Here’s an interesting article by Dr. Pauline Chen on medical student grades. In reading the article, residency applicants should reflect on how important the content of their letters of recommendation is, especially in the setting of medical school grades that may be inflated or simply inaccurate. The 2012 NRMP Program Director Survey (yes, I do mention that document a lot because it’s so helpful) supports the importance of letters, as well, with statistics. Make sure your letters are very strong; remember that mediocre letters should not be a part of your residency package.
Inaccuracies in Medical Student Grades Translate into Residency Application Strategy
For IMGs Participating in the 2014 Match
International Medical Graduates who are planning to participate in this coming year’s match should note that the ECFMG (Educational Commission for Foreign Medical Graduates) ERAS Support Services will not longer accept paper documents. All of an applicant’s supporting documents must be submitted electronically. For more information about how different documents (transcripts, photographs, letters of recommendation) should be submitted, click here.
Medical School Applicants: Avoid Missteps in the Admissions Process
Check out my recent, featured interview on the Varsity Tutor blog. Note some of the biggest mistakes candidates make in applying to medical school, the single most important thing medical school applicants should focus on, and why mediocre letters of recommendation are actually bad ones.
Expert (Goofy) Writing Tips
This entertaining list of writing don’ts offers a comic break for applicants who are working feverishly on their medical school personal statements. The rules are based on the wit and wisdom of the late New York Times’ William Safire and the copywriter Frank LaPosta Visco. Enjoy!
- A writer must not shift your point of view.
- Always pick on the correct idiom.
- Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
- Always be sure to finish what
- Avoid alliteration. Always.
- Avoid archaeic spellings.
- Avoid clichés like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
- Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
- Be more or less specific.
- Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
- Contractions aren’t necessary.
- Do not use hyperbole; not one in a million can do it effectively.
- Don’t indulge in sesquipedalian lexicological constructions.
- Don’t never use no double negatives.
- Don’t overuse exclamation marks!!
- Don’t repeat yourself, or say again what you have said before.
- Don’t use commas, that, are not, necessary.
- Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
- Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
- Employ the vernacular.
- Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
- Eschew obfuscation.
- Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
- Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
- Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
- Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
- Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
- Hopefully, you will use words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
- If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
- If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
- It behooves you to avoid archaic expressions.
- It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
- Never use a big word when a diminutive alternative would suffice.
- No sentence fragments.
- One should never generalize.
- One-word sentences? Eliminate.
- Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
- Parenthetical words however must be enclosed in commas.
- Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of ten or more words, to their antecedents.
- Placing a comma between subject and predicate, is not correct.
- Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.
- Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
- Profanity sucks.
- Subject and verb always has to agree.
- Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
- The adverb always follows the verb.
- The passive voice is to be avoided.
- Understatement is always best.
- Use the apostrophe in it’s proper place and omit it when its not needed.
- Use youre spell chekker to avoid mispeling and to catch typograhpical errers.
- Who needs rhetorical questions?
- Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
I Wish I Had Known
I was recently speaking to a colleague who graduated with his MD from UCSF and his MPH from Harvard. He’s a successful, practicing physician, and we were discussing some advice he had offered an undergraduate acquaintance who is pursuing medicine.
My colleague had advised the college student to ensure she gets to know faculty: During his undergraduate years at Stanford, my colleague had gotten acquainted with a few professors by inviting them to lunch. He had to call one or two several times before they met with him! But once they did, my colleague’s opportunities really expanded. One of the professors in particular realized my colleague’s potential and good nature and offered him a position on an honor committee and a strong medical school recommendation.
I wish someone had advised me early to get to know faculty. It turned out okay for me but not without having to do some hard thinking about whom I was going to ask for faculty recommendations. Acquainting yourself with faculty early in your academic career can afford you research and leadership opportunities. Of course, it can also help you with those much-needed letters of recommendation.
Dr. Finkel is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Medical School. On completing her residency at Harvard, she was asked to stay on as faculty at Harvard Medical School and spent five years teaching at the world-renowned Massachusetts General Hospital. She was appointed to the Assistant Residency Director position for the Harvard Affiliated Emergency Medicine Residency where she reviewed countless applications, personal statements and resumes.
