How to Write Pre-Med & BS/MD Essays That Stand Out

Webinar Transcription

2026-3-10-How to Write Pre-Med and BSMD Essays That Stand Out

Anesha: [00:00:00] Hi everyone and welcome to tonight’s webinar. My name is Anesha Grant. I am a senior advisor here at CollegeAdvisor and I will be your moderator today. Uh, today’s webinar is, “How to Write Pre-Med and BSMD Essays that Stand Out.” Before we get started, just to orient everyone with the webinar timing, we’ll take a quick poll just to learn who’s in the room with us.

Anesha: We’ll share a presentation on today’s topics, and then we’ll open up the floor to respond to your questions through a live Q&A. On the slide bar, you can start submitting your questions under the Q&A tab, and the slides are also avail available under the handouts tab. Now let’s meet our presenter, Dr.

Anesha: Katie Chiou. Hey Katie, how are you doing?

Dr. Katie: Hi everyone. Um, I am Katie. It’s nice to meet you all. Excited to be here tonight. Um, I was obviously, I applied as a pre-med, um, in high school and then actually ended up doing a BSMD program. I went to Brown’s BSMD program, called the Program in Liberal Medical Education.

Dr. Katie: Um, graduated in 21, 21 [00:01:00] for college in 2025 for, for medical school. So not, not that old, and, um, am now a doctor at Mount Sinai.

Anesha: Awesome. All right. Uh, we’re just gonna do a quick little poll just to see who’s in the room with us. You can let us know if you are in the eighth grade, uh, ninth, 10th, 11th, 12th, or other.

Anesha: If you’re a parent or teacher, we welcome you as you’re waiting. Um, I guess since we’re thinking about age groups, um, when, what grade do you feel like you started thinking about your college applications or applying or being a doctor? Like when did that, how early did that start for you? Because I know we have.

We

Anesha: have, sometimes we have eighth graders and sometimes we have folks who haven’t started thinking about that is true. So when did you kind of start?

Dr. Katie: I don’t think I seriously really, like, I, I knew in like ninth grade that I like tried a bunch of extracurriculars with the idea of like, you know, you knew that those extracurriculars were me or college apps.

Anesha: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Katie: Um, I would say I solidified applying pre-med, like maybe in my junior, [00:02:00] maybe not even like junior, like really close to application season was when I like thought like, okay, I’m going to apply as a pre-med student. So that was a lot later I would say.

Anesha: Hmm. Okay. All right. So people have time to think it over.

Anesha: It’s good that they’re asking questions now. Um, okay. All right. We’ll go ahead and close our poll. Just so you know who is in the room with us. We have about 333 people, probably more. Um, 25% of them are in the ninth grade. Uh, 38% are in the 10th grade. 31% are in the 11th grade, and uh, 4% are in the 12th grade.

Anesha: And then we have about eight, uh, parents and teachers with us. So, uh, diverse group are across, across the lower three, um, high school levels, but a, a sprinkling of some seniors with us as well. All right. I’ll stop talking and hand it over to you, Katie, and be back for the Q&A.

Dr. Katie: Perfect. All right, everyone.

Dr. Katie: So this is a talk primarily about how to write the really strong essays. And I would say writing strong essays is a huge portion of being successful in the [00:03:00] college application journey. And also being successful with B SMDs program specifically. And that’s because when you’re thinking about competitive applications, oftentimes I like in, in my time at least working with students also.

Dr. Katie: Um, oftentimes essays are really what sets a student apart beyond, right, the GPA, beyond the SAT scores. So I like to start with dispelling some common motions. So what does it actually mean to be pre-med? So first of all. It does not mean that you have to be a biology major. It doesn’t mean you have to be a medical major.

Dr. Katie: I think for a lot of us, and myself included, uh, my family were immigrants to the United States and in a lot of other countries, they do it very differently from the United States. So they, they do like a six year program or seven year program. In America, you have to do four years typically of undergraduate.

Dr. Katie: So you have to apply for college, graduate the college degree, and then reapply after that. For medical school, what that means is that all it takes to be pre-med is for you to take the prerequisites that medical schools want to see. So they wanna [00:04:00] see a certain amount of biology, they wanna see a certain amount of physics, chemistry.

Dr. Katie: They wanna see like some English actually, they wanna see some psychology or sociology. Um. So those are kind of the, the classic medical school requirements, but outside of those prerequisites, you really can major in whenever you want to. So I actually ended up majoring, for example, in anthropology, which is a hu like a social science major.

Dr. Katie: It’s completely not in the pre-med realm. So I wanna be very clear that it does not mean, like, being pre-med does not mean you have to apply biology or neuroscience or public health or whatever. Um, there’s reasons why people do it, which we can talk about later on too. But it’s really, actually, it can be really interesting when you apply to med school, when people have, um, unique s uh, unique majors.

Dr. Katie: So I wanna clarify that because I think once you clarify that, first of all, it helps clarify the timeline of things and, and those are two completely separate higher education timelines. Um. But I also wanna clarify that because strategically you might think about when you are actually applying on the [00:05:00] college application, what would make the most sense for you to indicate as your major?

Dr. Katie: And it does not automatically have to be biology or neuroscience in order to be pre-med. Um, being pre-med really is just like an internal designation for most schools. Like no schools do not have a pre-med major. That’s not a major in and of itself. And so it’s really just an internal designation. Like, oh, I know that after I finish college I’m gonna apply to med school.

Dr. Katie: That’s all that being pre-med really actually means. Okay. So what is a BSMD program then? On the other hand? So I’ll take some time to explain this. Um, a BSMD program is essentially exactly what the name is. Um, it means that you are doing some sort of bachelor’s program, so typically a bachelor of science, but it can also be a bachelor of arts, which is what I have.

Dr. Katie: And then, so that, and that’s for typically four years, and then you do four years of medical school. So my program, for example, um, the Browns BSMD program was eight years in total. So it was not accelerated. There are some programs out there that are accelerated, meaning that they are either seven years or I think [00:06:00] there’s one that’s actually six years where they cut down is the undergrad section.

Dr. Katie: So you, maybe you do, instead of doing four years of undergrad, you might do three years of undergrad and then after that, go on to medical school. I wanna clarify though, that once you are in medical school, you are just like any other medical student. Just to clarify, you take the same classes, you have the same like whatever, GPA grading requirements, whatever those requirements are to become a doctor, you are under the exact same requirements as everyone else.

Dr. Katie: Um, and so while I was a part of a BSMD program, now that I’m a doctor, I find that it actually comes up pretty rarely to be honest, because at the end of the day, we all have the same training. Um. So there’s a couple of pros and cons to when you’re thinking about the length of BSMD program. I think one big pro is that it’s shorter.

Dr. Katie: You graduate faster and you have less years of tuition. Now, the downside, and I will say I’ve spoken to a number of extra, some of my co-residents, um, went to BSMD programs. Um, some of them went to accelerated programs, [00:07:00] is that a lot of times people describe it as more intense. Um, they have to take a lot more STEM classes in rapid succession.

Dr. Katie: And so, um, a lot of times they didn’t get to explore a lot of their other interests. Um, I will say that every single BSMD program is very, very different. And I, I can’t even explain all of them to you right now sitting here, but I know Brown’s the program the best, obviously. So I’ll kind of explain a little bit more about Brown’s program.

Dr. Katie: Um, the things that you wanna look out for when you’re doing your research into BSMB programs and each, you have to really do research individually. So like go on the program’s website and look at their requirements, but. Um, some programs have certain requirements for the application. For example, you’ll see for example, um, there are some programs where they prefer students from the home state.

Dr. Katie: So you might see Connecticut, for example, university of Connecticut prefers Connecticut, like in-state students. Um, you might see some programs that are actually really interesting that are specifically for primary care. So that means if you [00:08:00] are someone who. Is interested. A primary care, by the way, is like your family physician, so like the, the person you go see for your annual.

Dr. Katie: Um, sometimes it might include also like being a pediatrician. It might also include seeing adults, but typically it would not include any other specialties like such as, um, being a surgeon or anything in surgery typically isn’t considered primary care, for example. Um, and so that’s something else you wanna look out for, right?

Dr. Katie: Is this limiting for the specialties that I might be able to apply to? Um, and the last thing you really want to look at carefully is what does it take to matriculate into medical school? So again, you have a conditional acceptance into medical school, straight out of high school. So I had a seat waiting for me.

Dr. Katie: Now there are conditions on the seat. For example, you have to pass college obviously, right? Um, you might also have to get a certain grade or above in certain classes. Like you might have to have a GPA minimum. Um, some programs you also have to take the mcat and the MCAT is basically like the SAT, but for medical school, [00:09:00] so.

Dr. Katie: What I will say, um, for Brown specifically, is that Brown had a lot of courses requirements. I think they required like four years of English, three years of foreign language, certain AP classes they wanted to see. And we had no MCAT minimum or no and no GPA minimum. So that means that I actually did not take the MCAT ever in my life.

Dr. Katie: Um, so that was also a really, really big plus I think to my BSMD program. Okay. So why is the strong essay important? So, again, I’ve kind of been saying this already. Essays are really one of the few ways that you can stand out in an application when you’re applying to as a pre-med or BSMD program. And the reason for that is because oftentimes when you’re thinking about really competitive programs or really competitive majors, you’re competing with other students who have really great grades, really great test scores, and.

Dr. Katie: When it comes down to it, I often, I’ll be honest, I look towards the essays and to the extracurriculars. Those are like the two biggest sections where I’m trying to learn a little bit more about [00:10:00] this person and whether or not they’re a good fit for this school, and also like whether or not their interests are genuine.

Dr. Katie: Whether or not they’re an interesting person, whether or not I feel like they’re gonna thrive at the school that I’m accepting to. And so oftentimes it makes a difference between getting into a school with a sub 10% acceptance rate isn’t the grades or the SAT score, right? It’s gonna be about forming that personal connection with your admissions officer, kind of pulling someone in enough to be like, for them to think like, Hey, oh, this student, they’re really, they’re, they’re like a, they would be a good fit.

Dr. Katie: So I remember for example, at Brown, once I got in, my deans were actually the same people who accepted me, so I know exactly who’s reading the applications and, and those are, they’re like real life humans on the other end of your essays. And so you’re really thinking about appealing to them and, and, right, like how can you show them that you are thoughtful, that you’re genuine, that you’re smart, that you have like.

Dr. Katie: Qualities that would make you a good doctor? Um, I think the second thing that I wanna make a lot of people don’t realize is that admissions [00:11:00] officers are actually assigned to your area and so often might be familiar with your high school. They know what APs they are offered. They might even know which teachers are, are harsher.

Dr. Katie: They might know like how many, um, students your, your school sends to Ivys every year, for example. And they are really the best advocate for your higher ups to getting in, um, to the higher ups. Meaning like the way that the admission cycle works. Often people don’t realize that is you submit an application, admissions officer spends like maybe like 15 minutes or so, honestly in total reading your entire application.

Dr. Katie: And then they, if they like you, they kind of put you in the, oh, like we, we wanna accept this person pile. And then they go forward and basically fight for you, um, up against maybe the admission officer from like your neighboring town. So you really want, the essays are the, are the best way to get someone to be like, oh, I really wanna fight for this kid.

Dr. Katie: I really want, I think this kid would be a really good fit for the school. Um, that personal connection really is that important. Okay. So how should essays [00:12:00] be structured? This is really a tough question. I wanna start by saying that there are a lot of essays you’re writing, so people often don’t realize this, but when you apply to colleges, you end up writing.

Dr. Katie: Like, I had to have written like 20 plus essays and used all of them by the way. Um, for Brown, for example, I believe that I had to write, uh, I think I had to write seven essays in total just for the Brown BSMD application because they were four essays for the undergrad section. And that’s not even including like some of the minor, like little tech check check boxes.

Dr. Katie: So four essays plus another three essays, um, for the BSMD program itself. So there are a lot of essays, um, and you want to think about them. As all showing different parts of who you are, and you don’t want them to be one note, because remember, I’m reading all of these essays in rapid succession within 15 minutes, and so you wanna keep me interested, right?

Dr. Katie: So for the personal [00:13:00] statement, typically these are about six 50 words and there’s also longer essays over three 50. Um, you want to think about, um, an essay like for example, like a “Why Medicine?” essay. So when you apply to Brown for example, they’ll ask you a question of why do you wanna become a doctor?

Dr. Katie: What experience has led you to wanna become a doctor? Um, so you typically, you know, you have to think a little bit, think back on your previous experiences, think about how you want to make a compelling essay. And one thing that I’ll often always suggest to my students is to just drop us into a personal narrative.

Dr. Katie: Drop us into like an interesting opener, capture my attention and keep me there. Um, so that means that I, you know, I’m from the beginning, I’m already interested. I don’t mean like don’t, do not start off your essay ever, but with like a rhetorical question like. Did you know that? I don’t know what’s a good, I don’t even know what it was when doing, um, you don’t really wanna start off with like a rhetorical question looking cheesy, but you wanna start off like dropping us into a moment and kind of having an increased amount of, at, of, of tension such that when I’m following you through, you dropping us into [00:14:00] the opening, right?

Dr. Katie: Then you’re introducing us, you’re kind of letting us know what the scenario is, what’s the context? Then you build up to kind of like some sort of, you know, some sort of climax and then you resolved, and then throughout the story you’re kind of communicating who you are, what you care about, and like what you, you know, what you’re doing in the story such that I am following you the whole way through, but I’m also learning more about who you are.

Dr. Katie: Um, that’s the typical essay. Not every essay is gonna be like that. Um, I would say that, um, the ideal essay is such that every single sentence is telling us either is either advancing the story or is telling us a little bit more about who you are and what you care about. Um. The ideal essay, again, six 50 words isn’t really that many words to communicate everything about yourself.

Dr. Katie: You really wanna take the time to make sure that everything is paired down and it’s also beautiful writing as part of it. Okay, so what factors make for a great essay, and I, I, I emphasize great over good because I think a good [00:15:00] essay can get you into really a good top-notch schools. But a great essay is really what makes a difference between, again, like those, like sub 10%, sub 5% acceptance rates.

Dr. Katie: Um, which a BSMD program is always sub, uh, 5% because, um, a lot of times they only accept like 20 or so students. So what makes for a great essay? I would start with saying surprise. Um, I have now worked with college advising for over eight years now, and so I’ve read a lot, a lot of essays. Um. I’ve also read a lot of pre-med essays specifically because a lot of my students tend to be pre-med.

Dr. Katie: That’s my specialty and very rarely on a first draft with a student am I like, Hmm, this is good. This is perfect. We’re done here. I almost always would like, we have to redraft and you know, go over and start a new, like start fresh. Typically work through a bunch of brainstorming, but the biggest thing that I can say that I will stop dead on, I’ll be like, this was a great essay as I’m reading a draft, [00:16:00] is if I’m surprised if I’m surprised about something that they said or something like, it doesn’t have to be like, oh look, I’m shocked.

Dr. Katie: I’m just saying like they had like an insight that I didn’t see coming. Like they had a good, really good piece of self-reflection that I’m like, wow, this person really sees themselves or really like, knows themself in a particular way. I didn’t really, I didn’t realize that about them or, oh, like they were able to do something funny.

Dr. Katie: They told a good joke, like something that is making me stop, pause for a moment because so many essays. Become really predictable, especially when it comes to an essay about medicine or engineering. It becomes very predictable. Someone opens up with, when I was little, I enjoyed playing with Legos. I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands.

Dr. Katie: That’s why I wanna go into engineering. I took physics class in high school and I learned really cool things about X, Y, Z things. Um, I’m really interested in AI and the future of AI and how it’s gonna impact future technology. And then that’s why I want to go to Brown, right? That’s like a essay that I’ve read many times, for example.

Dr. Katie: Um, and so if you can think about how you can add the element of [00:17:00] surprise, whether it’s you have like a funny tone, you’re kind of casual, you’re kind of humorous, you’re kind of sarcastic, um, in a, like, you know that that’s why you have another person read your essay and make sure that it’s appropriate.

Dr. Katie: Um, that’s always something that I’m like, will stand out to me. Um, my example of this is what, for one of my like short essays, I think it was only 150 words, I decided to write an essay in the form of an autopsy report. Um, I wrote in the form of an autopsy report of myself so that it wouldn’t be super dark and like a little bit creepy.

Dr. Katie: Um, but it was like an autopsy report as if, you know, you could see what was going through my brain. And I used this autopsy report to tell a story about, um. My experience with debate, like speech and debate. Um, and so I don’t know if it was a good essay or not, and I, I think I also used it separately at one point to, it was about speech and debate, but it was more, even more so about this like vegetable garden that I grew up having.

Dr. Katie: And my grandma raised me and it kind of told story of like who I was and who my family was and how I grew up. But it was, it [00:18:00] was a lot about me. It wasn’t just about like, you know, it wasn’t at all about my grandma’s hardships and coming over to America. It was about, it kind of painted a picture of where I grew up and what life I I, I lived growing up.

Dr. Katie: Um, and also was the form of an autopsy report, which is kind of bizarre. So that’s like an example of an element of surprise, but at the end of the day, you don’t want the element of surprise to be, the only thing, a bad example of this that I’ve seen before is a patient wrote their essay in the form of an acrostic poem and, um.

Dr. Katie: I think the letters were like medicine or pre-med or something like that. And they tried to write an acrostic poem where, you know, every, like the P would be like, P for prepared. I’m a prepared person, like R for, I don’t know, resourceful. I’m a resourceful person. Um, that’s an example of, I think like, I don’t know if the structure is really doing anything for you.

Dr. Katie: Maybe it is, maybe it’s not. But at the end of the day, what the content still matters. Just catching me by surprise is not enough if I’m going to laugh afterwards and be like, this was silly. Um, right. Like it still matters that you’re telling me [00:19:00] something about yourself. Um, and the reason I used an autopsy report, for example, was that I was really interested in forensics at the time and that was actually, uh, an event that I didn’t in high school in science lumpy.

Dr. Katie: And so that was my, my way of communicating like my love for now true crime. But back in the day, like crime shows and. And, um, and forensics. Okay. Second thing, a great essay. I kind of already mentioned this, but every word really matters. I wish there was a good way for me to explain this to you, except that a truly good writer, and also a lot of times our admissions advisors with like CollegeAdvisor also as a person who’s been immersed in admissions writing, um, knows what I’m talking about when they say like, every single word, every single sentence, kind of communicate something about yourself.

Dr. Katie: So you don’t have to be blunt, you don’t have to be outright about it. Um, you don’t have to say I’m a hardworking. The story you’ve told shows that you’re hardworking. You kind of imply all those things about yourself. Um, I can’t remember if I have a slide on one of my personal statements, [00:20:00] but for as an example, um, my personal statement was about me working on a suicide hotline.

Dr. Katie: And in the course of that personal statement, I told a couple of stories, but one of them, for example, was, um. About someone who wanted to end their life and was a young person who was living in like, I don’t know, the middle of Iowa or something. And I talked about how we discussed, like discussed crop rotation and we discussed like, um, what it meant for them to live to the next crop rotation and like, um, like all these things about, you know, I was like about mental health as well, so I don’t wanna get too into it, but, um.

Dr. Katie: I think what I was in the describing that I used, I was like very, very careful about what, what details I chose to include because I know that I wanted to communicate a couple of things. I wanted to communicate, one that I had empathy, but two also that I was pretty good at relating to people who grew up in circumstances very different for myself.

Dr. Katie: Um, I’m someone who grew up in Los Angeles, like [00:21:00] grew up in a big city, like, has had never seen like a field of wheat in my life or corn for that matter, right? And so that that’s something that I was trying to communicate as I was telling the story that I can relate, that I can be empathetic, um, and also still help someone who’s very differently, different from myself.

Dr. Katie: Okay. So how can you demonstrate your interests from medicine specifically? So, one thing I would say is that it helps if you have had some sort of clinical experience, so some sort of experience in a hospital. In a caretaking setting. Um, that can also be a senior center, right? That can be like a dentist’s office.

Dr. Katie: It can be anything where people are in some way treating or caring for someone else. And out of that, I think my big wish for everyone is as they’re doing those experiences, obviously like, you know, you’re seeing things for the first time, stay observant. Um, it’s very, very, I think what someone notices about interactions about their environment is very telling of them too.

Dr. Katie: And so, as you’re describing things that you notice in an [00:22:00] interaction, right? Like things that you paid attention to, things that you really admire, things that you didn’t admire so much, um, things that, you know, notice about the patient. Um. Those are all things that shows me that you’re an observant person, right?

Dr. Katie: So you don’t even have to tell me you’re observant, that you’re thoughtful, you’ve told me all of this just by telling a story, um, and, and kind of keeping me engrossed in like telling, talking with this interaction that you witnessed. Um, that’s a really good place also to start because it’s, it’s a good drop in moment, if that makes sense.

Dr. Katie: I remember from the beginning I was like, you can drop us into an intro. Um, and then also you can kind of relate that back to yourself, like, what is it about the things that you observed and that you witnessed that you really aspire to and also want to do in your future life? Um, it’s also okay if you don’t have clinical experience.

Dr. Katie: I think another thing that I will say is. As a high schooler, it’s very, very hard to know if you wanna be a doctor or not. For sure. Um, I think 30 per the statistic is like 30% of pre-med students drop out of pre-med, either [00:23:00] because the weirder classes were too hard or because their GPA wasn’t up to stuff or they simply realized there’s a lot more out there, um, that you know, you can do well with and make money and this is a lot of years to dedicate as well me not lie about that either.

Dr. Katie: Um, one thing I would say is I am the most impressed when I read essays where this person has clearly, clearly reflected and thought really deeply about what it would mean for them to go into medicine. And I will say, you know, for myself as someone whose mom is happy, that I’m a doctor for sure, right.

Dr. Katie: Some part of that was also separating my own interests and my own wishes for myself and my life away from my parents. Um. And so what I’ll say is if there’s one thing, especially for all of you, eighth, ninth, like 10th graders out there who haven’t quite started writing essays yet, what I will say is if you can do like a lot of self-reflection, if there’s like one skill that will serve you time and time again into the [00:24:00] future, it is going to be self-reflection, knowing yourself and being able to talk about yourself.

Dr. Katie: Um, and the writing skills certainly help with that too. And I will say like there’s, it’s never too early to start writing, to start drafting. Excuse me. I have like a notes app that I started in my phone from, gosh, like ninth grade. But like, I also just like wrote on the bus all through junior year when I was taking the bus to and from UCLA to go to my summer program.

Dr. Katie: I would like literally write down things about essays. I, you know, I’d be living like my best, um. Movie life, like staring out the window and just thinking about myself and writing things as they came to mind. Um, and one of the essays that I ended up using for the Brown plea program was an essay that I actually started writing in 10th grade.

Dr. Katie: Like I, I literally wrote it for a writing competition in 10th grade, and then essentially just repurposed it for the purposes of college admissions. Um, that was a long-winded way of saying. Think deeply and start early. And one way of thinking deeply, just to put an, an, a piece of advice out there is to think about within a doctor, there’s so many different kinds of doctors, [00:25:00] but also everyone who’s a doctor kind of has a different, like, there’s a different, um, role to think about within being a doctor.

Dr. Katie: So you can think about being a doctor as an advocate. Um, so for example, um, one thing that we’ve done in the past and I’ve, I’ve worked with doctors to do in the past is we’ll go to like literally the state Congress and we, because you have a doc, an MD behind your name, your voice is heard. If you say like, Hey, we think that, um, my, the thing that I was working on was what should the minimum age be for a child to be in jail, in prison, essentially?

Dr. Katie: Like what should that be? What is appropriate? And that’s something that you can comment on as a doctor, as a pediatrician. Um. You might also think about a pat, uh, a doctor as educating. I am teaching day in, day out. It’s like one of my favorite parts actually. I, I loved, I love and still like, I loved and still do love teaching.

Dr. Katie: And I knew that actually back in high school. I get a lot of tutoring and it was brought me a lot of joy. Um, I teach med students, but also when I’m talking to patients, I’m teaching them too. I’m teaching them, Hey, how does this medication, how does an SSRI work? Why do we care about your [00:26:00] hypertension? Why do we care about your diabetes?

Dr. Katie: Like, why is it that’s something that’s not impacting you now? Why should you care about it? That’s all teaching, right? It’s all about how do you educate patients and explain things to them, um, in like a simple format. Um, that’s a big skill. And then last thing is procedures, right? Like maybe you really enjoy working with your hands.

Dr. Katie: Maybe you enjoy cutting into things. Maybe you enjoy small things and you enjoy big procedures, right? Maybe that’s why you wanna be a surgeon. Those are all things to know about yourself. Um, and certainly to speak about in and a and a really good essay. It shows that you’ve kind of put some more thought into what it means to be a doctor.

Dr. Katie: So, um, okay. I knew it. I was like, I definitely talked about my own essays at some point. So I had five total essays. Um, I already talked a little bit about my personal statements. So again, I worked at a suicide hotline. And I will say part of that is just by virtue of me telling these stories of working in a suicide hotline, I was commuting a num, communicating a number of things that were good to be a doctor, right?

Dr. Katie: I was communicating, Hey, I’m calm under pressure. Hey, I am mature. Like I can handle tough [00:27:00] topics. Hey, like I, um, have a particular in, I had a particular interest in, in mental health. I applied actually as a cognitive science major with a focus in linguistics. And part of that was I said, Hey, I did a suicide hotline.

Dr. Katie: I’m really interested in words. And when you’re on the phone with someone, right? And you’re trying to figure out do I need to call the police on them, um, to make sure that they’re safe and brought to a hospital, um, part, part of like, all you have are words and tone and, and you know, the language and.

Dr. Katie: That’s all, that’s like, that’s the entire metric you have for whether or not someone will die. And so I talked a little bit about how important language was to me and also, um, I had a couple of kids who, um, came from abusive households and, um, talked about that as well. I was interested in the neuroscience behind how does language develop in, in a kid that maybe didn’t grow up in the best circumstances, for example.

Dr. Katie: And I, I don’t think it should come to a surprise to anyone that I am a psychiatrist now. Um, I hopefully will be pursuing a child psychiatry, uh, fellowship too in the future. So I’m still working with teenagers and [00:28:00] I’m still working mental health. And so one thing I will say is looking back, right, if you do a good job of self-reflecting, you look back and you’re like, Hey man, I knew myself all along.

Dr. Katie: I grew along the way. I learned more about myself along the way, but there was elements of things that like always called to you and chasing after those things that kind of call to you. Um, for my BSMD essay, I talked a about. An extracurricular summer program. So neither of things were, these things were like particularly noteworthy, right?

Dr. Katie: Like I didn’t have any extracurriculars that were like, ooh, I was like top 10 of the entire country. I had nothing like that. I was not like a crazy applicant like that. I also had zero shadowing hours, by the way. Um, I did work in a hospital, volunteering in a hospital for a while, but still zero shadowing hours.

Dr. Katie: And so the only real shadowing that I had was like, actually I had no shadowing. What am I saying? I had zero shadowing hours, but I did do a summer program and in that program I tried to add in that element of surprise I was telling you guys about. I like started off, dropped us into like a, like an an or, and was like, [00:29:00] I was operating on an aortic dissection, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dr. Katie: And then I kind of like did a cut. What is it? Like, what’s the word? Like a cut, like a cut a twist and was like, actually jk that’s not what was happening. Here’s what was actually happening. But here’s what I learned from that. And also here’s what I wanna be a doctor. Um, so I also will say that I was someone who’s very interested in medical humanities, um, which makes sense given that I ultimately ended up majoring in medical anthropology.

Dr. Katie: Um, I didn’t have the words for, at the time, I had no clue what medical anthropology was in high school. Like I hadn’t even heard the word anthropology. I was like, yeah, it’s a study of humans. What, what does that mean? Um, you don’t really learn what that means until you get to college and you’re like, oh, I took a class in this.

Dr. Katie: This is a really interesting way of thinking. Um, so that was kind of where, yeah, that’s kind of, I knew that somehow early on in my application and that kind of came off a lot. Okay, so common mistakes. I’m gonna go fast ’cause I know I’m running out of time and I wanna get to the Q&A, but common mistakes.

Dr. Katie: I think the first one is being vague about your interest in medicine. And when I say being vague, I [00:30:00] don’t mean. Like if you reiterate it and you tell me more times that you wanna go into medicine, that doesn’t make you less vague. Right? I’m saying be specific. Um, I want to hear specifically what brought you into medicine.

Dr. Katie: I want,

Dr. Katie: [Dr. Katie has audio issues for the next minute and then the issue is resolved.] I wanna say that you’ve thought very carefully,

Dr. Katie: highly recommend the pit bot area Acura. Um, but I wanna that you wouldn’t mean doctor and to incorporate that into application that you’ve thought about it. Um, yes and I’m, I’m saying every time everyone can write an essay about the one time they follow

Dr. Katie: doctor and saw a patient, everyone can say they love, help you about, um, right. Encounter how you, um, and like examples here. Right. Like, so [00:31:00] a advocacy.

Anesha: Katie, you

Anesha: Katie, can you hear me?

Dr. Katie: Hello?

Anesha: Hey, sorry you’ve been cut. You’ve been cutting in and out the last few minutes. Can you hear me?

Dr. Katie: Hi, you, can you hear me?

Anesha: Yeah, I think you might need to log out, log back in and, and try to reset ’cause you are, you’re frozen for us and your sound, ising. Okay. Just to pause y’all, uh, give Katie a moment to come back on. Please continue to submit questions under the Q&A. We’ll try to get to as many as we can.

Anesha: Um, and again, just a reminder that you can download the slides under the handouts tab. And hopefully we’ll get Katie back online. Okay. Hello? Am

Dr. Katie: I back?

Anesha: Yes, you’re back and, and clear.

Dr. Katie: Okay, good. [00:32:00]

Anesha: Okay,

Dr. Katie: perfect.

Anesha: I, I would hate to make you start at the top of this, but I think we did start to lose you at the top of this particular,

Dr. Katie: at the top of this slide.

Dr. Katie: Okay. No worries. Um, my main point here was, again, the opposite of vague is specific. It’s not reiterating, right? It’s not like if you say things more times, you say things louder, I’m gonna be more believing of your interest in medicine. In fact, that’s probably a little bit of the opposite. Um, I would rather you write one really truly stellar essay about medicine where you’ve showed how you thoughtfully engaged or thought like were, were thinking about a patient encounter or where you can find a specific niche in medicine that really appeals to you.

Dr. Katie: So maybe you’re someone who’s already kind of worked a little bit in the political, like doing political volunteering work on the side. Um, so maybe that’s a way that you can fold that into right, your interest in, in medicine there’s definitely people who major in political science who go into medicine and actually, like there’s in every single specialty we all have, um.

Dr. Katie: [00:33:00] Like a conference about advocacy where we all go to Washington DC and within our specialties, we think about mental health policy. We think about like public health policy, right? Think about how we can impact the entire country based on things that we’ve seen in real life. Um, and that’s like in the country, but also in the state.

Dr. Katie: In the city. Um, there’s ways that we make an impact, like for our patients, they can, they can really dramatically help a lot of people’s lives. Okay. My last advice. Um, so one thing I’ll say, I started off this way, so I’ll end this way as well, is consider applying as not a biology major. This tip isn’t for everyone.

Dr. Katie: There are some people who just have like, have really, really stellar biology applications, but like I mentioned, I didn’t apply as a biology major. I think it’s worth looking out there, like work, looking on any college website and looking through what their majors have. ’cause I think you’ll find that there’s actually a lot of majors there that you’ve probably never heard of.

Dr. Katie: And, um, until you’ve done your [00:34:00] research, I don’t want you to pick a major right until you can tell me if you’re applying to Brown, for example, until you can tell me the difference between neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, cognitive science, behavioral decision sciences, and psychology. I think those are all of them, all five of those brain science majors.

Dr. Katie: And tell me why you’re applying to the one you’re applying to. Go back and do your research and, and come back and let me know. Um, so the idea is really do your research into the major that you wanna apply to because you were gonna have to write an essay about why you wanna apply to that major and why it’s interesting to you.

Dr. Katie: And that essay is much, much better if you can be that specific. Um, and the other reason why I say consider applying is not a biology major is it’s really, really hard to write a good, specific, interesting essay about biology. People have done it, people have def certainly have done it, but I found it often can be easier to find a place where two different majors might [00:35:00] intersect.

Dr. Katie: Two of your interests might intersect. So as an example, um, brown had a class that was a crossover between, I don’t even remember, I think it was Neuroscience and the theater program where they used theater to help patients. I believe it was patients with different intellectual disabilities. Um. Also autism.

Dr. Katie: You kind of like learn social awareness skills. You learn how to communicate. You might also act out and practice how to do things that are what we call ADLs, but it means like day-to-day life things that might be helpful for them. Like how do you shop at a supermarket? How do you, um, ask for how much like the cost, like what the price is, how do you count out your money?

Dr. Katie: Those are all things that like acting could help with, right? So really interesting crossovers in a lot of different sections, um, and a lot of interdisciplinary like crossovers. And so I want everyone to take the time to look through them, like see what’s out there. And then oftentimes if you can find an interdisciplinary like connection that’s really unique to you and your interests, um, that can be a great way to like [00:36:00] write a really interesting essay.

Dr. Katie: Okay. Second thing, make sure your science courses are really solid. I think AP biology and AP Chemistry are the two that, um, are some of the most important if you’re thinking pre-med, um, because those are often, often also the hardest classes in college and are also like the weeder classes. So if you can do well in those two classes, that kind of convinces me a little that like, oh, okay, this is someone who I could see potentially doing really well in surviving in a BSMD program.

Dr. Katie: Um, and last thing, you can always switch career paths, whether it’s into medicine or outside of medicine, right? So when you’re in a BSMD program, at least for Brown, like you can drop out any time. So I had some people who were in the program who dropped out after college. They decided, no, thank you. I don’t wanna go to med school.

Dr. Katie: I had people who finished med school, got their doctorate degree, and then decided to go into consulting. And then there’s people who even go further. They finished residency, which is what I’m in now. You finish residency and then after that, go into often consulting for some reason and then go into consulting.

Dr. Katie: Um, and so, right, [00:37:00] there’s a lot of different ways that you can leverage medicine into a interesting career for you. And you can also always switch career paths. I always say it’s a long path if you’re not thinking and doubting yourself and doubting whether or not you wanna do medicine every single year.

Dr. Katie: Um, you need to doubt yourself more. Okay.

Anesha: All right. Thank you so much, Katie for a great presentation and thanks for logging out, managing some of those technical difficulties. Uh, we are gonna switch over to the Q&A portion of today’s session. Uh, just so you know the way that it will work, uh, I will read through the questions that you all have submitted through the Q&A.

Anesha: My colleague Lydia’s also in the chat trying to address questions as we have a pretty big audience. So we’re trying to get through as many questions live and, uh, via the chat as well. Uh, I am gonna ask folks to focus your questions on essays as that is the, the center of today’s conversation. If you are interested in other kind of pre-med BSMD conversations.

Anesha: There, they are plenty of, uh, webinars featuring Katie and some other folks on the webinar page. Um, so again, please try to [00:38:00] focus your questions on essays. Um, if your Q&A tab isn’t letting you submit questions, just double check that you logged in through the custom link you received in your email and not through our webinar landing page.

Anesha: You may have to log out and log back in. Um, and then, and although you may not be able to ask questions, if your Q&A is not working, the webinar is being recorded so you can review it at a later time. Okay. Getting to the first question, I’m gonna do some quick one-off non-essay question just ’cause I know it’ll be fast.

Anesha: Someone asked, what is the summer program you did at UCLA?

Dr. Katie: Oh, um, I did, I did two summer programs. One I did was at UCLA, it was actually in, I don’t think it exists anymore, but it was in biomedical engineering. It was completely free, and that’s how I discovered that I actually hate engineering. Could never do that with the rest of my life.

Dr. Katie: Um, the second one I did, I think it was at Stanford and it was some sort of surgery. Um, the UCLA one was free. I think the Stanford one cost some amount of money, but I know that it’s gotten a lot more expensive, um, since I did it. [00:39:00] And, and ideally, like, I, I mean, I, I paid for housing because I also stayed up there and that, so that was fine.

Anesha: Okay. All right. Um, so yeah, that was one extracurricular question for you. Uh, the first essay question someone asked, would it be helpful to practice writing essays early on? If so, what are some techniques that I could use?

Dr. Katie: That’s an interesting question. Um, yeah, I would say you wanna write essays, like it shouldn’t be like what you write in AP English or what you even write at school ever.

Dr. Katie: It’s more of like a reflective essay type. So you can start, for example, you might start with journaling, um, but you might also start with like writing to a purpose. So like if you look at like, like. Writing competition prompts, they’ll be like, um, tell us about a time in which like, you’ve grown as a person.

Dr. Katie: Or like, um, what does, what do books mean to you? Like, you could even start with something simple like that. And that’s like a great way to start writing and learning how to reflect on your own, on yourself in order to put that into words. ’cause a lot of [00:40:00] times we don’t really write, um, in that style. Um, I would also say reading really good memoirs can be really helpful ’cause it’s the same kind of writing.

Dr. Katie: Um, and so I found myself like, as I’m reading really good memoirs, I’m like, wow, that was written so beautifully. And the way they’ve like really reflected and told a story about their life is really interesting. Um, short stories also can be helpful because it’s at the right length. Um, those are all ways that I would say are, are ways, like early on, start thinking about essays.

Dr. Katie: Okay.

Anesha: Um, oh, you were saying that I wanted to say something cheesy, uh, which people can ignore. But you were mentioning, um, the acrostic poem essay, and I thought that was obviously a cool idea to get if you’re ha if you’re stuck just to think about words related to medicine or like, I like, uh, interesting brainstorm, so I just wanted to put that out.

Anesha: That

Dr. Katie: just be a brainstorm. That’s fair.

Anesha: Get things out of your head. Sometimes I think sometimes students get in like. I have to write it in essay format immediately, and sometimes you should just ideas out on the pages. So sorry, that I just wanted to raise, [00:41:00] that was like another kind of like weird brainstorming writing thing to get ideas

Dr. Katie: out.

Dr. Katie: That is one thing I will say is like, um, a lot of my students come to me with like half written essays and then they feel sad of course when they, like, I tear it all apart. And I, I think the biggest thing I could say is like, brainstorm more than you write, if that makes sense. Like, I think I brainstormed for an entire summer and then I wrote for like maybe a month and a half.

Dr. Katie: Because if you have a really good brainstorm, then you know you’re writing about the right thing. Instead of like writing hundreds of essays, you’re only writing a couple of essays, but you know, are gonna be really good topics and maybe you didn’t like, kind of like plotted it out, generally what you wanna say.

Dr. Katie: Um, so a really good brainstorm goes a really long way.

Anesha: Okay. Um, and I’ll ask this question, but I think it’s, it would be helpful if you could talk to how to spread out the topic of why I wanna be a doctor over the different essays, but someone asked, um, should my personal statement include why I wanna be a doctor?

Anesha: Or should it be more focused on me as a person? Mm-hmm. Um, and so then how, how do they answer that question or where else do they answer that question of why, why do I wanna be a doctor? [00:42:00]

Dr. Katie: Yeah. That’s a very good question. So I’ll start by saying as a, like, as a reminder, I applied to, um, like, call it like the traditional pathway as well.

Dr. Katie: So like, I applied to the Ivys, I applied to UCLA, like the UC because I’m from California. I applied to like a whole bunch of schools as pre-med. Um. Not a single time actually, did I mention that I wanted to be a doctor in that? Because again, right, being pre-med doesn’t necessarily mean anything until you go to college and you just take the right classes so that you can apply to medical school.

Dr. Katie: Um, so I wanna start by saying that because sometimes, um, reiterating over and over again that you wanna be a doctor might not be the best strategy. So how to do it effectively. So in your personal statement, sometimes it might work in there, sometimes it fits. But I would say oftentimes the personal statement should really be more about telling me about you, who you are, how you grew up, what the context of what you grew up is and is.

Dr. Katie: Um, maybe like in my case, like I went the boring route and I talked about an [00:43:00] extracurricular, but in that extracurricular I talked a lot. Like I was trying to communicate a lot of who I was and why I cared so much about this extracurricular. Um, um, yeah, so not a, again, not a single time in that application for like.

Dr. Katie: Some of these other schools I applied to, do, I meant, did I mention that I wanted to become a doctor? One good place that sometimes works is like a, when you’re answering the major question, so it’s like, why do you, like, what do you typically, it’s like you dropped out menu, you’re like, I wanna put my top three choices for a major.

Dr. Katie: And you have to write an essay about, you know, like, how are you gonna be that a student? Um, why are you interested in that major? So that might be a good place to put it. Another one is, if it’s like a BSMD program, they will straight up ask you why do you wanna become a doctor? And in that essay you will have plenty of space and time to explore and talk about why you wanna become a doctor.

Dr. Katie: And again, I would say like in like that. So that was my Brown application. Um, again, there’s three essays for the BSMD. There’s one that’s why you wanna become a doctor. Two was, why do you wanna come here to this program? And three was, [00:44:00] I remember three, I think it’s like something about like, what does professionalism mean to you?

Dr. Katie: Or something that was like a new essay. Um, it might have been after my years. I can’t remember if I wrote that one or if I just helped people write it. Um, but the first two, for example, um, the first one I was like, well, about me wanting become a doctor. Number two was honestly more about like my interest in like medical humanities.

Dr. Katie: Um, it wasn’t even that much about why I wanted become a doctor, but it was clear. Um, and the rest of my essays, I didn’t speak a single time about wanting, like, about pre-med. So just to be clear, you don’t even have to talk about it at all, is basically my summary.

Anesha: Uh, and I think just, um, can you offer clarity on what the personal statement is?

Anesha: We threw some people off there, like what is the personal statement?

Dr. Katie: Oh, I see, I see.

Anesha: We can just

Dr. Katie: briefly, the personal statement is like this 1, 650 word essay. Almost every single school require a personal statement. It’s kind of like the core center of your application. And then on top of the six 50 word essays, you have what are called supplemental essays.

Dr. Katie: So typically an average application might have one [00:45:00] supplemental essay asking you, “Why do you wanna major in this?” And they might have a second supplemental essay asking you something personal or like,, “Tell me about an extracurricular that you did.” Or it might be something bizarre, like, um, not bizarre, but like, “Tell me about a time which you overcame a difficulty,” or something like that.

Dr. Katie: That’s like more personal. So that’s what, that’s what I mean, my personal statement.

Anesha: Thanks for clarifying. All right, we’re gonna take a quick break just to talk a little bit about CollegeAdvisor. So for those in the room who aren’t already working with us, we know how overwhelming the process can be.

Anesha: CollegeAdvisor has a team of over 300 admissions officers and admissions experts who are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process through 1-on-1 advising sessions and through essay editing through our digital platform. We have had 10,000 total lifetime clients and and maintain a 4.8 out of five rating on Trustpilot with over 750 reviews.

Anesha: After analyzing our 2023 through 2025 data, we found that clients working with CollegeAdvisor who have a strong academic record and testing record are 2.6 times more likely to get into an Ivy League school, around three [00:46:00] times more likely to get into a top 20 college, and around five times more likely to get into Johns Hopkins, UCLA and NYU when compared

Anesha: to national acceptance rates. You can increase your odds and take the next step in your college admissions journey by signing up for a free 60-minute, uh, strategy session with an admissions specialist on our team by using the QR code that we’ll keep up there on the screen. During that meeting, you’ll receive a preliminary assessment of your academic profile, along with some initial recommendations of what you can do to stand out.

Anesha: And by the end of it, you’ll learn more about CollegeAdvisor’s premium packages, um, and get paired with an expert who can support you in building your college list, editing your essays and much more. CollegeAdvisor will be there for the whole process. All right, we’ll get back to the Q&A and to that point around, um, CollegeAdvisor, we had a few folks ask in different ways, who should I, who should I share my essays with, and who should I be asking for feedback from, um, on my essays?

Anesha: So how do, how do they get help? What are the best avenues?

Dr. Katie: Yeah. So, um, I like to say like, too many [00:47:00] cooks in a pot can also be too, it can also be like, not ideal. I would say like a golden number is like maybe around three people. Doesn’t have to be your parents, by the way, none of my parents actually ever read my essays.

Dr. Katie: Um, but it should be someone who, and you’ll kind of discover this, maybe it was just me ’cause I had like a very strong sense of like what my writing to sound like as well. But I remember I had a couple of people that I went to initially where I was like, hmm, like the changes they’re making or the things that they’re suggesting aren’t really landing with me.

Dr. Katie: So I had another person who was like an old English teacher of mine. Um, that I went to where I was like, oh, her changes actually, like they still fit in with my voice and they still work with the vo, the voice of my initial essay. Um, so you want someone like that who you can trust, but maybe is like a third party.

Dr. Katie: Um, she was like my old English teacher, but I wasn’t my teacher any longer and she had retired and like taken a college advising. Um, I would say someone who works a lot in college advising can be really helpful. So someone like at like at CollegeAdvisor, because we’ve read so many essays that we have a good sense of like, what’s a [00:48:00] strong essay, what’s a weaker essay and how to get you towards a stronger essay.

Dr. Katie: And, um, someone that you, like a trusted person, like, like, like a loved one also works. Someone who knows you well can often be a good person to brainstorm with, even to like bounce ideas off of and be like, what is interesting about me? I don’t even know at this point. I remember I asked some of my friends that, and they were, they like had some, at least good starting places for me to begin.

Dr. Katie: Um, like to, to understand how other people. Perceived me as well, like how, how other people saw me. Um, but yeah, those are good places to start.

Anesha: Okay, thanks. Um. Oh, someone asked, and, and maybe this, it sounds like it’s not true for you, but I’ll ask anyway. How should or should BSMD essays differ from the traditional college personal statement?

Anesha: Should there be a different tone or quality of writing if you’re doing your B-S-a BSMD application versus your traditional college app?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, I wouldn’t say there’s inherently that much difference, except that, you know, if they’re asking you why you wanna go into medicine, obviously you wouldn’t.

Dr. Katie: Answer that prompt, um, or why you wanna come to this program, you should [00:49:00] definitely answer that prompt. Um, so you’re like, again, either essay you’re answering the prompt, you’re trying to tell a story as well, and it should be a well written story. I think one difference I will say is that for most, like competitive colleges, the essays are like that last final push into acceptance, like the essays along with extracurriculars and like in like maybe, you know, like the interview a little bit and like maybe a little bit.

Dr. Katie: Recommendation letters. Um, for BSMD programs, there is typically a second round to the applications. There’s like a formal interview session. Um, and that interview session is incredibly important, whether or not you get in or that that often makes or breaks it because again, they’re only accepting like really 10 to 20 students at a lot of these programs.

Dr. Katie: And so, um, it’s like typically like an in-person interview and they really test you on the spot. They test your nerves, they test how well you think under pressure. Um, those are the things that they might look out for that, um, that makes it look a little different from like the typical application cycle.

Anesha: Um, to what degree should students [00:50:00] be specific about their interest in medicine? Should they be diving into a particular field like oncology or pathology or keeping it general?

Dr. Katie: Uh, I should, maybe I should have been, I should clarify there. I think oftentimes when I have someone tell me exactly what specialty they wanna go into, especially even like as a high schooler, I’m, I’m like, press exit doubt, right?

Dr. Katie: Like, I’m like, I don’t know if, I don’t know how you could possibly know that. Um, most people go into medical school, having 30% of people go into medical school knowing what they wanna do. 30% have no idea, and 30% are certain. And then change their minds. And so what I’m trying to say is oftentimes, like even as a medical student, like you’re on your way to be a doctor and you still don’t have a good sense of what it means to be that doctor, right?

Dr. Katie: It’s like one thing to watch someone do surgeries on Grey’s Anatomy. It’s a very different thing to be there. Doing it. Um, and so if you have like an interest, like maybe you have a deep interest in women’s health, like you’ve already worked in like, [00:51:00] I don’t know, like reproductive healthcare example or example, or like for example, like dealing of advocacy for reproductive healthcare, you could absolutely talk about an interest in gynecology.

Dr. Katie: But I think that if you, people when you, when you start to formulate your entire essay about one specialty, I start to become like, I’m kind of confused. Like, how would you have enough experience to know that that’s the one specialty you wanna go into? It’s a little bit too early. Um, hopefully that makes sense.

Dr. Katie: Like BI would rather hear more in that case, for example, I’d rather hear a lot about your reproductive advocacy work and how you wanna be an advocate as a doctor, more so than I wanna hear. Like, oh, I definitely for sure a thousand percent wanna go into gynecology and I wanna, like, that’s what I wanna do with my life.

Anesha: I know you talked about your journey, but I guess to that end, what was, what was your pathway into deciding your specialty? Uh, so folks have asked us that in, in a few different ways.

Dr. Katie: Yeah. Oh, I don’t think people usually ask me that question. Um, that’s a very good question. I was one of those people, 30% of people.

Dr. Katie: Well, I was in like that group of people where I was like, I’m not really sure, but I feel [00:52:00] pretty like certain that men, like psychiatry is definitely like top one or two of my interests. Um, and a huge part of it is, and I like, again, I work with my students. I give them advice also on this. Like, this is not just for all of you out there, but I often think about it as first of all, like you’ll, you’ll kind of just soon start to discover what brings you joy, what brings you energy.

Dr. Katie: More importantly, some people like myself really enjoy an outpatient setting. Like, I like working, for example, as like the people that you see as your pediatricians, the people that you see as your family medicine doctors. I actually really enjoy their job. Like coming in, being like, Hey, what’s going on?

Dr. Katie: Like. Oh, your knee hurts, or, oh, your diabetes doesn’t look so good. Let, let’s take care of that. Let’s talk about it. Um, I enjoy that. A lot of people hate that. Some people much prefer to work in a hospital and manage like day to day. Like, oh my God, this person is coming in with sepsis. We gotta take care of it right now.

Dr. Katie: Um, for me, sorry, I got long-winded. I went off topic, but for me, um, [00:53:00] I dec I discovered that what brought me, what I wanted to improve on each and every day the most was how I talked to patients and how I interviewed patients. And I found a lot of satisfaction and knowing that if I phrased things the right way, I knew that something that I was relatively skilled at and that I could kind of assess whether or not someone was in their right mind.

Dr. Katie: I also find like the pathology, meaning like the diseases of psychiatry to be completely fascinating. Like watching a patient who is manic or has a history of psychosis, watching them talk when they are psychotic. Um. It’s really interesting ’cause a lot of what I’m observing and what I’m able to tell about a patient is completely based off my observation.

Dr. Katie: There’s no labs, there’s no test for psychosis. It’s just me making an observation, trying to understand a patient and what’s going on in their minds.

Anesha: All right. Thanks for sharing that. Some students in, in a couple of different ways are nervous about not being able to speak to like some dramatic or life-changing experience that sparked their desire to [00:54:00] become a doctor.

Anesha: I guess what do you, how did those students, I guess, access that? Why, why medicine without kind of leaning on this particularly over dramatic, um, introduction to the field?

Dr. Katie: Yeah, I, I, I definitely don’t think you need an overdramatic, um, introduction. I think most people probably don’t have that kind of story.

Dr. Katie: Um, what I would say is that like, again, like I, like I kind of said within medicine there’s so many like different. Specialties, obviously. But what I’m trying to say is that there’s so many different skill sets that you are using. Like someone who’s a primary care physician is interacting very differently from someone who’s an anesthesiologist, right?

Dr. Katie: Like anesthesiologist, your patient’s asleep, you’re never talking, you’re like barely ever talking to this patient. That’s very different from a pat, like a doctor who sees a patient once every three months, which is also very different from a pa, a patient who I see every single day, I see every single morning and I see like [00:55:00] every single afternoon, right?

Dr. Katie: Those are all complete different, um, practices. And what I’m trying to say is within that there’s different skills and um, different like that draw people in. And so if you can kind of point to in yourself what you enjoy. So for example, for me. As a high schooler. Like I, I had, I figured it out that I really, really enjoyed teaching.

Dr. Katie: Like I did some tutoring and I tutored, um, for school and meals for example. Um, which I think tutors like unhoused, um, children and I was like, oh, I don’t really know if I like working with children at this point. But I was like, I do really like teaching though. Um, that’s why I started also doing CollegeAdvisor.

Dr. Katie: And so there was something about like just being able to know something about yourself that you can kind of display and tell people, Hey, I know this about myself. I see it in becoming a doctor. How can we like bridge those two and kind of explain that connection, if that makes sense into why I wanna become a doctor and go [00:56:00] from teaching math to like teaching how diabetes medications work.

Anesha: I think that’s so, yeah, that’s so thoughtful. ’cause I know a lot of the BSMD applications ask you to envision the type of doctor you wanna be. And that sounds like really you lay laying the foundation of this is the type of doctor I wanna be, here’s how I’ve started to do activities or learn things about myself to get to that pathway.

Anesha: I love that. Um, okay, uh, I’m gonna switch just ’cause I we’re at the end to talk, uh, about a little bit more BSMD lifestyle questions that have come up. So, um, someone asked, what does your day-to-day life look like? And I think they meant this in college. So I guess I’ll ask it in three ways. Like, what does your day-to-day look like?

Anesha: What did it look like when you were in college? How did that shift when you started your MD side of things? And then what does the day-to-day look like now that you’re in residency?

Dr. Katie: Hmm. That’s a good question. Um, when I was in college, I mean, I was living a very normal, like an average college lifestyle.

Dr. Katie: So I had a couple Monday, Wednesday, Friday classes. You only take four or five classes total in college, by the way. Um, and they only meet like. [00:57:00] Either three times a week or two times a week. So it’s kind of wild when I think back, how much free time I had. I, I miss those days. Um, and the rest of the time you would spend like, you know, doing your homework, reading the book that you were assigned to read.

Dr. Katie: So, you know, I’d like wake up like 10, 11:00 AM There’s a reason why college students, like they, everyone sleeps in so late. You’d attend like your 10:30, like I think I attended like a 10:30 neuroscience class on Tuesday. And then the afternoon I typically had like some sort of humanity seminar. So I think like one semester I had like a, um, a class called Everyday Moral Problems, for example.

Dr. Katie: So I’d have that Tuesday afternoons and then Wednesday morning I would have like my morning chemistry and then I would have lab in the afternoon. So I would like, you know, you’d have to go in and like tinker a bunch of chemicals and labs for like, from like four to six and somewhere in there, like I used to like go for a swim in the around noon time.

Dr. Katie: Um. And then I think I’m missing, no, that’s four class. No, I’m missing class four to six. And then I think I had like, like Friday section for [00:58:00] chemistry where like we would go all in a small group and then we would like discuss what’s going on in chemistry class. And you would like go to different tutoring sessions, um, in case you like me, are really weak at chemistry and like, don’t like chemistry and you need to practice extra problems.

Dr. Katie: I would do that and or do that. And then I would like, you know, after, after class go and meet up with my friends and hang out, get some food from the dining hall, and then go into the library and lock in and study for a little bit. So that was college. Um, med school was a lot rougher. Um, med school taught me that I needed to learn how to study and um, I think there were a lot of days where like we had remote classes at Brown, which was really nice, but there were a lot of days where I would like watch lectures on two times or four times speed, which is, you know, I don’t know if that’s healthy or not.

Dr. Katie: We had subtitles so it worked. And then I would like wake up first thing in the morning, go to the library, um. Start studying for most of the day. And then sometimes in the afternoon we would have, the first year we would have anatomy lab. So we’d go, [00:59:00] we’d dissect some of like, like a cadaver. We’d like be, let’s say we’re focusing on, again, I’m gonna use neuroscience again.

Dr. Katie: So we’d be dissecting different parts of the brain and we would looking for different parts of the brain. And like you see the anatomical findings. Can you point out like what section of the brain this is and you know, have different cuts of it and get tested on like, you know, can you figure out like what part of the brain this is?

Dr. Katie: Can you label it or, um, we dissect like different muscles and like, you know, there actually is a lot of muscles in your body, um, awful for me in anatomy class. And we’d have to like, you know, take a body, cut through it and, and find those muscles, dissect out the muscles, meaning we’d have to separate all the muscles from each other and then we’d have to label ’em appropriately on tests later on.

Dr. Katie: Um, so that was anatomy lab. And that was like maybe like three times a week for a couple of months, typically until we finished the entire body. But most of your day in medical school was. Studying the first two years and then the last two years, you’re typically on rotation. So you are working whatever hours the doctors are, like the residents are working [01:00:00] is what you’re kind of working.

Dr. Katie: So you are balancing waking up at like 4:00 AM going to surgeries, um, seeing patients in the morning before the doctors see them coming back, talking about them. Figuring out a plan for them and then let’s say going to the OR and then doing operations for the rest of the day where you stand there and you kind of watch and you listen and learn what doctors surgeons do.

Dr. Katie: Um, and then after that you would go home and you would study some more because there’s a test at the end of every single block. So there’s a lot of tests. If you’re not a test taker, medicine’s gonna be a little rough one for you. Um, and now that I’m a doctor. Um, my day differs depending on what rotation I’m on.

Dr. Katie: So I was just on child psychiatry for example, and we pretty much worked like a school day kind of work. So I would show up at 8:00 AM and we work until typically 4:00 PM and if there’s any emergencies, anything going wrong, like I respond to those, I, I respond to those. Or if there’s a code happening. Um, if patients are agitated, I respond.

Dr. Katie: Um, when I was on medicine, [01:01:00] if right, you’re like the first person that the nurses contact, if they have to, if they need medications, you put in those orders. If they need vital signs, check if they need blood pressure. You check their blood pressure. If you, you know, you like see like you leak in the labs, you’re like, how’s their sodium?

Dr. Katie: How’s their potassium? Um, if there’s any emergencies, if someone’s heart stopped, if someone stops breathing, if their labs don’t look very good and you have to add on new things, you have to add on fluids. Those are all things that, um, I did in, in, in a day to day of my life.

Anesha: All right. Well thank you so much Katie, for taking us from soup to nuts from starting the application, um, just talking about your own current, um, experience as a doctor.

Anesha: Thank you everyone for coming out tonight. Uh, we hope that you gained some tips and strategies for starting your, uh, pre-med and BSMD essays. If you haven’t, you can go ahead and scan, um, the QR code to schedule your free assessment with us. Um, also just know that, uh, if you aren’t able to scan it, the browser just remain open on the webinar line and you’ll be directed to that booking page immediately.

Anesha: So don’t close your browser as the webinar [01:02:00] ends. Um, all right, we hope we’ll you’ll join us for our future webinars. But until next time, take care and have a great evening everybody. Thanks so much.

Dr. Katie: Bye everyone.