hi if you're new to my channel i'm sam
srignor
a senior studying applied math at
harvard and this is not a regular video
as you might know we as a channel have
reached 10
000 subscribers recently and it's not a
lot but it means a lot to me
and thus i asked the subscribers to ask
me
questions in one of my community posts
and i got a lot of questions and this
video is answering the most commonly
asked questions
i will look at the youtube comments and
answer the questions one by one
if you might be wondering what this
t-shirt is about
it says morning brew on it this video is
not sponsored by morningbrew however
it's this amazing newsletter
that i follow and it sends you the
latest news in business and technology
every day via email
it's absolutely free and if you want to
improve your english or just
in general develop a reading habit
take a look at the link in the
description but yeah without any delay
let's move on to the questions question
number one how do you get into harvard
medical school for undergrad
i think that's a question i get a lot
the correct answer is harvard medical
school does not
offer undergrad medical schools in the
us don't offer undergrad they offer a
graduate degree called
md and the way you get into those
programs is basically
you have to study um an
undergrad con major concentration that
meets a lot of
pre-med requirements which are basically
selected courses in
organic chemistry physics and biology
once you meet those requirements you
apply
to med school after uh like during
the final years of your undergrad or
maybe after you graduate
and they require a specific admission
kind of like standardized exam called
mcat they require your transcripts
recommendation letters
um and then your resume in general and
it's a grad degree that is
that takes a few more years after you
graduate
and the apart from that the us does not
offer any undergrad degree for medical
schools so
that answers the question if you want to
get into those medical school programs
it's better if you
get an education in the us and then
apply to those schools
generally those schools are very
expensive
and scholarships aren't easy to come by
they're almost impossible to come by
if you still want to become a doctor
without going to med school in the us
but you want to be a doctor in the u.s
that's a very complicated process and i
do not know enough of it so i will not
answer
that question but hope that i hope that
answers your question of
how can i get to harvard med school for
undergrad
question two when you apply to harvard
did you know that you would get in
that's a good question honestly i didn't
know i would get in
i personally thought these are extremely
hard schools to get into and i had to
have
a fair amount of luck to get in so i did
not know
if i would get in if i apply again i
still don't know whether i would get in
or not
i'm looking at the next questions
question number three
how much financial aid do you get from
arbert and how many
dollars do you have to spend in a year i
get 100
financial aid from a harvard and i don't
have to spend a single
dollar every year the amount of
scholarship harvard pays me every year
is around like 75 77 000
and i end up like saving a few thousand
dollars
at the end of it after paying my tuition
day-to-day expenses
room and board etc harvard is one of
those schools that dem
meets all demonstrated financial aid so
if your family earns less than 60 000
dollars per year
you can get 100 financial aid at harvard
life of a harvard student what is it
like how do you hope
coping um with the harvard education i
felt is
difficult i came from a national
curriculum in bangladesh
and a lot of what i have been taught
there aren't the best concepts so when i
came here
i had to study and work hard a lot to
catch up
with the education that my contemporary
students from international
curriculum what the us curriculum have
has received so coping was difficult but
i eventually managed after a lot of hard
work
how does it feel to study at harvard
it's it's an amazing experience you
study with amazing people from all over
the world and it's an absolute privilege
to share the same institution with these
people you learn so much
inside the classroom outside the
classroom and it's just a wonderful
experience and
that's the only way i could summarize it
the next question is uh where are you
from in bangladesh what's your native
village
how does it feel living in cambridge
without your parents well i'm
my native village is in koshitabal but i
was born and brought up in dhaka
it feels it feels a bit weird to live
without your parents i went to major
purchase college
which is a military school back home so
i'm used to living without my parents
however
living in a different country all
together can make you feel homesick
every now and then
i i really miss the food and my close
friends back home
um i really miss my beloved sister and
my family every now and then
i miss biryani and miss bell puri and
all the wonderful food
that bangladesh has to offer so it is
difficult but it's a sacrifice you kind
of have to make
so a person ask a few more few questions
one
question is what makes your essay stand
out among thousands of applicants at
harvard i made an entire video on how to
write great essays check that out the
link will be in the description
any suggestion for fall 2020 applicants
no
that's what the playlist is about if you
want to
get suggestions with regards to that
just
follow the playlist and how can we
contact you i generally
um avoid taking personal questions
because i get so many the best way to
contact me is to comment on my youtube
videos and
if you have a question that i can answer
i will usually reply to that comment
another way to contact me is i will soon
open a facebook page
on undergraduate admission tips and you
can go and visit and comment on that
facebook page as well
next question is what are you doing in
this lockdown
uh that's a good question what am i
doing i i'm not doing much
i finished my fall semester just
like a few months back and then i had my
one month long winter break i watched a
lot of anime named the attack on titans
i watched a lot of movies
i finished the lord of dreams movie
series
i i was making youtube videos
and i was also just reading books
that i like good economics for hard
times is the book that i'm currently
reading
i also recently got into chess a bit and
i played a lot of chess as well so
just what basically anyone would do
with their free time that is what i did
i and i spent a lot of time with my
friends
here at harvard just watching movies
hanging out going out
and eating at different restaurants and
whatnot
of course maintaining the coveted
precautions
of social distancing and rapid testing
and whatnot
another question is like can you make a
video about the sct and scholarships for
undergrads in uic yes i have an entire
playlist on that so just watch that
the next question is was the perfect
time to apply
so generally if you want to apply for
the fall session of 2012
you wanna apply by the end of 2021 so
right by the end of december
uh if i if i take a gap year will it be
harmful for admissions no
it won't be harmful for admission so one
gap year is fine if you take
two that might be a problem but it's
also fine if you show good solid reasons
as to what you
are doing in those gap years if you are
doing productive things
appearing in national admission exams it
should be fine i personally applied
after my hsc which was in 2016
and they did and i told in my in my
additional information tab in common app
that
i was preparing for national admissions
i was preparing for medical
admissions iba admissions and thus that
is how i spend my gap year and i got in
so i guess that's totally fine
what were your extracurricular
activities that's a question i get a lot
if you want me to make a separate video
on that please let me know in the
comment section below and i can
elaborate on my extracurricular
activities
but generally at a high level i had a
few extracurricular activities
in leadership stem and
public speaking in public speaking i was
the national champion
of the international public speaking
competition and represented bangladesh
in front of 50 other countries in the
competition
international rounds in london in
leadership i was the college culture of
perfect in my military school
a college level prefect or the central
prefect as they would call it
is only given to four people out of a
batch of 54 people after five years of
evaluation
so it requires like they do a thorough
background
check of basically your entire your
achievement portfolio over the five
years
so it meant a big deal to me and you are
responsible for the welfare of basically
the
300 students in that military school so
that those are leadership activities i
was also a debater
i was like the debating champion
in my school and at the same time i
went to the national finals of the
bengali
btv tv debate and in stem i had a few
uh achievements i won the international
runners-up award
uh in a particle physics competition
organized by cern called beamline for
schools
and um that is that is one
extracurricular activity i enjoy doing a
lot and i also was an international
finalist
in the national academy of engineers
which is the organization that us
engineering for your video contest where
we had to explain
a complicated engineering topic in a
short video
so that is on a high level my
extracurricular activities i had a few
more here and there
but that pretty much covers it up
next question what should we focus on to
get into a top school of being from
bangla medium students i personally
think two things generally if you're a
bangla medium student you'll probably be
academically inclined
if you want to do well in your national
admission exams so i think academics is
something we end up doing well in
i think given we have a good academic
track record i
would ask you to focus on your
extracurricular activities do whatever
you
enjoy doing and try to grow
skills and go to competitions in those
regards
and another thing to focus on is your
english speaking and writing ability
i made a video with allah from stanford
on how we improved our english
and if you want to check out that video
check the description in the comment
section down below
there are many more questions about my
extracurricular activities i mentioned
that
how did you prepare for the public
speaking competition so basically what i
did was
i also had to participate for impromptu
speaking competitions and debating so
that was a lot of practice
anyway and the way i would do it is like
my teacher would give me a topic
to think about for a few minutes and
then i would speak about that topic for
five minutes you do that with any top
like for a long amount of time and
eventually end up being a good speaker
i also watched got feedback from my
friends about my speeches after
i practiced in front of them and i also
watched a lot of youtube videos on how
to be a good speaker i watched
speeches of like steve jobs introducing
the iphone and
basically public speaking analyzes
videos on youtube and eventually i got
better
another question is what's your goal
joining a giant tech company or building
your own
i'm assuming that those two aren't the
only options
uh with regards to goals in life it's
hard to say where i'd be
down the line i will be joining a giant
tech company
uh right after i graduate i'll be
joining ibm's chief analytics office new
york
full-time right after i graduate so
that's the immediate step
but towards the end of the day my goal
in life is to be a good human being
and to try my best to use and use my
potential and capacity and networks to
have
positive impact in the communities
around me and that's my long-term goal
and i don't know how
in particular that will take place but i
really want to positively impact
the communities around me for instance
right now i do a lot of teaching and i
make youtube videos for free
for a lot of students and i hopefully uh
down the line i will also
do things that will help the communities
around me the next question is will
this year be hard for international
students to get into top universities or
getting financial aid
i don't think so i personally think your
chances will remain the same
uh i don't i don't see why it will
necessarily be harder
the next question is if my teachers
don't agree to support me with
recommendation letters then what will i
do so honestly recommendation letters
are taken from teachers who really
like you have a good relationship with
you and chances are if that is the case
they are going to support you
so if your teachers aren't supporting
you the only advice that i have is find
a teacher that will support you
and if you have good relationships with
at least one or two teachers that is
bound to happen
and the final question is you attending
a summer camp in usa
help in my admission process so here's
the thing i personally believe
that summer camps are generally in the
us are generally expensive
if you can afford it easily
like you can go they usually expose you
to a lot of people
to an area of interest that that you're
passionate about
so that is a great experience to begin
with and after meeting and getting
exposure from a lot of
people with a lot of people you tend to
increase your ambitions i feel because
you will see them having high ambitions
of going into top
universities doing amazing things so it
increases your ambition
and that in turn helps like in the next
stages of your life does it help your
application
it doesn't help it doesn't make that
much of a big difference from what i've
heard
but it does help a bit it shows your
general interest
um in a subject topic which is good for
your application
at the same time if you do well in your
summer camp it also shows that you can
easily adopt and succeed in an
international
like education setting so that does show
that you're academically gifted
so like bottom line if it's hard for you
to pay
uh don't do it because it doesn't make
that much of a difference
if it's manageable or easy for you to
pay or if it's free
definitely do it it it does give you a
bit of an advantage in application it's
just a wonderful experience in general
for some context when i went to the
international public speaking
competition
in london that exposure really brought
in my mind as to how i should be
ambitious
a lot of people there were applying to
like top universities
a lot of people had big dreams in life
and that definitely made me
more ambitious and then i started
aspiring to do more in my life
so that type of exposure really helps
and it's just a wonderful
place to often make wonderful memories
so yeah
do that if you can if you manage to
reach
the end of this video thank you so much
for watching this was the 10
000 subscriber special so i won't be
doing question and answers that often
thank you so much for asking the
questions i try to answer them as much
as i can if you just
skip to this part in this video we have
covered questions about
what's my feelings of studying at
harvard how
i got better at english and how what
were my extracurricular activities on a
high level if you want me to talk about
any of the things that i talked about in
much more detail
let me know in the comment section below
and i would love to
cover it if you have any particular
suggestion about topics that you would
like me to cover apart from that also
let me know in the comments below
finally i'm letting you know that i will
also
open a facebook page for those of you
who watches my videos via facebook
to upload this similar video so you can
also check out my facebook page i will
post it for my personal profile
when i've actually created the page but
thank you for watching if you have come
this far
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comments below and i'll see you next
time
thank you