New Essays Get Previously Rejected Med School Applicant Accepted

PROBLEM

More than 50,000 people reportedly apply each year to US medical schools (MD programs), for which the overall acceptance rate is approximately a mere five percent — which means of course that some 95 percent are rejected. That’s a lot of rejected applicants, most of whom have had their hearts set on a career as a physician for a long time.

Some go on to study and do other things. I learned from my med school-track roommate in college, for example, that it’s standard practice for applicants to medical school to simultaneously apply to dental schools, as a back-up option. It’s not exactly confidence-inspiring to think that the person drilling your teeth may be a frustrated would-be MD but that may nonetheless be the reality.

Among those who didn’t give up so easily was a young man I’ll call Chris (not his real name), who came to me to help him with his applications to medical school after he had been roundly rejected everywhere the first time around. Chris’s problem was that the odds were against him at that point, as the chances of succeeding after blanket rejection the first time around are much lower than the original five percent. The situation might have been different if Chris had achieved something noteworthy during the time between rejection and re-application but that was not the case.

SOLUTION

That’s what brought him to me, as the potential solution to his dilemma. The first thing I do, of course, is understand the applicant’s situation. Part of that involves reading the personal statement that the applicant submitted. As soon as I read the personal statement that Chris had submitted in support of his application the previous year, the issues impressed me as obvious:

He had made the classic mistake of dwelling on various trite anecdotes that he mistakenly thought were an unspoken requirement for this sort of essay. His rambling narrative was full of cliches, lecturing the reader, while revealing a disturbing lack of awareness about the boundaries that someone with an interest in medicine who is not (yet) a licensed healthcare practitioner is not supposed to cross. In short, the statement did just about everything that a strong personal statement for medical school is not supposed to do — and almost nothing that it should have done. No wonder he was rejected at each and every one of the schools to which he had applied.

Through a difficult process of discussion and directed writing, I helped Chris put together an entirely different statement, representing what a compelling essay of this sort is supposed to be: in a word, a smoothly flowing narrative devoid of cliches clearly presenting the applicant’s intellectual auto-biography (the evolution of his thinking over time) and a credible case that he would make a good physician. If you compare the two statements side by side from the links above, you should easily be able to see the difference.

RESULT

The result was that this time, Chris was ADMITTED — among other places — to his top-choice medical school. Not only that, he was offered a merit scholarship, which he of course accepted. I mentioned above that the process of creating the new personal statement was difficult. The reason it was difficult (which it did not have to be) is that Chris showed the statement around to numerous people, to solicit their critiques, which he took very much to heart. He insisted on engaging in extensive back-and-forth about the validity of these critiques and the idea of rewriting everything countless times. When an applicant asks someone for feedback, that person feels obligated to offer some sort of criticism. They typically do so not because of expertise on their part but rather because not to do so might come across as uncaring — not taking the request seriously enough, in other words. I’m all in favor of incorporating any good suggestions that may be made. Challenges arise when the applicant has difficulty distinguishing between which suggestions deserve serious consideration and which do not. In any event, Chris ultimately accepted the draft I suggested, which of course was a good move on his part in view of the very positive outcome. The same thing applied to all the other collateral I helped him with, including the additional essays (“secondaries”), resume/CV and so on.

What ultimately helped obtain for him the desired outcome was the persuasiveness of his application collateral, in the sense of a compelling and well-reasoned presentation in favor of his candidacy.

THE SAME GUIDING PRINCIPLE PROBABLY APPLIES TO WHATEVER PROJECT YOU MAY HAVE IN MIND AT THIS TIME: Regardless of the nature of the project, success will hinge upon effective messaging — PERSUASION of your audience, in other words, into believing what you are telling them. That’s the name of the game. It’s what I do and why they pay me the big bucks, so to speak.

Note: In addition to applications to colleges for “pre-med” programs and then medical school, I have helped with applications for residencies, fellowships and so on. As in the case of Chris’s application to medical school, the strongest testimony in favor of my work is the fact that it typically obtains the desired results for applicants after their initial efforts have failed (with no significant changes in their circumstances).

People sometimes ask: How can you do this so well when you don’t know much about medicine? The answer is that this is not so much about medicine as it is about telling a compelling story, credibly and logically (and, ideally, in away that is also interesting), regardless of the field or discipline: medicine, law, business or whatever. The same set of principles is always in play.