Hometown: Brooklyn, New York, USA

Undergraduate School: Public, University of California, Los Angeles

Major: Biomedical Engineering

GPA: 3.95 out of 4.0

MCAT: 517. CP: 130, CARS: 127, BB: 130, PS: 130.

Successful medical school statement

It’s not every day you help a kid become Iron Man. It happened for me during an internship at the NIH. I was responsible for designing the electronics and software for a portable robotic exoskeleton to help children expressing crouch gait due to cerebral palsy to improve their gait by retraining their muscles and neuron pathways. I saw the project as a fascinating technical problem and immersed myself in solving it.

Then I met Landon. Landon is a child with cerebral palsy expressing crouch gait with limited mobility. When Landon first began training on the robot, he became frustrated. As I watched him become exasperated using the device, it really hit me that I was creating a device for a real person, and the way we delivered his care was every bit as important to what we were doing as delivering an effective technical solution. As his confidence grew, I witnessed Landon, who could barely walk without the device, try to run. We even had to tell him to slow down! He asked if he could bring home the device because it made him feel like Iron Man. This experience crystalized for me my calling, to solve the challenging medical problems children face with love and a deep appreciation for their humanity.

I have firsthand knowledge of what it means to a child with serious medical problems to have loving physicians and nurses. When I was four, I received a heart transplant. Five years later, I fell ill with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Throughout these difficult and uncertain times, I was fortunate to have a clinical team whose positivity and humor made me feel like a normal kid despite the fact that I was facing grave medical problems. While these experiences were difficult, they gave me a perspective that I treasure because it gives meaning to every day of my life. This perspective is where my calling originates—to become a physician-engineer completely committed to the emotional well-being of each of my patients.

The engineering problems many children face are substantial, and I am grateful for the opportunities I have been given to develop my skills in this area. As a part of my school’s design team program I worked on two projects that taught me different aspects of the process of developing medical devices. The first project gave me an overview of the design process of bringing medical devices to market. We developed a neonatal monitoring system for the developing world. We began with a needs assessment and then prototyped our solution to satisfy the specifications we developed. While I focused on the technical development, it was valuable to see other members create a sustainable distribution model because it helped me understand the step-by-step process by which an idea goes from concept to adoption in the medical field.

For the second project, I was the team leader. On past teams I had a narrow focus on the technical development, but here, I had to be knowledgeable about all aspects of the project and see the big picture in order to develop strategies to move the team forward. I learned how to create contingency plans by reaching out to our numerous advisors in many different specialties to build decision trees.

This project had an extra layer of meaning for me since we were developing an at-home monitoring system for tacrolimus, an immunosuppressant drug I have been taking for over twelve years.

Currently, monitoring of this drug’s levels can only be done in a clinical setting. Our device allows patients to monitor their levels in the home, allowing for less inconvenience to patients and more data to make more informed clinical decisions.

While my engineering training developed my technical skills, the foundation of my heart and why I will pour myself into my vocation is derived from the love and care I received from my own clinical team as a child. I feel called to be of service to children with serious medical issues, just as my physicians and nurses were to me. One of my favorite volunteer experiences was when I was a camp counselor for Camp Taylor, where I had previously been a camper. Camp Taylor is a week-long camp for children with congenital heart defects designed to create an environment of fun, hope, and normalcy. This is one way in which I can use the difficult experiences of my childhood for good because it is easy for me to bring normalcy to these children’s lives since for me, it is normal.

Another volunteer opportunity that has had a tremendous amount of meaning for me is working with the Washington Regional Transplant Community to spread organ donation awareness by telling my story. Since I never received the chance to know my donor family, I use this volunteering as my way to say thank you.

I have enjoyed my engineering studies and my volunteering experiences have been of tremendous value to me, but I cannot wait to go to medical school. It is my desire to be a bridge between the technical engineering world and the direct delivery of care that only physicians can give. I feel it is my mission to use all of my experiences, both good and bad, to find innovative solutions to help the next Wonder Woman and Captain America thrive both physically and in every other part of their lives.

Analysis

What stands out about this essay is how Aurelia hones in specifically on her engineering experiences. Through her references to anecdotes describing her engineering pursuits, such as designing the electronics and software for a portable robotic exoskeleton and working on her school’s design team, she is able to showcase all of the unique accomplishments that distinguish her from other applicants. These achievements also provide a testament to her personal character; she elaborates on both her individual contributions as well as the team effort required, indicating that while she is a leader, she also works well in group environments.

Aurelia grounds all of her pursuits in her personal experiences, as she has had her own health complications and has needed certain treatments in order to survive. These health struggles have inspired her to give back by volunteering as a way to say “thank you” to her organ donor. Furthermore, these experiences establish her empathy and show that she has multiple perspectives—the perspectives of both the doctor and the patient.

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