After about 4 months of checking the mail daily like a small dog my brothers med school application finally came in and it was a rejection. goddammit. he has 33 MCATs and a 3.9 GPA on a BS in mathematics degree so hopefully he will get in somewhere but now he will have to pay out of state tuition, which is about $35k a year while in state indiana tuition is about $18k a year. So he’s going to run up at least 200k in debt to fulfill his dreams. Had he gotten into indiana med school he could’ve lived at home with mom & dad and only spent 80k on tuition. Had he moved out he would’ve only spent 110k or so total. Now he has to spend double that.
Fucking supercilious, worthless, brainless assholes. His MCATs and GPA were more than good enough. Im sure alot of dumb shits who manipulated those dumbasses who had 3.5 GPAs and 29 MCATs got in. My brother just wasn’t willing to manipulate the board or fake like he was a super loving person like he was supposed to. Fuck, honesty is never the best policy as far as i can tell and this just proves that theory. Lying to supercilious idiots would’ve been the best route.
Maybe he can go to california, its only 21k for an out of state student. Alot of states only have 20-30k tuition rates for out of state students so maybe he will only be out 7k a year or so.
Indiana is 18k a year in-state, but alot of places are only 25k a year out of state.
maybe its not so bad. instead of spending 18k a year and living at home in indiana (or getting his own place and spending a total of 25k a year) he will go to New England, California, Texas, or the southwest, etc and spend 31k a year instead of 25k a year here in Indiana. He will get to travel and live alone all for an extra 7k a year. And he is a cheap bastard, so i know when he finishes residency he’s going to put 90% of his net income into paying off his loans.
Best case scenario, the guy takes out 30-40k in loans more than he had planned to. Had he gotten into indianas med school he probably would’ve lived away from mom & dad (mom is a nag and she doesn’t like him much because he stands up to her), so instead of 110k in loans for an Indiana med school & living expenses it may be 150k in loans for an out of state med school & living expenses.
And as i said, he is very cheap. he can live on $450 a month if he needs to so its not like an extra 40k in loans payed back over 10 years is going to kill him. thats about $400 a month extra.
Oh yeah, and i opened his mail to find this out. he doesnt know yet but when i saw the letter i couldn’t control myself and opened it rather than wait for him to come home. he’s probably not going to be pissed as when he has gotten other info from med school he has asked me to open it when he wasn’t there. i dont think he’d be but if hes upset about the med school thing he may take some of it out on me.
Im sure he knows out of state tuition in tons of medical schools in the south, new england, west coast, etc. isnt much more than in-state indiana tuition. 25k vs 18k, not a huge deal.
Look at military scholarships, goverment scholarships for doing post-residency work in impoverished places, etc.
Yes, clinical experience, demonstrating compassion and a spirit of community, not being able to afford that $1400 Kaplan prep program, I know, I know, I hate those manipulative dumb-shits too.
Stop typing out so many uninterupted responses to your own thread.
I’m a undergrad frosh who wants to go to med school, so I am naturally inclined to be sympathetic to your brother, but people that open other people’s mail and write rambling threads about it: less so.
he has, he isn’t interested. Besides an extra 40k on top of 110k isn’t a huge deal for someone who is cheap.
Or…saying what people in power want to hear. Thats also good for getting what you want in life. There are tons of books on how to do that in the self help section of any library.
I prefer to refer to them as my advisory council, not ‘voices’. voices has such a negative connotation. Advisory council sounds professional, like something Luke Skywalker would have.
Besides i was trying to vent. for me replying to my own threads helps me do that and since 80% of the posts on this thread are mine im doing a damn good job i think.
Mmmm, if your brother would only say he is interested in helping others, or in other people’s lives and problems to “look good” you have to wonder why he wants to become a doctor in the first place.
A big problem in the profession is the growing adversarial relationship between patients and their doctors. It causes lots of law suits and general unhappiness. Much of this traces back to patients feeling that their doctors are uncaring, only in it for the money, and have no interpersonnal skills. There’s a pressure on those who admit college kids to medical schools to go for those interested in other members of their species vs. those who post great grades and test scores but come across as unfeeling.
Maybe those medical board folks in Indiana are on to something…
I dont know. He wants to be a doctor more for the medical rather than the humanistic part and there are fields he can go into where he can do that.
So you are partially right but i know for a fact that he doesn’t want to be a doctor who is more an advisor/friend than a medical professional like a general practitioner, he wants to do something along the lines of surgery.
He is sympathetic, he told me he is and i believe them he just wasn’t willing to lie and say ‘i want to save the world’ in his interview.
Go for “Personal Cabinet” people will think you’re all politically aware.
If writing stuff out helps you deal with your sneakiness in opening others mail or the fact that being a smart, nice person doesn’t guarantee the career someone wants shows up, may I suggest a diary for your stream of conscious.
So, would they rather have less-skilled humanists or more-skilled technicians? Are they willing to overlook academic credentials if the candidate interviews well?
I don’t want anyone operating on me who can’t admit I’m a person and is just interested in my internal mechanics.
I don’t care how fucking smart they are. Or how much they paid for their degree.
I have met some amazing medical practitioners in my life. I have met some absolute jerk-offs. I had the privledge of being taken care of by one of the best trauma surgeons in MI. He was a very sweet, funny man who took the time to make sure I understood what was happening and was comfortable with how we were going to fix it. At that time, I was in shock, having problems coming up with my own phone number, and he got me to relax, and get back in touch with the world, as well as made the whole situation much more enjoyable. If he had just dived right in and started working on my mechanics, I would have freaked out further and probably had to have been sedated for him to do anything, injuring myself further in the process. Because of his obvious care for me as a person, the level of attention required was much less and much better for everyone.
Similarly, I had an emergency surgery my freshman year of college. Nightmare situation, but a few weeks later a guy stopped me on the street, greeted me by name, and asked me if I how I was healing. I apologised that I didn’t recognise him…he had worked on my surgery. I would rather have someone who genuinely cares about me as a person get anywhere near my internals than someone who is a mechanic for bones, blood, and flesh.
Also, your brother picks his school by cost alone? Not what programs he’s interested in, how he fits in the culture of the place or any of the more defining parts of an education?
And don’t open other people’s mail. It’s not yours. How old are you? four? Respect other people’s things.
Speaking as someone with a degree in math, a degree in math isn’t the kind of thing that people do when they’re “dreaming” of becoming a doctor. Not to mention the fact that while math may sound impressive, getting a 3.9 in math, I think, is much easier than getting a 3.9 in biochemistry or film studies. Not to mention the fact that math programs cater more to lazy geniuses, where biochem, for example, caters to people who are interested in understanding the workings of the bodies while working their asses off.
In a word, yes. It’s easy to train someone to be a good technician. Being a good doctor entails much more than eye-hand coordination and a good memory.
As they say - “A patient won’t care what you know until they know that you care.”
Well, at my particular school we receive about 2,500 applications for 100 or so spots. It’s fairly safe to say that we hold out for both.
And just to be clear, we get LOTS of applications from people with 3.9 GPA’s, and 35s or 36’s on the MCAT who also happen to have people skills and an iota of compassion for their future patients.
Sorry, socially inept mathematicians are probably better suited to research.
