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Talented Pre-Meds: Leverage your Money

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Recently I’ve heard from a few fortunate Insider medical school applicant clients who were not only accepted to several medical schools, but also were offered scholarship money to attend. They’ve asked me this: Is there a way to leverage the money I’ve been granted at one medical school to get funding at another?

Well, it’s worth a try.

As long as you’re diplomatic, contacting other medical schools, advising them of your scholarship, and requesting a match might help, although I’d suggest having low expectations. Still, if done politely, it cannot hurt.

In a different vein, a sometimes-successful technique I’ve encountered is to use the scholarship award as a means of obtaining an interview or trying to get off the wait list at another school. Send a note to your wait listed schools to let them know of your promised funds. After all, if you’re competitive enough to earn a scholarship at one place, you should be competitive enough to be accepted at another.

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Match Day and Financial Security

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First, congratulations to all of my residency applicant advisees: I am thrilled by the enormous success the Match brought to these candidates in a variety of fields. If you have not yet updated me, please send me an email.

Second, now that residency applicants have a professional plan for their next few years, they also need a financial plan. You could choose to work many fewer years, work in an environment you prefer, or go to part-time if you start to make good financial decisions right now.

CrispyDoc.com is a financial literacy blog for the newly minted physician. (Yes, you.) Here’s a recent blog entry about how to simply start to manage your financial portfolio without a financial advisor (even if that portfolio is tiny or you have significant debt). You can use Dr. CrispyDoc’s advice and call up Vanguard or Fidelity (I get no kickback from them) and tell them you need help setting up what you have read. Whala! You are already making good decisions that will earn you compound interest and give you more control as you move through your career.

Here are more posts from Crispy Doc on finances, early retirement for doctors, raising a family, career choice, hedge funds, Costco and more.

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An Offer You Can’t Refuse

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I speak to a few lucky medical school and residency applicants who are asked to write their own letters of recommendation. If you have this opportunity, first, realize that it is not unethical to write your own letter if you’re asked to do so. If you’d like to explore the scruples of this issue, take a look at this New York Times ethicist column about this topic.

The mistake I see candidates make in these situations is that applicants don’t write strong enough letters for themselves because they feel awkward about showcasing their accomplishments fully. If you have the opportunity to write your own letter, craft a glowing one. Be effusive and full-throated in your remarks about yourself. Remember that the letter-writer can choose to tone down the recommendation if she doesn’t agree. But if she does, you’ve utilized an opportunity fully and bolstered your candidacy tremendously.

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Bias in Residency Evaluations

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There’s a scary, but important, recent article in the Journal of Graduate Medical Education by Mueller et al called “Gender Differences in Attending Physicians’ Feedback to Residents: A Qualitative Analysis.” As you might have guessed, male and female residents were given – on average – very different types of evaluations from faculty. Here’s a link to the study and a podcast with an interview of the physician-authors.

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Pre-Meds (and Others): Don’t Make a Promise you Simply Cannot Keep

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My mom told me an interesting story recently: She is a retired lawyer – not in medicine – but her anecdote resonated with me:

Years ago, a legal job applicant indicated on his resume that he spoke two languages, in addition to English. Unplanned, the interviewer to whom the candidate was assigned also spoke those languages and proceeded to speak to him in those languages during the interview, only to find that the candidate spoke both poorly at best.

As you can imagine, the applicant was not hired.

I frequently see applicants indicate on their curriculum vitae or their AMCASes that they speak languages fluently. If you do speak a language in addition to English, good for you and great for your candidacy. However, if you indicate that you are fluent, please be ready for your faculty interviewer to conduct your entire medical school interview in that language if s/he pleases.

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About Dr. Michelle Finkel

Dr. Michelle Finkel

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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Listen to Dr. Finkel’s interview on The Visible Voices podcast: 

 

Listen to Dr. Finkel’s interview on the White Coat Investor podcast:

Listen to Dr. Finkel’s interview on the FeminEm podcast: