Well. One week from now I will officially be a college graduate!
I just finished filling out my AMCAS application the other day, but can't submit it until June 1st
The hardest part of the application process was actually deciding which schools to apply to!
It was really tedious/annoying typing in all the basic information, and then going through and inserting EVERY SINGLE college and AP class I've EVER taken...even though they are going to get a copy of my transcript! But it must be done...
My personal statement was a breeze, since I'd already written it last year for the health careers evaluation committee.
Hm...for one second lets pretend that people actually read this blog. If I was a freshman or in high school and I was going to apply to medical school what would I want to know?
1. TAKE AP CHEMISTRY. Biggest regret of college was that I didn't take AP chem in high school. It would have made my freshman year SO much better!!
2.If your college tells you medical schools don't like it when you use AP Bio credit, I'm pretty sure they're lying. I've not seen ANY school that doesn't say it will give you credit for anything your undergrad institution gives you.
With that said, I recommend one semester of college bio, even if you got a 5 on your AP, just to make sure/refresh your memory/learn a few new things/sometimes if you're a nerd like me Bio is just FUN!
3. Take several upper-level bio classes. This is an unwritten requirement anyways, and absolutely required if you AP out of intro bio
4. Little known fact: most med schools require a letter of evaluation from a health careers committee. At Cornell, this meant submitting a personal statement and resume-type form, and having an interview with a faculty member (randomly assigned). The faculty member writes a letter of evaluation (not recommendation...though it is supposed to cast you in a positive light) and then there is a committee of important people who edit the letter for consistency across the letters. They also collect your recommendations from faculty members and put all these letters together in a packet and send them to AMCAS (American Medical College Admissions Service- an online common application) and AMCAS sends them to all the places you tell it to submit your application to.
5. The above process is sort of annoying, but necessary. If your school has a committee and you don't use it, medical schools will think you are weird and not like you.
6. 90% of what I learned my 4 years of college has had nothing to do with academics, other than academics created a stressful environment which sped along all my other life skills-learning that I did. I learned how to study, how to make friends, how to be a friend, how to function as a human being, how to fix problems, how to stop creating (as many) problems, how to realize that you're an idiot and do something about it, how to realize you're an idiot and not do anything about it- then rinse and repeat...the best thing you can do is find a balance of meeting people and spending a LOT of time with them, and doing your work. When you graduate even if your GPA is as pathetic as mine, you will be glad you made the friends you did rather than spend your life in the library. Who remembers sitting in the stacks reading a textbook? I don't know. But I know I'm gonna remember sledding down the slope. That slope is a 70 degree angle. It was fun. And we could see the people in the library studying.
7. So back to medical school related things...
So you log into AMCAS, you type in all the stupid things...name, parents names and jobs and ages and siblings and all their info (Why do medical schools care if I have a brother in high school or not? I mean, I love the kid, but who else cares?)
Then you do that annoying thing where you type in ALL your classes, and click through a bunch of questions...all very easy silliness
Then there is a section where you enter every medical and non-medical thing you have done since freshman year that could POSSIBLY make ANYONE on an admissions committee think you're cool or important or talented or a nice person.
Then you submit your personal statement
Then they ask you to choose schools from a list
Then you scramble for your MSAR book and say to yourself "crap...where am I gonna apply?"
Then you will call your parents to ask them, since they know everything.
The following conversation will ensue:
Father Dearest: "Danielle, you have to apply to at least one school you're almost certain you're going to get into!"
Danielle: "Dad, there isn't any school I'm that sure I'm going to get into. Med school isn't like college like that. There's schools in Alabama that have lower GPA requirements...but I don't want to go to school in Alabama!"
Father Dearest: "What if your future husband is in Alabama?"
Danielle: "I don't want to marry someone from Alabama!!" (No offense to anyone from there...it's just...a very different world in the South and I don't have a particular desire to be a part of it. :-D)
Father Dearest: "What if your husband is someone from New York who didn't get into school anywhere else?"
Danielle: "I don't want to marry someone who didn't get in anywhere else either!!!"
Father Dearest: *laughs at me*
so...that wasn't much help
so I proceeded to list 7 schools....5 in NY, 1 in PA, and 1 in California, just for fun, because THAT would be a sign from God that my husband was at medical school...if the only school I got into was as far away from home as I could possibly be and still be in the continental US.
So now the application is just sitting there in limbo land waiting for June 1st.
Now. I am both super excited and super depressed about the approach of that day
because it means the end of THE most amazing for years of my life. I have decided to return to Cornell to work with Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship as an intern-sort-of-thing in the fall, until December...and I'll go to Kenya in January. So I'm going to get to be back here with no classes, which i'm psyched about.
but I'm gonna miss my Heidi! We've been best friends and roommates since sophomore year, I told her that I didn't know if I could survive at Cornell without her, I've never done it before!
So we'll see how that works out.
