Thanks to NYU’s announcement that it will be eliminating tuition at its medical school, other institutions are reassessing their costs and graduates’ educational debt, as some experts predicted. Recently, Kaiser followed suit with a free tuition plan for their new medical school in Pasadena. Now, Yale is making overtures as well, lowering the financial burden for needy students by covering more costs with scholarships, instead of loans. Keep your eye out for what will likely be a revolution as more and more medical schools note that to compete for strong applicants, they must offer robust financial support.
Blog Archives
Med Schools Have No Patience for No Patients
For those undergraduates who are starting to think about their medical school applications, I will tell you a secret: One of the biggest weaknesses I advise candidates on is their lack of clinical experience. I’ve seen students with outstanding MCAT scores who did not get into medical school on their first try. They had little or no patient experience.
So, ensure your application has robust clinical activities. Some suggestions:
Scribe
Clinical Care Extender
EMT
Low Income Clinic Volunteer
Hospice Volunteer
Veterinarian’s Assistant (a great way to get hands-on procedural experience)
Phlebotomist
If you are not excited about getting clinical experience, it is time to question your interest in a career in medicine… which is exactly what admissions committees will do if they don’t see that experience :).
Take a look below at my Guru on the Go© Video about this topic.
Flaunting our Failures?
The New York Times had a recent, thought-provoking article for perfectionists, overachievers, those with impostor syndrome, and any combination of the above. “Do you Keep a Failure Resume?” is a great reminder that chronicling our failures (something that isn’t encouraged in medicine) can help us determine what the operational roadblocks were to our successes so that we avoid those obstacles in the future. (Perhaps the issue was lack of preparation or speeding through a project unnecessarily.) Reviewed in retrospect, an “anti-portfolio” is also a good reminder that a failure is sometimes the first step to a success in another realm.
Tags: Failure, New York Times, Portfolio, Resume
Doctors are Crispy
The annual Medscape Burnout Survey is out and the news this year is – again – somber. More than 15,000 physicians were surveyed in 29 specialties, and 44% of the respondents reported feeling burned out. Urologists made a jump up to the number one burnout specialty with a rate of 54% – with neurologists close behind at 53%. My field of emergency medicine was at 48%, compared to 45% last year. (Click here to see the 2018 Medscape Burnout Survey.) Women are more burned out than men at 50% versus 39%.
For the brave of heart, take a look at all of the 2019 results here.
Tags: Medscape, Physician Burnout
The Rank Order List Deadline Is Approaching: Check Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself
This is an important reminder that Wednesday, February 20 at 9pm EST is the rank order list certification deadline. Start now to think about your priorities and specifically, where you will be happiest. Waiting until the last minute and making impulsive changes to your list is not a great idea.
Please make sure to avoid simple missteps in creating your rank order list. Improving written materials and interview skills is important, but all of that work can go down the drain if applicants do not understand basic strategies for the Match. In November of 2015 the NRMP published an article called, “Understanding the Interview and Ranking Behaviors of Unmatched International Medical Students and Graduates in the 2013 Main Residency Match” in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education. The data is especially important for IMGs who represented the majority of unmatched candidates.
Sadly, the authors found that some applicants made strategic errors including the below:
– Not attending all interviews, thus failing to capitalize on every opportunity to market themselves.
– Declining to rank all programs at which they interviewed or not ranking all programs they would be willing to attend.
– Misunderstanding the Match and ranking programs at which applicants did not interview.
– Failing to rank programs based on true preferences or ranking programs based on the perceived likelihood of matching.
Here is an explanation of the Match algorithm. If you do not understand how the Match works, it is absolutely critical that you learn about it to avoid destructive errors.
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. Read more
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