Admissions Straight Talk

Our guest today is Dr. Benjamin Chan, Associate Dean of Admissions and Idaho Affairs at the University of Utah's School of Medicine and host of the Talking Admissions & Med Student Life podcast. Dr. Chan earned his bachelors at Stanford and his MD at UUCOM. He then trained in General Psychiatry at George Washington University in DC.  He has also completed a fellowship in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, has an MBA from University of Utah and a Masters in Education from the University of Cincinnati. He is also an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and inpatient attending physician at the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Dr. Chan, can you give an overview of the Utah COM’s curriculum focusing on the more distinctive elements of the program? [2:20]

We are an allopathic medical school, which means we offer the MD degree, which is four years long. We are known for innovation, in particular trying new teaching techniques. TBL-based learning is new, and it’s essentially students teaching each other – they break off into small groups, do cases, debate, and learn.

We also have a bench-to-bedside bio innovation project. There was a question of how to take bench research to help patients more quickly, so we decided to break up students into multi-disciplinary teams, including other graduate students like in computer science, biology, or physics, and the teams interview and shadow doctors. We provide some lab space and startup money and they go back to their lab and brainstorm ideas and design prototypes. We have an annual gala when everyone comes together to present their designs, judges interview and play with prototypes, and there are winners – it’s essentially a science fair on steroids.

One winner a few years back is currently in stage 3 trials with a UV light that kills bacteria. It is a catheter that kills bacteria before you insert it into the skin, which could have huge implications, since you don’t always have the sterilization capability.

The curriculum is divided into four core areas that students participate in throughout their four years at UCOM: Service, Scholarship, Mentorship; Clinical medicine; Medical Sciences; and Medical Arts.  Clinical medicine and Medical Sciences are what most people think of when you talk about medical school. How do the other two areas play out in the Utah experience? [5:25]

Students learn a lot of hard facts – anatomy, physiology, and pharmacology. How does one take that information and communicate it with your patients? You can have all the clinical and scientific knowledge in the world, but if you can’t share it in a way that makes sense to your patients, that does you no good. So there is a science to medicine, and there’s also an art to it. We have medical humanities, so we talk about death and dying, how to interact with diverse patient populations, and how to deal with bioethical issues as they arise, which is incredibly important. With service, scholarship and mentorship, we pride ourselves on the fact that our students stay up-to-date on the latest news and research, so the vast majority participate in a research project of some sort. We also have a formalized mentorship program.

I noticed in reviewing your site and preparing for the call that there is a strong focus on “practice-based learning.” Can you describe that approach in the medical school setting? [11:26]

The first two years of med school are historically classroom-based, and then very clinically-based.

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Kellee Scott. This is Kellee’s first time on AST, but she is no stranger to Accepted, having participated in our old online chats.

Kellee earned her bachelors in business at the University of Miami and worked in business for companies like Unilever and Ernst and Young. Then she became a Trojan through and through, joining the Marshall admissions team in 2001. She also earned her MBA at USC. In addition to her duties today as Senior Associate Director at Marshall, she has served on the Boards of the Forte Foundation and The Consortium for Graduate Study in Management.

Can you give an overview of the USC Marshall FT MBA program for those listeners who aren’t that familiar with it? Please focus on its more distinctive elements. [2:40]

The flexibility of the program is one aspect – we really are a “Make Your Own MBA.” We start with a pretty tight core but students start taking electives pretty early on in the program, to provide breadth and depth, and students are also welcome to take classes outside of Marshall.

Communications is part of the core, which is rare for MBA programs at this point. We feel it is a critical component for success - knowledge and expertise don’t matter if you can’t convey your ideas. In fact, The Bloomberg BusinessWeek jobs skills report named us as a school consulting companies love to come to because of our students’ great communications skills, and this will remain part of our core.

We also were the first school to require international travel as part of the core, so everyone at Marshall needs a passport since you will be going overseas. Additionally, we have an intensive case competition. Even if you are not going into consulting it helps with leadership and critical thinking skills, and allows you to apply things you are learning very quickly. Finally, we are the only MBA program that presents at the annual Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), another major project where students present to CEOs of APEC.

When I think of Marshall’s strengths I think of entrepreneurship, media and entertainment, and global business, especially on the Pacific Rim. What else should I be thinking of and why? [5:55]

We have a very active tech club, and the tech industry is now 2nd to consulting for MBA hires. Being here in LA, which we call Silicon Beach, is great because of the tight start-up culture, which is very important to lots of MBAs. There has been lots of growth in the interest in gaming, and it has grown such that our Gaming Club was created as an offshoot of our Tech Club. Also, Business Analytics is part of our core. We were one of the first schools to add it, and we now have a new Masters in Business Analytics, and MBA students can take additional courses in that area as electives, or can concentrate in it if they like.

USC Marshall states that its four core values are: Transformational courage, collaborative ambition, impactful service, and unwavering integrity. How do those values influence admissions decisions? [7:49]

The wonderful thing about those values is they came from our students. As we look at applications in the admissions process we assess these values in different ways. With transformational courage, we are looking for applicants who transform and find ways to stretch themselves - constantl...

Warning: Our guest today has done so much that it’s going to be really hard to give his background succinctly, but here goes. Dr. Calvin Sun earned his bachelors in 2008 at Columbia where he held numerous leadership positions. In 2014, he graduated from SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and served as graduating class president. Since 2014 he has been an ER resident at Montefiore and Jacobi Medical Centers and is also the Director of Resident Wellness at Jacobi.

In his non-existent spare time in medical school, he somehow managed to found and now runs The Monsoon Diaries, which he describes as “a blog-turned-travel company”. The Monsoon Diaries organizes flexible, budget trips and has gone to over 128 countries in the past six years. He is also a film-maker, popular speaker, and activist in the Asian American community.

Can you tell us about your background? Where you grew up? [2:26]

I was born and raised in Manhattan and was lucky to have parents who raised me in an environment where I was constantly learning and growing. In the interim of my youth my father died of a heart attack and my mom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, which led me to determining my path for myself earlier than expected, and that led me to medicine which I thankfully believe was a decision I made on my own rather than a decision made for me.

My father had wanted me to become a doctor. Then after he passed I was free in that confusion to decide for myself whether or not I wanted to do that, and my mom gave her blessing to my exploring my options. I actually rejected medicine for a few years, because I felt it was something my dad had been forcing me to do, but ultimately the issue with overthinking is that I wondered whether I was rejecting it because of my father. I realized that if I really wanted to be free of anyone’s influence there was no way to know other than by trying it for myself. I applied to as many schools as I could, and didn’t think I would get in anywhere since my academic record was below average. My hope was to just get all rejection letters and check the box that I was free of the decision, knowing that I wasn’t meant to become a doctor. However, I was fortunate enough to get in, with people kind enough to see me as a human being rather than someone who studies all the time. I was very grateful that the evolution of medicine had become more humanistic and organic. While in medical school I insisted on keeping my life outside of medicine, and ironically it was all the things that almost got me flunked out (extracurriculars, etc) that got me into residency and becoming director of resident wellness. And now in my last few months of residency, if nothing else happens I will become an attending.

I believe you took a gap year between Columbia and med school. Are you glad you did? What did you do during that time? [6:42]

The best advice I can give anyone is to not listen to anyone else’s advice but your own. The second piece of advice I can give is to recommend taking gap years, as it’s the best decision I ever made. I took the time off since I didn’t know the answer to what I wanted. To have the confidence to say, “I don’t know,” that is a valid answer. I tell people to embrace that.

This week we are airing an encore of one of our more popular podcasts this year, which is “Optimize Your Grad School Application.”

It’s an excellent time to air this podcast, because many of you are looking ahead to apply this summer or fall.  Reviewing the different moving parts of the grad school application, their purpose, and the tactics you can use to optimize each one will contribute to your success in the fall.

I also want to take the time to invite you to a couple webinars we will be hosting in the coming weeks.

1. The first is for med school applicants, on April 10th at 4pm PST/7pm EST – “Create a Winning AMCAS Application,” presented by Accepted’s consultant Alicia McNease Nimonkar. It’s free, but you do need to register.

2. For MBA applicants, you are invited to, “Get Accepted to Top MBA Programs with Low Stats,” which I will present twice, on April 18th at 10am PST/1pm CST and at 5pm PST/8pm EST. Register for the webinar here.

Click here for the full show notes.

I assume many of you are taking spring break right now, and hope you are having a wonderful time and thank you as always for listening!

Related Links:

• Fitting In & Standing Out: The Paradox at the Heart of Admissions, a free guide

• Round 3 vs Next Year: When should You Apply?, a recorded webinar

• 10 Tips for Writing Letters of Recommendation

• What if the President of the United States Wrote Your Letter of Recommendation?

• Create a Winning AMCAS Application , a recorded webinar

Related Shows:

• Your Past Doesn’t Define You

• 5 A’s for Your Low GPA

• Focus on Fit

• Stand Out! A Critical Goal for Your Application

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It gives me great pleasure to have for the first time on AST, Luke Pena, Executive Director of Admissions and Financial Aid at The Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Luke earned his bachelors in PR and business at USC in 2006 and cut his admissions teeth at USC’s Annenberg School of Communication. He subsequently earned a joint MBA/MA in Education at Stanford GSB and joined the GSB’s admissions staff in July 2012 as an Associate Director of MBA Admissions. He rose to Director of MBA Admissions in October 2015 and moved to Hanover, New Hampshire to become Tuck’s Executive Director of Admissions and Financial Aid in July 2017.

For those listeners who aren’t that familiar with Tuck’s program, can you give an overview of it, focusing on its more distinctive elements? [1:36]

I’d love to start with the mission of the school, which is to educate wise leaders who better the world of business. This emphasis on wisdom is integral to the fabric of Tuck. Wisdom encompasses essential aptitudes of confident humility, empathy, and judgment. These aptitudes align with our core values of being personal, connected, and transformative. Confident humility requires students to bring their full sense of self to the community, empathy requires sharing your breadth and depth with other practitioners of leadership and embracing their perspective, and good judgment is fundamental to transformation.

On a practical level, Tuck builds a distinctly immersive learning community with our scale, focus, and place. Our scale is deliberate, with 285 classmates, all of whom know you, challenge you, and support you. Our focus is the fulltime MBA program – we don’t have other masters or PhD programs. The two-year, fulltime program is it, so the focus is on you, from faculty, alums, and visiting execs. Hanover is the place, which offers the opportunity to wholeheartedly immersion, away from the distractions of a major market, which we think is integral to successful transformation into a wise leader.

Tuck’s mission is to “educate wise leaders to better the world of business.” What are “wise leaders,” what does Tuck mean by “bettering the world of business,” and why limit it to business? [4:32]

“Better” is deliberate and intentional, and it means achieving superior outcomes by practicing the aptitudes of wise leadership. It encompasses not only the what, but the how, leading with an orientation towards both results and values. Within the community here, the “better the world” piece means doing well by doing good. We believe that as our global economy continues to become more dynamic and more diverse, the call for wise, values-driven leaders, the kind Tuck creates, will continue to grow louder. With your specific question about “business,” we are a business school, a management program, and while we believe the business sector is increasingly being called upon to exert leadership in all different kinds of industries and career paths, at the core of what we do is train leaders and managers who impact the world through business.

Any advice for Tuck’s essay questions, specifically #2 about wise leadership? [6:11]

There is a belief that essays all by themselves will swing the admissions decision, and I just don’t find that.

One of the biggest motivations, if not the biggest motivation, for applying to graduate school is career enhancement and achievement of professional goals. For many MBAs and some other graduate students, consulting has irresistible appeal. Today it is my distinct pleasure to have on Admissions Straight Talk Keith Bevans, Partner and Global Head of Consulting Recruitment at Bain & Company.

Keith earned his BS and MS in engineering from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. Except for his two years at HBS, Keith has been with Bain since 1996 both as a client-facing consultant and most recently as head of global recruiting.

Can you briefly outline the hiring process at Bain for consultant positions if one is coming from a graduate business school? [1:52]

We first engage with students as part of our Experience Bain programming which is a series of live and virtual events over the summer, before students even arrive on campus, to give them a sense of what we are about, what consulting is about, and what consultants actually do.

In the first year of business school, we are not typically allowed to talk to students in the first 4-6 weeks. So in Sept./Oct. we have a large kick-off event, introducing students to Bain, to some of our consultants, summer associates, and our projects, and they meet a lot of us during that same time. We go through the recruiting process in Oct./Nov. and then interviews are in January. That is how first-year recruiting works.

The same thing happens for second-year students but most of them opt out of summer events since they know us already. For second years, right at the beginning of the semester in September we start recruiting, with October interviews, and offers given out by Thanksgiving.

If someone gets in touch with you the summer before starting business school, are they aiming for an internship that summer or thinking about fulltime employment at the end of that two years? [3:45]

Sometimes both. A lot of times what we find is that summer events aren’t recruiting events, but education events. We want people to learn as much as they can about us early on, so if we are not aligned with their career goals, then they can focus on things that are a better fit once they get to campus. Most are looking for that summer internship, and about 90% of the people who work for us in the summer get an offer and return. So the summer program is a very important onramp. It gets your foot in the door and sets up the strong possibility of an offer.

In an excellent interview on your bio page on the Bain website, you outlined the four qualities Bain looks for in recruits: Problem solving ability, client-facing skills, teamwork, and certain personal characteristics including humility and leadership. Can you unwrap those requirements a bit? Why are they important and where do you find them in the recruiting process? [5:18]

The answer starts with what we are about at Bain. We are about creating client success stories and people success stories. Problem solving ability is about the ability to break down a problem into discreet parts to prove or disprove a hypothesis on each part to come up with an overall answer for what to do next.

It’s not enough to be smarter or more credentialed, or just more self-confident than the people you’re working with. To be effective as a Bain consultant you need to have people skills to inspire clients and be able to present your analysis in a compelling way.

Our guest today is Jamie Wright. She grew up in California, started her career in PR in Chicago, and then crossed the pond in 2009 to become the Client Services Manager at London Business School’s then brand-new Masters in Management (MIM) program. Jamie rose to become the admissions director for all early career programs at LBS by 2017.  In 2018, she joined Accepted and has become an admissions consultant on our staff. Let’s learn from her if there is a magic sauce to acceptance.

Before we get to the early career stuff, how does a California girl end up as Client Services Manager and then the first Admissions Director of London Business School’s Early Career Programs? [2:11]

By chance, actually. When I initially moved to London I wasn’t able to work due to visa restrictions so I had time to explore other career options. I had been working in PR before moving to London, and considered staying in that field, but I used that opportunity of time to explore other roles in publishing, sports business, and came across an ad for a client services role for the MIM at LBS. The program had just launched and was recruiting for its first class. I figured this was a great opportunity to be part of something from the beginning. It was quite entrepreneurial, almost like a start-up even though the program was part of a large school like LBS. It was the first pre-experience program and it was exciting to be a part of. I stayed there for the next nine years.

What are early career programs in management in general? [3:20]

They are general management programs for the most part, though there are some programs that offer specializations. These programs are designed for those just entering their career, with less than 1-2 years of experience looking to go into entry-level positions. In addition to traditional consulting and finance roles, more students are going into entrepreneurship, which is a specialization some programs offer.

How do the masters in management programs differ from the MBA in terms of structure, content, length, goals and placement? [4:30]

In terms of similarities they are both general management programs. An MBA is really for those looking to accelerate or develop their careers, whereas a Masters in Management is for those looking to gain the knowledge and skills to break into a business career. MBA students have on average 5-8 years of work experience and learn a lot from peer practical experience, whereas MIM students might have some internship experience but are really learning more from the classroom environment. MIMs are applying for entry level positions, and MBAs are looking for more senior positions.

From a content perspective, from the outside an MBA looks more practical than a MIM – there are more theory-based MIMs, though there is definitely no shortage of early-career programs offering practical and applied learning as well, with internships and study abroad opportunities. MIMs can be one or two years long, depending on the program.

Do you have any idea how many MiM graduates go back and ultimately get an MBA or for most is it a terminal degree? [6:44]

I’d say a MIM is definitely not a terminal degree,

Our guest today, Gina Moses, is the Director of Admissions at New York Institute of Technology’s College of Osteopathic Medicine. Prior to taking this position in 2016, she worked for almost ten years as the Associate Director of Recruitment and Application Services for the American Association of College of Osteopathic Medicine. Gina also worked in different admissions capacities for Georgetown and for the University of Maryland before starting at AACOM and after earning her masters in Higher Ed Administration from USC.

Can you give us an overview of NYIT COM's program with a focus on the more distinctive parts? [2:00]

One unique thing is the technology aspect to the program. We are probably one of the only medical schools in the nation outside of MIT that has it. The nice thing is that the program blends state of the art technology into the curriculum. With our new campus at Arkansas University we are synchronizing lectures between campuses and even with interviews.

Can you discuss the specific focus and strength of osteopathic medicine and NYIT? [3:19]

The beauty of osteopathic medicine is that it is founded and grounded in the philosophical approach, which makes it so distinctive. This philosophy came about from Andrew Taylor Still in the 1800s. He was a physician, and tragically his children died. This made him recognize there was a disconnect in medical training, and that the traditional training of the time was not effective and often harmful. He felt that medicine needed to be practiced in a more holistic manner, where structure and function are interrelated. So if you break your arm it puts pressure on different points that it wouldn’t otherwise do. Osteopathy is a way of looking at the body to aid in it healing itself. When we train osteopathic physicians we are taking history and philosophy and infusing it into the curriculum in the first two years. Students at NYIT gain 200 hours in those first two years in anatomy and physiology in the musculoskeletal system, which comes together throughout lecture and case-based training but also in hands-on doing. That is the power of osteopathic medicine.

With all this amazing training, the beauty in 21st century medicine is that if you have a sinus infection, an osteopath can palpate your sinuses, head, forehead, neck, shoulders, and lymph nodes to help your body in the healing process - moving fluids around, enabling the body to breathe better, and improving the functionality and flow. It is a wonderful way of looking at medicine.

Palpation or manipulation is very low tech. Why would NYIT pursue this more philosophical approach? [6:31]

At the end of the day we are an osteopathic medical school that provides the best state of the art technology with robotics, so students can work with “patients” through robotics and not do any harm. We are able to look at cadavers online and use technology to see things you might not see when you have an actual cadaver in front of you, since we are not all created the same internally. We infuse state of the art telemedicine, providing healthcare to remote locations, and also when working with patients in front of you with non-invasive, cost effective care, working with the body’s immunology to promote self-healing and not going to a prescription or an opiate because we’ve seen what can happen with over-prescription. In the general public, across the spectrum in healthcare, people are concerned about the cost of it, the cost of pharmaceuticals,

Note to readers: Dr. Arnold P Gold passed away the week before our interview took place. This interview is dedicated to his memory.

I’m so pleased to have on the show Dr. Dorothy Levine, Director of the Gold Humanism Honor Society. Dr. Levine earned her bachelors at Princeton, her MD at Albert Einstein, and did her residency in pediatrics at Columbia Presbyterian. Today she leads organizational and strategic planning efforts of the Gold Humanism Honor Society.

What is the Arnold P Gold Foundation, and can you give me a little background as to its founding? [1:21]

The Arnold P Gold Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to infuse and sustain our healthcare system with a culture of compassion, caring, and respect for patients and practitioners. It began in 1988 when Dr. Arnold Gold realized he had to do something to combat the depersonalization of the patient/physician relationship that he saw developing in front of his eyes. He was a pediatric neurologist who taught students and saw patients, and he saw this distancing developing. His effort was helped enormously by the passionate and seemingly limitless energy of his wife Dr. Sandra Gold. Donations from physician friends and grateful patients allowed the dream to become a reality. Over the years sympathetic administrators have joined in and provided financial support, and most recently reach has grown from the creation of a corporate council of healthcare-related companies. The aim is to maximize the impact the organization has on goals to keep all patient activities as empathetic as possible.

Why do you think the problem developed? [3:19]

In the old, old days there was often not much physicians could do - there was lots of hand holding, sitting by a patient’s bedside, empathy, and compassion. As the power to change the course of the illness through diagnostics grew, I think doctors got very busy doing those things – ordering tests, interpreting them, and the patient got further away. Then you have the managed care company or insurer. It used to be that doctors would hand the bill directly to the patient and negotiations for payment would happen directly between those two parties. When insurers got involved, the patients suddenly seemed to not even be yours anyway, and then electronic medical records put the finishing touch on this depersonalization, as the doctor is very well meaning but busy looking at a computer screen.

How did you get involved with the Gold Foundation? [5:42]

I was a lucky pediatric resident at Columbia Presbyterian Babies Hospital from 1980-1983, studying to be a pediatrician and I met Dr. Gold, who was one of my professors of pediatric neurology. He was one of my most beloved physicians on the faculty there. There can be an emphasis on lack of compassion with doctors, and he absolutely was not that way. He was a wonderful man and I periodically sent my patients with the most difficult neurological problems to him to diagnose. When I retired several years ago I met Dr. Levin, President and CEO of The Arnold P. Gold Foundation who had stepped in after Dr. Gold retired, and he encouraged me to take the position.

What is humanism in medicine? [8:41]

People spend a lot of time trying to identify and explain what it is and why it is or isn’t there. It should be an easy answer, but I think it’s present when all members of the healthcare team, from the doctor to the person who cleans up the vomit, treat their patients with dignity and compassion....

This show was triggered by a question asked on a recent webinar that I gave when a member of the audience, Glenn, asked “Are there any podcasts or resources that focus specifically on rounding out the application - recommendations, extra-curriculars, etc.”

There aren’t. I decided to create one, and this is it. We’re going to discuss different elements, why they are important in graduate admissions, and what you can do to make sure you provide admissions committees with what they want.

Grades [2:13]

A school’s class profile gives a good idea of averages and what schools would like to see. If your grades are above the average, great! If they are below the average, you will need to work harder to gain admission.

Grades are important because past performance predicts future performance. This is a fundamental premise of admissions. Schools want to know you have the ability and self-discipline to excel in a demanding academic environment. If you want to go to a top program with great grades and you excelled in a tough program in the past, you are providing evidence that you can thrive in a new environment. If your grades don’t provide that confidence, you need to provide context as to why your grades don’t reflect your ability, or you need to take classes now, get strong grades now, and show that you now have the discipline and raw intelligence to perform. I go into much more detail in Podcast 137, 5 A's for Your Low GPA.

Test Scores [4:02]

Test scores provide a common standard – everyone takes the same test – whereas individual schools’ grading standards can vary enormously. While test scores don’t show the ability to apply oneself in a demanding academic environment, they do measure raw aptitude and are highly predictive of success in specific graduate programs. In addition, test scores have some secondary purposes. When published, they impress alumni, applicants, and recruiters -- and US News. Because of these non-official purposes, they can tend to take on outsize importance.

Essays [6:00]

The primary purpose of the essays is threefold, and you can think of it in terms of the acronym PAD:

P: Provide a window into the real you. They want to meet you, see that you would fit in, that there isn’t a jerk factor, and that you share their values and mission.

A: Add value to the other elements of the application. Your grades, resume, test scores, recommendations, etc., are all parts of the puzzle that portray an image of you. The job of the personal statement is to show you as a human being. You don’t want to duplicate what you do in other parts of the application. And if possible you want to steer clear of technical examples. Rather for most graduate degrees, but not all, focus more on motivation, interpersonal or leadership examples, and the impact you intend to have once you earn your degree.

D: Demonstrate your communications ability. Schools, especially business schools, are more and more are asking for videos – I think this will become increasingly common. For most programs, though, writing is the only way to gauge how well you communicate until they invite you for an interview.

Your writing needs to be clear, well written, correct,