<p>Strengths, roughly in order of importance:</p>
<p>1.) MCATs.</p>
<p>2.) Extremely early applications. Many schools told me I was the very first student to submit a secondary; I usually interviewed on the very first day available.</p>
<p>3.) Excellent clinical experiences, including a semester-long photodocumentary project on a cancer patient, a medical service project in very rural, indigenous Mexico (not a border project; way down at the Southern tip), extensive physician shadowing, patient care volunteering.</p>
<p>4.) Going to *Duke *-- a school which has an extremely strong availability of information. That is, past Duke students have done pretty well at most schools -- an excellent blend of academic talent with professional attitudes. Notice that I am not discussing a prestigious school, or a school with grade inflation. I'm discussing a school whose students usually do well at the next level. Hence my post on the stickied thread reads:
[quote]
look for a place where you believe you'll excel - not just as a student (although of course that too) but as a person. Where can you find room to grow? To learn to nurture others, to demand the most out of yourself? To understand how to work and inspire confidence and professionalism - all these things are less tangible aspects that I think you can feel when you walk onto a campus.
[/quote]
These are the things medical schools look for in students; these are the things they'll remember about students from your school; this is the box that they'll see if you fit into. The better your school at facilitating your growth as a person, the better you'll fare.</p>
<p>One very important thing. I think a huge part of the reason Duke was so good for my personal growth was that it was far from home (Berkeley, CA).</p>
<p>5.) Excellent advising. A practice interview, essay feedback, a letter of recommendation, and most importantly retention of contact between my HPAC and medschool adcoms. When I tell a school they're my top choice, they don't quite know what to make of that. Am I telling other schools the same thing? When I tell my advisor which school is my top choice, and she tells them, then they know they can trust her.</p>
<p>6.) A very strong **research **background, including a low authorship in a high-level journal. I was able to speak fluently about my project and discuss its implications for medicine.</p>
<p>7.) Excellent, excellent **school selection **at application time. Digging around on my computer will reveal huge databases compiled from many, many sources about school selectivity and how to pick schools to apply to. It's all about finding arbitrage opportunities (use wikipedia) in a very, very inefficient market.</p>
<p>8.) Very good essays, including a personal statement that went through 29 drafts and secondary essays that were heavily edited and went through several screening processes before launch.</p>
<p>9.) Being able to speak intelligently about my **major **and turn it into an advantage. As an economics major, I had to prove my case about how it was relevant to medicine. I did so very well, with details that made sense but weren't obvious. Notice that being an economics major isn't the strength here. It's being able to talk about it well.</p>
<p>10.) Extremely good *interview *style. (See 4 below.) I spent four years in high school debate learning how to present myself competently and professionally, and it paid off.</p>
<p>11.) Good letters of recommendation. My three professors all had medical ties -- my professors in physiology, chemistry, and medical economics -- and none of them taught me in courses larger than twelve students. My research PI not only came from high-powered schools herself (JHU, Duke) but has a master's in English.</p>
<p>12.) Some **community service **experience, including a very memorable tutoring experience.</p>
<p>13.) A family **legacy **in medicine, which medical schools once openly used as a criterion but is now no longer mentioned as such. I think it might still happen some under the table.</p>
<p>14.) An actual and active **legacy **at a very selective medical school.</p>
<p>15.) Poor grades. First, my bad grades were almost entirely in my sophomore year, meaning that I had to overcome them, indicating an ability to fix things after they've gone wrong. Second, they helped reassure many mid-selectivity medical schools that I wasn't overqualified for them. Many, many students get trapped in a gap between tiers: some schools think they're overqualified, the rest think they're underqualified, and they get in trouble. This is more a problem in undergrad admissions and can be fixed by diversification, but it's still a problem.</p>
<p>16.) Very heavy courseloads, as measured by units. I averaged what AMCAS considered 18 units a semester. If you were to measure it by course hours -- i.e. hours actually spent in class -- my heaviest semester was 42 course hours.</p>
<hr>
<p>Weaknesses:</p>
<p>1.) Grades. My chemistry GPA was, if memory serves, approximately 2.7. I believe this speaks for itself.</p>
<p>2.) An economics major, meaning a deficiency in the serious science coursework that indicates preparation for medical school.</p>
<p>3.) Severe lack of "fun" **extracurriculars **and severe lack of campus "activity". I had community service, research, and clinical experience, but I belonged to zero organizations and did nothing fun that I could list. I didn't play intramural sports, join a fraternity, belong to any interest societies, nothing. My idea of fun was hanging out with friends in a dorm room, playing board games, watching football, and inventing new philosophies about our horrible social lives.</p>
<p>4.) Extremely poor *interview *content. (See 10 above.) When content was basically given to me via highly structured questions ("Mike, tell me more about your research"), I did very well. When content was left very open-ended ("Mike, tell me about yourself"), I tended to stumble significantly. I had major trouble with very personal questions ("How do you think your friends would describe you?"), and in efforts to avoid self-aggrandizement, my answers were usually pretty content-less. In particular, question 3 came back to bite me significantly, since most future medical students seem to have very active ideas of fun. Sitting around talking about football and politics seemed to be very unimpressive compared to students who liked to run marathons, play instruments, or design robots.</p>
<p>5.) **California **state residency. This is a very bad thing.</p>
<hr>
<p>I'll add more if I can think of any.</p>