How to Write Standout Essays as a Pre-Med Applicant

Webinar Transcription

2026-7-8-How to Write Standout Essays as a Pre-Med Applicant

Anesha: [00:00:00] Hi everyone, and welcome to tonight’s webinar. My name is Anesha Grant. I am a senior advisor at CollegeAdvisor, and I will be your moderator today. Today’s webinar is a special session for HOSA and FutureDocs on “How to write Standout Essays as a Pre-Med Applicant.” Before we get started, just to orient everyone with the webinar timing, we will take a quick poll just to learn who is in the room with us, share the presentation on today’s topic, and then open up the floor to respond to your questions in a live Q&A.

Anesha: On the sidebar, you can start submitting your questions in, un- under the Q&A tab. Slides are available under the handouts tab. And now, let’s meet our presenter, Dr. Katie Chiou. Hi, Katie. How are you doing?

Dr. Katie Chiou Hi, everyone. Excited to be here tonight, and I’m excited to meet you all.

Anesha: Tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, unless you feel like you’re gonna repeat it in the the presentation.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, so I went to Brown as a PLME student, or Program in Liberal Medical [00:01:00] Education, which is basically just r name for a BS/MD program, which means that I did my undergrad and, um, my doctorate both at Brown. Um, I have now graduated. I’m a resident in New York, but, um, spent a lot of my years in Providence. And if anyone’s curious what a BS/MD program is, I’ll try to touch upon it, and we can also talk about it in the Q&A.

Dr. Katie Chiou But basically, it is a early acceptance to dement- into medical school. At the same time that you apply for college, you also apply for medical school. So I’ve spent a lot of time now, I think almost eight years or more than that actually, um, working with college applications and also specifically am uniquely interested, uh, in helping out my pre-med students out there.

Anesha: Awesome. Thanks. Uh, we will first get our poll going, and then, uh, I’ll hand it over to you. So our poll is just let us know what grade level, and especially since we’re in the summer, what grade level will you be going to, um, [00:02:00] next year. If you’re a parent or a teacher, we welcome you. You can go ahead and select Other.

Anesha: As we’re waiting for the polls to come in, I will ask a non-medical related question about where have you found the best pizza in New York?

Dr. Katie Chiou Oh my gosh. That’s a good and interesting question. I also, right now I’m working in, on the Lower East Side, which is, like, the, and, like, right next to Soho too, the mecca of all things food.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and so I’m next to, like, a couple of famous change, uh, chains, like Rubirosa, Upside- Mm-hmm … uh, Prince Street are all, like, within a block of each other where I work. And so my goal is to one day just, like, get every single pizza on the same day and then, like, side by side compare them.

Anesha: I feel, I feel like it’s hard in the ci- in the entire city.

Anesha: I did a Brooklyn- Yeah … pizza tour.

Dr. Katie Chiou Ooh,

Anesha: okay. Okay. Um, and so that’s its own special thing. But okay. All right. Sorry. Highly New York specific, but, um, I always- That’s okay. I like always ask Katie the same question, so I wanted to just mix it up a little bit. Um, okay. We’ll go [00:03:00] ahead and close our poll. Um, there are about 140 folks in the space with- us just for your context, Katie.

Anesha: We have about three ninth graders, um, 29 10th graders- Wow … 44 11th graders, and then a big chunk, 61 12th graders, and then we have a handful of parents and teachers. So mostly seniors, but representative across all grades.

Dr. Katie Chiou Gotcha.

Anesha: All right, so I will talk to talk- I, I will stop talking and hand it over to you, and be back a little bit later for our Q&A.

Dr. Katie Chiou Sounds good. All right, I’m excited to see a lot of juniors and seniors out there. I think especially for you, um, seniors, I hope that you guys are kind of definitely thinking about it, and a little bit starting to edge towards the trenches of doing the brainstorming, um, maybe drafting. Um, I would say a good goal for everyone, and I’ll talk more about this, but a good light goal is to have something, something written by- m- mid to end of August, depending on when you [00:04:00] start school.

Dr. Katie Chiou So before you start your school year, it’ll be, it’ll be nice if you have something drafted. Okay. So let’s start with, and granted, I, I’ve done a lot of, um, advising now with pre-meds, and so I always start from what are some common misconceptions? And I start there because the title of this talk is about what to do as a pre-med applicant.

Dr. Katie Chiou And so I’ll always start by saying, “What does it actually mean to be a pre-med?” Because I find this is one of the biggest misconceptions and also mistakes that people made in the essay process. And the first thing is that being pre-med does not mean that you’re applying to a medical major. So you can be pre-med out of literally any major ever.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, some– a lot of people do biology or a biology-adjacent major like, um, public health or human biology, but really you can be a, a, a medical provider under anything, and I would say some of my most interesting classmates and who bring the most to the table often are those people. I will say plug for myself, I majored in anthropology, and I’m right now at work reading a book that is, uh, [00:05:00] from an anthropologist talking about psychiatry, which is my specialty, and I’m finding it really, really helpful.

Dr. Katie Chiou And also thinking about myself and have realized how much having a different discipline inform my work has made a huge difference in how, like, I think about work, and also I’m much more interesting when it comes to talking to, like, a lot of my attendings. They’re always curious about my thoughts about things.

Dr. Katie Chiou Okay. So basically what I’m trying to say is that in America it is a little bit different than in a lot of other countries. For those of you like myself who may have immigrant parents or maybe just had parents who went to medical school even in a different country, it’s a very different system. In America, we have to do four years of undergraduate, and that’s what I’m talking about here, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou Undergraduate, college, same thing. You can do any major you want. At most colleges, you don’t declare your major until the end of your second year, which means what I’m trying to say is that when you are applying to college, what you’re putting down on the application, and typically you’re listing your top one, two, and three choice, is really about strategy.

Dr. Katie Chiou It’s really about what can you– [00:06:00] what major can you best make an argument for and will best highlight your strengths and how you’ll contribute on the college campus, and maybe your intellectual curiosities as well on the college application. Because once you get to college, bar a couple of engineering school, like, things, once you get to college, you dec- you have until sec- your second year to de- to declare your major, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou So at that point, it doesn’t e- like, what you put on your application does not matter whatsoever. I applied, applied, for example, as a cognitive science with a focus in linguistics. Did not take a single class in the cognitive science department once I got to college. Um- Okay. The other thing is that these are two entirely separate processes.

Dr. Katie Chiou So another big mistake that I’ll, I’ll often see, and I’m gonna reiterate this throughout the entire talk, is that I’ll find that people, they’re so set on wanting to become a doctor that they forget they’re applying for college. Meaning, all of these application advisors, they’re looking for who you will be and what you’ll contribute to the college campus, not to what you’ll contribute to medical school, not to necessarily what you’ll become [00:07:00] in 10 years’ time.

Dr. Katie Chiou They’re asking who you are gonna be in the next four, uh, or four years if you’re a senior, if you’re anything like that, you know, the next, like, couple of five, six, seven years. They’re not interested in like, “Oh, so you say you wanna be a cardiologist.” Great. You’re not gonna become a cardiologist at, in college.

Dr. Katie Chiou That’s not happening. And so what that means is that when you are applying, you are trying to make an argument for the kind of college student you’re gonna be, and maybe one day you’ll become a, a doctor and you’ll be pre-med while you’re in college. But there are a lot of other interesting things about you and a lot of interesting things that they want to know about you that aren’t just one-dimensionally, “I wanna be a doctor, I wanna be a doctor.”

Dr. Katie Chiou Okay. So why is writing a strong essay really important? Um, especially for if any of you are looking at more competitive schools, and a lot of schools these days I think have also become m- more competitive, that schools that w- were once like my target schools are now reach schools for me. Um, or are, I would categorize as reach, as reach schools for a kid with the same profile as me.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, they are a way to stand out. I would say that, [00:08:00] you know, admissions officers, they typically spend around 15 to 20 minutes reviewing your entire application. What are the things … I’m, I’m skimming over your grade, I’m skimming over your SAT score, I’m skimming over the classes. Okay, cool. But what’s going to stick is going to be a good story.

Dr. Katie Chiou And often people don’t realize that the way to get into college is that admissions officers are typically assigned to your local area. Um, and they, they might know your high school, they might know like, you know, the general area and extracurriculars that other people are doing. They might know like what grades other people in your school are getting.

Dr. Katie Chiou And then they kind of, it’s like a tier system. It’s almost like, um … Oh, God, I don’t have a good analogy for this. But like a hierarchy. So like one admissions officer feeds into like another senior admissions officer who maybe oversees like a bigger area, and then up and up and up. And so what you are aiming for ultimately, if you think about it from the AO’s perspective, is you want them to want to advocate for you, to fight for you.

Dr. Katie Chiou And the first step to doing that is to be memorable. You wanna be memorable and you wanna be likable in your essays, and you have a lot of essays that you can showcase all of that in. And so, um, [00:09:00] when it comes to like why … And why a good essay is important, I can’t emphasize enough like how much a really strong essay sticks in my brain and makes me wanna fight for a student that much harder, because it’s so rare to come across good writers.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and especially I think, I will say in the time of ChatGPT and AI, it’s gotten all that much harder to find like an interesting, unique, or even surprising essay. Um, and so that’s, that’s part of why essays can really help. Um, they really humanize you also. Um, and that humanization is what makes people wanna advocate for you.

Dr. Katie Chiou So how should your essays be structured? This really is a tough question. Um, I often think of like a couple of different styles of essay. The first one, which is the most classic one, is kind of like a, almost like a classic novel, is what I say. It’s like you start out with a little bit of, you’re building up, you’re giving us like a problem, you’re building up tension, you reach some sort of climax, and then you kind of resolve it Um, and when I’m thinking about personal statements [00:10:00] especially, or longer essays that are over 350 words, I often recommend that people start by dropping us off into, like, a critical point in your experience.

Dr. Katie Chiou It kind of helps draw the reader in. Um, what I would not recommend is, like, a rhetorical question. Like, you know how back in the day, um, when you were younger, people used to tell you, “Oh, like, to start off an essay about, um, I don’t know, about cursive, you should start off your essay with a rhetorical question.

Dr. Katie Chiou Why has cursive gone out of date?” Uh, that, that doesn’t, that does not ever work for a personal narrative essay, okay? Um, drop us into a moment, and then give us, like, build that tension using your words. The other thing is you can oftentimes have an essay that is naturally structured around maybe multiple different little stories that all kind of coalesce and come together.

Dr. Katie Chiou I think that’s a harder essay to write, but if you have an experience that kind of has multiple little stories embed with it, within it, and you can find a strong connection between those, then that can also work for a- an essay structure. Um, and then yeah, thinking of [00:11:00] it as having a climax. You kind of– I, I want to be invested in where your story is going.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I wanna be curious about it, and I wanna be, like, I wanna want to read it, if that makes sense. So in that way, a personal statement is a little bit like a book in the way that it, in the way that it’s like you want to be captivated by it, right? That’s like part of, like, why these essays are so important, is you really wanna have good writing and catch someone in.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, how it is not like a novel, though, is that you only have typically around 650 words. And so what I’ll often say is that means you’ll write a lot, but you’ll need to really, really condense and make sure that every sentence is either advancing the narrative there some way or is communicating something about you.

Dr. Katie Chiou Maybe subtly, maybe not like a, “Oh, I am a compassionate and kind person,” but more in telling the story of who you are, that can come across Okay, so this is where I get into the detail. What [00:12:00] factors make for a great essay? And I- you’ll notice that I, I made a big preference to say great versus good. Um, I’ve read many, many good essays, but they’re ever so often…

Dr. Katie Chiou And you really only need one great essay in your entire portfolio to be memorable. Like, I genuinely believe that. Um, I mean, you want all of them to be strong, but every… Like, you just want one to be like, wow, and that’s how someone’s gonna remember you. They’re gonna refer to you as, “Oh, that girl who did the blah, blah, blah thing.”

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, so a great essay. In my ideal world, my perfect element for a great essay is a- any element of surprise. Um, so the way that I’ll often describe this is people don’t realize, and maybe some of you seniors out there might have realized, um, but usually around, I think if I remember correctly, it’s around, like, the first week-ish of August, the Common Application opens up.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, if you haven’t already, I would at least go out and Google what the Common Application prompts are, and I would also look up, like, what were previous essay prompts for a couple of schools you’re looking at ’cause you might [00:13:00] be shocked to find out that, for example, I’m gonna use Brown ’cause I- that’s where I went.

Dr. Katie Chiou The Brown, um, undergraduate, just the college application, had, if I remember correctly, five different essays. Now, all- not all of them are super long. Some of them are much shorter. But you will be writing five different essays for just one school. And so you could definitely reuse essays. I highly recommend reusing essays.

Dr. Katie Chiou There should not be a taboo about it. Um, but writing five really, really strong essays can be really tough, especially because ultimately you’ll be writing more than that when you’re applying to other colleges. Um, so when I’m thinking about the five essays, I kind of think of it as, and I hate to use this analogy, but kind of like a stock portfolio, like a risk portfolio, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou So in different essays, you’re gonna play it differently in terms of how much risk you’re taking. So let me use myself as an example. Um, one pretty standard but still, like, a, like, a decent essay was my personal statement. Um, I wrote about my extracurricular activity, which is a pretty, like- [00:14:00] Boring even, like standard thing to write about an extracurricular activity.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I volunteered a suicide hotline. So there’s a lot in my personal statement that I was able to communicate about being a good doctor, which again, not, not the point, but just being a good doctor, but being a good student, right? So there’s the fact that I’m calm under pressure, that I can talk to people, um, right, that I’m kind and compassionate, I guess.

Dr. Katie Chiou Like, just by virtue of the fact that I was doing this work, right, and I really cared about these stories. My element of like maybe if I had to characterize it like low risk– Uh, what’s a low risk thing that you can invest in? Like bonds? I don’t know. Um, my element of the low risk here was that I used the story format I was telling you guys about before, where I integrated like two or three mini stories into my narrative, and that can be risky because you only have so many words, and you can’t waste a lot of your c- your words on like talking about other people’s problems, because then I don’t, you don’t learn anything about who I am.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and so that was kind of like my small risk that I was able to pull off because I kept [00:15:00] these stories really contained. Um, and this personal statement was kind of like the core of the rest of my essays. It talked about my interest in mental health, it talked about my interest in language, and it talked about my interest in the brain, which as you might imagine, for someone who’s applying for cognitive science with a focus in linguistics, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou You see how it kinda ties that all a little bit together in some ways. Um, so that was my personal statement. Then I had r- really risk- much riskier essays. I had one essay where the topic was risky. I wrote about how I failed as a, um, as a Science Olympiad captain. And I will say, I think a lot of my Science Olympiad work was backed up by my letters of rec.

Dr. Katie Chiou I had some really amazing teachers who wrote really great letters of rec. But I remember that was actually the most often mentioned thing. Once you get into college, admissions officers actually write you a little bit note saying– A little note saying like, “Oh my God, we were so…” Like, um, “We’re,” like, like, “You know, we’re so happy to admit you.

Dr. Katie Chiou Please come to our school.” And like, they put in like one particular thing that stood out to them in your application. For me, for both, I think for both Yale and [00:16:00] Princeton, they both mentioned my Science Olympiad, um, which was kind of interesting, because I wrote an essay about how I failed at it. So that was like kind of a riskier topic, but it was kind of like a classic narrative structure in terms of like, here’s how I failed, here’s the climax, and then here’s what I learned from that experience.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, then I had way riskier essays in terms of structure. I wrote one of my essays in the form of an autopsy report about myself, because I was someone whose like favorite show was Criminal Minds, and I really liked Friends back in the day. And, um, so I did an autopsy of myself, and I ended up actually turning it into like not so much an autopsy as much as like a, here’s what’s going through my mind.

Dr. Katie Chiou Here’s how I think about things. Like here is what’s going through my mind as an intern in debate. Um, and then I had like another essay. Brown used to back in the day have an essay about what home means to you, and it’s like 100 or 150 words long. It was so short. And so I wrote more of like a um, literary, like poetic style, um, [00:17:00] essay about Moving a lot as a child, and, and this, particularly this orange tree in my backyard, and what this orange tree signified to me about stability and finally being able to stay in one place.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and so there’s a lot of different ways, right? Like, hopefully, like many across, like all these different essays I’m writing, you’re kind of choosing … You’re choosing sometimes a risky topic. Sometimes you’re choosing a risky structure. Sometimes you’re choosing, like, everything’s just risky. Like my autopsy report, like, oh, that was like a, it was like r- uh, generally a pretty risky essay.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, but whenever I read someone’s essay and I’m surprised in a good way, and sometimes I’m surprised in a bad way. Uh, like I think there was like one essay I saw that was like an acrostic poem with the words medicine across it. Risky in a bad way. Um, and that’s why you need also to have good people you can ask and ask, like, “Is this a good essay or not?”

Dr. Katie Chiou But the point is, you kind of play different levels of risk. I also had many essays that were purely safe. Why do I wanna go to Brown? It was a very straightforward, this is why I wanna go [00:18:00] to Brown. I did my research, right? And so, um, you kind of wanna play it differently with the risk, mostly because that’s kind of, that’s part of what makes you memorable.

Dr. Katie Chiou And also, as someone who’s read a lot, a lot of essays in my time, when I am surprised by an essay, I’m making note of it. Because most of the times for mu- uh, most essays, I can almost predict how it’s going to flow. Because once you’ve read w- like, a lot of admissions essays, you kind of get the, the gist of it.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I’ve read so many essays about how someone looked under the microscope at like, I don’t know, like some straw- uh, something about strawberry dissection. It was like a, a really popular biology one. And I’ve read many, many openings about how Legos was someone’s favorite thing, and that’s why they wanna be an engineer.

Dr. Katie Chiou Or someone really likes biology and their physics class, and that’s why they wanna be a bioengineer now, right? These are things that I’ve seen time and time again, and so you want to be, and it helps to have someone who’s an advisor too. It helps to have someone look at your essay and be [00:19:00] like, “Is this trite?

Dr. Katie Chiou Is this something that everyone else has already said? And how can I take a different stab at a different perspective?” And that’s where that surprise comes in. Okay. The second thing, I’ve just gone on a lot about surprise, but I get a lot of questions about that. The second thing is the every word matter.

Dr. Katie Chiou So I’ve kind of already explained that already, but what I hope to me- like, hope that I can communicate with that is that it really is like every sentence is kind of advancing something. So my example is in my suicide hotline personal statement, um, for example, each of these three little stories, these discrete stories that I chose, was meant to communicate something about me.

Dr. Katie Chiou It wasn’t because… I mean, the stories themselves, maybe they were interesting, maybe they were not, but they were meant to be something about me. So one of the stories I picked, for example, was about this person, this teenager, who, and I don’t wanna get into any trigger warnings, but essentially it’s a suicide hotline, and they were from, um, a farm in the Midwest.

Dr. Katie Chiou And like- Part of our time on the phone was us talking about, like, crop [00:20:00] rotations and how their, you know, th- this particular, that they were feeling really, really down, and it was tied to, like … They, they were very descriptive in the description of the farm, and this, like, I’m coming from Los Angeles, have never seen a farm at that point in my life, had never seen a corn field in my life.

Dr. Katie Chiou And so in this way, me telling the story was trying to communicate my ability to relate to people who are not like myself. Never once made that statement, but I’m, I hope, I hope that makes sense in terms of, like, when you are able to talk about things that occurred or things that you’re thinking about.

Dr. Katie Chiou Like, for example, maybe I’ve seen some really good essays, like shower thoughts essays, or dinner conversation or the table essays. Like, really mundane things, but they’re communicating something about you, um, or about the way you grew up or how you navigate the world, and those are all things that are what makes a truly great essay

Dr. Katie Chiou Okay. How can you demonstrate your passion for medicine? Um, so I wanna be clear that, and I’ll, I’ll [00:21:00] hammer this in over and over again, that not every one of your essays should be about medicine. That is not the only interesting thing about any of you out there. And in fact, when it comes to an admissions officer for colleges, I’m less interested in, um, like, why you want to be a doctor, or I’m less interested in– I’m interested in why you wanna be a doctor, but that’s not the only thing I wanna hear about.

Dr. Katie Chiou I wanna hear about who you are as a person first. Um, and I drive this home by saying that when I applied to colleges, I actually nowhere on my application for the Ivy League schools, outside of Brown, um, did I indicate anywhere that I was gonna be a doctor. Despite the fact that I knew that I was, I was gonna be pre-med going in, I did not talk about medicine or becoming a doctor anywhere in my application.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, because to be honest, I felt it wasn’t really relevant to… I had a lot of other interests that were definitely not medicine, and I also don’t really like biology and chemistry and math that much. So it was like, I was like, “Okay, this is something that I’ll do, but it’s not really the thing that I’m going to college to [00:22:00] explore.”

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, okay. So in terms of indicating your passion for medicine, when you do have to write it, and I, I certainly did have to write some essays like this, um, one of the things that I will try to encourage is to think about any experience that you might have with healthcare, um, whether it’s shadowing, whether it’s volunteering, whether it’s like going to a senior home and helping out.

Dr. Katie Chiou For me, right, like, I think the suicide hotline kinda counts. Um, clearly I became a psychiatrist, so. Um, but all of these things, one of the– it’s not just that you have those things, ’cause that can go into your extracurricular section, right? So you telling me, “Oh, I shadowed this pediatric cardiologist. He was really kind with patients.

Dr. Katie Chiou He was so patient with them. Like, it was really nice watching him,” that’s all good and dandy. But, uh, a good essay, right, I need more depth, and I lit- need a little bit more, um, surprise. And so one of those things is thinking about how you can show that you’ve reflected really deeply on this [00:23:00] experience. So that comes with when you do it, y- it’s, you know, observation.

Dr. Katie Chiou What are the things that you’re talking to the patient about? And it’s not about, like, the medical knowledge. I- I’m not expecting you… Like, it’s not, um, as much as maybe you wanna throw around, like, really cool medical words, at the end of the day, like, the admissions officers themselves aren’t doctors. And so, like, while it’s like, “Oh, clearly this is someone who’s engaging with the information,” it’s not really something that I’m, like, looking for.

Dr. Katie Chiou It’s more so, like, how much have you thought about what it means to be a doctor, and what stood out to you about that shadowing experience or that volunteering experience? Um- I think showing that you’ve thought deeply about why a doctor and what is a doctor even. Like, let’s get down to the basics, like what is a doctor?

Dr. Katie Chiou What is their role in society? Those are things that I think, like if, if someone can get at those points in their essay, I’m imp- like I’m surprised. That is a surprise. I am impressed. Um, and also it’s okay if you don’t have clinical experience, right? Because some of the things that I think transfer to being a doctor, people…

Dr. Katie Chiou And I, at the time in high school also didn’t really fully [00:24:00] understand. Um, I remember one of the things that I did when I was in high school, I don’t even know if it made it onto my extracurricular list for college applications, but I volunteered at this thing called School on Wheels, which was, um, this where we went to different shelters in Los Angeles, um, unhoused shelters.

Dr. Katie Chiou In my case, I actually happened to be matched with a domestic violence shelter, and I would just tutor kids who didn’t really have good educations because they were moving around constantly for various different reasons. And it’s so interesting because… So that just me explaining that extracurricular activity without even saying anything more explains a little bit, two things a little bit about me.

Dr. Katie Chiou One, that I really enjoy teaching, and that is something that come- is like, has been true time and time again. I am really interested in medical education, will pursue that in my future. Um, and I really enjoy teaching in that this was like a patient population that I didn’t really have a lot of exposure to until like this one glimpse into it.

Dr. Katie Chiou And now as a [00:25:00] doctor, I’m working pretty deeply. Like, like I, a lot, like, you know, on the child units, a good amount of my kids are kids who have had very fractured childhoods and have moved a lot and, um, have very unstable households. And I think back and I’m like, “Wow, I couldn’t have known it then,” but that, that was me already finding an interest in a population and, and getting involved with it, and that’s connecting to me now.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, what I could have said back then, which is true, is education So for me, for example, and I wrote here too, I wrote- listed a lot of things, but for me, I think one of the best things about being a doctor, and again, this is me personally, not everyone will agree, and surgeons certainly won’t agree, for example.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, but one of the best things about being a doctor is how much education there is. And so I, I think of my day-to-day job a lot of the times as educating people and teaching people about different things. So if someone’s a primary care provider, for example, like y- let’s say you’re a pediatrician or let’s say you’re a primary [00:26:00] care doctor, you might have to explain to patients what is diabetes.

Dr. Katie Chiou Like what the hell is diabetes? Why do we need to treat it if someone’s not having symptoms right now, right? Why, why you need to take these medications for the rest of your life? And that’s a huge part of being a primary care doctor most times. But of being a doctor, um, or the pediatrician, you might have to explain to parents why one thing might require antibiotics, why another thing might not, or you might have to explain like why you wanna do this test or might not.

Dr. Katie Chiou Some people will think of being a doctor as more of like a puzzle type thing, right? If you’ve ever watched House MD, not super accurate, but still there. Um, The Pitt, by the way, is the most accurate medical show I’ve watched in a very long time. Um, but I would, so I would say The Pitt, if anyone like wants, like what is medicine in the, at least in the emergency room setting, The Pitt’s pretty accurate.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, you might be someone who, like, really enjoys working with your hands, and in which case, like a surgeon is probably like more what you wanna be talking about. Um, and so but if you can kind of narrow, like find some niches within what it means to be a [00:27:00] doctor and kind of go forward with that niche, that can be, and relate it back to your own extracurriculars, most importantly, of course, that can be a really good way to write an interest- a, an interesting That is an essay.

Dr. Katie Chiou Excuse me. Okay, so I remembered that I had talked a little bit about my essays, but let’s get more into it. Um, so Brown claimed me. I had a total of– It’s actually more than that now. Um, I think it now has six or seven essays. Um, but at the time, it had five total essays, and I already kinda talked about my personal statement.

Dr. Katie Chiou It was about working in a suicide hotline, and, um, I connected a lot of my es- other essays to it. So when I talk about this personal statement being the core of my application, I really meant it. In a lot of my other essays, I would reference back. For example, in my BS/MD, like my medical essay, I, uh, the question was like, “Why do you wanna be a doctor?”

Dr. Katie Chiou essentially. I referenced back, um, to, for example, an interest in child abuse and an interest in thinking about what [00:28:00] abu- how abuse might impact a kid from a neuroscience perspective or a cognitive perspective, from a language perspective. Again, that’s connecting with my major. Um, I also talked a little bit about, like, things that I had learned at school, thinking about how culture can impact medicine and impact the stories that we tell about, um, illnesses.

Dr. Katie Chiou And, um, some of the classes that I picked out in my application for Brown were classes that I took. In fact, most of them were. I, I mentioned, like, a couple of medical anthropology classes. At the time, I didn’t know what anthropology was, so I, I didn’t say those words. But I, like, picked out a particular class called Culture and Health, which I ended up taking and absolutely loving.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and there were other things that I said I liked and I ended up not liking. I was, like, really thinking about ethics at the time. I was like, “I’m for sure gonna love ethics and biomedical ethics and debating, like, the morality of things.” I took like two philosophy courses, and I absolutely hated it. On the other end, I ended up taking a class on Buddhism and death, which was in [00:29:00] the religious department.

Dr. Katie Chiou I am neither Buddhist– I guess I am invested in death, but I am, uh, not Buddhist. But I took this class in the religious study department never having been interested in religion in my life, and wow, like, that was such an interesting class. Um, uh, like I took a bunch of history classes, which I never would’ve– Like, I didn’t really enjoy history all that much in, in high school, and I took these history classes, and I still think about them to this day because those professors were so good and compelling at telling stories about really interesting things, like the history of board games or the history of prisons or the history of psychiatry.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, anyhow- Sorry, back to my essays. So that’s all the ways in which when you are writing your essays, I highly encourage all of you to research the school specifically. Make sure you go onto their website, figure out what different majors they have, and when you’re picking a major, make sure you know why you’re picking neuroscience and not cognitive neuroscience.

Dr. Katie Chiou Why are you picking cognitive science and not biology, right? So don’t just list a bunch of things that sound similar. Actually think it through and see [00:30:00] i- in fact, if there are any, like, interdisciplinary, like, uh, classes. Those might be the ones that are the most interesting for you to pick out. For example, at Brown, we had this class under the theaters department technically, but it was specifically a theater overlap with neuroscience.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, it was like cross-linked or whatever it’s called. And, um, basically, it was a class about using acting and, like, theater and, like, role-playing to help older adults with Alzheimer’s, um, and with dementia, and how it can help them improve their functionality in day-to-day life, right? So these are things that, like, that might sound super fascinating to you, and maybe you’re also someone who’s interested in Alzheimer’s and happens to be a theater nerd.

Dr. Katie Chiou Beautiful. Um, okay. BS/MD, my BS/MD essay I, I haven’t really talked about, but my, like, risk for that essay, I remember, was that i- I kind of dropped into a surgery perspective. I was talking about, like, suturing up a pig heart, and then I was like, “Ha ha ha.” Or I was talking about suturing up a heart, and then I was like, “Ha ha, [00:31:00] this is not a medical emergency.

Dr. Katie Chiou Actually, this was just a pig.” And then I sort of backtracked and talked a little bit about what drew my interest into medicine. Um- Yeah, and the bent that I p- I took at the time especially was that I was really interested in medical humanities because I also had a strong section of my extracurriculars that showed an interest in writing and in literary arts.

Dr. Katie Chiou And so with that in mind, right, you wanna figure out how can you present a full picture of who you are. And so I was kind of establishing myself as like, “Hi, I’m a medical humanities person,” versus someone who might be more interested in, like, biotech. Okay. Common mistakes. Um, I’ve already touched on this a little bit, uh, as well.

Dr. Katie Chiou Like, I have talked more than I think my slides have allowed for, so I’m gonna move through this fast. But being… Can you get as specific as possible? I listed a couple of examples. So in what ways have you engaged thoughtfully in a patient encounter, and in what ways are you interested in medicine in which you can find a niche, even if it doesn’t actually pan out, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou It doesn’t [00:32:00] have to pan out. But what are some ways that you can apply kind of the niches that you’ve found for yourself in your extracurriculars right now in high school, how can you apply that to your interest in medicine? So that might be, for example, tutoring in education. It might be, like, you are someone who’s gotten involved with, like, advocacy.

Dr. Katie Chiou That’s huge. Like, there are a lot of physician advocates who literally go to Congress and testify, and even not Congress, like, at state levels will, like, there are things that we can change laws. Maybe you’re someone who really likes debate. Well, funny enough, there are doctors who go present in court, and they’re forensic doctors, and they’re the ones who are doing evaluations on, you know, criminals and, like, why or why they might not be competent to stand trial.

Dr. Katie Chiou Those are all things that fall within a doctor’s realm of duties, and so it’s kind of wild because the, the realm is so large. Um, and because the realm is so large, that is, again, why the specificity really helps To convince me that you have thought about this and that you are very genuine about this passion.

Dr. Katie Chiou And that’s hard, I get it. As a high schooler, like, how is this possible? We’re all– You just do your best. [00:33:00] Um, okay, final piece of advice. I’ve already– I’ve kind of tiptoed around this, but consider applying not as a biology major. The reason why I say that is, again, I read a lot of essays, and I find that it’s really, really tough for people to write a really compelling “why do I wanna major in biology?”

Dr. Katie Chiou essay because there’s just– I think there’s just, like, not… And again, this is maybe coming from my perspective, and I didn’t love biology. I’m sure there’s some of you out there who it will actually be, like, a huge, like, biology is the perfect fit for your application. But I would consider researching kind of more some of the other majors that exist at the schools that you’re applying to, ’cause I think you’ll come across a lot of really interesting majors that you didn’t even know existed.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and so the example I gave earlier, right? Like, where Brown literally has a category of, like, five different neuroscience, like, brain-specific majors, not even biology. There’s biology, human, there’s, like, a human biology, and there’s a public health. But on top of that, we have neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, [00:34:00] cognitive science, and then we have, it’s like a biological neuroscience or something, and then we have a behavioral decision sciences, and then we have psychology.

Dr. Katie Chiou So that was six things that I just listed right there, um, that are all technically under the neuroscience window. And so you should know the differences. You should know why you wanna do the one that you want to do, and you should also know what they all are, ’cause you might not. And certainly, like, I wouldn’t know what behavioral decision sciences is if I didn’t look through the course catalog and was like, “Oh, that’s what it’s intended for.”

Dr. Katie Chiou Okay. Make sure your sciences are solid. Um, AP or IB biology or chemistry, if your school offers them, is always, like, a high priority. I think especially chemistry is a really, really tough leader class in college, and so any strength that you can build in chemistry can be really helpful. And you can always switch career paths, whether into medicine or out of medicine, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou Most people, actually, I wouldn’t say most people. Nearly all people applying to medical school these days take at least one or two gap years, if not more. Um, I remember on the residency [00:35:00] application trail, I actually got questioned why I didn’t take a gap year. It was considered, like, kind of a detriment.

Dr. Katie Chiou It was, like, kind of weird that I didn’t take a gap year. Um, I had to answer because I was in this eight-year program. Um, but I would, I would, I would say is if the bigg- the best thing that you can do for yourself is to constantly ask yourself if you want to be a doctor and why you want to be a doctor, because this is a very long journey.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I finished college in 2021 during the pandemic, and I currently still have four years ahead of me in training. That’s how long it’s gonna take. Um, so yeah, being a doctor is certainly not easy, and it’s definitely not the easiest way to make money. Um, but it can be very fulfilling. All right.

Anesha: Hello. Okay, sorry, my mic was… not turning on. All right, sorry everybody. Um, we are going to transition. Thank you so much, Katie, for a thoughtful presentation. We’re gonna transition [00:36:00] into our Q&A section, so just gonna give some context on that before we get started. Um, that is the end of our presentation session.

Anesha: I hope you found the information helpful. Uh, remember that you can download the slides under the Handouts tab. We’re gonna move on to the live Q&A. I’ll read through the questions that you submit in the Q&A tab, paste them into the public chat so that Katie can see them, or that everyone can see them, and then read them aloud so that Katie can go ahead and give us an answer.

Anesha: Um, if you’re not able to submit questions the q- through the Q&A tab, just know that you might have to log out and log back in through the, um, through the link that you received via your email and not through the CollegeAdvisor landing page. A reminder that the session is being recorded and will be available at the website that’s at the top of your screens, um, later tomorrow, um, or will be forwarded to you, uh, through future Docs and HOSA.

Anesha: Okay. Um, I’m gonna also put out a piece for people to not send overly specific and personal questions. Um, we, we cannot [00:37:00] give you a, a, a private, um, and, or public, um, individual advising session right now. Um, but we will try to get through as many questions as possible. Um, so some of these I think you started to address, Katie, but I was gonna start with, um…

Anesha: Someone asked, “How do you write a strong essay without having to talk about your past traumas?”

Dr. Katie Chiou Oh, okay. Um, I think this is an interesting, and Anesha obviously feel free to chime in at any point, but it’s an interesting thing, uh, where I think people actually very mistakenly think that the more they can trauma dig and unload their trauma in a essay, the more admissions officers will like your essay.

Dr. Katie Chiou And on the flip side, I also have people come to me and say like, “Oh my God, I don’t have any traumas. Like, what am I gonna talk about? Like, there’s nothing for me to say.” And, uh, both of those things are, I think, predicated on this very, very false assumption that you have to trauma dig and trauma, like, pour [00:38:00] out in order to make a good essay.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, while it’s– I think essays are important place where you can show other points of circumstance in your life. Like, maybe you spent a lot of time taking care of your younger siblings growing up, and so maybe that’s why, like, you didn’t have as mu- like, you just, you don’t have as much time for extracurriculars after school as maybe someone else who is an only child or didn’t have to do that, um, had to.

Dr. Katie Chiou But it’s, it’s actually, it’s, it’s definitely not true that the more you trauma dig, uh, the better it is. In fact, I’ve actually had advisors explicitly, advisors for me when I was applying to residency, in fact, explicitly tell me not do that because at some point it starts to feel, it can feel very disingenuous, and it can also feel like, “Oh my God, like, this person has, like, is, is struggling.

Dr. Katie Chiou Like, do I need to do something about it? Like, I’m worried for them.” Like, right? And that’s never the way you want to come off. And so, and it can also raise, like, I think people will say, which I don’t know how you f- people feel about that, but sometimes people say like, “Oh, it can raise a red flag for admissions officers when you [00:39:00] get too personal.”

Dr. Katie Chiou Again, this is a college application, and while I think it’s important for you to write that stuff out in your process of brainstorming, an application essay really should not be about you kind of unloading your deepest personal struggles. Um, that’s more for a diary. An application really should be a, telling some story about who you are and what was formative for you growing up.

Dr. Katie Chiou And that might be like how your parents think about, like, maybe, like, your parents are huge classics people. I, this is not related at all to me whatsoever. Like, really huge classics people, and how has that informed the way that you think about the world now, right? It does not have to be a trauma dump. I will be just as interested, I promise you, if you can write a really interesting essay without that trauma stuff.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and also, if you feel like it was formative to your perspective on the world, then yes, I do wanna hear about it. Um, but it should really be focused on how who you, how it shaped who you are as a person, and not so much like, “Oh my God,” like, “This is [00:40:00] everything that happened to me and this is why my life sucks.”

Dr. Katie Chiou Because that’s not something that a college application advisor can first of all do anything about, and can’t really, like, and they’ll probably be like, “Oh no, I’m worried about this student now.”

Anesha: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Katie Chiou I hope that makes sense.

Anesha: Yeah, I think, um, students feel like they wanna get everything out, but sometimes it’s like, do you need to disclose this?

Anesha: And what happens if and when you disclose it? Um, okay, my next question, you staying focused on essays. Um, you kind of addressed this. Well, a lot of questions came up around the surprise element that you brought up- Hmm … and I know you had lingered on that, um, for a minute. So some folks were asking, is the hook enough, um, for, for the surprise element?

Anesha: And then other folks were talking about just wanting to get more context from you on how to integrate that and make sure it, it actually comes to a thoughtful narrative arc.

Dr. Katie Chiou Mm, okay. Yeah, and I think, I was hope- hopefully that I kind of explained how a surprise, it doesn’t have to be in every essay.

Dr. Katie Chiou Again, I wanna be very clear, this is like, it’s a risk portfolio. [00:41:00] Some of your essays should be nice, straightforward, like why do you wanna major in neuroscience? And it should just be like, “This is why I wanna major in neuroscience,” right? Like again, you are definitely playing, it’s like a stock portfolio.

Dr. Katie Chiou You’re not buying, you’re not buying Bitcoin or whatever with all of them, right? With all your money in the world, ideally you shouldn’t. Um, okay, so in terms of a good hook, I would say yeah, like maybe the rest of your essay is a little bit more like solemn in tone, maybe it’s more contemplative, maybe you just wanna give us like a little burst of humor and like, kind of like throw a little joke in.

Dr. Katie Chiou I would say for example, my, um, medical essay that I was describing, the one where I started off with like the pig, the surgery with the pig, and then got into like much more just like a, here’s why I wanna do medicine type thing. That was an ex- a good example of like, that was just a hook. That was like kind of drawing attention, and the rest of it was very much straightforward why I wanna do medicine.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, so yeah.

Anesha: Okay. Um, this is an interesting question. Uh, someone asked, [00:42:00] do you, are there buzzwords that people should or should’ve avoid, should use or avoid in the essays?

Dr. Katie Chiou Ooh, that’s an interesting one. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that. Um, I wouldn’t say there are buzzwords for, like for… I guess some things I would generally avoid are like- I would, I would generally avoid, like, a lot of politics.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I would generally avoid, like, religion when you’re applying to most schools. And then some things that I would also not avoid, but just be more careful about would be mental health. Um, that would be something that, like, I would want to make sure someone else is checking over and making sure that it’s, like, an appropriate conversation.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, other than that, there’s, like, no words in specific. I guess these days also with AI, you’re wanting to avoid things that really signal AI. I know people rag on em dashes, which I’m so sad about. I love em [00:43:00] dashes. Yeah. Um, but yeah, like those things are, like, if people can detect any semblance of AI, like, that’s not a good sign.

Anesha: Well, sorry, this is my gripe. I usually write in rules of three, and now that, that is like a-

Dr. Katie Chiou Yes, me too …

Anesha: AI, that’s a, like, established AI, like- Yeah, like- … red flag, and I’m like- Oh, I agree … it’s a structure. It’s a structure. It’s

Dr. Katie Chiou so sad.

Anesha: Anyway, anyway, also missed the em dash. Um, okay. Someone asked, “How do you help students who feel like they don’t have a particularly unique story or experiences that will help them to stand out?”

Dr. Katie Chiou Hmm. I think that is honestly the most common, um, concern that I feel like people come to me. They’re like, “I don’t really know what to write about.” And I feel like because of that, people end up writing a lot about their career interests. So that’s, that’s when I get, like, a student who’s written, like, five different essays about why they, why they wanna go into medicine, ’cause that’s, that’s what they think that, um, the admissions officers are most interested in.

Dr. Katie Chiou So the first thing I would do is keep the admissions officers in mind, but I, I find [00:44:00] that people, they think that the admissions officers wanna hear one thing about, like, how good of a student you are and what you’re interested in, but it turns out they actually wanna just hear more, like, any, like, genuine stories about who, who you are.

Dr. Katie Chiou So here’s what I will say as a starting recommendation. Um, spend a little bit of time, and I really mean a discreet little amount of time, reading through some really great college application essays. I often recommend, um, John Hopkins Essays That Worked. It’s a website where admissions officers have literally chosen, I think Chicago has one too, has chosen, like, really, really good essays.

Dr. Katie Chiou And read through some of them and see, like, what topics people are picking. I remember my year, like, someone wrote about shopping at Costco, and then someone wrote about, like, a Venus fly trap they had. And so I f- I, I think you’ll find that there are a lot of interesting things that you can write about that don’t necessarily mean that you had to have cured cancer or had major events in your life.

Dr. Katie Chiou These are, like, mundane things that you don’t realize are interesting about you, but are. Um, when I look [00:45:00] back, to me, a lot of the things that I wrote about were, like, so… I was like, I wrote about them, but I was like, “This is so lame of me.” Like, I wrote about my friend group, for example, and, like, the different, like, diversity of my friend group, the different traditions we all participated in, and, like, how we got to know each other.

Dr. Katie Chiou And then as I grew up and got older, I realized, oh my God, it’s actually true. Not many people don’t grow up with diverse friend groups, and, like, that actually was a part of who I was growing up. And so, um, I think people don’t realize what’s interesting about them, and so also asking friends, asking parents sometimes can be helpful.

Dr. Katie Chiou You’ll find that, like, sometimes other people see you very differently from how you see yourself. So that’s, those are two things that you can start with

Anesha: All right. Um, appreciate that. Gonna pivot a little bit before we kinda do our pitch, and just ask multiple folks that were curious about how you, um, pursued the, the opportunity at the suicide hotline.

Anesha: Um, like how did you get that? Are there other… Would you- or advice on how other people can pursue it. I answered in the chat that it’s regional- Yeah … and it’s a local thing. But, um, if you have any other [00:46:00] kind of context for that, people were very curious.

Dr. Katie Chiou Yeah. A lot of things I will adm- I will say that are like cool and interesting out there, like a lot of like shadowing things and following people around the hospital things, are very limited by age, and I’m aware of that, admissions officer is aware of that.

Dr. Katie Chiou Like I went through… Like I remember, it’s… I had no shadowing hours by the way going into college. Um, and so it’s, I, I- it’s not something that I’m like, “Oh my God, I can’t believe someone doesn’t have it.” I literally didn’t have it. Um, as far as the suicide hotline, that, let me talk to you about how I found the opportunity more so than how you can find the exact same opportunity.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I was, I remember that s- one of the upperclassmen at my school had mentioned it very, very offhand I think in like one of their like student council speech election type things. And I was instantly like, “I wanna do that.” Um, I had always been interested in mental health, and there was something about this [00:47:00] opportunity that was like I was intrigued by.

Dr. Katie Chiou And once I did it, I found that it was an extracurricular that, it essentially it was very rejuvenating. Like I, I felt energized at the end of the night after working instead of like exhausted and tired out, like some people might feel after listening to people complain about their lives all, all for like hours on end.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, and so I think it’s really about keep your eyes and ears open, and to upperclassmen are like what opportunities are they participate- p- participating in? And then what would you get drawn to? What do you feel like you’d be good at, and what do you think you can kind of like chase after in terms of like a passion for yourself?

Dr. Katie Chiou And that’s where I think you can find like the best extracurriculars that fit for you. Um, and also, like I will not lie, like I spent hours on the internet, and now there’s ChatGPT to help you even more. So like, I spent hours on the internet, um, usually during winter breaks, like looking for different summer programs and like finding things that, you know, like different pre-med lists that I used to wa- wade through, but also like non-pre-med, like volunteering opportunities.

Dr. Katie Chiou I would go through like, just try to find what’s in the [00:48:00] area, like use the radius. Like all these things, like I was actively like always searching for different opportunities. That’s how I found, for example, School on Wheels, was just like me googling for hours and ended up turning that up. And then I was like, “Oh, like, you know, I’m, I, I qualify for the age and all these things.”

Dr. Katie Chiou And so that’s what ended up working. Um, yeah.

Anesha: Okay. All right, we will give you a, a minute to rest and take a sip, um, and talk a little bit more, um, about, uh, CollegeAdvisor, just for folks who are not familiar. We wanted to take a minute to highlight some student success stories. So our first one is DJ, who grew up wanting to be a physician.

Anesha: He was active in relevant extracurriculars and sought out challenging coursework. As a scientist, writing narratively was challenging for him though, so the essay, the college essay style did not come naturally. He signed up to work with CollegeAdvisor and was accepted by five colleges, including Johns Hopkins, where he received an institutional scholarship of over $60,000 per year. Um, and then our next student is Sahar, who was highly organized but unsure if she needed guidance when [00:49:00] she connected with CollegeAdvisor as a junior.

Anesha: She realized how much we could help her stay on track without micromanaging, and Sahar appreciated that CollegeAdvisor has a wide range of packages for her family to choose from. With comprehensive, with comprehensive support, including multiple rounds of revisions on all of her supplemental essays, Sahar was accepted to almost all of her schools, um, including her top choice, Yale.

Anesha: So these are just two examples out of CollegeAdvisor’s over 10,000 clients, um, uh, that we’ve helped guide through the application process. Our team of over 300 admissions officers and admissions experts are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process through one-on-one advising sessions and essay editing.

Anesha: To learn more about how you can get started with CollegeAdvisor, you can scan the QR code that is up on the screen, and that’ll help you sign up for a free 60-minute strategy session with an admissions specialist on our team. During that meeting, you’ll receive a preliminary assessment of your academic profile, along with some initial recommendations on what you can do to stand out.

Anesha: By the end, you’ll learn more about CollegeAdvisor’s premium packages [00:50:00] and be paired with an expert who can support you in building your list, editing your essays, and much more. CollegeAdvisor works to be there for the entire process. Okay, we will leave our QR code up there and, uh, get back to our questions.

Anesha: My next question for you, um- Uh, getting back to the essay component, someone asked, um, should you avoid making yourself sound perfect in your essays? And I thought a corollary to this was, uh, what are tips for writing about failure in your essays? So should- how do you kind of balance wanting to big yourself up or even talking about how you managed to overcome failures?

Dr. Katie Chiou Yeah. That’s a good question. Honestly, um, if, like, if when you maybe down the line or even now apply to BS/MD programs, I’ll show a lot of them will ask you about a time in which you failed and you overcame. I think the biggest mistake that someone can make is to write about something trivial, like in an effort to sound as perfect as possible, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou It’s kind of like a, well, I know this is relatable, but like when you’re applying for… It’s not even relatable to [00:51:00] me. When you’re applying for a job and someone is like, “What are your strengths and weaknesses?” Mm. The, like the least favorite weakness is to be like, “Oh, like I’m just so perfect.” Um, and so the, the corollary to that on college applications is when someone’s like, “Oh, I failed this math test one time and got like a C, but then I ended up being able to bring my grade to an A.”

Dr. Katie Chiou I’m like, “Okay. It didn’t really tell me anything more about you, to be honest. Um, unless you like struggled with math for most of your life and you have, have like dysgraphia.” I’m like, “I’m a little bit unsure like what this is really communicating to me,” and it kind of feels like you picked something trivial bec- like, just so you could avoid talking about anything that was like a true, um, failure and a true like hardship, if that makes sense.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, so I would say yes. Like when someone, if someone’s asking about a time in which you overcame a challenge, that’s a question that you choose to answer, pick a real challenge. Because oftentimes, like even if you are showing a weakness of yours, everyone has weaknesses. Like [00:52:00] everyone has weaknesses, and so it’s really about like how much you can speak about your weakness, how and like, uh, it, it shows like mat- like maturity.

Dr. Katie Chiou People recognize it. And it also kind of can show, you know, what are the things that maybe you haven’t overcame it completely. Maybe it’s just something that’s a, a trait of yourself. But in the story of talking about yourself, it- things come, come, come through about you. When I was talking about, for example, like how I failed as a captain, I, I was also, like part of it was me humble bragging about all the things that I did get done, but then the things that I couldn’t get done really got at the crux of a lot of my, um- So I was able to show, like, good things about myself.

Dr. Katie Chiou Like, oh, I was able to, um, be a leader and talk people through really difficult times, like tell them, “Hey, you didn’t make the team.” And also I failed at some of the more intellectual parts of it. Like, I wasn’t, I, I was, like, felt like I wasn’t good enough. And so I was portraying a weakness of mine that, um, was very present as something that I definitely dealt with.

Dr. Katie Chiou And it’s, [00:53:00] it’s kinda makes you a more relatable person as well. Also it is a weakness. One of my best friends and my roommate at Brown actually, she wrote her entire personal statement starting off with the fact that she was really impatient and she hated writing introductions. And then she was an athlete, so she ended up writing about sports and connecting that in some way.

Dr. Katie Chiou But right, like sometimes a really good essay can come out of, like, you talking about a weakness about yourself

Anesha: Um, yes. And I also think the goal for colleges is not necessarily to say how, how weak are you, but they wanna see how you overcome. Yeah. They wanna see the work you put in, the process of, of overcoming, um, whatever y- the challenge was.

Anesha: Um, someone said you… They- you referenced, um, your suicide hotline experience throughout your appli- application is what, um, you shared. So they were curious about how do you avoid being repetitive or too repetitive. If that was your- Mm-hmm … central topic, but you referenced it elsewhere, how do you avoid kind of saying- Yeah

Anesha: the same thing over and over again?

Dr. Katie Chiou I certainly didn’t reference it in every one of, like, you know, for example, for Brown, in five [00:54:00] essays, I probably mentioned it in my personal statement, and then maybe, like, one or two other essays when I was talking about, like, “Oh, I wanna take this class for this reason.”

Dr. Katie Chiou I think the best way to, to be unrep- like, not repetitive is to, first of all, they already know what this extracurricular is. It’s in my extracurricular resume, and so there’s no need for me to redefine it or re-talk about it. I could just reference it. Um, and then I would reference it at a d- a different aspect of it every time, so it wasn’t like, “Oh, remember that time that I was on the suicide hotline and I showed empathy and compassion, and I’m all these great, really great things?

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, that is why I wanna do this again,” and then repeating it over and over again. It was more of just, like, uh, sometimes I think it would be, like, a r- truly, like, a one-sentence mention. And it’d be like, “I’m also interested in the impact of how abuse might impact developmental language, um, due to my time on the suicide hotline.”

Dr. Katie Chiou Mm-hmm. Or something like that. But something, like, along those lines where it was, like, a one sentence. Maybe it was, like, rounding out a longer, and when it was rounding out a [00:55:00] longer discussion about why I wanted to take this class about developmental language or, you know, linguistics or something like that.

Anesha: Okay. I wanna just answer one question that was here. Someone asked, um, if you should write about experiences in middle school. N- not really, if you can avoid it. Yeah. It’s okay to reference to things that you did when you were younger, but you should try to keep your experiences as sep- as, um, centered in, in high school as possible, and also your later high school years.

Anesha: Um, th- the next question I have for you, Katie, someone asked, “Is it a good idea to integrate research that you’ve done into any of your essays?”

Dr. Katie Chiou Oh, that’s an interesting question. Um, I’m assuming you are saying, like, research, like, specifically, like, oh, you’ve done, let’s say, like, res- like, cancer research or something, that you’ve worked in, like, a STEM-related lab of some kind.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I, yeah, I absolutely think it can. It should really… Unless it’s, like, the crux, which it might be. If it’s, like, a major crux of your application, you can reference it multiple times, just like how I talked about the [00:56:00] suicide hotline. Your, your crux might be your research, for example. Um, I would say that it might be useful to reference it.

Dr. Katie Chiou For example, let’s say you did cancer research, and you wanna talk about how you want to major in molecular biology. Those things might be directly related, and so that would be an appropriate time to mention your research. But also keep in mind that- Your application will have an extracurricular section detailing what your research is about, right?

Dr. Katie Chiou Detailing, like, what it involves. And so you don’t have to do, like, three other essays being like, “My cancer research was specifically into, like, the IL-8, you know, whatever thing, and like…” Like, in the lymphoma, like it doesn’t have to come up every single time in that full way. Um, and again, like, we’re- this is a 15-minute thing.

Dr. Katie Chiou I have the memory longer than a goldfish. And so, like, I will remember that you mentioned it this time. You don’t have to mention it again, if that makes sense. Um, unless, outside of like, a, like a reference back to why it’s relevant.

Anesha: Yeah. I would just add to also, and if you are [00:57:00] gonna talk about your research in some way, just to avoid jargon, again, the first reader-

Dr. Katie Chiou Yeah

Anesha: is an admissions officer, even if you’re applying to a BS/MD program, and they, they may not have had any experience or exposure to, uh, the type of science and, and pieces you’re talking about. Um, okay, someone asked, um, what is the best way to connect everything that you’ve done, extracurriculars, essays, activities, into one cohesive narrative, um, in order to make sure that an admissions officer has what they need to advocate for you?

Dr. Katie Chiou Hmm. One thing that kind of ties them all Together. Um, I would say, like, part of what I did was I feel like I had different extracurriculars that kind of showcased different elements of my interests. Like I hadn’t, I haven’t touched upon much tonight, but I had a, like, s- a section of my extracurriculars that was mostly about, like, writing and, like, winning essay competitions in high school and, like, editing on a literary magazine, like, doing [00:58:00] poetry.

Dr. Katie Chiou And so that was a portion of my application, and some of my random e- essays, that would come up. Um, it would, I would co- it would come up, like for example, in my, like when I was talking about what I wanted to major in, I would talk about, like, why I’m interested in, like, a particular medical humanities class or a medical literature class.

Dr. Katie Chiou And also some essays should really just be about who you are. I had a whole essay that was about, um, learning to sing, and I was not a particularly good singer, and I don’t have any awards and accolades for that, and it was just, like, purely about becoming a singer. And so I think some of your essays will come, come together and coalesce in a story, but it’s okay if there’s a couple of essays that are really just about who you are.

Dr. Katie Chiou Same thing with the orange tree essay, right? Like it, it was just about who I was and how I grew up. Um, I think it can be helpful to kind of separate your extracurriculars maybe into, like, different parts of your passion, whether it be, like, by category, like, oh, this is community service, or maybe it’s like, oh, like, clearly I have a strong environmental science or environmental [00:59:00] interest in my extracurriculars, and so I’ll make sure that I at least spend one of my essays, or t- like, some of my essays will be referencing that interest in environmental science.

Anesha: Um, one, a, a quick advi- piece of advice that I sometimes give to my students is to lay out what it is you want the admissions officers to know. Yeah. I usually say a list of, like, up to five things, and then kind of go through and say, “Okay, this essay speaks to that. This activity speaks to that.” What are the qualities or things about you that you want the admissions office to leave with?

Anesha: Um, someone asked… Okay, this is our last question, so, um, this is an opinion question, but someone said, “Does it matter where you go to undergrad in the grand scheme of things? Does the med school you go to matter more?”

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, that’s a great question. I actually get asked that a surprise- uh, not a surprising amount.

Dr. Katie Chiou It’s a very normal amount. Um, and I actually have a very, very blunt and direct answer for that. So give me a, a minute, a, a little overtime. Basically, um, where you go for undergrad, one of the things that it’s really important to note is that you will likely not get any financial aid or [01:00:00] loans in medical school, not because you’re not great, but simply because it doesn’t really exist for medical school because most of the time people are like, “Oh, you’re gonna be a doctor.

Dr. Katie Chiou You’re gonna be able to pay it off.” And so let’s start there, right? When you’re thinking about finances and where you can get support knowing that you wanna go to medical school, know that medical school is going to cost a decent chunk of money. Um, and so where you can save money is undergrad. So let’s start with that.

Dr. Katie Chiou Bare minimum basics, like you should know. Um, on top of that, when it comes to prestige, I would say that medical schools do care about prestige. I will not lie about that. But they actually are a pretty fair process in the sense that your MCAT, which is like the SAT for medical school, actually matters quite a bit, as does your GPA.

Dr. Katie Chiou Your GPA matters quite a lot. So you wanna have at least like a 3.8, especially in your science GPAs, and then you wanna have like a strong MCAT score. And those two things can help people come from like schools that are lesser known. Like I had plenty of classmates from schools that I hadn’t really heard of because they were like in Florida or [01:01:00] they were like in some place in the West, and medical schools like want to have that diversity as well.

Dr. Katie Chiou And so in a lot of ways medical school is actually fairer in the admission process than, for example, PhD, where in PhD a lot of it’s about like the connections, about who you know, and like finding a mentor. And so oftentimes it’s about like who you know and like what undergraduate you went to, if I’m being totally honest.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, that also means because your GPA matters so much, you might wanna be thoughtful about the college you pick, right? Like if you are going to go to a, a really amazing college but you know you’re gonna struggle at getting good grades there, for me, like that was Caltech and I knew I would have really struggled.

Dr. Katie Chiou I hate math. Um, then maybe that’s not the right school to pick if you’re interested in pre-med, to be totally honest. Like it’s gonna be a school where you’re gonna suffer and your grades are gonna suffer, and because of that you might have a much harder time getting into medical school. Now, in terms of what medical school you go to, I do think that actually matters m- more than what co- how, what college you go to in terms of [01:02:00] the next step after medical school, which is residency.

Dr. Katie Chiou Um, I will admit the prestige of med school, especially when it comes to, like, top 30 medical schools, does kind of help you get into the specialty you want to go into and also maybe the area you wanna go into. Um, and that’s why I say it matters more because it can directly impact, like, the specialty you get to pick.

Dr. Katie Chiou So maybe you really wanna do neurosurgery, um, then maybe you might be thinking a little bit more about the prestige of your medical school. But hopefully that kind of answers the question.

Anesha: I thought it did. It was a good response from my end. All right, we are gonna- we are over time. Thanks so much for hanging with us a l- for a couple of extra minutes.

Anesha: Thank you all for coming out tonight. Thank you, Dr. Chiou, uh, for a lovely presentation. We hope you all gained some tips and strategies for develop- developing your pre-med essays. We also hope that you’ll join us for our future webinars, but until next time, take care and have a great evening, everybody.

Dr. Katie Chiou Bye, everyone.