Brief Profile:
I was a relative late bloomer in terms of maturity and figuring out what I wanted to do with my life, so I had a number of shortcomings going into the cycle. In a nutshell, I was a pretty terrible student with a huge chip on my shoulder coming out of high school, and that ultimately left me with some large gaps in my resume and lacking grades in key courses. Some schools bought my evolution out of that stuff and attempts to remediate over the following 2 years, others didn't.
LGBT applicant.
// Applications //
Application Cycle One: 06/08/2014
Undergraduate college: Mid-size private school
Undergraduate Area of study: Biological/Life Sciences
Total MCAT SCORE: 523
MCAT Section Scores:
B/B 130,
C/P 129,
CARS 132
Overall GPA: 3.70
Science GPA: 3.65
Summary of Application Experience
My application year was a long year made even longer by an embarrassing mistake I made with my matriculation in the spring that resulted in an extremely stressful few weeks in May. Miraculously that still worked out, and I am living the dream in New York at Mount Sinai!
Highlight Reel
Best interview day pitch: Duke
Most supportive institutional culture from the interview day: Tie between Michigan and Mount Sinai.
Best interview day food: Tight race between UVA and Pitt, slight edge to UVA
Best pens: Pitt
Nicest rejection letter: Harvard, which was somewhat unexpected.
Strangest interview topic: Discussing UVA alum Tina Fey's stories about her less than successful love life at the school.
Most awkward interview moment: Talking about my relative disinterest in the laboratory setting with a student interviewer, perhaps forgetting that this was an important interview, not a vent session, and getting a little carried away...only to later discover my interviewer was doing a lab science-heavy PhD.
Worst application decision: The picture I submitted to Michigan. Oh god that was horrible.
Things I Would Change
- Shorten the school list. Do research, pick an appropriate stable of schools to send applications to, and be confident in your decision and application.
- Write the harder secondaries first. The monster that is the Duke secondary helped me organize a lot of my thoughts. Many of my other secondaries would have been better had I done the hardest first rather than last.
- Take more opportunities to experience places and not just schools. Interviewing is an excuse to travel I wish I had taken more advantage of, even if the opportunity cost can be high.
- Practice interviewing more at the outset. Looking back, there's a pretty clear difference in outcome comparing the places where I interviewed earlier versus the places I interviewed later.
- That damn picture.
Applied
Case Western Reserve University
Applying for combined PhD/MSTP? No
Submitted: Yes
Secondary Completed: No
Interview Invite: No
Interview Attended: No
Waitlisted: No
Accepted: No
Rejected: No
Summary of Experience:
Never completed secondary due to burnout.
Summary of Experience:
RIP dreams of leaving winter behind. I took an approach on the secondary prompt that was a gamble and in retrospect probably not the smartest option.
Summary of Experience:
After a comically bad faculty interview that I seriously wish had been recorded just to be able to relive the palpable awkardness, I am not surprised at all about the outcome here.
Summary of Experience:
WashU was the undergrad I dreamed of going to, but ultimately didn't for a number of reasons. The opportunity to visit the towering fortress of medicine and research that is the medical campus at WashU was a pretty nice experience. Not terribly surprised by the waitlist given my GPA compared to WashU's average; I was actually surprised I even got an interview. Just happy to still be in the running honestly.
Summary of Experience:
Womp womp. After a long wait for a decision, it's looking like Michigan will not be my home next year unless their use of the waitlist drastically changes from the recent past. At least it's not the outright rejection I was expecting!
Summary of Experience:
Waitlisted 2/4/15: Not surprised due to interview. Withdrew in favor of Sinai.
To summarize my performance at the MMI in NYU: I have plenty of new reasons to laugh at myself. This is probably related to the post-exam night out in NYC I was invited to by my student host the night before (not a negative experience, but probably not the best idea given the fact that I was there for an interview). Nevertheless, I had an overall great experience from my visit just because my hosting experience was unique among all the schools I visited and extremely fun.
Summary of Experience:Withdrew. Loved the Big 10 setting, but I don't think Iowa was far enough from home to fit with what I was looking for at this point.
Liked the curriculum, loved the campus environment (or sorry, the "grounds" environment). However, Charlottesville gives me the same hang-ups as the locations of some of my other schools.
Summary of Experience:Withdrew. Duke is a fantastic school that attracts some amazing students and faculty. However, I don't think Durham was the place for me right now, and after a twist of fate that ruined my plans to matriculate here, I think I have landed somewhere I fit much better.
Though my impression of Pitt was very, very good and one of the favorite docs I've worked with is an alum, I want to go a little farther out of my comfort zone for the next 4 years.
