 Hey guys, let's settle in and talk a bit. I want to discuss a little bit about like the crackling tension surrounding medical school admissions. Stick around. Hi, I'm Dr. Josie. This is Write Your Acceptance. I work with students on all aspects of their medical school and dental school application for personal statement to interview problems. So A to Z. I work on focusing the application to elevate the student's message to really get across the most compelling, crafting your most compelling, compelling essays so that they really kind of get a sense of who you are, your values, and what you bring to the table. So if that is what you're interested in and you kind of want to learn a little bit more, definitely grab your free spot on my calendar where we can talk about how I work with students and kind of fit. So today I want to talk a little bit about the actual kind of admissions ecosystem, kind of, you know, emotional relationship that students have with this process. I have the great privilege of working with pre-dental and pre-medical students during the admissions process. And so after working with hundreds of students in medical school, in residency, beyond at this point, I really kind of have the great privilege of being on the inside with these students, kind of walking with them emotionally and kind of, you know, sometimes physically to throughout this process. I love working with my students. We nurture a beautiful, collaborative, a supportive environment, not just for, you know, each other, but also for their peers, right? So we kind of come together in a very interesting, collaborative, supportive community, and I feel very, very fortunate to work with students in that way. On this channel, I've really tried to stay in my lane, in my kind of zone of expertise, which is really the writing and the messaging, how to help students craft their message, their pitch, so that they kind of not only stand out, that's super, super important, but also that they feel like their best self, their most elevated self, with their values and their assets and strengths are clearly and compellingly conveyed on the application, so that when admissions committees are reviewing their application, they truly get a kind of beautifully written, a composed and curated application so that all aspects of the student is conveyed. It's not just about editing, or moving a comma, or changing this paragraph, it is about building it together, crafting these pieces of texts, which in many ways hold pieces of your soul and your heart because the experiences, a lot of times tend to be so personal and so kind of transformational in certain moments in your journey. With a PhD in writing and literature, I have taught as a university faculty, I have presented at pre-medical conferences, I've built pre-med personal statement book camps and workshops for local universities, and so I've really kind of worked very, very hands-on what the kind of discourse, what the kind of language and conversation is that should be kind of considered when you are writing these pieces of application texts. My guidance has helped students with a low MCAT score, 500, get four acceptances, a 502, get two acceptances and invitations to two bridge programs with guaranteed acceptance should they get ex-GPA, right? I've had students who've received a full ride to Mayo Clinic solely on their personal statement. They didn't have to write any other extra scholarship. I've had students who were re-applicants with, in my opinion, very, very stellar GPAs and MCATs who really weren't showcasing who they were, a resounding number of acceptances that second time around when we started working together. So there is this kind of qualitative aspect of the messaging that you decide to kind of create to package everything you've done so much already, right? Volunteering, clinical, GPA, all the courses you need, all the MCAT prep and Tate in sitting for the exam. And so you're at this kind of one yard line, right? To use poor sports metaphors, but it's almost the beginning of a new race because you have all of this archived experience. How do you package that? How do you write that on paper to really convey passion, purpose, commitment, resilience, right, values? And so a lot of times students will kind of fall short. We'll do all the work and we'll have all of the experiences but we'll fall short from really elevating their language so that their purpose, commitment, and passion are conveyed. So let's chat about why getting into medical school is so difficult, right? If you Google acceptance rates are anywhere between 37 to 41%, so less than half of students that are applying are getting accepted into medical schools. So competition is high for sure. But after working with hundreds of students, this is kind of my insight and my offering to you that I see kind of cropping up those types of mistakes or kind of missteps that I think students can avoid. First, do not focus on feeling helpless. Something that I see in the personal statements constantly is this feeling of helplessness, right? And you share a story or you share an experience and you wanted to do more or in that moment you didn't know what you could do or you couldn't do anything in that moment. And while it could be a very formative experience into your why medicine and you wanna have that, you wanna make sure that once you are writing, especially your personal statement because you're stitching experiences together, when you are writing your personal statement and you've picked your maybe two or three kind of patient-centric stories, make sure that the lessons tend to be different, right? That your aha moments or those kind of like reflective, critical thinking aspects of your personal statement are different because I can't tell you how many times I will start with a student who already has a personal statement drafted and then I'm kind of a forensic reading of the personal statement will show three patient-centric stories and in each time their takeaway was I wanted to do more and I felt helpless that I couldn't do what I wanted to do to help this patient. And so you're not a physician yet, you will be, but you're not yet, you're not expected to heal this patient or cure this patient or do whatever, right? So the helpless factor, yes, it's important for you as a realization, but it doesn't kind of play as strongly on the page to move your why medicine the way I think a lot of students kind of use it or borrow from it. So you wanna kind of avoid feeling helpless on the page, let's say, focus on what you did, focus on how you adapted to their needs, how you cared for their kind of emotional state or how you went above and beyond to find the research resources that they didn't have before. So figure out kind of how you can turn a helpless situation into an active moment that really kind of solidifies your why medicine. And I wanna kind of double down on this a little bit and say this one more time. You want to focus on how experiences, how experiences have advanced solidified your kind of why medicine. A lot of times another kind of misstep and it's not a blatant mistake, but a lot of times a kind of a misstep I see in personal statements and kind of longer secondary essays is that they will, a student will share a patient's story and then they'll add a line at the end that says, this experience solidified my calling to medicine and they'll move on to a different story, but they didn't say how. You only tell a story, this isn't, in many ways it has creative elements, personal statements and the secondary essays and even some activities for sure. I'll kind of link above a couple of videos to see how I bring in critical elements and creative elements, but you're not just telling a story and then moving on, you only should be in my opinion, giving raw material these anecdotal kind of, as if you have a camera over your shoulder moments in your personal statement or in your whatever essay that you're writing to then give you raw material to explain that you're a Y medicine, how this advanced your Y medicine, a story and a line that says, and this solidified and then you move on, you kind of have a missed opportunity to really, really convey your Y medicine in that moment as clearly and as strongly as possible. I don't teach you medicine, but I do solely focus on teaching you, working with you to elevate your message so that your Y medicine is as strongly and as compelling as possible so that you become the next generation of physicians. My focus is on your message, is on what's driving you, is on getting that as crystal clear as possible so that you are almost as if might get hand in the moment in the room when the ad comes or reading your application. You want that vibrancy in every text in your application. My zone of expertise is writing, is how you craft a story, is how you kind of stitch together as if it were a quilt, different experiences and all of these different experiences, you want them to create a bigger, one holistic tapestry of you, right? And so there so much goes into actually writing these texts for your application so that it shows a well-rounded student, a student who has taken opportunities that have offered growth and challenged the student but also has kind of brought them to a wiser, more kind of empowered sense of who they are and how they're going to serve medicine. So there's a lot going on. It's not just, oh, well, I did this and then I did this shadowing and that shadowing and this clinical experience and this volunteering and that's my Y medicine. Could be for some, not for me. You really wanna strategically curate your message so that no one questions whether or not this is your calling, right? Whether or not your passion and purpose are wavering. Having said that, your writing has a ceiling if your experiences are not top notch, right? And so I have on this channel a couple of testimonial interviews where you can kind of hear from my students and kind of learn about their process and get inspired by their journey, hopefully, that is the goal. But you have kind of a sense of students kind of thinking about how they choose in those interviews, students kind of sharing how they chose their pre-medical experiences. And so some of them most kind of beautiful because I get attached to essays, some of the most beautiful essays tend to be students who are sharing very intentional experiences who really thought through what they were going to kind of devote years to clinically and when they were volunteering and in their extracurriculars. So you really wanna think about it. It's not just the artifice of the writing. It's not just a great attention grabber and a transitional topic sentence. So all those things are very important when you work on that but you wanna make sure that at the heart of your story is heart in your story, right? Does that make sense? So you wanna make sure that you are really choosing experiences that drive you, that get you closer to your why medicine in a very intentional way. My favorite students are the students that say they suck at writing. They hate writing. They haven't taken a writing class since freshman year or they opted out of writing and they never kind of looked back. And so you don't have to be great at writing. We have that, right? We handle that together. But you want to be kind of clear on how this is a kind of lifelong pursuit, right? And our kind of work together, especially for students that I work with is a conversation. It's a back and forth. It's not just editing to make sure that you don't have sentence fragments or add a topic sentence here or this is not clearly stated or kind of clarify that we really kind of build your messaging together. And that has strategy that has commitment from me to you as a partner in your application. But it also has a sense that you're not alone in this process. This kind of the pre-med grind is a grind indeed, right? It could feel overwhelming and isolated. And for students I work with, they don't have that kind of fear gnawing at them because they're not alone. For any question that they have, we kind of work through that together. And so the second or third, I don't count, misstep that I would, and this is like the last soap boxy kind of, step I'll tell you or misstep I'll tell you, but like any kind of lifelong pursuit medicine is a calling. It goes beyond a profession, right? You would know that more than anyone as someone who's invested in this, in such an early stage in your career. But it's not a life plan. And so you want to make sure that you seek your happiness, that you're not just kind of moving the goalpost. Oh, I have these pre-med classes. I have this volunteering. I have to do this shadowing. I'll be happy later. I'll do kind of something that drives me. I'll take that photography class later or I'll join that yoga club later. I don't have time right now. Don't kind of kick your happiness down the kind of future road because in many ways, and I talk to students, former students of mine who are in med school or in residency or in a research fellow right now or physicians at this point, practicing physicians, you never get unbusy, right? So life is not going to magically just create the space for you to do other things. But if you integrate what makes you happy, what fuels your soul, what kind of nourishes and refuels you to then come back to this calling that is all consuming in so many ways. That will kind of be evident in your application as well. If you're intentional and very honest with your experiences, a lot of times those experiences will be wrapped into the application in a way that could create a unique quality in your application and help you stand out. Thanks for listening to my coffee talk. Oh, without coffee, I am over caffeinated already. But thanks so much for stopping by and kind of getting a more deeper sense into kind of my work and my work philosophy and how I kind of connect with students, which is my number one goal as a professional in this space. So if you are interested in learning a little bit more about how I work with students, if you're kind of starting the process, definitely get on my calendar for your free call. It's in the description below and we'll talk soon. I'll see ya, take care.