Students all over Reddit search for graduate school admissions help that can provide advice and help on the subtleties of the admissions process. Even students with high GPA, strong references, and impressive experiences in their graduate school CV realize that getting into their desired grad program takes more than good grades and a list of notable experiences. So, how do you get into grad school? Your application must create a holistic narrative of your personality, strengths, experiences, and goals, so a random list of accomplishments won’t be enough. In this blog, we reveal what the admissions committees look for in their candidates and who can help you with creating the best possible application.
What is the challenge of a graduate school application?
Creating a holistic narrative between all the different application components is perhaps the most difficult aspect of putting your graduate school application together. Just think of it - without being repetitive, each application component should echo the next and contribute to a fuller understanding of you as a student and a professional. That’s a tall order! For example, this means that your reference letters should ideally connect with what you wrote in your graduate school statement of purpose, but not repeat it. The composition of all the application elements, therefore, will create one, holistic narrative that captures the attention of the admissions committee, enough to invite you to an interview.
college admissions scandal, college applications, admissions assessment
America is still reeling from the admissions scandal that erupted in the United States just over two years ago. The Netflix documentary based on these events has further promoted public interest in what happened. People were truly outraged by the fact that admissions into prestigious schools, including Ivy League colleges and some of the best undergraduate business schools, is not always fair. Certainly, bribery is a criminal matter that must be dealt with by law, but there are many other ways admissions are skewed and unfair that cannot be measured by the legal system. Undergraduate, graduate, and professional programs often use admission tools that uphold unfair admissions practices and their bias selection criteria.
This is not always done consciously. Most programs truly want to get to know their applicants through college application essays, supplemental essays, activities sections, a variety of college admissions interview questions, and anonymous situational judgment tests. However, rather than breaking down barriers and biases, most educational institutions end up further driving a wedge between accessible education and the majority of America’s population. And while the college admissions scandal incensed Americans, nothing has changed since it has been uncovered. The educational system remains the same and these colleges continue to boast competitive acceptance rates, prestige, and most importantly for them, prosperity.
Undoubtedly, if you get invited to a medical school interview, you should celebrate! You have come further than the majority of medical school applicants. However, whether you’re applying to DO or MD, or looking to enter one of the many MD-PhD programs in the US or Canada, you should be aware that medical school interview prep is a tricky and arduous process. How long to prepare for a medical school interview? Give yourself at least 8 weeks to thoroughly prepare for what’s to come. In this article, we are going to share some interview tips that are going to help you ace your medical school interview!
medical school admissions tools, medical school admissions
If you know an aspiring medical school hopeful, you have probably witnessed their frantic MCAT prep and watched them stay up late trying to stick to those medical school GPA requirements. And while strong academic acumen is important for a future physician, it has traditionally been prioritized over many other important professional competencies we desire to see in our physicians. Some medical schools, to this day, will weed out applicants at early stages of the admissions process using the GPA and MCAT criteria without even looking at the rest of their applications, including essays, extracurriculars, and reference letters. Mostly, this is done due to incredibly high competition. Weeding out applicants based on statistics helps institutions make the applicant pool manageable. However, this does raise the question of how holistic and fair the admissions process is when it comes to forming the future of medicine. This is not to say that academic history and tests are obsolete, but they cannot be the only measuring stick we use to select who will become good doctors.
And while medical schools claim to use a holistic approach to applications, what can admissions essays and interviews really tell them about the applicants? And if anything, should we be worried about the possibility of bias that may result from these admissions tools?
