How to become a student Stanford Medical School wants?

[juillet]

I moved this thread to pre-med topics.

A couple things:

1. Try not to get too attached to any one medical school. Med school admissions are more competitive than even elite college admissions. In 2014, only 43% of medical school applicants were accepted into any medical school. All med schools in the U.S. are great, and if you want to be a doctor, any med school is a good choice.

2. Stanford says this about the students they’re looking for:

Stanford School of Medicine utilizes a holistic review of the applicant pool each year. The School of Medicine seeks candidates who want to transform the fields of medicine and biomedical sciences, whose personal journey and accomplishments show strong evidence for originality, creativity, and a capacity for independent, critical thinking, who are academically ready to succeed at Stanford and whose personal qualities will serve them well in our profession.

They provide more information about their prerequisites [url=http://med.stanford.edu/md-admissions/how-to-apply/academic-requirements.html]here[/url], and there are some profiles of some of their students [url=https://med.stanford.edu/profiles/browse?affiliations=capMdStudent]here[/url]. Just at a quick glance, many of them seem to have taken some time between undergrad and med school; a few have master’s degrees (and one I saw had a PhD). It seems like you would need to distinguish yourself not just as someone who wants to be a physician, but someone who wants to change the face of medicine - become a clinical scientist making medical discoveries; planning to make some revolution in patient care; wanting to become a regional or national leader in some specialty…etc.

Other than those two things, can someone please tell me what types of profiles fits those who attend the best medical schools? What sets those people apart? Examples of extracurriculars, volunteering, and activities that catch the attention of the admissions committee. I’ve heard that they are looking for “good people”, hence the change in the MCAT which incorporates more Psych/Soc. So that basically means someone who is not only good at studying and getting scores but someone who demonstrates that they care and will make good doctors (in addition to having the good scores). I’m not really sure how they are going to measure that, but that’s where I need the guidance.

These are things like volunteering at hospitals or clinics, perhaps going abroad to volunteer for health/medical-related things there, tutoring - basically, community service. Demonstrations of leadership are good, too, especially if you an connected it to how you’d become a leader in medicine. TO be successful, though, I think you should be the type of person who already likes to do those things and would do them regardless of whether it would get you into medical school. If you are interested in becoming a clinical scientist, assisting some life sciences professors in research is a good idea. There are also lots of summer programs that are designed for med school hopefuls - they often combine research and shadowing at the same time.