Hometown: Richardson, Texas, USA

Undergraduate School: Private, Washington University

Major: Biomedical Engineering

GPA: 3.9

MCAT: 38. PS: 13, V: 11, BS: 14

Free sample medical school application essay

As Dr. Hotchner ruffled his patient’s sheets, I was horrified by what he unveiled. The face underneath was mauled, and through its swelling I could barely identify a boy only slightly older than myself. “He was pushed out of a moving car,” Dr. Hotchner told me. In a matter of moments, this boy had been reduced to a state so weak that an infection could throw him into a whole-body inflammatory state called sepsis, threatening to kill him. It was then that I understood the motivation behind Dr. Hotchner’s sepsis research and I received my first introduction to academic medicine. My teaching, clinical shadowing, and research experiences have only fortified my desire to follow in Dr. Hotchner’s footsteps. As an academic physician, I would be able to confer my knowledge to the next generation of physicians while also translating research from the bench to the benefit of my patients.

Throughout my undergraduate career, teaching has been my way of relating my experience and knowledge to people of all different ages and backgrounds. The diverse accomplishments that resulted allow me to understand what I would gain from teaching as a physician. My students gave me a true passion for what I was teaching. As the first Math/Engineering Chair of the Texas Academy of Math and Science (TAMS) Research Organization, I shared my appreciation for research with my peers by helping the next generation of TAMS students find research opportunities. I applied my high-school competitive swimming skills as a water safety instructor at my local recreational center. As a computer science teaching assistant in college, I helped many of my peers to build a mode of thought with which I watched them transform their daunting computational visions into reality. The strife and triumph I shared with my students reminded me of the value of my knowledge and the difference that I can make in others’ lives as long as I retain faith in its power.

When I shadowed Dr. Nastaran Abadan, a family practice physician, I was delighted to discover a similar role in the clinic. One somber-looking patient came to the office with a severe cold. As Dr. Abadan was explaining the patient’s condition, the patient began crying in frustration that she had been consistently sick for the past several months. Dr. Abadan immediately empathized with her and reassured her that by making some small changes in her exercise routine, diet, and supplements, she could build a stronger immune system and ultimately a healthier lifestyle. When the patient’s condition improved and she revisited, I could relate her look of triumph and the thrill I felt for her sudden progress to many similar instances I had experienced teaching. Dr. Abadan’s unwavering faith that her advice could make a difference, even against something as commonplace as a weak immune system, amazed me. As an academic physician, my faith in the impact that my advice can have will be two-pronged: it will empower me to pass down my appreciation for medicine to budding physicians and allow me to exert a lasting impact on my patients.

My research experiences have provided another opportunity for me to apply what I learned in my curricular life. In high school, my captivation with math led me to apply to TAMS, where I received a research scholarship to statistically analyze the clinical effects of Hyzaar, a pharmaceutical, on subject blood-pressure profiles. After I learned the power that math has to explain medicine, my captivation with math was transformed into a fascination for applying math to medicine. I was motivated to study biomedical engineering at Washington University, where I learned the skills necessary to solve a medical problem from an intrinsic mathematical perspective. After teaching computer programming for two years, I wondered how computer science, similarly to math, helps to probe the barriers of medical knowledge. In an independent study under Dr. Kurt Orbis, I studied how LWPR, an algorithm for nonlinear function approximation, could serve as a potential model for motor memory formation. My astonishment with how easily these programming skills bridged to the medical field compelled me to see how my other classes were related, and this August I will explore how biomedical engineering helps to reduce global barriers of care in a rural Chinese orthotics clinic. Through scientific projects, I learned to apply my curricular knowledge for another purpose: to build a stronger foundation for clinical practice.

My passion has been for applying the wisdom I gain in my curricular life by applying math to medical research and relating knowledge to a diverse set of people. In medical school, I hope to learn to enhance the linkage between math, medical research, and clinical practice. I hope that I can develop from a skilled teacher into an inspiring physician. As an academic physician, I ultimately hope to linger on the intersection of researcher, teacher, and physician: bringing research to the forefront of medicine and the needs of medicine to the forefront of research, inspiring budding physicians as so many physicians have inspired me, and ensuring that the benefits of both medicine and research reach peoples of diverse ages, backgrounds, and cultures.

Analysis

Johnathan centralizes his essay around his passion to become an academic physician and builds upon this theme throughout his essay with a mixture of anecdotes and self-reflection. He begins with a vivid recounting of his introduction to academic medicine. Its strength lies in its brevity; though short, the anecdote provides sufficient context for readers to understand the significance of the event and hooks them into learning more about his story.

His next couple of paragraphs elegantly weave together distinct experiences that have shaped his relationship with education and medicine. The essay structure is well organized, with a clear arc in the narrative. Each paragraph conveys important insights into experiences that have encouraged Johnathan to continue to pursue academic medicine while showcasing his diverse interests, accomplishments, and active extracurricular involvement. His conclusion provides a powerful declaration of his aspirations—in drawing from aforementioned experiences and outlining specific goals, he leaves readers with a clear sense of his genuine passion for the field.

From 50 Successful Harvard Medical School Essays edited by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson. Copyright (c) 2020 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group