Creative writing class - Duke - Sample medical school admissions essay
Sample medical school admissions essay
Tell us more about who you are. You may provide additional information that expands your self-identity where gender identification, racial and/or ethnic self-description, geographic origin, socioeconomic, academic, and/or other characteristics that define who you are as you contemplate a career that will interface with people who are similar AND dissimilar to you. You will have the opportunity below to tell us how you wish to be addressed, recognized and treated.
I was born in Northern California, to my loving parents, Jill and Steve, and was followed by two younger sisters. Growing up in a house full of girls was an extremely adventurous childhood. I spent hours climbing trees behind my house, playing doll babies, and making huge messes doing tie-dye and spin art. I poured over books, staying up past my bedtime to finish a chapter of Harry Potter. I tried just about every sport possible, but only one stuck: swimming.
From fifth grade onward, swimming became my life outside of school. I fell in love with the sport. I was on a small team, which meant my coach gave me a lot of personal attention. I felt seen and my accomplishments noticed. The pool was an environment I was authentically expressive in, giving me self-confidence in other areas of my life. I never doubted my ability to grasp new concepts or succeed in the classroom. School, like the pool, became a place that felt like home.
In high school, I realized that I was most interested in science and math courses. I like being able to find the correct answers to problems and learning about subjects I relate to. In biology, I could look down at my arm and see the tendons and muscles I was learning about move my pen across my paper.
I wanted college to be filled with new experiences and people. This led me to apply to WashU, a Midwestern school, far from my experiences in California. Swimming competitively and the predominate pre-med community gave me stability and a sense of belonging at a time when my life was changing drastically. At first, classes were harder than I imagined and I did not get the grades I expected. However, the increased expectations and demanding classroom environment taught me that I was capable of learning in challenging situations if I reached out and asked for help.
Sophomore year, I became more involved in the community through a student run organization: Help to Heal. We provide daily childcare at a women’s shelter. Our child care allows the mothers to attend group meetings and focus on their mental health. Playing with the children fosters a loving environment in which they can be comfortable expressing themselves. Volunteering has shown me what a large impact kindness has.
This summer I am interning at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. This has allowed me to combine my passion for serving others with my aspiration to attend medical school. I have particularly enjoyed my work on the Family Team, as I have been able to see many aspects of women’s reproductive health care. I want to be intellectually challenged throughout my career. The opportunities have long-term relationships with my patients and perform surgery are two reasons I am drawn to women’s health care. My experience this summer, coupled with my volunteer work with underserved women, has cultivated my desire to become an OBGYN.
Describe the community in which you were nurtured or spent the majority of your early development with respect to its demographics. What core values did you receive and how will these translate into the contributions that you hope to make to your community as a medical student and to your career in medicine? What improvements do you think might make the described community better?
I grew up in Menlo Park, California. Menlo Park is an affluent community in the heart of Silicon Valley. Living there was a privilege. I had access to stellar public education, restaurants, health care, parks, and of course, sports teams. Everyone who I was surrounded by seemed to be very successful. This instilled a drive to achieve the same level of success. I want to make my parents, siblings, and community proud. While this drive has helped motivate me through the often-daunting workload of school, I think it is important to remember that there is more than one definition of success, and that happiness and mental well-being should play an instrumental role in any definition. I believe my community would benefit from this reminder.
Living in the Bay Area, also meant that I grew up in a very liberal environment. I think this was crucial in the development of my core values. I was taught that everyone was deserving of the same treatment and level of respect, regardless of their race, ethnicity, religion, or gender and sexual orientation. I was taught that diversity was something to be celebrated. Not only do I believe that diversity is exciting and enriching, I think that it's true power is realized when community members take active roles in engaging with the diversity around them.
At my high school, Menlo-Atherton, the school’s motto is “Strength in Diversity”. Students are drawn from two racially and economically distinctive populations: Menlo Park and East Palo Alto, a poorer Latino community. However, despite being on the same campus, students from each community were often on different academic tracks and we rarely took classes together. It was not until my senior year, when I took creative writing, instead of AP English, that I made connections with students whose backgrounds differed dramatically from my own. We had conversations about which characters we related to and how the meaning we found in stories stemmed from our unique values and beliefs. These conversations taught me that the classmates I once considered to be so different from myself were, in fact, similar.
I enjoy connecting with people whose backgrounds, on the surface, seem different from my own. I believe approaching others with openness and empathy has prepared me for a medical career in which I will undoubtedly be interacting with all types of people. I know the admissions committee desires diverse, multifaceted applicants, and as a medical student, I plan to continue to embrace the robust community I am going to find myself in at Duke.
Describe a situation where you have chosen to advocate for someone who is different from yourself. What does advocacy mean to you and how has your advocacy developed? How do you see it linked to your role as a physician/leader? What risks, if any, might be associated with your choice to be an advocate?
Swimming has always been a place of comfort for me and the pool is an environment where I can be myself. I believe that this environment creates an empowering atmosphere that extends far beyond swimming and into my everyday life. Protecting this community and actively perpetuating acceptance is important to me.
My sophomore year of college an incoming freshman walked onto deck the first day wearing a knee-length jammer. For those of you not on a competitive swim team, this is a bit odd. Every other man on the team was wearing a speedo. People turned to look at the freshman and you could hear whispers and snickers. A senior on the team ran back into the locker room, grabbed a speedo, and demanded that the freshman change into it. Everyone was laughing. It was immature, but not malicious. To my surprise the freshman took the teasing in stride, went back into the locker room, and returned with a grin on his face and the speedo pulled up over his jammer.
Throughout practice, I still could not shake the feeling that, while everything had turned out okay, this interaction had the potential to destroy the supportive community that fostered so much of the person I am today. After practice, I went to my coach and talked to him about how inappropriate I felt the situation was. Had the freshman been a woman, she would never have been asked to wear a more revealing suit. I asked my coach to talk to the seniors and make sure that that team environment remained one that was built around friendship and support.
Not all my friends and teammates were supportive of my choice to talk to my coach. They thought that I was taking a small issue and magnifying it, that I was being hypersensitive. However, the decision is one I stand by, despite the resentment that some of my peers held. This situation helped me define what I think advocacy means. I think it is incredibly important to stand up for what you think is right, regardless of what others may think of your decision. As a physician, I think it is important to advocate for others, but at the same time realize that as a doctor your opinion will be held in high regard. Therefore, it will be important to think before you react to a situation to ensure that what you are fighting for is truly something you believe in.
What has been your most humbling experience and how will that experience affect your interactions with your peers and patients?
This summer, I have spent much of my time interning at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program (BHCHP). While I had a preconceived idea of what my time at BHCHP was going to look like, the experience has transcended my expectations. I believed the internship would be a fantastic opportunity to gain clinical experience working in a hospital respite setting; what I did not expect was how much I would learn from the patients themselves. I grew up in a community and household where access to the highest quality of health care was standard. Prior to BHCHP, I would not have considered how a basic medical task, such as taking medication with food, could be a challenge because access to proper nutrition is limited. Talking with patients and hearing their stories was an incredible humbling experience. Being able to gain insight from their perspectives and acknowledge places where my own background has led me to specious conceptions, has helped me navigate and engage with the diverse community of patients with whom I want to continue working. I have fostered interpersonal skills and gained emotional intelligence, all of which will make me a more empathetic and successful doctor.
What qualities will you bring to the practice of medicine?
I believe that the two most important qualities for a doctor to have are the knowledge to correctly treat and diagnose a medical problem and the emotional intelligence to relate to their patients and make them feel cared for. I possess both qualities.
I have proven through my academic history that I am capable of learning challenging material. My undergraduate experience at Washington University was initially harder than I expected. My consistent improvement from freshman year, demonstrates that I was successful in adapting my learning strategies to cope with the increased workload. Medical school will undoubtedly be another, larger, challenge. I am confident that I can meet this challenge, not necessarily with easy, but with a strong work ethic and passion for learning.
My extra-curricular activities have helped me garner the interpersonal skills I need to be a good doctor. On the swim team, I have learned to be an active leader and the importance of backing up words with actions. Volunteering at a women’s shelter in St. Louis and interning at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program has introduced me to people I would not have met otherwise. Talking to these patients has helped me expand my horizons and learn how to relate to and interact with a diverse population. I believe I can bring empathy and a genuine desire to connect with each individual patient.
Describe a situation where you failed. What did you learn from the experience? Describe at least one functional impact of the experience.
Like many freshman, I had a rude awakening when I entered the collegiate academic world. In high school my final chemistry project was to make a stuffed animal mole, so I immediately felt out of place walking into my first chemistry lab. I was expected to calculate titrations when I had no concept of what made something an acid or base in the first place. As the midterm approached, I was so lost and overwhelmed I did not know how to prepare. The exam shocked me. I was used to feeling confident on tests. When I received my score, I had a glimmer of hope. I thought I had gotten an 86%. However, the moment was short lived and pit slowly formed in my stomach as I realized I had received 86 out of 200. I had never experienced such a large academic failure; school was always a place I excelled.
I was determined to overcome the initial struggles from first semester. I joined tutor groups and read the “suggested” material. Most importantly, I reached out and asked for help. I learned I could not solely rely on myself to succeed, and more importantly, that this was okay. On the swim team, I took advantage of the network of students I had access to and asked upperclassmen chemistry majors to explain problem sets. I spent hours pouring over lecture notes, instead of resigning myself to the fact that I would never understand orbitals and wave theory, as I had done first semester. I learned one failure does not mean that I am incapable of success, nor does it determine the amount of success I am capable of in the future. I found the resources necessary to improve and met the next challenge I was faced with, in this case the final, prepared to succeed.
Failing my first college midterm turned out to be an invaluable lesson, one I think will serve me well, both as a medical student and a health care practitioner. Medical school will be difficult and as a practicing physician, collaboration with a team is essential; my ability to face challenges and ask for help when needed will benefit me throughout my medical education and career.
What role has research had in your preparation for medicine?
Research has exposed me to the scientific community and allowed me to see how the scientific process plays out in a real lab. I joined the Dantas’ Lab at Washington University School of Medicine the fall of my sophomore year. I was paired with a postdoc mentor. On his project, I was tasked with identifying novel antifungal resistance genes, cloning, amplifying, and sequencing them. I was trusted to work independently. Through this I learned how to troubleshoot problems and figure out how to proceed on my own. I believe this work will allow me tackle confusing medical problems by thinking creatively to come up with solutions. I also attended lab meetings, where each week, a new member of the lab presented on their project. This exposed me to different research topics and I garnered a deeper understanding of antibiotic resistance outside the specifications of my own project. I was able to ask questions to the senior members of the lab, who were willing to help guide me. This taught me the value of a strong mentor/mentee relationship. Having someone within the scientific community who was willing to walk me through project descriptions, answer questions, and provide insight on their own career choices made me feel informed and capable.