Standing Out to Admissions Officers as Pre-Med Applicant

Webinar Transcription

2026-02-09 – Standing Out to Admissions Officers as Pre-Med Applicant

Anesha: Hi everyone, and welcome to tonight’s webinar. My name is Anesha Grant. I’m a senior advisor at CollegeAdvisor, and I will be your moderator today. Today’s webinar is, “Standing Out to Admissions Officers as a Pre-Med Applicant.” To orient everyone with the webinar timing. We will take a quick poll to learn who’s in the room with us, share a presentation on today’s topic, and then we will open up the floor to respond to your questions In a live q and a on the sidebar, you can start submitting your questions under the q and a.

And slides are also available under the handouts tab. Now let’s meet our presenter, Dr. Katie Chiou. Hey Katie, how are you doing?

Katie: Hi Anesha. Hi everyone. I’m happy to be here tonight. Um, I, I’m Katie. Uh, a little, a little bit about me. It’s already here, but I was part of the. The Brown BSMD class. So, um, I graduated from Brown in high school with a major in anthropology in 2021, and then graduated from med school in 2025.

Um, and I am now a resident doctor at Mount Sinai.

Anesha: Awesome. I know you share more about your, your, your journey and your life story as we go through. So I’ll go ahead and jump into our poll. Um, so just let us know, uh, what grade level you are in. If you’re a parent or a teacher, we welcome you. You can go ahead and submit other, and as we’re waiting, um, given that you’ve had a, a long week, I’m wondering what is one reason why.

You wanted to become a doctor that’s still true for you today?

Katie: Wow. Well, that’s a good question. Um, I think something I take a lot of pride in still is being able to explain really complicated medical. Like I just got, came off of medicine nights and I’m like, these people are tired. People have like five different problems and are very, very ill at Mount Sinai.

And I take a lot of pride in being able to simplify and explain things in a way that is, is honestly is simple and hopefully at least, um, so my patients understand a little better and kind of less elevated in terms of like complicated medical terminology maybe, but with the information you need to know right now in the moment.

And that’s, I take a lot of pride in being able to do that.

Anesha: That’s nice. That’s good. I have a, I have a student who’s working on, like, is interested in like patient literacy, so I love that. I love that. That’s connected.

Katie: Ooh. Okay. That’s cool.

Anesha: Um, all right, so we’ll go ahead and close our poll, but I love that response.

Thank you so much for sharing. And like I said, I know you’ll do it throughout, but just so you know, uh, we have five eighth graders in the room with us. So Welcome. Y’all are ahead of the curb. Uh, the majority of folks with us are ninth graders, which also makes sense to thinking about how do you get ready probably for the next, the curriculum in the next few years are ahead.

So there’s a 117 freshmen in here with us. Uh, we have 95 sophomores, 69. 11th graders, um, 19 12th graders and about 13 parents or or teachers with us. So the majority are ninth grade, but a spread across the grades. All right. I’ll stop talking. I’ll hand it over to you. I’ll be back a little bit later.

Katie: Sounds perfect. All right, everyone, let’s get into it. So I always straight out this talk, um, by kind of dispelling most common like common notions. And the first one that I’ll do, and this is very important, is what does it actually mean to be a pre-med applicant? Because I find that a lot of times I’ll get students even like in their junior in the midst of application, they’re like, wait, I’m confused.

What does it actually mean? So what I’m trying to say is that being pre-med at most universities is not, its. Own special major. You’ll find that in a lot of universities, it’s actually not, like pre-med isn’t something that you designate, um, in your application anywhere. It’s not something that you can major in.

What it does mean though, is a lot of people who are going into pre-med will say, oh, I like, I wanna major in biology or neuroscience or human biology or public health. Those are like really common majors for people who are interested in being pre-med. But what pre-med actually means just means that in your head or in your heart or wherever in your body that you’re feeling this, um, you wanna go into medicine.

And so what that means is that medical schools themselves, as you’re applying to medical school, they have a list of required classes that you must take. Typically, this includes some biology and physics, some math, some chemistry, um, sometimes even some English and literature classes, some psychology, right?

So kind of a whole array of classes that we call typically pre-med classes. And those are the classes that everyone who wants to go into medical school typically is taking. And so no matter what you major in. You can end up taking those classes and you can still apply to medical school. So I’m a very good example of that because, for example, I applied or I majored in anthropology.

And when I applied, I actually didn’t designate in a, in anywhere on my application that I wanted to become a doctor. Um, except for at programs like at Brown, where I was applying to a special BSMD program. Um, so what that means is I designated my major. I wrote an essay about why I wanted to major in, at the time it was cognitive science.

Now it’s, and then after the end it was anthropology. But I also, on top of that, while I was in college, took all of the prerequisite classes for medical school so that when I, when I, if I wanted to apply, I could apply. Um, so that’s all that being pre-med means. And so when we’re thinking about being pre-med, the reason why I am so literal about explaining what it actually means is because that means that when it comes down to application time, especially for a lot of youth 11th graders out there maybe who are thinking ahead and to the end of this year, um.

Or back. Well, anyways, you know what I mean? Um, when you’re thinking about your creating your application, you’re being thoughtful about where can you strategically, uh, you know, what strategically can you do to make yourself a better applicant or to make yourself more interesting or, um, to make sure that you are putting yourself forward in the best light.

Um, and, and that’s why I’m being so, you know, I guess concrete in terms of what pre-med means. Okay. So for me, how did I know that I was interested in pre-med in high school? So for me, it was a big part of what I’m, I tell this to all of my students and even my medical students now as they’re deciding on specialties as I’m, I’m, as I’m teaching and mentoring them, is it’s really about focusing, I think on what brings you joy gratification.

And if you can figure out what that is early on in high school, which is incredibly rare, um, that can be really, really helpful. Um, I’ll talk a little bit more about this in terms of the extracurriculars that I did, but I was starting to find that I really needed, that. I really enjoyed having that like instant, uh, gratification of like someone being like, or of like helping a problem or doing a task that would fix a problem, but also of getting and receiving that immediate fix.

I can say now looking back, right, one of the big things that I find a lot of. Gratification is in, is when a patient, I can tell that I had a really good conversation with a patient, um, and I explained something well, or it just like I led the conversation the right way and we kind of move forward and their understanding of a concept or of themselves and that like I can walk away from a conversation like that and actually feel that I did a good job and feel good about myself.

And that’s sort of how I knew, for example, that research wasn’t as much gonna be for me because I wasn’t someone who like had a burning question or developed burning question and then kind of like chase after that question for, for years at a time and know that I was pushing forward and like Pi, like being on the pioneer of science, I was very much someone who liked working in those smaller, like literal individual.

Day to day patient to patient increments. And that was what gave me satisfaction rather than like the kind of the big, like I wanna change the world type things. Um, I would also say neither of my parents are doctors, and so I’d never actually seen what firsthand the doctor’s lifestyle was. Um, but I did know a lot about what I did not enjoy and ended up doing some extracurriculars down the line as well.

Um, that taught me a little bit more about what I didn’t like. Like I worked in a biomedical engineering lab and was like, oh, this is not for me. Um, and that’s also useful information to know, right? Like just as much as what you like, what you don’t like, um, can be very helpful. And, um, yeah, I wanted a career that really would auto offer me sort of that day-to-day gratification and personal growth.

And that’s something that I, I would say at the end now of a very, very long path, right at the end of this full eight year path. I can say that like, at least where I am now, I’m still getting that day-to-day gratification as I’m working very long hours, uh, as an intern. Okay. So the extracurriculars that I did that I think made the most difference.

So the first one I’ll mention is this thing called Teen Line. It’s very, very specific to where I’m from. I grew up in Los Angeles and, and had the benefit, I will admit of, of a huge city, uh, living in a huge city and teen line is, it was essentially a suicide hotline that was manned by teenagers for teenagers across the world.

And so people would call in and a lot of them would be in crisis for one reason or another. And I. Learn very quickly about how to talk through a crisis, how to calm people down, but also how to relate to people who had very, very different backgrounds and experiences to me. Um, and I should say this was one of those first moments where I realized, like, I came home and my mom, I’ll be totally honest, was not someone who was particularly interested in mental health.

And so she didn’t, she wasn’t like she, she was never someone that I came home and like talked for hours with about like what I was reading in English class, for example. But I would find myself coming home from working at the suicide hotline and feeling like I was more energized rather than less energized.

And that was like, I think my first sign this something that was right for me. Um, the second thing that I did that was major was, um, science Olympiad, which I’m some, I’m sure some of you guys have at your high schools too. This was something that I actually. Actually ended up being mentioned in a lot of my, once you get an acceptance letter, sometimes admissions officers will like write you a little note.

So I remember actually I think at Princeton, um, they wrote me a little note about how much they enjoyed hearing about my Science Olympiad. Um. Career, I guess is the best way to put it. So in Science lumped, I had a leadership role. I was the captain of my team, but more so than that, I actually ended up writing an essay about how I felt like I had failed as a leader, um, which was a riskier essay to write.

Um, and I also know, you know, after I applied, I got the recomme, I was able to read the recommendation leaders. Letters from my high school teachers. And I know that some of my teachers also mentioned in, in, in a lot of detail about Science Olympiad and, and how I was involved in leadership and also what it meant to go to a school that was incredibly underfunded and to be, to rely primarily on a student run club versus, uh, and that was competitive and won awards versus going to a team where parents were very involved in, and, you know, the school had a lot of funding to push forward projects for Science Olympiad.

Um, the last thing I’ll say, um, and this is true for a lot of pre-med students, is this word research is already on your radar as a high school student. So what do I mean by research? Research is not when you like, I don’t know, like do like personal research and Googling on Alzheimer’s and you write a blog about like all the advances in Alzheimer’s research, although that’s really cool and a separate thing.

Research specifically, I’m referring to peer. Peer reviewed publications, so like scientific research where typically you are working in a lab under a principal investigator and you are publishing in peer reviewed journals. Now as a high schooler, no one’s expecting you to have a peer reviewed publication.

In fact, if you did, that would be honestly incredibly impressive. I would be like, oh my God. How did you do that? Um, I certainly didn’t. Um, what I did do though is like sometimes there would be summer programs that I could attend that worked in research or at least help me get a sense of what it meant to work in a lab.

And sometimes you might present like a poster here or there, or you might be involved in different science for competitions. Those were all things that as you progress even more in the pre-med process, as you go into college, you have to do more research. As a med student, you do research. Um, and even now as a resident, I am still thinking about and stressing about having to do research, um, because it’s just one of those metrics that we are measured on and people look at as far as like competitiveness in an application.

All right, so expected academic profile. So the first thing I would say is your grades. Of course. That is always a starting place, and especially when it comes to taking challenging courses. Um, the reason why it’s important is because I would say that. Let’s say, um, out of all the students who enter into college pre-med, I think I heard a statistic once that only 30% of students really actually end up staying pre-med and applying to medical school.

The reason for that is, is a multitude, right? For one, like one reason. It’s just that there’s, you, you discover so many other things you can learn about in college, um, that simply did not exist in high school. Um, like I took a history class in college and I was like, this is completely different than to AP US history that I took in high school.

And this is so much better and I’m enjoying this so much. Um, but so you, you’re kind of, your, your eyes get broadened, so maybe you leave because you find a different passion, but also because a lot of schools do have these things called weed out classes, which is to say these are like the typical pre-med classes.

Usually it’s like gen chem or like Orgo or something like that. Organic chemistry. And they’re tough classes and they typically are called weed out classes because you have to do well on them and get a good grade in them to be competitive for med school and, and medical schools. Look specifically at the science and math.

Uh. Classes and GPA to just to decide if you are a good applicant for med school. So that means in high school you also wanna be already, if you’re saying you’re pre-med, you wanna be proving that you are strong in these areas. So that means taking APs or advanced courses or that kind of, you know, IB, whatever it is that your school offers in especially biology, chemistry, physics and math.

I would say you wanna be taking, for example, calculus in high school. Ideally you wanna be taking AP biology, AP chemistry. If your school doesn’t offer APs, don’t worry about it because at the end of the day, colleges assess you based on what your high school has to offer. That being said, I would encourage you to still seek out whatever the most challenging available course to you is in those subjects.

Whether it’s taking honors biology, whether it’s like you wanna go out to a community college and take like an advanced level class. Those are all like reasonable things to be to, to look into as well. Um, second thing, of course, SAT scores, I always say that SAT scores and grades like the GPA numbers, these are kind of things that open the gateway for competitive schools.

Um, meaning that they, once you reach a certain threshold, like we’re happy, you, you’ve proven yourself. The rest of it’s kind of like, you know, the difference between like a, um, like a seven 20 and like an 800 oftentimes. And reading has to do with whether or not you vibe with that passage that day or, you know, you made some silly mistakes, for example.

So, um, when it comes to the SAT scores, again, like there’s a gate where there’s like a number at which you’re like, all right, like, we’ve kind of figured it out and then like you’re a strong student and then it’s really up to the rest of your application to make the difference when it comes to a competitive university.

And then last thing I would say is interest and depth of interest in medicine and other subjects. Um, I’ll talk a little bit more about that later on when I talk about like what, what it, like what’s a OneNote applicant, but essentially like, right, like I was saying, like you wanna have in your extracurriculars, um, in your classes, like kind of showing an interest in science and medicine.

Um, but it’s like volunteering at a hospital, doing research, whatever it may be. Um, those are all ways that you can kind of show that interest. Okay. So my college admissions process, so I’m from Los Angeles, like I was saying. So, um, my biggest applicant applications went to my local state schools, the UCs.

Um, my families are very strong UC fans, um, so they wanted me to go there. I also applied to the Ivy se, Caltech, Stanford, a couple of BSMD programs, and I should slow down here and explain what a BSMD program is. And basically what it is, it’s a conditional acceptance into medical school, straight out of high school.

So that means that I did not apply for medical school again. I already had a seat waiting for me at Brown Medical School, um, provided that I completed, you know, the prerequisites and every program will be different in terms of those prerequisites. Um, and, and then some of them are the full length, meaning that the undergrad is four years and medical school is four years, which is typical.

That’s an eight year is the usual process to become a doctor. Um, these days actually, usually it’s more because it’s, it’s, it’s more common to take a gap year these days. Um, or sometimes we’re shortened to seven or even six years. And then I also applied to a good number of safeties. Um, one thing I will put out there for anyone who might be applying very soon and might get very nervous, just think of this in the future when you’re applying, and it’s like December, um, is that I didn’t get into my early action school and that was really demoralizing.

But after that, I ended up getting into a ton of schools regular decision and had like a good pick of schools still. So just because you didn’t get an early action doesn’t mean the world is over. Um, it just means you go back to the drawing board and you rework your application. Um, and I toured a number of schools on the East coast because at that time I hadn’t really spent a lot of time on the East Coast.

Um, and the deal with my mom was that I got to see the schools after I got in. So I, I was able to do like a really nice tour down like the New England and, and like, I don’t know, whatever you call this, like eastern starboard area. Um, and ended up choosing Browns program. Okay. Do you have to major in STEM to be pre-med?

Hopefully all of you can answer this from one of my previous slides already, but the answer is no, absolutely not. So, um, why then do people apply to be, apply STEM and, and what is like the thought process there? And so here’s where I, I take, I, I do my like. Pull or my little, like, I stand my little sandbox or whatever.

That’s not the word. I stand on my little box and I say it’s all about the strategy. And this is where I think oftentimes working with someone who’s in admissions, um, working with someone at CollegeAdvisor actually does come in handy because there’s a lot of strategically about what you can put, uh, in your, there’s usually one between one and three boxes, usually like two or three boxes where there’s a dropdown menu and you can put your interest in what in, in major, um, on the common application and.

Depending on what major you apply, there’s a lot of different things that might pop up. You, first of all, you have to write an essay about you typically about why you wanna do that major. Um, you might also get extra popups if you decide you wanna apply into like, the school of engineering or into the, like the, like some different academy.

Um, so why do people major in STEM then, is the question? Well, a lot of times people do it because the overlap between a biology major and pre-med is like nearly, like most schools make it like nearly one-to-one, right? So if you’re, if you are applying, or let’s say you’re majoring in biology, all the classes that you need to graduate with a major in biology typically line up beautifully with what medical schools also want to see.

Now that being said, um, like I, I said I didn’t major in stem and the reason for that is because I honestly had a. Deeper and much more fulfilling interest in another field. Um, and, um, I could still take the pre-med classes on top of that. Like there’s enough overlap that it still worked out and I still have plenty of time to complete all those classes.

As far as strategically what you’re putting on your application though, um, what you might be thinking about is do you have a really strong stem background in your application, right? So that you can write an interesting essay, you might wanna think about where can you write the most interesting essay and do your research there.

I think one thing that I often see is everyone’s always like, I wanna apply biology because that’s what the pre-meds do. And then you, when I’m, when I’m working with my students one-on-one, for example, I’ll find that it’s honestly really, really hard to write a good essay about why you’re interested in biology, because most people, and that that’s not true for everyone’s blanket statement, but like most people.

Their interest in biology is like, ah, I took AP biology. It seemed kind of cool, right? And so then you can’t really write like the most fascinating essay about biology from there. So that’s something that I’ll work with my students one-on-one. Can we write a really interesting, intriguing essay about biology or, and oftentimes is what I, I do is we find where biology overlaps with my students’ other interests, and we try to find like a unique nexus or meeting point of their interests so that the essay itself can be unique and kind of intriguing in a way that hasn’t been done before.

Um, and so that’s, that’s one reason why you might choose to not major in stem. It’s also one reason why you might choose, and I would highly recommend. To not major in, um, biology per se, but like do a little bit more, uh, research into what specific majors a school has to offer under the biology general umbrella.

So, like I was say, like for example at Brown, if you were interested in pre-med, you could do biology, you could do human biology, you could also do neuroscience or cognitive neuroscience or cognitive science, or behavioral decision sciences or psychology. So I just named like five different majors that specifically work with the brain.

And the question for you right, is do you know the difference between them and can you write a compelling essay about why you wanna major in that specifically? All right. So how did I choose my major? So I’ve talked about a little bit about how I did a major in anthropology. The technical name of my major was Science, technology and Society, uh, which is an interdisciplinary major where I got to choose both the focus and a discipline.

So what I, I, I explained it as like I got to choose both the lens to, I gotta choose a problem and a lens at which to look at that problem. So I ended up choosing anthropology, specifically medical anthropology and mental health. Um, so the discipline that I chose to look at the world with was medical anthropology.

And I did a lot of training in like, or a lot of classes and, um, like what is anthropology? How does anthropology research work, what anthropologists do? And then I also kind of wrote a lot of essays and did my ultimate final thesis, applying that to mental health, um, which makes a lot of sense today as I am a psychiatrist now.

Um, and so there’s something to be said about the fact that I have been very consistent in my interest since as I, as I mentioned, working at the suicide hotline. Um, so something about Brown, which is what I will say that I really loved was, we’re famous for the open curriculum, meaning that our curriculum is all about freedom.

So if I wasn’t pre-med, actually, I even as, as a ee actually, I didn’t take a single math class and I, I don’t enjoy math. Um, and. My major didn’t require math, and there wasn’t, there’s no general requirement in the open curriculum, meaning that all of those spots that I had that were freed from having to take a general education requirement, I took really, really interesting classes.

And I was always one of those kids who was really excited when the classes came out every year. I promise you. Um, for those of you who were rolling your eyes at me, the classes in college are so bizarre. Like, there’s, there’s a class I remember in the history department about board games, and it was just looking at the history of civilizations through board games and what the board games like told, told you about, um, each civilization like, like the, like the, like the violent, I think it’s like basketball or soccer or whatever, like the initial.

That of that in the Aztec civilization, for example, it was a really cool class, so you’ll find a lot of really interesting, um, classes in every single department. Um, and I very much ran the whole gamut and I took history classes, anthropology classes, but I also took like art classes. I took philosophy classes, a lot of English classes, um, literary arts classes.

I was all over the board. And, um, that was something that I would say that plead me specifically, really valued and saw in me as someone who, um, was an atypical pre-med applicant to put plainly, like I was someone who was like, much more humanities oriented and came into med school, which with much more of that bent than a stem, like a STEM background.

Okay, so what else can I do to demonstrate my interest in medicine on my college application? This is like one of the most common questions I get. And the three things that I’ll always mention is the first one is shadowing. And I think shadowing is very much dependent on what you have access to and who you have access to.

Right. And also I’ll say like in, in Los Angeles, there are really strict rules about age and criteria as far as when you could shadow. And, um, again, neither of my parents are doctors, so I, I went into A-B-S-M-D program actually having no shadowing experience. Um, some programs will want to see a little bit more shadowing hours and it certainly is always a good experience to have some shadowing because you get to see a little bit more in actuality of what a doctor does.

Um, shadowing for any of any of you who are unfamiliar essentially when you follow a doctor through a day in their life and you kind of like experience what it’s like. So I think when I was working in the emergency room, um, a couple months ago, we had, uh, a couple of pre-med students, college students who were there.

And there’s also other ways to volunteer. I know when I was on the pediatric service, for example, there were some, uh. Well, actually I think they were pre-med students who were in college, who were volunteering in the hospital and they were able to shadow us in in that manner. Um, second thing I’ll say is volunteering at local hospitals.

Senior homes also will work for this. Um, I did do this in, in high school because oftentimes the age cutoff is like around 16 and it’s a nice way to at least get to spend time in the hospital and learn a little bit about the roles that everyone plays and learn a little bit about what it means to like work in a clinical setting.

Um, and it’s even better if you can have some sort of meaningful, kind of like clinical encounter and, and, and talk to people, um, and talk to patients specifically. ’cause you kind of learn a little bit about how you can help patients. Last thing I would say is to really show thoughtfulness. Um, if you’re gonna talk about your interest in medicine.

Try to show that you’ve put some more serious thought into it. And I say that and it’s very easy to say, and this is again, where oftentimes I’ll work with a lot of my students one-on-one and really try to elucidate or get nailed down a good reason that someone wants to become a doctor. And, and oftentimes, I’ll be totally blunt, the answer of helping people doesn’t really, uh.

Doesn’t really make the cut because there’s a lot of ways we can help people in the world. Um, so sometimes what I’ll, I’ll put out there is you can think of physician in different roles. So a physician as an advocate, for example. Um, in the past I’ve worked with mentors where we would go to Congress or we would work on different legislative policies or we would make statements, um, from like different associations.

Telling people like, Hey, this is why you should pass this into a law. This is why you shouldn’t pass this into a law. So one of the things that I had previously worked on was what the minimum age should be for someone to be, for a child to be sent to prison. Um, because I used to work in juvenile forensics.

Um, and, and because you are training to become a doctor, or once you become a doctor, um, those are things that you, you know, you actually lend a meaningful voice to. And, and lawmakers actually do listen to you. So there are people who work a lot in the advocacy and healthcare policy side of things. Um, you can also think of physician as an educator.

That’s kind of how I think about it and where I take a lot of pride, which is to say that a physician is often, always teaching, and this is true, maybe more so for specialty, um, like family medicine for example, than a specialty, like a surgeon. Like a surgeon. So as a family medicine doctor, right, you’re often thinking about how do you teach patients about diabetes or diabetes medications.

Like how do you teach people about what that does to your body and like preventative medicine and like why it’s important to take this medication. Um. And so as you’re thinking about, you know, yourself and what you enjoy, um, those are things that still carry through like years into the future. Um, I did tutoring when I was in high school, and that’s still true today that I really enjoy teaching.

Okay. Um, for those who are looking to study pre-med, what are some advice, um, advice, things that I would give, so know which professors and this professors, but also teachers are harsh graders versus easier. Greater. So even in high school, right? Like, listen to your upperclassmen, like when they say this teacher’s way easier a grader and in like, in math than in, you know, than it’s other teacher.

That’s something you wanna be keeping an eye to the ground for. Um, this is also true in college because GPA does matter a lot when you’re applying to med school. It’s important to get good grades and so knowing that information’s always useful. Get your recommendations early. This applies to you forever, like now in high school and then also the UN medical school, right?

So you typically want to have both one STEM teacher and one, um, humanities teacher. And so you wanna keep an eye on who you think you’re gonna ask, you wanna ask early, and you also wanna provide a good, what we call, at least back in the day, we used to call a brag list. So thinking of occasions in class that you went above and beyond that really illustrates something about you and your personality and who you are.

Um, you want to provide teachers with that. Remind them of that information so they can write something about you and who you are and who you are as a thinker, as a student. More so than just like, you know, oh, this, this, this kid, you know, has an a in my class. That’s great and fine, but I can find that on your cv.

I don’t really need a recommendation letter. Tell me that final thing. Um. Branch out in your interests. I have read many a OneNote application full of essays about medicine. I’ve read lots of those essays, and rarely do I read anything particularly new or exciting. Um, when people kind of write what they think that schools want to hear.

And especially if across for when you apply to college, you actually write multiple essays. If you bring up medicine across every single one of the essays. At this point, I’ve read through your essay After 15 minutes, I’ve learned nothing really new about you. I don’t really have a strong impression of who you are, and I’ve been bored and, you know, don’t think much of this.

I’m like, okay, this person wants to be pre-med. That’s all I know about them. So it’s important to, uh, work with, you know yourself, to brainstorm or, or with someone to brainstorm multiple ideas and think about your essays as a portfolio, meaning that each and every essay you kind of work together to paint a fuller picture of yourself.

Okay. What advice would I give to students interested in BSMD program specifically? So, one thing I will say is it’s very, very competitive. If you are genuinely and strongly interested in BSMD schools, I would say apply to many, many programs. Um, the other thing I’ll say is that these programs, they are, it’s not a streamlined process.

I wish it was, but there’s no one place that you can find a list of every program or that you can find a list of requirements for every program. It’s kind of a mess, no matter how you look at it. So, like, I remember, I remember when I applied, like some programs wanted A PDF emailed to them. Some programs wanted an early application submitted by like some random date, like December 1st.

Um, some programs like. One, it were in common app and more easy to find and fill out. And other ones were like, Nope, you have to like submit this random online form and then if we think that you’re good enough, then we’ll email you again with the application. It was like a whole thing. Anyways, the point of what I’m trying to say is it requires an organized person to wave through all of that nonsense, um, to apply to a BS MD school.

It’s also important to figure out, right, each BSMD program has very different requirements. Some have a GPA minimum, some have an MCAT minimum. Um, some like, some have different, like some are different links, some have different like requirements as far what classes you to take in college. It’s again, a whole message’s organization and it takes time to wade through all that.

So long story short, apply to many of them. Um. Second thing I will say is to prepare long and hard for that interview. Um, a lot of the interviews can be different from the way that college interviews are structured, although some of them can be personal interviews style, but some of them can be called, uh, what we call MMI, which is like, but essentially multiple mini little interviews and they might drill you and ask you more medical related questions or current event related questions.

Um, so the ideal thing is that you practice with someone who’s been through that and who has done it. Um, you may also be asked to interview in person. I know I flew out to Rochester and New York for the first time when I was in high school, um, and interviewed in person. So prepare for that. Um, and final thing in the biggest thing I would always say, uh, for anyone in, in pre-med or really in STEM two, please let your common application ahead of time.

What I mean by that is even if you don’t have the essays done, just. Go through all the drop boxes because sometimes these special BSMD programs, you won’t realize until last minute. You’ll click like a yes or a no somewhere and then all of a sudden a brand new essay will appear. It’ll just like appear out of nowhere and you’ll be like, I did not write this essay.

I’m not prepared. And it’s the day before the application is due. So my biggest thing fill out all those dropdowns so that you know what all the possible essays are before you do it. Um, some of the toughest essays, um, that my students come across typically is what is a difficulty that you’ve had to overcome and with the time you spoke out about an opinion or stood up for a belief.

Um, those are both essays that I wrote back when I was in high school and often have worked with students on as well.

Anesha: Okay. Thank you so much Katie for that awesome presentation. We are gonna transition over into the q and a portion of our webinar. So that is the end of the presentation section of the webinar. Before we get started, just a few quick warnings regarding it. So, uh, the way that the q and a will work, you can go ahead and submit your questions.

We’ve already started answering some of them in the chat. I’ll read it aloud and give Katie an opportunity to respond and then paste it in the chat so that others can see it. Um, if you are having any challenges with submitting questions or that, you might have to log out and log back in and make sure you use the, uh, link that you received in your email and not the CollegeAdvisor webinar landing page.

Okay. My first question for you, um, I’m, I’m pulling together from a variety of questions, but ultimately to ask you to restate your extracurricular kind of profile. So folks wanted you to restate what were all the activities that you did. And I think it might be helpful if you can kind of connect where you feel like they fell into some of the categories, whether there was community, um, service or volunteering or clinic.

Katie: Yeah, that’s a good question. So, um, I think I would say like, I think when I rank them even, ’cause you kind of, you kind of have 10 extracurricular spots and you, you don’t have any more than that. So you kind of have to think about like, what are your most important ones and how you might wanna group them and how you might wanna rank them Anyways, long story short, um, the first one I did was the suicide hotline.

That was, I guess more, it was like volunteering, community service. Um, I was the captain of my Science Olympiad team, so that was within the school. Um, and that’s like a competition where you go and you compete against other schools by taking tests and doing different building projects. Um, and how well you do in your county or in your state kind of like is, oh, that’s in a whole ward system.

I also volunteer at the local hospital. Um, and I did two different summer programs. One in, it was like in cardiac surgery or something, and we like learned how to practice sutures and like kind of procedural things on work hearts. The second one was a program at UCLA, which I don’t think exists anymore unfortunately, but that wasn’t biomedical engineering, so it was like I was assigned a, a lab and I got to work and learn how to do research and like learn from someone who was a PhD or PhD candidate.

Um, so those were kind of like more my, more sciencey things. I was also editor in chief of my school’s literary magazine, and I mentioned, um, I, I was, I’m a humanities person and that was cleared my application as well. I was, I did a lot of writing competitions and wrote a lot of essays and, and won awards and money for that.

So that was like a second part of my application. Um, what else did I have in the writing session? I did like a little bit of political volunteering as well, and then I saved like one or two spots for hobbies. So all in all, the way that it kind of comes together, if I can explain it, is that I ended up applying, I ended up applying as a cognitive science major with a focus in linguistics.

So the argument that I was making essentially was that, hey, I have this interest in and background in biology in the sciences. So that’s the co, like the neuroscience part of CogSci, and then. In my personal statement related to the suicide hotline, I spoke a lot about the importance of language and words.

’cause right, on a suicide hotline, the main thing you’re doing is you’re, you’re talking to someone and your words are making a difference between whether or not, um, you know, like they progress and, and move more into crisis, or they kind of take a step back and can relax for the night. Um, so I, I talked a little about the importance of language.

I also, um. While I was on the hotline, um, encountered a lot of children who, um, maybe were in abusive households or to other, like, really tough things happening to them. And so I talked a little bit about how that kind of influenced my interest in the development of language. Um, and that felt also really well into kind of like this biological part, but also this interest in linguistics, um, that I, I like wrote in my application.

And then the final thing I mentioned in a lot of my essays was kind of my interest in where biology meets culture. So I, um, had a number of like interesting essays, but. One of my essays talked a little bit about like, um, this disease called Kuru, which I’ve actually now had a lot more experience with.

But it’s, it’s a pion disease. Other, it’s also in America, it’s often known as CJD or ksal Yako Disease. And it’s a, a pion disease. Disease of protein is folding, it’s fatal. Um, it’s, there’s no cure for it right now. But, uh, KU specifically has an overlap, um, in particular like native tribes, um, with like cultural practices.

And so what I was talking about was, I was actually really interested in thinking about what I, I didn’t have the words for at the time, but was interested in like, the anthropology of medicine, like thinking about where culture and biology intersect. Um. And then when I got to college, discovered that that was actually just called medical anthropology and, and did a request to that.

Anesha: Uh, I also discovered that what I was already doing was called anthropology. Um, but uh, okay. Um, staying focused on extracurricular. Someone was asking for a little bit of advice and I think it might be helpful to give clarity to this audience. Um, so they were asking specifically about research, um, and trying to stand on the application.

They didn’t understand what it means to publish research. Do you publish an article? Is there something you’re supposed to be looking at or specific topic? And then they also asked, why do people say research takes a long time? So any context you give, like research. Yeah. Especially, especially for high school students.

Katie: Yeah. These are all really good questions because I think like research is one of those things that like, is the, what is it? Like the grayest of films. It’s like if you don’t know any, if you don’t have family in the academics, which I didn’t like, research is simply just like a nebulous, like what in the world is that?

So basically what I, the, the way I do it as a high schooler by the way, is what I would say is like look at like a local university or college and start looking up, like look up like Department of Biology for example, or Department of Chemistry. And then you’ll see a bunch of professors pop up. You wanna click into the professors like bios typically.

And you’ll see under the name of like, this person, like went to this school, that school, and their research interest is in like. I don’t know, like, and it’ll be like a long string of words like tau folding, blah blah, blah, beta amyloid plex and Alzheimer’s disease, and the degeneration of blah, blah, blah.

And it’ll be like a really long thing of things that you probably are not familiar with. And then underneath that, there typically also will be a bunch of citations. Like, like think like, uh, people just still to these like MLA citations, like, like literal MLA citations, um, for research publications.

That’s what a research publication is. Um, it’s not something, it is absolutely not something that you can do on your own. It is something where you are reaching out to one of these professors, which is what I recommend you do in high school, is you just dry email a bunch of these people. A lot of them will respond to you, and that’s completely normal.

But you draw email a bunch of professors at your local university and you hope that one of them responds to you. And typically in this email, you wanna say something like, oh, look, I’m really interested in Alzheimer’s research and I’m really intrigued by the things that you’re doing. You, you take like words from their, from their bio, and you say like, is there a place for you?

Is there anything that I can get involved with, um, in your lab as a high schooler? And then from there, typically, right, like if they’re a good mentor, they might help you, um, present a poster, like a small symposium or something like that. But a research publication is something where it’s novel. You have like a brand new finding, and that takes years, um, because you’re sifting through like so much information, whether it’s like.

Um, one of my friends worked in chlamydia research in, in mice of all things. So you were, they were studying like a cure for chlamydia or like treatments for chlamydia. So it would take this, this sounds kind of awful, but like hundreds and thousands of mice for them to understand what, like how does chlamydia mutate in, in, in an animal model?

And that takes years of like, pipetting and like looking at things under a microscope and like all of those things. So that’s why research takes a long time because true research, when it’s published it’s novel information. It’s things that we have never known or thought about or, or we’re, we’re answering a question, um, that people in the field need answered.

Yeah.

Anesha: Yeah. No, thank you. That’s great. Um, I, I realize that we, we kind of throw it out. We don’t always break down what it means as a term and, and how it is different from this headier idea of research. Uh, okay. Someone asked. Uh, and I’ll, yeah. Okay. What do you believe or what is the, I guess, socially accepted advantage of doing a BSMD program?

Katie: That’s fair. Um, and I actually just re recently met a couple people who, um, also did BSMD programs, but by the way, we’re a completely different slant for mine. So listening to her talk about her program, I was like, I was like, this is a complete different experience for my program. So what I will say for Brown specifically, and I’ll say for other BS MD programs a little bit, but for Brown, the biggest thing is that there’s a weight off your shoulder because you’ve already gone into med school and applying to med school is, it’s incredibly competitive.

It’s really tough. Like even amongst really smart people, it sometimes will take multiple rounds of applications. It typically these days will take, like, it will take a gap year. Most of my colleagues take a gap year and or if not two, to do research or build up kind of more clinical hours to be competitive applicants from med school.

And that’s not even counting the cost of applying to med school, right? It, it, it costs even more money if you can imagine than applying to colleges. Um, ’cause every application again, costs money. And so. You know, I will say like saving money and then also kind of like saving the stress of having to apply to med school is, is certainly not to be discounted at Brown specifically.

Um, we are, we did not have a GPA minimum and we also did not have an MCAT minimum, so I never took the mcat, um, when I went to medical school. And so that was nice too, was like, it was like one less standardized test to study for. And I will also say, because I had that shoulder lifted off of me, I also had less pre-med requirements.

So that’s how I got away with not taking any math classes or any physics classes because that those were not interested in mine. Instead, I took classes that taught me about medicine from a different discipline. So like a lot of Mehr classes, for example, um. And those things still paid off in medical school.

Um, so I kind of had a little bit more intellectual freedom and curiosity that I was able to explore. Um, what I will say, so some of the other programs, um, are also accelerated. So you’ll see your, you’ll hear from like a seven year program for example. A benefit of that obviously is that you save a year of tuition, which is, you know, can be a very sensible amount of money.

Um, some of those programs I will say, have a very different slant or vibe from the Brown program in the sense that these, because it’s condensed, um, oftentimes they’re also more intense about their pre-med classes. So a lot of the times you are pretty much going like from STEM class to STEM class to STEM class, and they’re much, they’re very rigorous in terms of the fact that you, you have to take a lot of the classes at once and.

Oftentimes condense, whether it’s a lot in one semester or taking classes over the summer in order to graduate in that step, like in that shortened three year of college span. Um, but the benefit again, still there, I would say is, I mean, you finish a year earlier and you also, I mean, typically you have a spot waiting for you ATD school, and that’s something that like, really can’t be discounted.

Anesha: All right, we are gonna take a little break right here just to talk about CollegeAdvisor for a minute. Uh, for those in the room who aren’t already working with us, we know how overwhelming the process can feel, uh, given some of the questions. I think some of you actually have really great questions that would be useful, um, to talk with an advisor about.

Um, so. So that you know, CollegeAdvisor has a team of over 300 former admissions officers, admissions experts, who are ready to help you and your family navigate the college admissions process through one-on-one advising sessions and essay editing. Through our digital platform, CollegeAdvisor has had over 10,000 total lifetime clients and a 4.8 out of five writing on Trustpilot with over 750 reviews.

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Also, you’ll learn about CollegeAdvisors premium packages where we, where we, where we will pair you with an expert, sorry, who can support you in building your college list, editing your essays, and much more. We’re here for the whole process. All right. We’ll keep pushing forward with our questions. There are so many of them.

Um, someone asked, there are a few questions around, around summer programs. So someone I’ll, I’ll simply state it, someone asked, what is your standpoint on summer programs? Do they make a difference in, in college applications? And I guess are there specific, I won’t say specific programs, but specific types of programs you think that students should try to prioritize, um, in their application process?

You are muted.

Katie: Oops, sorry, I was answering a question. Didn’t want my typing be really loud. Um, summer programs is a very good question, especially because I think more and more it’s become a business, like even like in the years since I’ve graduated, it’s become more of a business. A lot of them are paid and so there are some really good free programs out there.

As you can guess, the free programs are typically a lot more competitive and also really prestigious. Um, I would say summer programs that often I looked out for were ones that involved research. And by research I mean it is at least four weeks long. You are being assigned to a mentor, like a principal investigator typically, who’s like the head of a lab, like a professor at the university.

And they are mentoring you in research in their lab, whether it be in STEM or in humanities or whatever it might be. And at the end of it, typically there’s some sort of like poster presentation. So some of these programs are free. Some of these programs are offered at like. Low costing, maybe you pay for, for lodging and for food.

And then some of these programs also might offer like financial aid or you might look for programs that are specifically targeted at underrepresented communities, um, because those often are also very competitive and prestigious and also might be lower cost. Um, so there’s a couple of like, really ones, um, which you’ll hear like they’re only open to juniors and things.

I’m more, the ones I’m thinking about are like the summer science program, SSP, um, MIT has like a number of very prestigious programs that they run. I think for humanities, there used to be a program called task, but I don’t know if it’s still running, but it’s TASP. Um, but there’s a number of like really, really prominent programs that are like really, really competitive.

I actually didn’t do any of those. I, um, did one free program, which like I had mentioned was run out of UCLA, um, in the engineering school. And um, and then one program that I paid for now a four week long program, um. They’ve probably gotten more expensive since, but it was at Stanford and that was the one in surgery.

Um, apparently it was expensive ’cause we were paying for supplies, but who really knows. Mm-hmm. Um, the one thing I would like people to, I think avoid paying for, if I could put a caution sign out, is those like weekend programs that are all about purporting to teach you about leadership. I feel like a lot of those are really gimmicky.

Like, there’s like, oh, we’re gonna have like these workshops for you and they’re really expensive and it’s really just like a fun like weekend field trip type thing. I think those I would are things that I would stray away from. Um, and I think the thing that you’re looking for when you’re thinking about a good program, ideally you wanna be, you wanna be getting some kinda experience out of it.

So if the program is primarily like you being stuck in a classroom. Learning about something that’s cool, but that’s not as much of like a summer program in my brain as much as like, okay, we’re taking classes at that point. Um, you want a program that’s gonna get you into a place that you wouldn’t otherwise be able to access.

So in my case, right, it was like getting into a research lab. ’cause I don’t know anyone research or getting into like being able to work with pork cards ’cause like where would I find a pork card to do, you know, sutures to do things on. Um, so those were kind like that, that was kinda the lens at which I viewed summer programs.

And what was worth your hard-earned money?

Anesha: All right. Um, someone asked what people are asking, a lot of different, like this versus that. Um, but I’ll ask, uh, what are your thoughts on APS versus dual enrollment courses as far as like having the most competitive academic record or profile?

Katie: Yeah. Um, I think we get this question every time and I think Anesha you also have pretty good guidance on this.

’cause I, I’ve worked with mostly students who were a, like were in AP or IB program and that’s also what I had offered to me. Um, what I will say, the one thing that I did actually look out for was my school in particular did, um, weighted GPA and then we also had a rank, uh, within our high school, which meant that taking an AP class within my high school actually boosted my weighted GPA.

And then if I got an A in that ap, it actually boosted my g like my weighted GPA even more. Um, versus if I did a dual enrollment class that would not. Contribute to my weighted GPA and so, um, taking dual enrollment class actually would hurt my rank, if that makes sense. So there was like, you wanna talk to your high school counselor about this ’cause they’re gonna know best for your particular high school, um, how like dual enrollment classes factor in.

But I’ll say at some point, like, so I had some classmates who like straight up ran outta math classes to take that were ap. They went out and took like linear algebra at the local school, which is, you know, super cool for them. Um, and uh, the other thing that I’ll say is, at least for me, maybe this was just my experience, I took, um, a calculus class at like a local college and I, I didn’t take it for credit, but I found it to be a lot harder than my high school calculus.

’cause it was like I was surrounded by college students, um, who. I don’t know. I guess we’re just better at math than I was. And like, I don’t know. They like, they, they all knew their stuff and, and like a lot of the college courses were teaching about like how to actually be a good math person, like how to do proofs versus I was like, oh, I’m trying to study for the ap.

Um, so that was sort of my experience with it. Um, but my big thing is that the way that gpa, is that what I would say?

Anesha: Yeah, I think that’s co I think that’s complicated because it seems like it’ll impact your rank, but ultimately your GPA gets unweighted. ’cause Cal Colleges will do their own math of your GPA.

They won’t include certain, like, they don’t include ninth grade. Um, so yeah, the math of it all is tricky. But yeah, I agree. I agree with taking the classes. That makes sense for you. Um, and my typical advice is to, to again, pursue the most competitive available to you if aps are there. You’re good with aps.

I don’t know that you need to add, um, dual enrollment, unless, to your point, Katie, you, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve, um, tested out or classed out of something.

Yeah.

Katie: Um,

Anesha: but yeah. Uh, someone also asked about EMT and CNA certifications. If they were to do those certifications, do tho, would those count towards kind of doing clinical hours or in lieu of, I think research hours potentially.

Katie: Oh, absolutely. I would say clinical hours and research hours are kinda like separate categories, but if you do EMT or CNA, but that’s like, that’s really cool to get involved in, especially as a high schooler. I, you get, I’m sure you get really cool stories out of it, and that makes for really intriguing application, I would say.

Um, some of, I remember actually one of my classmates, um, in the Play Me program, um, she was in like, she like was from somewhere like random in Connecticut, but she was like a, she wrote a lot about her in her application and I think that’s a, it’s a really standout, um, way to get like clinical experience and also really interesting stories to write about.

Um, so, uh, I would say that that honestly fulfills your like shadowing hours, like that kind of like the clinical shadowing hours category of things. Um, and uh, is really cool to be able to do as a high schooler.

Anesha: Uh, we’ve had this question and asked a couple of times and we do have a few of them in the room.

So any thoughts that you would give specifically for eighth graders thinking about how to. Mentally prepared for high school. Yeah. To mess with applying to medical school. Any thoughts on what they could be doing now?

Katie: Yeah. Um, so for, I don’t know, like the eight eighth graders out there or however it was, um, I would say if you, the one thing I would say if, if you know what high school you’re going to, one thing is to start keeping your ear to the ground and being, and thinking about, okay, so at this high school, like, I remember for example, my cousins, it was like you had to take honors biology before you took AP Biology.

So honestly, like sitting there now as an eighth grader, if you know what high school you’re going to, you can kind of like preliminarily map out as much as, I hate to say, like kind of map out like what classes you’re gonna take every year. And that can be really helpful because it can kind of help you figure out like, hey, like what AP should I take when?

And also how can I space out my STEM classes? Like, I would often say like, I would never wanna take chemistry and physics in the same year. That would, or in the same semester. Like that would truly be the end of me in my brain. Um. So like you can map things out in that way. Um, you might also be starting to keep your ear to the ground about um, who the, who the good teachers are, who writes good recs, um, who are the easy graders.

Those are things you can keep an eye out for. Um, and then last thing I’ll say is one of the things that occurred at my school, which I don’t think is true for most other schools. Um, but some people will like think about, um, taking like an additional dual enrollment math class over their freshman year summer or like the summer before their freshman year, depending on what makes sense for you at your high school.

I think that’s going. Just if, if people are talking about that, like keep an ear out for that. But I don’t think that’s like a common experience.

Anesha: Yeah, I would agree with you. And, and the, the best thing to do now is think about strategy for class selection. Yeah. And, and get yourself in a way, I think math is usually what trips people up with the algebra one, algebra two.

Exactly. Math, transition, geometry, like those three courses when you take them, kind of establishes when you can take calculus, I believe. And so I think those are the questions I would also ask too. Um, just to add on to, to yours. Um, we got a lot of questions in various ways, people concerned about your mental health.

What, what your experience was of potentially, you know, anxious about their own future mental health. So someone asked, um, how did you handle classes you struggled with without letting your GPA tank?

Katie: Yeah. Um, I don’t know if that’s referring to high school or to college, but either way I would say like I as if, I don’t know if you guys could tell so far, but I was not a huge math person, was not a huge STEM person.

I actually did, um. I, I worked really hard at those and to do well. I studied a lot. And even when I got to college, I was like very overwhelmed because I, I discovered that I hadn’t, I didn’t have as good of a, a chemistry education going in as a lot of my classmates did, and especially like lab education coming from like a very underfunded school.

Um, we simply just didn’t have access to like all the supplies and, and cool chemistry things that I did in college. And so I was like, whoa. Like, and some of my classmate has taken organic chemistry already. I was like, oh my gosh, I’m outta my depth. Um. But I would say it’s definitely something that you, if I think if it’s something that you are pushing and pushing at and you are doing still extremely poorly in, it can just feel really disappointing and really tough.

And that might be something to like, examine to see if it’s something that you wanna, you wanna really commit to in college. Um, but if it’s something where it’s tough but you’re kind of like working through it, maybe it’s not one of your strengths. Um, I would say one of my big things in when I got to college, especially actually when I was struggling, was, um, we have like a learning specialist that Brown offers on hand and she honestly just gave like a lot of tips on how to study and like how to memorize things, but also like how to, like, she helped me figure out what kind of learner I was and I really discovered that like, lectures not very beneficial for me.

Mm-hmm. I was like not an auditory learner ever and would never be. And so I had to find other alternative ways to, to learn information. Um. So, yeah, I would say like basically long story short, past eight years, it’s a lot of learning. Like medical school is not an easy feat. Those STEM classes in undergrad also not an easy feat.

Um, so you definitely want to be kind of thinking about if this, it’s a long path. Like if this is something that you can push through and that, you know. Uh, how much of this also is going to reappear in your future? And like how much of like, yeah, like kind of thinking about how much of these tough classes you really hate and how you’re doing in them.

Because at the end of the day, the GPA does matter and I hate to say that.

Anesha: Yeah. But I love that idea of, of trying to figure out how you might have to learn something differently. Like you might just have to approach it from a different way. Yeah. You’re trying to learn a subject through one particular teacher’s like way of teaching.

Oh, yeah. So I love the, like picking outside of the box and being like, maybe I have to approach this and get a different type of resource. Um, so I appreciate that advice. All right. The last question I’m gonna ask you again stated on this, like, how are you, someone asked, um, can you tell, uh, tell me how you’re feeling about this.

They said it’s a huge process to become a doctor from pre-meds med school, interning, residency, all the things you’ve experienced. Um, so they’re asking just how did you navigate through it. Someone asked, have you experienced burnout? And can you speak to your experience with that in terms of. Both being, um, at college and then going through medical school, uh, whether from you or your classmates.

Katie: Yeah. Wow. These are, these are good questions. Um, yeah, I would say I, I certainly in, I had, because I was part of the Brown like Plea Me program, my undergrad experience was much, much, um, easier and much more relaxed than a most, like, even than my best friend who also went to Brown with me, but was not part of the program.

Um, I didn’t have to grind, um, like a, a resume like you guys are doing now for college. But I didn’t have to grind like that. And I really pursued extracurriculars and, and like summer research and summer programs that like genuinely I was passionate about and appealed to me, um, over things that I felt like I had to do to apply med school.

Um, but once I got into med school, it really, I think. Not like the fact that I hadn’t done those things, but it was more like med school was hard. And that really hit, and I had to like, like I was saying earlier, like I had to relearn how to study, relearn how to learn and how to, like, people call it drinking out of a fire hydrant because it’s that amount of knowledge that was sprayed at you that you simply could not have possibly prepared for.

Um, and so that was, there’s, there’s definitely a period in med school, especially like my first two years where I experienced a lot of burnout and I was like, oh my God, this is awful. And what I will say is going, one of the beautiful things about going to a good medical school, and this is something that, you know, you should talk with people later on as you’re, when you’re applying to med schools and getting into med schools, going to a good, a good medical school meant that my first two years of pass fail.

And also that my mentor, like my advisors and the deans and everyone, they were all about. Getting us through. Um, they weren’t like, they weren’t punitive, they weren’t people who were like trying to fail us. And so when I sought support and I like needed help, I needed tutoring, all of those things were made available to me.

And, and like, like I was talking about meeting a learning specialist, even, it was just like literally on staff to meet with any, any of the students to help you figure out how to study. I literally had someone who sat down with me and went through a medical school exam with me and like we went through every question that I missed and was like, okay, so in this one, like what happened here?

Like, why did we get this question wrong? Like, what I do not understand about it? Like how can we work through it? Um, and that those were like things that I actively did and, and, and did to improve and be better and like become a better test taker as well. Um. And then I would say now in, in, in residency as a doctor, a lot of people experience burnout because the hours are awful.

Um, I like this, like this past month I worked so many hours. I was on nights, so I was working through the entire night and every single weekend, um, I had one day off. Um, like this past week, the only time I had off was from Sunday morning at seven 30 to, um, this morning at seven. So I had a 24 period off.

Um, and then I had to go back to work at a new place like this month, like today from nine to five. Um, that being said, um, it, it’s not always like this. And you kind of balance like what you feel like is fair work, life is fair work life when you choose your specialty. And my life is about to get much better as I’m back on psychiatry and, um, yeah.

And, and, and you kind of like, it’s only for your first couple of years where you’re really working this, this hard and this this badly.

Anesha: All right, we’ll leave it there. Thanks for those words and for always, uh, sharing your. Wisdom, uh, with folks in your experience with our, our students. There were a lot of questions, folks.

I will encourage you to go to, uh, CollegeAdvisors webinar page. Uh, some of your questions will get addressed there. Katie has done so many other, um, webinars for us, so if anything didn’t get addressed today, you can’t get it. Um, uh, probably addressed in one of those past webinars. Um, but that is it first tonight.

Thank you so much for your questions, for the thoughtful questions. Uh, we hope to catch you at another webinar in the future. Until then, take care and have a great night everybody.

Katie: Bye everyone. Good night.