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MD Applicants

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  • User #5422

  • Application cycles: 2006
  • Demographics: Female, East Asian
  • Home state: Texas
  • Brief Profile: President of student orgs (International Medicine, Biology Journal, Math Club)
    2 pubs, another expected this summer
    lots of research... normal scholarships, didn't apply to anything fancy
    normal volunteer/shadowing... 2 summers at hospital, following doctors
    some travel (China, Kenya) for service

    Research interests: developmental biology, cellular differentiation, human genetics, computational models.
    Above 'mathematics' major actually is 'statistics'--not an option on mdapp
  • // Applications //

    Application Cycle One: 2006

    • Undergraduate college: Rice University
    • Undergraduate Area of study: Biological/Life Sciences
    • Institution: Rice University
    • Area of Study: Mathematics
    • Total MCAT SCORE: 523
    • MCAT Section Scores: B/B 132, C/P 132, CARS 129  
    • Overall GPA: 3.96
    • Science GPA: 3.98

    Summary of Application Experience

    AMCAS submitted 6/7
    AMCAS verified 6/27

    8/1 Most challenging so far (besides motivation to work on apps) has been the MSTP questions from Columbia and UPenn to provide a document of career goals as a physician-scientist. For those of us who still see a world of possibilities, it's quite a problem.

    9/1 Recommendations sent to all programs.

    10/9 Interview invitations coming in, many with conflicting dates. My advice if applying to many institutions is to wait a while before confirming dates and see what other offers arise. Then negotiate all at once.

    10/26 Call, call, call!! Don't want to realize too late that academic advising didn't send your rec letters to all your CA schools. (I realized this about 3 weeks ago, but only got UCSF completed just now...)

    12/18 Don't jump to conclusions. Automatically thought I was rejected from Cornell when I didn't get an email from them on 12/6. Turns out, it's waitlist, which is hopeful, I think..

    1/29 It's been 3 months since I submitted Harvard's app, and it's taken that long for my file to become complete. HST interview today, but strangely, rejected from New Pathway. Waiting for MD/PhD interview from them now.


    2/29 UCSF called today to tell me I'm first on their alternate list, and that there hasn't been a year where they haven't accepted an alternate (they initially accept 15, and after that is waitlist). This is after they got my update/interest letter by email today -- lesson is send a letter.. even if it can't change anything, it might get you more information on where you stand.

    3/26 Got off the Harvard MSTP waitlist! What are the odds! Apparently they accept exactly 10, and one person declined immediately for personal reasons, and I was first on the wait list.


    5/7 Accepted at Harvard, and withdrew remaining schools. I struggled with this decision for a long time, but I think in the end I realized I really did know where I wanted to go. It definitely took revisiting everywhere to figure it out though. I'm sure I couldn't have made the decision otherwise. Not that any revisits were bad, but it just helped me realized what I was looking for and where I felt comfortable.


    School impressions, to help me remember and future applicants know what to expect:

    UTSW - The focus here is balancing clinical and research sides, rather than one or the other. It's great strength, though, is the research (greatest # of nobel laureates of any medical institution), and Brown is director of MSTP. There's also great financial support bc of ties to *Ross Perot*, who visits specifically with MSTPers annually. You'll hear all about how 'collaborative' it is, and it's true, even from my short summer experiences. Labs are open door, and people are genuinely interested in each other. The interview day was a bit disorganized, our speakers didn't show up, our student hosts were confused about the schedule, interviewees were left to ourselves most of the time. This is likely not an accurate reflection, as every current student talks about how helpful the administration is. There is a second interview in February if you make the cut (I got the call yesterday), which hopefully will reflect better on the school.

    Northwestern - Focuses on physician-SCIENTIST. Really great mentorship, and graduates have 3-10 publications (all of them do), and 22 currently are on their own grants. Research is admittedly not as spectacular as some other places but certain fields are focal. Neuroscience is huge and incorporates interdisciplinary investigators, and autoimmunity and microbiology/virology seem strong, and there seems to be a big strength in nanoscale chemistry. 3-day interview gets VERY tiresome.. 5 faculty, 1 student, 1 administration, but they definitely were very organized and worked on impressing us with what they had. Students say greatest strength is support of other MSTP students and integration with the MD class. Also, location in Chicago is cold, but very beautiful.

    -------Never got around to writing about the other interviews, but here are some revisit impressions-----

    Harvard - Diversity in every research field you could possibly want. Their revisit showed a lot of attentiveness to the students--all years of MSTP were available to speak with, as well as all the deans, and many of the prominent faculty members. A faculty who was not available that day invited me to call him at my leisure. The 1.5 day revisit was a whirlwind of people to meet and impressive research to discuss. I was initially concerned about the HST program (i was hesitant about being with the same 30 people with the same interests all the time and also the seeming lack of time for grad school courses and research), but now I think it sounds like an amazing opportunity. Faculty are invited to give lectures on their area of expertise... while it would cause some redundancy in the curriculum, I am excited about the depth that they would bring to the class, and the non-textbook quality. The students emphasize how much they really learn the concepts. All my faculty meetings were extremely interesting and were welcoming to MSTs. Harvard has really played a role in unifying the MD and PhD to shorten the time to graduation. Students (even in year 7-8) were generally pleased with their experience.

    UCLA-Caltech - The UCLA students are probably the happiest I've met all around. The sun was so infectious to people's personalities that I wonder how I would turn out if I were here for a few years. The faculty were all extremely open in discussing their research, and the collaboration was apparent, as 2 of my faculty meetings in entirely different departments were well aware of each other and had even begun collaborations. I was excited at UCLA, and extremely so by Caltech. Caltech MSTPs all seem to be selected for a technology-based background (the other prospective, and both students that showed us around were into physics/engineering/etc). The faculty were developing such great technology for their studies, and while the labs seemed less collaborative than UCLA, each was very good at what it did. The focus in the Caltech program is definitely research (the current students did not wish to pursue clinical practice later), and that mindset, the disjointedness of Caltech from UCLA, and the small-school feel of Caltech ware not what I'm looking for in a program. We still have the option of doing the PhD at UCLA.

    Application Complete, Rejected

    Columbia University
    University of Pennsylvania

    Application Complete, Withdrew

    Duke University

    Attended Interview, Rejected

    Johns Hopkins University

    Attended Interview, Withdrew

    University of Texas, Houston
    University of Chicago
    University of California, San Diego

    Attended Interview, Waitlisted, Rejected

    Cornell University
    Stanford University

    Accepted off Waitlist

    Harvard University
    University of California, San Francisco

    Accepted

    University of Texas, Southwestern
    Baylor College
    Northwestern University
    Washington University in St. Louis
    University of California, Los Angeles
    New York University

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