<p>Let’s just say that I’m a gun nut/military buff, and I have some very “interesting” hobbies. One hobby is called airsoft, where people dress up in military clothes and shoot at each other with imitation firearms. It sounds juvenile, but I have taken it to the next level by being a competetent gun technician. I think it requires a lot of engineering, there’s electromagnetics involved (I learned how to solder a MOSFET solid state switching device with a chip and some resistors), mechanics (motor and gear shimming), and Newtonian physics (figuring out the bullet trajectory, adjusting the rifling to combat gravity, etc.)</p>
<p>I am also considering buying an old Russian Mosin Nagant, and building a hand-loading rig to make my own ammunition.</p>
<p>On the one hand, I think the hobby is interesting, and I have taken it to the next level. On the other hand, I am afraid it might make me look like a Cho Seung Hi type. Note that I am not REPLACING my other ECs (Research and volunteering) with this, I thought it would just be something interesting that I MIGHT bring up in an interview, if it doesn’t make me look like a freak of course. Your thoughts?</p>
<p>Is it the nature of the hobby, or the fact that I am Asian and like guns?</p>
<p>I am also a film buff, would that work better in an interview? I don’t want to only talk about my academic stuff without touching upon what I am like as a person.</p>
<p>I’d say that even if it was just the nature of the hobby, but you also brought up a good point about race. (I’m also Asian.) And sure, I would think that would help a lot.</p>
<p>The way I see things, paintball would be fine because the paint lends a cartoony feel to it all. Cartoons are acceptable.</p>
<p>Once you start taking the cartoons out of things and adding pseudo-military clothing, imitation firearms. and hand-manufacturing ammunition, it starts sounding much different to me. In my opinion, you’re running the risk of making people think of Cho Seung-hui, and no medical school wants to be in BU’s position right now. I’m going to agree with BDM and suggest that you not talk about this during your interviews.</p>
<p>If you like it, talk about it. Play up the technical side and how you apply theory to the concrete. </p>
<p>If an institution of higher learning cannot accept people because they have odd hobbies, it is probably not the type of institution I would want to have trying to define how I think!</p>
<p>Seems like this might bring up some questions about the kind of person you are (even if it shouldn’t). It might make them question your “fit” for medicine and they may go looking for other indicators of antisocial bx at your interview… Unfortunately, if they look hard enough, they’re bound to find some social mistake you made at some point in the interview process that some current student saw or heard and if they do, they may misinterpret your otherwise insignificant social slip-up and decide to pass by you for another, similarly qualified but generally “safer” applicant.</p>
<p>Personally, I think that a psychopath would have to cross many, many barriers to be able to get a medical school interview in the first place. But if I use the word “paintball,” most laypeople won’t tell the difference. I won’t throw it in the interviewer’s face, but if I get asked what I do in my spare time, it may come up in the bottom of my list. “I am a minor film buff, enjoying old classics like Taxi Driver, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and Seven Samurai. I am also very technically inclined; I can make websites, and fix broken computers and paintball guns.”</p>
<p>Also the MOSFETs I installed, I can just describe how I installed it without actually telling them what I used it for.</p>
<p>That’s what you would think. I am no psychiatrist (ha ha ha!), I am not calling him a psychopath, and he is innocent until proven guilty, but I bet many people, especially at BU, are wondering if and how someone who did what Philip Markoff is alleged to have done could slip by a medical school adcom. If the people reading applications, conducting interviews, or evaluating files are hypersensitive to this sort of thing, then mentioning your hobby is not going to be helpful come application time.</p>
<p>I didn’t know who that guy was, and just googled his name. Wow. Yeah, I totally should not bring up anything gun related, if only out of respect for people who might have been affected by him.</p>
<p>I thought it was odd that you didn’t get my reference to BU in post #9, so I explained a bit more. It’s not that you shouldn’t talk about anything related to firearms, it’s that you need to be aware that because of some recent events, some people may view things as: any combination of hopeful med school application + interest in guns = stay away!</p>
<p>Wow you guys seem to be really close minded about this. The guy likes guns so adcoms will automatically think he’s more likely to shoot every patient instead of helping them.</p>
<p>You haven’t met closed minded until you meet your med school interviewers, who are generally very traditional and conservative (not in the political sense but in general). This is akin to listing video games on your app. Legit hobby? Yes. Something med school adcoms are going to value? No.</p>