 What is up guys? Karma Medic here and welcome back to another dose. If you don't know who I am, my name is Nasser. I'm a second year medical student studying at Kings College London. As you can see from the title of today's video, I'm going to be talking about a subject that is a little bit difficult for me to talk about. It definitely brings up some of the more sad memories of my life. So I'm going to spend the first half of this video talking about my life story, what it is that happened to me in my rejections in medical school, both in 2013 and then again in 2017. And then I'm going to spend the second half of the video just talking about rejection in general, how it is that I think you can deal with it and what you should do to move on and better yourself and ensure that you can get into medical school the next time that you apply. I've also been receiving quite a few messages from you guys recently telling me that you've been rejected from all the medical schools that you applied to. I know how difficult of a time that is. I've been through the rejection process twice, so I understand I really do. And I know that at the time when I was rejected by medical school, it would have definitely helped me if I could sit down and watch a video about someone else's perspective, someone else's story and realize that I'm not alone and that I'm not going through this by myself. So first things first, what is my story? What is it that happened to me? So I first applied to medical school back in 2013 when I was finishing high school and I only applied to the UK at the time. I applied to Imperial, Edinburgh, Kings and Cambridge. I only applied to the most prestigious schools that I could think of because I was an idiot and I got flat out rejections from Edinburgh, Imperial and Kings and that really sucked. That was really difficult at the time. I just, I didn't know what to do. All of my friends were getting their acceptances for like engineering, for maths, for history, for politics, whatever it is. And I was sitting there with absolutely zero interviews. I hadn't even attended the interviews yet, you know? When you get rejected before the interview stage it's like they didn't even give you a chance and that was a really tough time. I did however manage to secure one interview at Cambridge and I was really, really excited for that but I just did not know how to prepare for it. No one had told me the importance of preparing for the interview. No one had told me how to prepare for the interview and I was just so, so, so lost. And what I actually did to prepare for my Cambridge medical school interview was memorize my biology textbook. Pretty horrible idea, I know. And that's actually part of why I started this YouTube channel in the first place. I know that I was so lost when I was going through the whole medical school application process and I wish that I had someone to tell me, hey, this is what you should study, this is what you should focus on and this is what you need to do. But I didn't have that and so obviously my Cambridge interview was just shambles. I felt such a big sense of confusion. All my life up until that point had been so structured, so well planned. I always knew what I was doing and now here I was not going to the next natural step of my life which was to get into medical school. So really when I say this I mean it so wholeheartedly I know what it feels like to have been rejected from medical schools. I know that feeling of rejection and the feeling of trying so hard and working so hard towards a goal and it not ending up manifesting in a positive result. It's a tough time, it really is a tough time. I know that and it might seem like the end of the world at the moment but it's really not. There's a lot of things you can do from here. So the reason that I think I didn't end up getting into medical school the first time I applied was because of my UK cap. No one had told me that this exam is crucial for you to get into medical school. I think I did about a week, a week and a half of practice for the UK cap before I took it and that didn't help me in my chances of getting into medical school. My dad had also told me make sure you apply to some schools in Canada and at the time I thought that was the stupidest idea why would I apply to schools in Canada if I know that I'm going to get into medical school in the UK and of course what actually ended up happening is that the decision to apply to Canadian schools saved me in the end but of course I didn't know that at the time. After I had gone through the period of feeling extremely bad feeling really sorry for myself and just you know being down from being rejected from medical school I knew that I now had to start making some decisions, making some plans in order to move on from this and so I basically had two options at this point. I was either going to take a gap year and spend a year working on building up my CV, retaking my UK cap, getting as much medical experience as I can to make sure that I am going to be the best medical school applicant when I apply for the next year or I was going to go to a Canadian school and do an undergraduate degree and then apply for medicine as a graduate student. Now at the time I really didn't want to slow down my momentum. The idea of not being in university while all of my friends are in university and just taking a full year off from studying in a structured environment was really really scary for me. I decided that the best thing for me to do was to go to a Canadian school for an undergraduate degree and in the end this turned out to be the absolute best decision that I made. I couldn't see it at the time and at the time I was so upset and I was so sad that I wasn't in medical school I was devastated that I had to do this undergraduate degree before I even got to apply again and looking back it was actually one of the best things that ever happened to me. So I ended up doing my degree in two majors biotechnology and microbiology and then the minor was immunology. In those four years of my undergraduate degree I matured so so so much you know as an 18 year old I sort of knew that I wanted to be a doctor I knew that I wanted to go to medical school but truth be told I actually had no idea what being a doctor entailed. I didn't actually know what it's like to be on the wards for 12 hour shifts I didn't know what it's like to talk to and interact with patients and have to deal with really difficult subjects I just wasn't I just didn't know what that was like and that's fair enough because I hadn't been old enough to experience those things and so over my four years at university I ended up volunteering in a center for victims of torture where I talked to patients for extended periods of time and learned how to deal with people who are coming from really difficult situations who are in very different cultural backgrounds than me. I managed to get a lot of shadowing experience with doctors and surgeons and also managed to work in a couple of labs as well doing both hospital clinical work and also research it was basically just an amazing four years to help build myself build my character mature and really realize that medicine is in fact what I want to do. In fact I think being a graduate student studying medicine is a huge huge huge advantage and I think I have a full video dedicated to that somewhere on the channel I think it's called something like the truth about being a UK graduate student or something like that I'll leave a link to it in the description and somewhere over here so after four years at the University of Toronto I felt really just empowered to apply to medical school again I knew for a fact that I wanted to be a doctor and I had so much experience under my belt that could back up why it is that I wanted to be a doctor I'd also learned how to study I'd learn how to take notes well I had explored a lot not only about life and everything that was around me but also about myself I had learned a lot about myself I had grown as a person I had matured and I was just ready to take on and tackle medical school and this time I didn't want to take any chances I was like you know what I'm going to apply to both UK medical schools and Canadian medical schools if one country doesn't accept me the other one will and lo and behold what happened I got rejected from all of the medical schools that I applied to in Canada that was extremely devastating I couldn't believe that I had been rejected all over again and I was about to go through the same process that I went through four years ago but then slowly slowly the UK medical schools started getting back to me now this time around when I had applied to UK medical schools I was so much more confident in myself first things first I had my good high school grades with my solid IB score to apply with I had also finished four years of my undergraduate degree and I had those grades to apply with and then third and finally and probably most importantly my UK cat score was really really good this time and I have a lot of videos talking about the UK cat exam how it is that I prepared for it how it is that I did so well and if you guys are interested in that you can find the links to it somewhere here on my channel so the second time around in 2017 when I applied to UK medical schools again I ended up applying to Kings Bristol Southampton and Queen Mary's Queen Mary's rejected me outright without an interview and then I got interviews for the other three I ended up rejecting Southampton's interview because at the time I'd already been accepted to Bristol and I also got accepted to Kings so as a mature student when I went to do my interviews I felt like a grown man who was there at the interview who knew exactly what he wanted to do who knew why he wanted to pursue medicine and so really the second time around when I was applying everything was just so so so much easier and I can't stress that enough as a mature student the whole process is going to be easier you're going to feel more confident you're going to do better and you're probably going to have higher chances of getting accepted so now that I'm done telling you my entire life story about the UK medical schools and rejection let's move on to talking about rejection in itself what it is that you can do to move past rejection and how it is that you can build yourself to make sure that when you apply next time you're definitely going to get in so the first thing that you have to do is just realize that for this year for this cycle you're not going to get into medical school and that is it's a very tough fact to come to grips with it's a very tough thing to accept but that is the truth and that's the first step in being able to move past the fact that you have been rejected it's realizing your current situation and how you're going to move forward from it after that something really important that I want to say is that medical school is not a one-time shot it's not a one-time opportunity where you just sort of throw in everything you have and if it doesn't work out that's it it's done. Students get rejected every single year and so many of them find a way to get back into medicine whether that's applying the next year after a gap year or whether it's applying two years later after a gap year and doing some work experience or whether it's after doing a full undergraduate degree and then applying again and in fact if you get rejected at the age of 18 in the UK for medical school you are still at least five years ahead of anyone who's getting into medical school in either the US or Canada. In the US and Canada the average entrance age for medical school is 24. Medical school is a really long career it's a really long path and it's going to take something like 12 to 14 years until you become the top consultant or top surgeon that you want to be so just taking one year out to take a gap year or to get extra work experience or whatever is nothing in the grand scheme of things and you have so much to learn and so much to gain from experience in that one year that it's going to make you so much more of a better applicant so much more of a better person. I would honestly try and see it as a positive thing that you now have time to be able to work on yourself to work on your experiences and also retake any exams or A levels or whatever it is that could help improve your application. And keep in mind me and all of my friends who are on the graduate course in medical school right now we were all rejected from medical school the first time we applied and some of my friends applied up to four times before they go into medical school and here they are sitting right next to me in class doing the exact same tests we're all in the exact same level. Also remember that if you're being rejected by medical schools right now you likely still have your A levels or your IB exams coming up and you need to do really really well in those to make sure that you have solid high school grades when you go to apply for medical school the next time so don't give up now don't drop everything yet. Something else that was great for me when I was rejected from medical school is that it forced me to sort of sit back and examine the situation and realize is this really what I want to do is medicine the career path that I have chosen for myself just because that's always what I've wanted to do from when I was younger or is this something that I actually truly want to do. So for everyone who's watching who has been rejected by medical schools this year or last year or is going to be rejected next year in the future when you're watching this video just trust me this is not the end of the road this is by no means the final shot for you to get into medical school. If it is your dream and if it is your passion it is so possible you need to work on it and you need to work hard no one said it's going to be easy but it's definitely possible to get into medical school and personally for me getting rejected was honestly one of the best things that happened to me. I was able to gain four years of life experience four years of work experience just grow and mature as a person and I can't explain how valuable that is now that I'm in medical school as an older student as a mature student I've been through this experience before of being at university and I feel so much more confident in my ability to take on medical school now. Okay so I think that's it for me that's where I'm going to end this video this definitely wasn't the easiest video for me to make and I hope that in me talking about what I've been through and my rejections that it helps some of you guys also overcome what's going on with you right now. Next week back to a nice happy up the talkative video and I'll see you guys then peace