<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12373390-post16.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/12373390-post16.html</a></p>
<p>A couple of years ago, I wrote the following to a young lady then entering UC Berkeley:</p>
<p>Don’t calibrate your expectations based on other Berkeley students. You will have to be much smarter and harder-working than most of the kids around you. I remember that during MCAT season, I had one friend at Duke and one friend at UCB. They both scored a 31 on the MCAT. My Berkeley friend celebrated by throwing a party, and all of his friends were very jealous of him. My Duke friend immediately began studying for a retake and his friends all sympathized with his troubles and loaned him their study books. You will have to hold yourself to a higher standard than Berkeley undergrads hold themselves to.</p>
<p>Get to know your professors. Make an effort. This is difficult, because you have to straddle the line between brown-nosing and passivity, but the vast majority of Berkeley kids will err on the side of passivity. Avoiding brown-nosing does not mean sitting back and being quiet; it means being genuinely excited rather than faking it. Remember – you have to be a racehorse, running for its own sake, not a pack mule.</p>
<p>Branch out and find a diverse group of folks. You have to be careful to cultivate a balanced worldview. You will learn from the people around you, if they are different enough; you will reinforce your own tedencies if they are too similar. Berkeley is bigger, but that just means it’s easier to find a “critical mass” of students who are very similar. Avoid them. </p>
<p>[My friend and I are both Chinese, and it’s often easy for us to fall into Chinese cultural surroundings. That has advantages and disadvantages; I wanted to highlight the disadvantages for her.] Specifically, I’ve found that Asian culture sometimes promotes a few very common problems: (1) treating schools as trophies rather than as education; (2) being very geographically picky and thus limiting their options; (3) jumping through hoops only when there are immediate goals involved rather than intellectually exploring. </p>
<p>Ask for lots of advice from students at other schools – particularly private schools like Duke and Penn. I was applying at the same time as one of my good friends who was a UCB undergrad, and he basically did whatever I did. He didn’t have any pre-med advising, but he saw that I did. Following my lead meant that he was, by extension, getting similar advising to me. He ended up at Yale Med. The Internet can help you here, too. I avoid studentdoctor.net because the people there are hyperneurotic and extremely rude, but collegeconfidential.com is a useful resource.</p>
<p>Embark on geographic and intellectual adventures. Going to Duke from California is kind of like an automatic study abroad; since you’re staying within a 15 mile radius your entire life, a study abroad (or somewhere else within the US) is especially important. (And no, China and Taiwan don’t count.) You absolutely have to make good use of your summers, so avoid summer school at all costs. Many students tend to like summer school a lot: it’s easy to find, intuitive, their parents understand what it is, and they already know they’re good at school. This is a huge mistake. Summers are for adventures or exploring; you already spend 75% of your life demonstrating that you’re a good student. Do something else. Ideally, do it SOMEWHERE else.</p>
<p>Travel a lot. Skipping school is okay, really. Make sure to go whenever you can, but having some defined absences just to travel is good too. Take a trip with a few friends to Tahoe. Fly out to Seattle and see the space needle. Go visit Texas: ride a mechanical bull at a bar, eat a big Texas steak, and watch an Astros game. Spend a semester in Greece. You’re saving a lot of money on tuition [by going to an in-state public]; spend a little bit of it traveling. And travel within the US! – I know an awful lot of people who visit New York and London and think of themselves as cultured because of it. Make new friends, even if it’s scary at first. And actively seek out people who are from different parts of the US.</p>
<p>Grades are very important, but they are not the most important thing. Good grades alone will not get you into medical school; mediocre grades alone don’t get you rejected. I have a C+ in organic chemistry, the most important premed class, and a 3.6 science average, but I got into 4 of the top 10 medical schools in the country while only being rejected by 3. MCAT scores, leadership potential, intellectual capacity, and – above all – an excellent application will matter much more, in the end. I know too many students who pour their lives into their grades and then botch the simple fact of getting your application in during June. If they had removed 0.5% of the effort they put into their grades and moved it into the application, they’d be MUCH MUCH stronger. As a general rule, your “schoolwork” is an inefficient place to allot your energy, provided you’re doing acceptably.</p>
<p>Take lots of different courses. Many students like to stick in their comfort zones, and Berkeley is one of those schools that encourages you to do so. Fight the inertia. Make sure to load up on courses which make you write. A lot. Lots and lots of writing. Take a cool language, like Arabic or Russian. Study geopolitics, history, and current events. Go to football games (and yes, that’s a valuable learning experience). Do as many courses with independent research as you can. Maybe an art class or two; I used photography, for example. Naturally many of these will lead back into medicine. When I took a photography class, I did a photodocumentary on a cancer patient in the hospital. When I took a game theory class, I did my project on health insurance. But the point is you’re exercising all the different parts of your brain.</p>
<p>Minimize the competitiveness you have to deal with. One of the solutions to competitiveness, of course, is to have a diverse group of friends! I had a circle of five close friends at Duke. The five of us majored in Biology, Political Science, Public Policy, Economics (me), and Math. This way we all rooted each other on and learned together. I found one or two study buddies in each class who very nice people with whom I could study in a relaxed fashion while still learning. They all turned out to be white, from the South, and older than me; I didn’t plan that, but I don’t think it’s a coincidence either. Study at home, not in the library. Have friends who do different things and are on different schedules. Make it a point not to talk about school with competitive people. There’s no need to impress anybody with how smart you are, and sometimes people will feel threatened by it. Don’t talk about school with other premeds; it’s usually just mutually stressful. Talk about current events, the football team, and church.</p>
<p>Make sure that moving out really is moving out. Go to a new church, even if your family’s church is nearby. Do your laundry and cooking on your own. Have defined times for you to visit your parents and for your parents to visit you – I think once a month plus holidays is very reasonable. September, they come visit you for a Saturday. October, you go home for a Saturday. November, they come visit you for a Saturday, plus you go home for Thanksgiving. Etc.</p>