence playlist - link below - and subscribe to be notified
of our latest videos.
Much love, and I’ll see you all in that next one.