bluedevilmike

A couple of years ago, I wrote the following to a young lady then entering UC Berkeley:


Don't calibrate your expectations based on other Berkeley students. You will have to be smarter and harder-working than most of the kids around you. I remember that during MCAT season, I had one friend at Duke and one friend at UCB. They both scored a 31 on the MCAT. My Berkeley friend celebrated by throwing a party, and all of his friends were very jealous of him. My Duke friend immediately began studying for a retake and his friends all sympathized with his troubles and loaned him their study books. You will have to hold yourself to a higher standard than Berkeley undergrads hold themselves to.

Get to know your professors. Make an effort. This is difficult, because you have to straddle the line between brown-nosing and passivity, but the vast majority of Berkeley kids will err on the side of passivity. Avoiding brown-nosing does not mean sitting back and being quiet; it means being genuinely excited rather than faking it. Remember -- you have to be a racehorse, running for its own sake, not a pack mule.

Branch out and find a diverse group of folks. You have to be careful to cultivate a balanced worldview. You will learn from the people around you, if they are different enough; you will reinforce your own tedencies if they are too similar. Berkeley is bigger, but that just means it's easier to find a "critical mass" of students who are very similar. Avoid them.

[My friend and I are both Chinese, and it's often easy for us to fall into Chinese cultural surroundings. That has advantages and disadvantages; I wanted to highlight the disadvantages for her.] Specifically, I've found that Asian culture sometimes promotes a few very common problems: (1) treating schools as trophies rather than as education; (2) being very geographically picky and thus limiting their options; (3) jumping through hoops only when there are immediate goals involved rather than intellectually exploring.

Ask for lots of advice from students at other schools -- particularly private schools like Duke and Penn. I was applying at the same time as one of my good friends who was a UCB undergrad, and he basically did whatever I did. He didn't have any pre-med advising, but he saw that I did. Following my lead meant that he was, by extension, getting similar advising to me. He ended up at Yale Med. The Internet can help you here, too. I avoid studentdoctor.net because the people there are hyperneurotic and extremely rude, but collegeconfidential.com is a useful resource.

Embark on geographic and intellectual adventures. Going to Duke from California is kind of like an automatic study abroad; since you're staying within a 15 mile radius your entire life, a study abroad (or somewhere else within the US) is especially important. (And no, China and Taiwan don't count.) You absolutely have to make good use of your summers, so avoid summer school at all costs. Many students tend to like summer school a lot: it's easy to find, intuitive, their parents understand what it is, and they already know they're good at school. This is a huge mistake. Summers are for adventures or exploring; you already spend 75% of your life demonstrating that you're a good student. Do something else. Ideally, do it SOMEWHERE else.

Travel a lot. Skipping school is okay, really. Make sure to go whenever you can, but having some defined absences just to travel is good too. Take a trip with a few friends to Tahoe. Fly out to Seattle and see the space needle. Go visit Texas: ride a mechanical bull at a bar, eat a big Texas steak, and watch an Astros game. Spend a semester in Greece. You're saving a lot of money on tuition [by going to an in-state public]; spend a little bit of it traveling. And travel within the US! -- I know an awful lot of people who visit New York and London and think of themselves as cultured because of it. Make new friends, even if it's scary at first. And actively seek out people who are from different parts of the US.


Grades are very important, but they are not the most important thing. Good grades alone will not get you into medical school; mediocre grades alone don't get you rejected. I have a C+ in organic chemistry, the most important premed class, and a 3.6 science average, but I got into 4 of the top 10 medical schools in the country while only being rejected by 3. MCAT scores, leadership potential, intellectual capacity, and -- above all -- an excellent application will matter much more, in the end. I know too many students who pour their lives into their grades and then botch the simple fact of getting your application in during June. If they had removed 0.5% of the effort they put into their grades and moved it into the application, they'd be MUCH MUCH stronger. As a general rule, your "schoolwork" is an inefficient place to allot your energy, provided you're doing acceptably.


Take lots of different courses. Many students like to stick in their comfort zones, and Berkeley is one of those schools that encourages you to do so. Fight the inertia. Make sure to load up on courses which make you write. A lot. Lots and lots of writing. Take a cool language, like Arabic or Russian. Study geopolitics, history, and current events. Go to football games (and yes, that's a valuable learning experience). Do as many courses with independent research as you can. Maybe an art class or two; I used photography, for example. Naturally many of these will lead back into medicine. When I took a photography class, I did a photodocumentary on a cancer patient in the hospital. When I took a game theory class, I did my project on health insurance. But the point is you're exercising all the different parts of your brain.

Minimize the competitiveness you have to deal with. One of the solutions to competitiveness, of course, is to have a diverse group of friends! I had a circle of five close friends at Duke. The five of us majored in Biology, Political Science, Public Policy, Economics (me), and Math. This way we all rooted each other on and learned together. I found one or two study buddies in each class who very nice people with whom I could study in a relaxed fashion while still learning. They all turned out to be white, from the South, and older than me; I didn't plan that, but I don't think it's a coincidence either. Study at home, not in the library. Have friends who do different things and are on different schedules. Make it a point not to talk about school with competitive people. There's no need to impress anybody with how smart you are, and sometimes people will feel threatened by it. Don't talk about school with other premeds; it's usually just mutually stressful. Talk about current events, the football team, and church.

Make sure that moving out really is moving out. Go to a new church, even if your family's church is nearby. Do your laundry and cooking on your own. Have defined times for you to visit your parents and for your parents to visit you -- I think once a month plus holidays is very reasonable. September, they come visit you for a Saturday. October, you go home for a Saturday. November, they come visit you for a Saturday, plus you go home for Thanksgiving. Etc.

Colleges00701

^^^I just wanted to point out that you shouldn't get discouraged if you can't be better than the students around you, the point is to TRY to be better than them. Just keep working hard and don't get discouraged if you don't live up to the high expectations that you have set for yourself.


I try to be more hard-working and smarter than the kids around me, but sometimes in certain classes it can be hard, especially if you are not naturally talented in that subject. Trying to achieve perfection in every course, can be discouraging when you don't live up to the high expectations that you have set for yourself. Also, trying to be smarter/hard-working than the kids around you can also be discouraging, because there will always be other students who destroy classes that you find yourself getting Bs in.

I have made only 2 B's in my college career so far and they have all come at the hands of chem courses. I was never really good at Chem (hated it in high school), and no matter how hard I study or work, I could never pull my grade up in those classes. I tried so many different study habits for those 2 classes through the course of the year, and nothing worked. At that point, I gave up and told myself that I will be fine with a B in those classes. I guess you can say that I "gave in" and just settled for a B like some typical pre-meds. I settled because if I hadn't, and had I continued to beat myself up over those 2 Bs, I would have have lost the motivation to work hard in my other classes.

*****I think the key here is to TRY to be better than the students around you and strive for perfection, but to also understand that it will not be possible in all cases.

I was assuming your post referred to most pre-meds (not just Berkeley students), excluding the ones at elite schools


^^^ I def. agree this is a VERY IMPORTANT point. I see a lot pre-meds getting too caught up in their grades (me included). Gotta focus on your application as whole.....

^^^ How do you think med schools view study abroad? I am thinking about going to the UK for a semester next year, but if I do go abroad I won't be able to continue doing research on certain research projects. Do you think its worth going abroad, if it means sacrificing certain ECs for that semester? (inculding office positions in clubs, research projects, etc).

bluebayou

side note about Intro Russian...it's generally an easy A.

Colleges00701

Also pertaining to my previous question:

I have another question. My school has a study abroad program with the Dalai Lama where students go and spend the summer with Dalai Lama and other buddist monks learning about mental health and Tibetan culture. Here is a descrition of the program:

Its a very unique program that isn't offered at other schools. We have a special program where Buddhist monks come to my school to learn the basic sciences (bio, chem, physics) in return for Emory students going abroad to learn from them. After talking to my advisers about some of my interests, they all recommended that I try this program out. However, from a lot medical school students that I know at Baylor Med, they told me to instead do a summer research program such as Baylor SMART, UTMB-SURP. My question is which one is better. I honestly don't mind doing both programs, but I can't because the dates for both programs coincide.


Let me know what y'all think.

UCLAri

Mike, as always you are awesome. Thanks for this very helpful thread.

MiamiDAP

All are awesome pointers, but one. I agree, that being as far away as possible is not for everyone and definitely not for one who wants to stay no further than 4.5 hrs away from home and having it as criteria #1 (my D.). Distance criteria has worked very well for my D. for choosing UG as well as Med. School.
So, as another pointer I would add, be very sensitive to your own personal preferences, stick to them, it will work out. Nobody knows you better than you.

mom2collegekids

Some schools require students to live on campus. My school requires kids to stay on campus for the first 2 years, which is ridiculous.


Usually these schools have opt-out exceptions....such as if the family lives in town or for economic reasons.



If anyone here goes to an enormous school (student body size), could you comment to dealing with that initial overwhelmed feeling and how one can adjust to it? The two schools I'm seriously considering are huge state schools.

If the school has some "fun days" during the week before classes start, be sure to be on campus during those times. My kids' school has a Week of Welcome (WOW week) that is filled with ice-breaker events to meet new friends. There are also 2 other things that are offered the week before WOW week which involve canoeing and community service activities to make new friends. It also has a "get on board day" where all the clubs set up booths and kids can find out and join various groups. Other schools have similar things.

So, find out what your schools offer before classes start. (Which schools are they?)

wobudong

BDM: Basketball and sweet tea? You forgot Bullocks.

ViggyRam

@mom2collegekids, UT and MSU. UT has 'Gone to Texas' which is the night before classes. I will definitely attend that if I attend UT. I will look up what MSU has if I choose to attend.

johny1

So I used the 10 criteria steps and I'm still not sure how to evaluate my choices... I find that there are pros and cons for each one of the schools, Cornell, Tufts, CMU.

Suppose I put all of the personal preference and comfort aside( liking the atmosphere, distance etc...) which is the best school for getting into a good medical school and over all success in life?

Cornell, Tufts, CMU?

Please answer the question I'm not gonna choose one because you said so ,but I'd love to hear your opinions on which one in order to gather more information and to see things from a diff perspective.

curmudgeon

Colleges, go to Tibet. Plenty of great research going on at Emory.

johny1

Also why does Cornell have such a good reputation as a premed school when only 67% of its premeds get accepted into medical schools.

It seems that cornell has a ridiculous grade deflation and its difficulty jeapordizes a lot of bright kids with high mcat scores.

can anyone elaborate on this?

Colleges00701

^^ Thanks Curm. I just didn't want to be the one of the few kids that doesn't go to these summer research programs, since a lot of kids participate in them. Then again, the Tibet program, and the UK semester abroad are once in a life time opportunities that I shouldn't pass up.

Colleges00701

If by "over all success in life" you mean which school would be better for you if you decide to change fields from medicine to something else, then Cornell would be your best choice. If you are pre-med, where you go to school really doesn't matter, what is more important is what you do at that school. Choose Cornell if you are not absol. sure medicine is what you want to do.

johny1

Regardless of what I do at Cornell their premed acceptance rate into medical school is 67%. Whereas the other schools that I am choosing amongst are CMU (85%) Tufts (75%).

The obvious choice seems like CMU, but I see a lot of people on CC recommending Cornell over these schools. I'm just trying to find out why. Personally I have a hard time of choosing CMU over Cornell even though it seems so easy of a decision based on the percentages I just posted. Cornell's prestige, academic quality, people, and resources lure me in but its med acceptance is too low.