<p>ok…clear things up haha</p>
<p>the MD Anderson symposium is a partnership that Baylor College of Medicine has with our district and presumably a few others in South Texas; we get a tour of several laboratories and the Texas Medical Center and are given assignments, write-ups and are given professors to shadow (my group shadowed someone at the Virginia Harris Research Center who was working on melanoma in fish, or something). It ends in a presentation to the school board, who, with BCM, give us certificates of participation
the top 10 percent of our incoming junior class got to go, just as the top ten percent of our incoming senior class gets to go to DocPrep</p>
<p>My dad’s best friend is the head of Gynecological Oncology at the University of Sto. Tomas in Manila, so learninginprog’s right about my dad (and mom) being able to pull some strings, especially since it was a charity surgery in a private hospital in the philippines (familiar, stringent US operating room protocol is not necessarily entirely enforced).</p>
<p>limabeans, i apologize. i think i may have skewed ur perspective a little; “Symposium” was the official word the District Board used in its documents and certificates, so I felt i was in the right in using that word. But i see that it can understandably cause this kind of confusion. I asked for my chances because I wanted to get candid perspectives on my app stats from people i didn’t know personally (mimicking, to some extent, the unfamiliarity of the adcom). lol learninginprog’s right again, since my essays would probably ease the burden of some of those questions.</p>
<p>hahah and i don’t think my stats are all taht great, i’m not like those kids that get straight 800’s on the SAT subscores and complain about getting a 780 and insist on retaking the test, or those kids who are neck to neck for rank 1 and 2 and have taken 15 AP’s and go heavy on the AIME or USABO/USAMO. THOSE kids amaze (and scare) me haha.</p>
<p>that being said…chances? haha</p>