Q and A, part 2

Another question from a visitor to this blog:

I've a few questions about the MSTP program. More specifically, how your application process went. I'm wondering what sort of laboratory/clinical experience you had before applying to your program? What were your MCAT scores? Also what did you study in your undergraduate years?

I'll start with the quicker stuff first.

In terms of MCAT scores, I'm happy to give a range of scores (it's not really necessary to give individual scores, because everyone is different and the test will be different than it was in 2005 in terms of average scores, etc). Of the people I know in the program (including me) here are some scores:

34, 37, 36, 38

(I don't include writing because I'm not sure a single person remembers his or her writing scores...and people, especially MSTP folks, really don't care much about it).

My research experience began the summer after my freshman year and continued until I graduated. (I went to Pomona College in Claremont, California - Pomona is a small liberal arts college with active researchers in Biology, Chemistry, Physics, and Mathematics; I was a Chemistry major with a Biochemistry emphasis - there was no Biochemistry major when I attended Pomona). To be honest (because on applications it is easy to claim continuity of research) I probably worked an average of a day every other week during the year and then ~10 weeks during the summers; however, I worked in spurts, so some really meaningful experiments and results were still performed and obtained, respectively, during the years. I was fortunate to be funded as a researcher starting after freshman year - I wasn't a tech or a dishwasher, so I had a project of sorts early on, and it developed into a story that comprised two publications and a senior thesis.

I think there's a major take-home about my research experience: I could discuss my research formally and informally early on because I had a project I was invested in from the start. And so, when it came time to interview for MSTPs when I was a senior, it was second nature to talk about research. For the most, this helped me during my interviews. That said, I had a rocky start with interviews (UCSF, for example; though I would say some of that had to do with getting interviews with 'difficult' individuals, to put it nicely). So I would suggest getting your story straight - figure out how to explain the experiments you did, the background/motivation behind the work you did, where it fits into an interest in medicine, and what you see yourself doing in the future. There are no correct answers in this, but earnest and well-informed ones are rewarded with thick acceptance packets in March or April.

Don't let the fact that I (or others) have done quite a bit of research discourage individuals who have spent less time in a lab -- your commitment to a project, grasp of the subject matter, performance in classes, and letter from PI can all help if the amount of time is lacking. And if you feel you're not quite there with your research experience, by all means consider taking a year off. (In any event, admissions committees will want to know what you did if it wasn't research. If you were still trying to find your passions, and research is what you landed at, taking more time is never a bad thing).

As I said above, I was a Chemistry major at Pomona; thus I took a variety of classes related to my major (calculus series, physics, Gen Chem, O-chem, P-chem, P-chem lab, Analytical Lab, Biochem, Bio-organic chem, Analytical chem, NMR spectroscopy, senior thesis, independent study) and those for biology/med school (Genetics, Cell and molecular biology - this is a misnomer, as Pomona's intro course has now been correctly re-named cell biology and cell chemistry; and DNA repair and human disease. Being that Pomona is a liberal arts college, I also studied some classics (greek literature, lower levels), art history, music (I played in the orchestra throughout my time at Pomona and studied in the music department on solo and chamber music), shakespeare. I'm not rattling this off to be impressive - most Pomona students do this and more (there is a bit of a grade inflation problem at the school) - but instead to say that people (read: MSTP admissions committees) like this kind of diversity in courses, with also a clear commitment to some major - which doesn't necessarily have to be science. Case in point, a soon-to-be second year in the UCLA MSTP was once-upon-a-time a humanities major at a small liberal arts college. She did post-bac work, research at the NIH, and now is passionate about becoming a physician-scientist.

I spent about 2 months at the Pomona Valley Hospital doing one evening a week of bed changing, patient escorting, and other mindless tasks. But I got a sniff of medicine, and I liked what I was sniffing. My most exciting moment there, incidentally, was as a patient with a subluxated (a.k.a. dislocated) knee-cap.

Ahhhh - the application process. I'm not sure where to start. I think the short answer is that when I started my application, I felt like I really believed in being a physician-scientist, and so answering questions that asked me to expound on my belief in research and medicine weren't that difficult. It didn't hurt that I was forced out of physical activity for a month after the knee injury. I will try to add some other thoughts about the application process in more detail in a later post; for now, I seek some R and R before a busy day in lab tomorrow.