Admissions Straight Talk

Accepted Founder Linda Abraham Talks Med School Admissions [Show Summary]

Are you planning to apply to medical school this year? Worried about the personal statement, most meaningful experiences, activity descriptions, and secondary essays? They can be challenging! Let’s learn about the who, what, when, where, and why of impressive, engaging writing that will get you accepted.

Acing Your Medical School Personal Statements, Most Meaningful Experiences, Activities, and Secondaries [Show Notes]

While we’re going to take a deep dive into personal statements, etc., today, our upcoming webinar, The 5-Part Framework for Medical School Acceptance, which I’m presenting, provides a conceptual framework that will help you choose where to apply, optimize your application, ace interviews, and start medical school next fall. Please join me for the webinar on February 6 at 4 PM PT/7 pm ET.

If you combine the advice I’m giving today with the framework in the webinar, you’ll be ahead of the curve on your MD or DO applications. So let’s look at the who, what, where, when, and why of the writing required in applying to medical school, although I’m not going to go in that order. Like Simon Sinek, I’m going to start with the Why.

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Why do you need to do so much writing for your medical school application?

The reason for all the writing in your medical school application can be summed up by the acronym PAD.

Essays should…..

Provide a window into the real you.

Add value to your application.

Demonstrate writing and communications skill.

Who will be reading your medical school application?

Admissions committee members are going to be reading your application. Like most human beings, they like and respond well to stories, anecdotes, and specifics that make you come alive. Grandiose declarative statements make them suspicious.

You want to show what a wonderful physician you are going to be. The people evaluating your application want to be able to imagine you treating their mother or father with compassion, kindness, and skill. They want to see you as a detail-oriented, empathetic professional.

When should you apply to medical school?

Start early so you can submit primary apps in June (as early as possible). Medical school admissions can be like musical chairs – there are more chairs the earlier you apply. I suggest listening to the podcast where a soon-to-be med student talked about how he started the process early, submitted in June, prewrote his secondaries, and was accepted by October.

Allow time for writing and rewriting the personal statement, and give yourself some distance between drafts. That temporal distance will give you a critical eye.

To prep for secondaries, take notes on programs as you research where to apply so you...

Interview with Dale Jarosz & Dhruv Dhawan, MBA Students and Founders of Bschool Travel [Show Summary]

Two Michigan Ross MBA students launched their brand new business, Bschool Travel while attending the Michigan Ross School of Business. Let’s learn how these two very busy MBA’s managed to start and run a business while attending a demanding MBA program. Actually we’ll also discover how the Michigan Ross MBA program and Zell Lurie Institute helped our guests get Bschool Travel off the ground. Listen in for their fascinating story!

Michigan Ross MBA Students Talk About Admissions, Business School Life, and Founding a Company [Show Notes]

Both our guests today are members of the Michigan Ross class of 2019 and the co-founders of Bschool Travel, which we’ll learn about in a few minutes. Dale earned his bachelors in mechanical engineering from Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012 and then worked for Caterpillar for five years before coming to Ann Arbor. Dhruv Dhawan graduated from UC Irvine with a BBA and then headed into public accounting for a couple of years followed by a three-year stint as Director of Marketing and Operations for a health supplements company. With that as background, let’s hear about their MBA experience at Ross and the founding of Bschool Travel.

Can you tell us a little about your background? Where you grew up? What you like to do for fun? [2:16]

Dhruv: I’m originally from Los Angeles, but went to international high school in India before returning to go to UCI. I worked in public accounting for a few years, but decided I wanted some more operational experience so I transitioned to my family business, Health Plus Inc., where I learned a lot. My true passion is travel, and I like to get on a plane whenever I can. Basketball is also a big part of my life. I’m a huge Lakers fan.

Dale: I grew up outside of Chicago, I was really involved in sports growing up and engineering-related fields. My dad is an engineer and I followed in his footsteps. I went to Caterpillar to work in product development and innovation which got me interested in being an entrepreneur. My family also has a business so I came to Ross really focused on entrepreneurship. Dhruv and I met during the interview process and said we should start a company, and now we’ve actually done it!

What was hardest part for you in the MBA application process? How did you handle that element? [4:46]

Dale: I think the hardest part is honing in on your story in the essays, connecting the dots and having the vision for where you want to be afterwards. As an entrepreneur I didn’t know what company I wanted to start and in what industry, but that doesn’t cut it for a story, so I really sat down to think about what industry I would fit and overall what mattered most. Once I did the reflection it was very informative.

Dhruv: My answer is similar but different. I had worked in my family business, so had non-traditional experience, and I made it more of a challenge than it needed to be. Since I had already experienced entrepreneurship I really needed to know if it made sense that I want to be an entrepreneur. I had to sit down and reflect, figure out why I wanted an MBA,

Interview with Christine Carr, Accepted Law School Admissions Consultant [Show Summary]

How can you optimize your application and get into the law school of your dreams? Our guest today, Christine Carr, will give you the scoop.

Christine Carr graduated from Harvard University in 1993 and from there pursued a career in higher education. Before joining Accepted in 2018, she served first as Assistant Director of Admissions and then, since 2014, as Associate Director of Admissions at Boston University Law School. Needless to say she knows law school admissions inside and out, and she’s going to share what she knows today on AST.

Everything You Need to Know About Law School Admissions [Show Notes]

The standard line in admissions is that admissions and higher ed is not a field people decide to go into in kindergarten. What has been it’s attraction to you? How did you get into it? [2:00]

After college I had an amazing opportunity to work in higher education as Assistant Director of Athletics at Suffolk University and also serve as softball and volleyball coach. It was great for me to do both the administrative aspect and athletic as I was a student athlete. I did that for five years, and coaching was starting to lose its luster, but I enjoyed being part of higher education, with really interesting people coming on campus and a really wonderful atmosphere. I realized I had been recruiting athletes so it seemed like working in admissions would be a nice transition.

You recently joined Accepted as a consultant after 15+ years in different admissions roles, the last nine at BU and the last four of those as Associate Director of Admissions. What kind of experience, activities, or qualities did you like to see in law school applicants? [4:07]

There is a variety, and at the institutions I was working at there were no real cookie cutter applicants. First and foremost we looked for academic success - the ability to show they could be successful in a classroom was important. Then you’re thinking about the school community, and you want to admit people who classmates will learn from, will consider a true colleague, and value as part of their network. Throughout the process we were looking for applicants who had taken advantage of opportunities in the past, jumping in full force as a willing/able participant. Through resumes, personal statements, and so forth, we were looking for human beings who were active learners and willing to embrace the whole aspect of a law school education.

You reviewed over 10K applications while at BU. What made an application and specifically a personal statement stand out for you? [6:06]

My gut reaction to this question is what makes one stand out in a not so great way. To start with a personal statement that rubs me the wrong way is not proofread, with errors in the first paragraph - to me that was always glaring. Law school is a professional school, and that carelessness and lack of attention to detail is bad. In terms of good personal statements, they are clear and concise, and fit in the whole narrative of the application of why this applicant is interested in going to law school. The personal statement is an essential piece of the narrative, to show the applicant as a person,

Interview with Ryan Inman, President and Financial Planner at Physician Wealth Services [Show Summary]

How are you going to pay for medical school? How are you going to pay off your med school debt after you start practicing? How will you be able to afford a home and some of the comforts you’ve worked so hard for? Those are the questions we’re going to discuss today with an expert in financial planning who focuses strictly on residents and physicians.

Financial Planning for Doctors [Show Notes]

Ryan Inman is the President and Financial Planner at Physician Wealth Services, which he runs from Las Vegas, NV. He is also the host of the Financial Residency Podcast. Both are aimed at medical students, residents, and physicians in their first 10 years of practice. In addition to a Bachelors in Accounting, Ryan has an MBA and a Masters in Accounting and Financial Management, Personal Finance, all from the University of San Diego.

Ryan, can you tell us a little about your background and how you began your career in financial planning and advising? [2:00]

I got my first glimpse at investment advising from my neighbor. I was the nerdy kid who saved all his money and asked his mom to open up a TD Ameritrade account so I could trade stocks. My neighbor was a certified financial planner, working with high net worth individuals of $1M+, and “working” with him I knew what I wanted to do. When I got out of college in 2008 the entire financial industry was decimated so I ended up starting with KPMG in public accounting. Ultimately I went to work with my neighbor doing financial planning.

I started dating my wife as a freshman in college. We got married 10 years later, and we’ve been married for five, which is how I got into advising physicians, as she is one. I saw all the stuff my wife and her colleagues were pitched – terrible investment products, using fear and scare tactics to sell them - so I helped them out. As my wife and I started talking about our future – whether we wanted kids, our career paths – I realized I really wanted to work with physicians. All of our friends are doctors or financial planners and it’s what I really love doing so I’m very happy to be talking on the show to premeds to arm them with knowledge before they get to med school to avoid mistakes on the back end.

Why have you focused on guiding medical students and doctors early in their careers? Why do they need different advice than a young lawyer or young engineer, for example? [5:21]

One is I’ve been there. I have intimate knowledge of the pain, struggles, and yes, of course joys of a career in medicine. I know what it’s like to be buried in student debt, with your spouse making next to nothing, sleeping every fourth night in the hospital. This is a main driver of why I only work with physicians.

In terms of how they are different, a few things stand out. One, they have delayed gratification. They put so much aside to become a doctor – not just financially, but free time, social time - and are earning pennies per hour in their residency, essentially. They take their work home and chart and that time is not reimbursed, for example. I have clients who have put off starting a family due to student debt. My average client has $283K of debt, and there is a reason why they are overwhelmed with what to do. They are never trained in finance but are then expected to run their own practices. The biggest thing after all of this delayed gratification is they experience this insane lifestyle inflation. An attending salary may be $340K after making about $55K as a resident.

 

I am swamped at this time of year with clients facing early January deadlines so I decided to start 2019 with one of our most popular shows of 2018, my interview with Tuck’s MBA Admissions Director, Luke Pena.

In the show, Luke discusses the importance of Tuck’s mission to the school and in the application process. He also shares his perspective on the MBA application essays, the Tuck interview process, and what Tuck means by “wise leadership” and “confident humility.” So for those of you trying to decide if Tuck is for you, or for those of you putting finishing touches on the application you plan to submit this Monday, January 7, Tuck’s next deadline, or for those of you planning ahead for a R3 or 2020 application, this podcast is for you.

I also want to mention that if you’re an MBA wannabe trying to decide whether to apply Round 3 this year or wait until next year, Accepted has a webinar coming up just for you. On January 16 at 10 AM PT, I am presenting Round 3 VS Next Year, a live webinar to be followed by a Q&A. It’s free but registration is required.

In case you missed last week’s show I again want to thank you for listening to the podcast and wish you much success in this brand new, exciting year, 2019.

For the complete show notes, please check out the original blog post. 

Related Links:

• Tuck MBA Admissions

• Dartmouth Tuck MBA Essay Tips & Deadlines

• Raether Family Donates $15 Million to Tuck

• Accepted MBA Admissions Services

Related Shows:

• Meet Duke Fuqua’s New MBA Admissions Director, Shari Hubert

• Do You Fit With Cornell Johnson?

• Building Your Consulting Career, and a Look

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As this show airs,  I’m really busy helping applicants with the end of the year application crunch. And you are probably also really busy, either with your own applications, year-end at work, or with holiday and family events and parties.

Now is an excellent time for an encore show. Consequently, I decided to replay my interview with Bain & Company’s Keith Bevans, Partner and Global Head of Consulting Recruitment at Bain. It is definitely one of the most popular interview of 2018.  

Obviously if you are interested in a career in management consulting, this interview is for you. In addition, many of the qualities and skills that Bain values are also valued by other employers and by many graduate schools, especially in business, law and engineering. So pull up a chair… or at least put on your earbuds.

In addition to introducing this week's podcast, I want to take the opportunity to thank you for listening week in and week out, or whenever you find a show you like. I truly appreciate that you choose to spend time with Admissions Straight Talk’s guests and me. Thank you!

I also want to wish you a wonderful holiday season and a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year, a year filled with the realization of your educational and professional dreams, and of course acceptances.

For the complete show notes, please check out the original blog post. 

Related Links:

• Bain Interview with Keith Bevans

• Preparing for Bain’s Hiring Process

• Fitting In and Standing Out, your free guide to the paradox at the heart of admissions

• Meet David, Cornell Johnson MBA Student Headed to Bain

• Accepted MBA Admissions Consulting Services

Related Shows:

• Haas, McCombs, and Case Interviews

• Case Interview Secrets and More with Victor Cheng

• How to Become a Management Consultant

• Building Your Consulting Career, and a Look Back at a Tuck MBA

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Interview with Dr. Charles Cochran, anesthesiologist and blogger [Show Summary]

Are you wondering what life is like as a med student? Resident? Practicing physician? Do you want to graduate without mountains of debt? Do you want to be able to have work/life balance when you start practicing? Interested in rural medicine? Anesthesiology? Hear from Dr. Charles Cochran about the unique path he took to becoming a doctor, and his advice on how not to bury yourself in student loan debt.

Med school admissions, med student life and #lifeofamedstudent [Show Notes]

Our guest today, Dr. Charles Cochran, is a Hoosier through and through. He grew up in Indiana, attended Indiana State as an undergrad, and Indiana University School of Medicine Bloomington, which he graduated from in 2013. He did his residency also at Indiana U Medical Center in anesthesiology. On the side, he started the Twitter hashtag #lifeofamedstudent and a very popular pre-med and med student web site by the same name.

Can you tell us about your background? Where you grew up? [2:05]

I grew up in a small town called Spencer, not far from IU – Bloomington. I knew early on I wanted to get into medicine - my dad was a chiropractor. I rode horses on the weekend, spent lots of time in the woods learning to hunt and fish – basically a traditional rural Indiana upbringing.

How did you become interested in medicine? [2:56]

My dad was a chiropractor and gave me exposure to medicine as a rural clinician. He didn’t push me to be a chiropractor but he thought if I was interested in medicine I should go for a more advanced license, an MD or DO. Even from high school I had a pretty clear idea I wanted to go into medicine, and luckily it all worked out. I didn’t take a gap year, which was fine with me. Now that I am paying back my loans I am glad I went through as quickly as I did. It is nice to be done!

What was the hardest part of applying to medical school? [4:29]

I was part of the Indiana State/IU rural bachelor/MD program, so applying to medical school was pretty straightforward. The program takes people from small towns and provides them with a pathway to becoming a physician in hopes they will return to a small town and practice medicine. Ideally the state would like primary care physicians, and while I didn’t go that route, I think I still fulfilled that goal by practicing in a rural, midsize hospital.

In a lot of ways things were set up for me since the first day of undergrad. If you maintain an average GPA of 3.5 and met the minimum required MCAT you were set for admission to medical school. Once I was in the program it was a matter of sticking with it. It wasn’t always easy – I did have to take the MCAT a second time – but overall it was much less stressful.

What was the best part of your medical experience at Indiana University? [6:38]

IU has a lot of regional campuses - 8-9 where you can go for your first two years. I guess this could be considered the best and sometimes the worst. You are in one (rural) place for two years, and then Indianapolis for two years. I actually really liked it – I spent the first two years in Terra Haute, and then moved to the big city for years 3-4,

Interview with Cornell Tech's Dean Matthew D'Amore and Admissions Director Dr. Raymond Lutzky [Show Summary]

The Cornell Tech campus and programs on Roosevelt Island in New York City have INNOVATIVE stamped on them. Hear from Dean Matt D’Amore and Admissions Director Dr. Ray Lutzky about the inception of the program, the innovative degrees currently being offered, how to get in, and what the future holds for Cornell Tech’s lucky students and graduates.

Get to Know Cornell Tech [Show Notes]

Our guests today are Dean Matt D’Amore, Associate Dean at Cornell Tech and Professor of Practice, Cornell Tech and Cornell Law; and Dr. Ray Lutzky, Senior Director of Enrollment and Admissions at Cornell Tech. Since they both have bios and resumes longer than my arm, I’m going to do away with the details and simply welcome them.

Dean D’Amore: Can you give a little background or brief history about Cornell Tech? [2:10]

Cornell Tech grew out of a 2011 competition from Mayor Bloomberg, who wanted to incentivize a first-class technical campus in NYC, and solicited bids from major academic institutions. Seven or eight schools ultimately submitted bids, including Columbia, NYU, MIT and Stanford, and Cornell won out in a joint bid with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. We were awarded land to build a campus and started from there. The academic curriculum is a combination of seven masters programs and a small PhD program with applied sciences in technical areas.

Normally I ask for an overview of the one or two programs my podcast guest represents. However, you both work with seven masters programs and several PhD programs. We’re going to focus this episode on the master’s options: Johnson Cornell Tech MBA, MS of Engineering in Computer Science, MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Master’s In Operations Research and Info Engineering, LLM in Law, Technology and Entrepreneurship, Technion-Cornell Dual Master’s Degrees in Connective Media, and the Technion-Cornell dual Master’s Degrees in Health Tech. I’m going to suggest that we not get an overview of each program and I’m going to ask what these very different programs have in common. What makes them Cornell Tech programs? [4:06]

Studio is what ties all the programs together. The Studio curriculum is 1/3 of all our one-year programs. It is a cohesive interdisciplinary program based around product development and the basics of figuring out whether to launch a company, how to launch a company, and provides students with the basic skills and insights to help them decide if they want to found a startup when they graduate as well as the tools to do so.

It sounds like Cornell Tech is very entrepreneurially-focused. Do established companies want graduates from Cornell Tech? Or is it a mix? [6:01]

We’ve been experimenting and looking at ways of working with established companies in addition to startups. With the studio program, part of our mission is to inspire and help students to spin out companies, and we have done 40-50 companies in the past five years. We also have curriculum that’s built around established companies, where practitioners come to campus and ask questions like, “How might we bring banking services to rural areas?” “How might we better educate people about retirement options?

Interview with Ryan Crane, Entering Medical Student [Show Summary]

Ryan Crane already knows he is going to medical school next fall, having been accepted at two schools in October! The medical school application process is long and ardurous, and Ryan knew he had some weaknesses to overcome. Listen to how Ryan overcame those weaknesses with a a detailed plan that he followed methodically and that led him to success early on. Let’s learn how he did it!

An Admitted Medical School Applicant's Story [Show Notes]

Our guest today, Ryan Crane, is happily anticipating the start of medical school. He was accepted to medical school in October. I’m going to let Ryan tell most of his story, but here’s a little background: In 2016 he graduated from Michigan State, where he was a bio major and a member of the Crew Club and rowing team. He has worked as an emergency room nurse aid, research associate, and scribe. That’s pretty bare bones, let’s get into the meat of Ryan’s story of early medical school acceptance.

Can you tell us a little about yourself? Your background and where you grew up? [2:04]

I grew up in Traverse City, Michigan and went to primary school there as well as attended two years at Northwestern Community College before transferring to Michigan State.

How did you decide to pursue a career in medicine? [2:32]

I was always interested in science growing up and was good at it. It was probably during the anatomy class my senior year of high school when we were doing cat dissections that it really clicked. I was naturally good at it and had good instincts. The teacher had me help other students with labeling the anatomical landmarks, so that was the first hint of my interest in medicine.

I also had a traumatic brain injury after riding a bicycle and spent a few weeks in the hospital recovering from that and then several months back and forth talking to specialists. Through that experience I shadowed and interacted with a lot of different physicians, nurses, PAs, etc., which confirmed what I wanted to do. After recovering I started volunteering in the ER at Munson Medical Center in Traverse City to get more exposure, and did so for a year and a half.

You’ve had a lot of different types of clinical exposure. What experience was the most valuable to you in terms of confirming your path? [4:34]

That’s a tough question, since I think each of the experiences has taught me something different about medicine. For example, working as a nurse’s assistant you get one-on-one patient interaction and the opportunity to develop a bedside manner. As a medical scribe you get the flip action of that, working one-on-one with a physician, which taught me to think like a physician and make notes like they would. I am an advocate for multiple types of exposure.

Was your 2018-19 application your first application to medical school or a reapplication? [5:39]

It was my first application that was completed. I began filling them out in the 16-17 cycle but was waiting for an MCAT score to come back, and it wasn’t what I’d hoped for, so I ended up holding off and began working with Alicia Nimonkar at Accepted in anticipation of applying during the 17-18 cycle. Then I decided to wait another year beyond that as we discovered some weaknesses in my application...

Interview with Nik Kumar, Columbia MBA Class of 2019 [Show Summary]

Want to know what it’s like to be a Columbia MBA? How about what it’s like to be a police officer? Nik Kumar (CBS ’19) can answer those questions, and in this episode he shares the ins and outs of both. Listen in for the scoop!

A Current Student's Perspective on Columbia Business School [Show Notes]

Our guest today, Nik Kumar, earned his bachelor’s degree from Cornell in Industrial Labor Relations and Economics. He joined Bank of America/Merrill Lynch as an analyst in 2010, moved into PE in 2012, and became a CBS MBA student in January 2018. While working on Wall Street, he also served as a volunteer auxiliary police officer for the NYPD.

Can you tell us about your background? Where you grew up? What you like to do for fun? [1:45]

I grew up in the Dallas area, and by the time senior year of high school rolled around I really wanted to get away from Texas, so I went to Cornell and had a wonderful time there, enjoying the experience and being away from a big city. Many people I met there are still great friends to this day. When I graduated the allure of Wall Street was too much to pass up so I joined the investment banking program at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch as an analyst in their leveraged finance group. I then had the unique opportunity to join a smaller firm, Sound Harbor, focused on distressed debt, and then went to another larger firm, AEA Investors, where I was for 2.5 years before starting at Columbia.

How did you get interested in becoming a volunteer police officer? [3:08]

In looking back it started kind of with 9/11. As I grew older and saw the terrorist incidents I hated being unable to do anything about them. I thought about joining the military, going to West Point, but quickly learned I might not be the best fit to lead a platoon in Afghanistan or Iraq. I decided to pursue a more regular career path, but always had the desire to do some sort of service. When I found out about the NYPD program I knew I wanted to be a part of it. It is essentially a reserve police unit that operates during big events, like parades, visiting dignitaries, etc. It is a 12 hours/month commitment. Training is over 16 weeks, once a week at the police academy and includes training in self-defense, penal law, reacting to terrorist incidents, and military style training, so very different from anything I had ever done previously. People in my class were from very different backgrounds - students, mechanics, city workers – and it was an amazing way to meet people I wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to. We did not have guns, and our responsibility was mainly to observe and report, crowd control, etc.

What experience as a police officer stands out for you? [6:28]

New Year’s Eve always stood out. I did that for four years in Times Square. With so many people in such a tight area, my responsibility was to be on the lookout for anyone acting suspiciously and also crowd control – that people are safe, crowds don’t spill over barricades and stampede. It was our job to make sure it didn’t happen.

You have an undergrad degree in business and extensive experience in investment banking and private equity. Other than the credential, why do you need an MBA? Are you actually learning much from your studies? [9:47]

The decision to go back wasn’t easy. I spent a lot of time thinking about it.