Our Seniors
Many of us found inspiration and good advice regarding Medicine, life as a medical student and much more from seniors who have curated their own sites and channels to share personal experiences. If you are a pre-med student thinking about applying to Medicine, get to know more from Our Seniors. We have tried to compile a list of blogs, youtube channels and books that you can check out.
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Seniors in School
Advice from a Senior
Just wanted to share my two cents on the approach to applying for medical school and I hope this would be helpful for all of you hopeful applicants! All the best in your preparations!
Johann Boi, M2 LKCSoM
Before I share the 4 main pointers that come to mind, I wanted to share that it’s very important to place this process of applying into helpful perspectives. Most people tend to view this as an immensely stressful, highly competitive period of time whereby the “inferior candidates” are “weeded out” from the “better ones”. I would like to suggest that it really isn’t so - and that actually this process is all about finding out whether medicine is suitable for you, not so much whether you are suitable for medicine.
I’m sure most of you are really interested in the great potential for helping people that comes with the role of a doctor, and that’s great! However, I feel that it might be a bit narrow to take this view, because there are so many other occupational roles that place you in a position to touch peoples’ lives for the better. In fact, I would say that while the doctor leads the medical team, all the other members of that team probably spend more time with the patient, exploring his or her feelings and rendering care and comfort, than the doctor ever does. In that, the role of the doctor is more leader than attendant - and our role requires us to fixate on the objective health status of the patient. So I would encourage all of you to also actively keep an open mind and consider other wonderful roles that allow you to significantly impact others - such as all the other healthcare roles!
01
What makes you a unique candidate?
I’m sure all of us can imagine that if you were an interviewer having to go through the hundreds of candidates in the busy period of applications, the more memorable or unique candidates would stay in your mind for longer (hopefully in a positive light). And unfortunately, some of us may be sucked into the whirlpool of endeavouring to “stat-pad” or squeeze ourselves into what we deem is the “quintessential medical student”. Isn’t it sad if you should need to change yourself drastically to apply?
I believe that all our lives are so different and just as these unique traits are so worth celebrating - we should apply that to this situation as well. Take a long hard think about what makes you who you are - what are the formative experiences that shaped your worldview and principles? What makes your life different and what are the reflections you’ve garnered from them? It is my humble opinion that offering the most genuine version of yourself is the optimal way to go through the interviews, and I would suppose that doctors would be able to read people well enough to pick up hints of faking personas.
02
Keep digging introspectively
As much as we can all anticipate the “key questions” that could be asked, like “Why medicine?”, “Why not nursing?” or even “Tell me about yourself”, I’m afraid we might not take the opportunities to really use this time and pry into our deeper intents and motivations. One golden piece of advice I received was to just ask myself these core questions every day and find these answers to familiarise myself with them, so that I could say them later by truly meaning them and conveying it with all of my self. Don’t imagine the curveballs and forget to prep for the good ol’ questions - good to rehearse!
03
Keep asking people who’ve gone through / or who are going through medical school!
I was privileged to have had quite a few contacts who had been or were studying in medical school, and honestly hearing all of their different takes and opinions really gave me a great foundation to work on. I didn’t have to feel insecure about not being prepared about certain aspects of the process - but then again I needed to be proactive and ask.
So that’s my recommendation too - just ask! Hear from everyone who you can find and never disregard an opinion - sometimes we need to be challenged to unearth new things that we never noticed, that might well aid us in the process of applying. I’m heartened to see that there are portals like this website available for people to find such contacts, so go ahead and ask!
04
Do your research - but make it diverse
I think many of us would have the urge to google and delve into the internet’s plethora of resources on things like details of applying, recommendations and different features of the schools we have in mind, but I personally feel that we should really be adventurous enough to ask different questions. What about looking into the testimonies of medical students who graduated and gave it all up by a career switch? What about inspecting the statistics in terms of mental wellbeing for doctors or medical students, which isn’t always great? I think we would easily realise that these ideas are so different from the typical “heart string tugging” books about medicine and emotional encounters - perhaps it would be good for you to move past the inspirations at times and into the realistic state of things! Challenge your passionate desires to get in and perhaps think equally about why you wouldn’t want to get in - and at the end of the day that would greatly aid you in obtaining a holistic view of everything. Wouldn’t you be different if you acknowledged the unglamorous aspects of being a medical student, showed poignantly that you had thought through these things and yet come through it with a strengthened desire to go through it?
With all this being said, I hope that I’ve provided some clarity into how meaningful this process of applying can be! Medicine is a great calling and a thoroughly fulfilling one - but I would think that you need to first ensure that it’s the calling for you. If you have any other questions, feel free to submit them in the "You Ask, We Tell" section and I’d love to get back to you . Till then, I wish you all the best in your endeavours - study hard, cherish those around you and stay humble. See ya!