What "They" Look For? The Why Doctor? Theme The Why Exceptional? Theme The Why Qualified? Theme Editing Checklist
WhyQualified?
Theme 3: Why I Am a Qualified Person
The last major theme dealswith your experience and qualifications both for attending medical school andfor becoming a good doctor. Having direct hospital or research experience isalways the best evidence you can give. If you have none, then consider whatother experience you have that is related. Have you been a volunteer? Have you tutored English as a Second Language? Were you a teaching assistant? The rule tofollow here is: If you have done it, use it.
Hospital/ClinicalExperience
Direct experience withpatients is probably the best kind to have in your essay. But the importantthing to remember here is that any type or amount of experience you have hadshould be mentioned, no matter how insignificant you feel it is. Here is an exampleof an essay by an HIV counselor and one by an applicantwith ER experience.
Research Experience
A word of caution: Do notfocus solely on your research topic; your essay will become impersonal at bestand positively dull at worst. Watch out for overuse of what non-science typesrefer to as "medical garble." If it is necessary for the descriptionof your project, then, of course, you have no choice. But including medicalterms in your essay just because you are able to will not impress anyone. Thisapplicant, for example, delves into the use of scientific and medicalterms, but also also spends enough time away from them to reveal his ownpersonal, non-technical voice.
Unusual MedicalExperience
Even if you have notvolunteered X number of hours a week at a clinic or spent a term on a researchproject, you might still have medical experience that counts: the time you caredfor your sick grandmother or the day you saved the man at the next table fromchoking in a restaurant. It does not even matter if you were unsuccessful(maybe, despite all your valiant efforts, the man at the next table did notsurvive), if it was meaningful to you then it is relevant; in fact, these failedefforts might be even more compelling. Thisapplicant, on the other hand, deals with a fascinating success story:The writer was forced to become a doctor by default in a village in Honduras fora summer, even though she had no formal training, no experience, and her onlysupply was "a $15 Johnson & Johnson kit."
Non-medical Experience
Your experience does noteven have to be medically related to be relevant. Many successful applicantscite non-medical volunteer experience as evidence of their willingness to helpand heal the human race. In fact, almost every one of our essayists cited havingbeen either a volunteer or a tutor at some point in their lives.
SampleEssay One
Note: This essayappears unedited for instructional purposes. Essays edited by EssayEdge aresubstantially improved. For samples of EssayEdge editing, please clickhere.
High School Teacher with AIDS;SCID/Genetics Research Experience; HIV Counselor
Before I found out that my highschool Spanish teacher was HIV-positive, AIDS was not much more than a bunch ofstatistics to me. The disease, its course, and the people afflicted with itseemed alien to my life-as distant as the continent from which the virus wassupposed to have sprung. Then Mr. T. stopped coming to school. When hereappeared a few months later to wish us well on the advanced placement exam,his face looked sallow. His voice, once a thunderous bass that rumbled in classand reverberated down the hallway, was weak and thin. Seeing my teacher lookingso unfamiliar was my shocking introduction to AIDS. I felt as if I were in thepresence of a stranger, this mysterious disease, who was insulting Mr. T. rightin front of my eyes. I wanted to know who this stranger was.
I entered college, believing thatbiology could explain to me why life's processes went awry. I learned that thebody is exquisitely complex, but I was reassured by the underlying theme ofsystems. Even if I didn't know all the molecules and connections, there seemedno denying that a fundamental order existed.
From physiology to cell biology tomolecular genetics, my classes presented smaller and smaller systems to explainthe origins of diseases. Finally, in genes, with their innocuous four letteralphabet, I felt I was learning the foundation of it all. If biology providedthe keys to understanding life, then genetics must be the master key (if only wecould see some of the doors we were trying to open). During two summers in aresearch laboratory at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, I helped trackdown the gene causing X-linked severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID).
Even though AIDS and SCID are verydifferent diseases (SCID is exclusively hereditary), each compromises the body'sdefense mechanisms against foreign pathogens. I felt this was a significantconnection. In SCID, I was meeting a distant cousin of AIDS. Learning aboutcommon themes of immunodeficiency disorders, such as the perils of opportunisticinfections, helped me to begin to understand what had happened to Mr. T. In theSCID laboratory, and in classroom seminars on infectious diseases, science washelping me demystify disease.
In the same year that Mr. T. becameill, my grandfather died during bypass surgery and my father underwentchemotherapy and radiation treatment for colon cancer. Since then, disease hashad a human face for me. To better understand how people deal with disease orthe fear of disease, I've become a volunteer counselor in an HIV clinic.
Speaking to people who come in forfree testing, I've found that discussing HIV, getting the scary words (andacronyms) out in the open, is a way for many people to release their anxiety.Through expression in their own words, they make the disease real, which helpsthem to see that it is also preventable. Then, they often take the next step,making specific goals to maintain their health, whether they are HIV-negative orpositive. What science in class and lab did for me in confronting the difficultissues of AIDS, talk does for my clients.
As an HIV counselor in an anonymousclinic, I feel both the potential of my role and its limits. I can't go homewith my clients to remind them to keep condoms under the bed, but I can helpthem make a plan-something that could stay with them much longer than theinformation I offer. At the end of one session, one client surprised me with hisresponse to a question I had asked: "What do you think you'll do with theHIV information?" There was a silence in the counseling room as the clientpondered, but I recall sensing the comfort of the silence. This was a sessionthat seemed to be producing the potential for a breakthrough (not every sessiondoes), and I waited patiently. He responded, "I think I'll ask mygirlfriend to use her own needles." Then, the client thanked me for havingasked the question.
I was thrown. My client proposed astrategy for reducing his HIV risk, but he didn't address what was likely hismain issue-heroin use. Should I validate his plan? In effect, that's what I did,because I didn't challenge the drug issue. When he left the clinic, Ipractically wanted to follow him out the door. I wondered if I would ever seehim again and be able to ask him how his plan was going. I wondered if he wouldultimately seek help for his drug use. My supervisor reminded me that I had donemy job as an HIV counselor. I had helped the client make a plan; he had eventhanked me for it.
And I can thank him in return. Hereminded me that although I have worked to understand disease in the classroom,the laboratory, and the clinic, I still have much to learn about caring for allaspects of a patient's health. I am eager to continue the learning process inthe New Pathway Program at Harvard Medical School.
SampleEssay Two
Radiation OncologyVolunteer; Biochemical Lab Experience; Neurosurgery Research; ER Volunteer;English Language Tutor; Student Advisor; Community Service
"Carl, the womanwe're about to meet will receive her first palliative treatment today,"said Dr. A., an Attending in Radiation Oncology. He continued to explain hercase as we walked briskly down the hallways of the hospital. I followed him intothe radiation treatment room to meet the patient and learn about the procedurewhich, sadly, would not eradicate her disease. Since then, I have met with himweekly throughout this summer to learn about radiation oncology and medicine ingeneral. Through experiences such as these, I have learned much about theprofession of medicine. I want to become a physician for the intellectualchallenges and rewards that come from helping others.
I first became interestedin medical research by working in a biochemical engineering laboratory at MIT.For over two years I explored the medically related field, biotechnology. I haveled experiments involving fermentation bioreactors and trained two inexperiencedundergraduates. Recently, I presented a poster entitled "Effect of Antifoamduring Filtration of Recombinant Bacterial Broth" at a New England Societyfor Industrial Microbiology colloquium. Enjoying the biomedical rather thanengineering aspects of the work, I have shifted my career interests to medicine.
Last summer, I expanded myinterest in medicine by working for the Neurosurgery Department at Brigham andWomen's Hospital. After a short training period, I worked independently on threeresearch projects: Clonality analysis of schwannomas, clonality analysis of amultiple meningioma, and the loss of heterozygosity (LOH) screening of pituitaryadenomas. I developed a strong interest in my work when I observed my mentor,Dr. Peter Black, remove brain tumors in the operating room. After the initialshock and amazement of seeing the exposed brain of a conscious patient, Ithought more about the connections between this clinical work and my research.While my pro