I’m currently a junior in high school going into my senior year and I’ve had a lot of questions about college admissions and what it takes to get into college, particularly Columbia.
My “spike” I would say is this: I am a partt of the national academy future physicians and medical scientists and I am an intern at Stanford medical center. As for what exactly my spike is well I’ve been invited to watch surgeries and have stood in OR’s for countless hours simply observing and I am also going on a medical internship experience in Africa this summer. I am also an advocator for medicine at my school, i.e. I hosted a few CPR classes afterschool and I have been recognized by Stanford medical center as an outstanding intern. I also attended a national conference held by the academy of future physicians in D.C. but I didn’t speak or anything, simply attended
I believe my “spike” as admissions officers call it is my interest in medicine since a young age but I don’t know if it’s good enough for Columbia (and Stanford just throwing that in there) . Please help, any advice is welcome!!
I’m pretty sure that “National Academy” is a for-profit organization (read: scam)…
Interning at the medical center could be good, but did you do anything besides shadowing?
The medical internship could also be very good, but are your parent shelling out a ton of money for it?
Not sure I’d call any of that a “spike”, it’s always good to show interest in something though.
Don’t overvalue what you read on various blogs and books proporting to tell you the inside scoop about how to get into the top colleges-something I am assuming you are doing based on your use of a jargon (babble) term like “spike”.
Doing something PASSIVE like watching or merely attending but not contributing is not a meaningful activity and will not impress. There’s no difference between this and watching it on TV, since u had ZERO role/responsibility/contribution in the action.
Applicants who are interested in medicine are a dime a dozen.
I’ve commented on the Ds in your transcript already. That puts you out of contention at selective colleges such as Columbia despite your high ACT or SAT (I don’t remember which). The Future Physicians thing is not a boost to anyone’s application per se. It says either you raised money or had relatives pay for that information seminar. It’s for-profit – preying on kids/families hoping for some application “boost”.
You should focus on your GPA and less on top 20 colleges. That wastes your time and emotional energy. You need to be looking at schools that will realistically accept you and hopefully, help you to achieve med school one day. Wondering about Stanford and Columbia is a fool’s errand.
When you go to buy a house, you don’t tour all the multimillion dollar mansions first. Everything else later seems shabby. You’ve gone down the wrong path. You should be touring schools that specifically are realistic to gain acceptance. yeah Stanford is beautiful and Columbia is a great college. So what? Neither are realistic for you. Please focus on likely schools.
In general, if you have to pay to receive an award/recognition, then it is meaningless. The National Academy of Future Physicians and Medical Scientists costs about $1000 to attend, and it is a for-profit entity.
In fact, I would argue that putting this down on your college application might actually hurt you.