Gender discrimination and transfer student

[ngolden]

Hello,

I have a question about my husband. He has applied to 10 medical schools. He has very high grades (3.99 overal, 3.9 science GPA), very high MCATs, excellent letters of recommendation, a pending publication, and 1 year of research experience. However, he transferred to university from a community college. The university where he will get his bachelor’s degree is high ranked (top 50) and his grades there are higher than at the community college (though he earned a 3.75 at the community college). Also, he has long hair (though it is neatly kept) and basically no clinical experience (we had to support ourselves through college so he had to work his entire way through and thus had little time). Should he be concerned about the above factors keeping him out of medical school despite his credentials? How heavily are things like transfer from community college and of course, long hair weighted?

Thanks,
An anxious pre-med wife

[y82benji]

1. Clinical experience is important. But volunteering in a hospital or doing research in a field that is associated with medicine can also be good. Your husband’s application needs to reflect that he is not only interested in medicine but that he has a reasonably accurate understanding of what is involved in being a doctor. That’s where clinical experience is important. Assuming he is applying for 2005-2006, it’s not too late to still work on getting some of that experience to update med schools about or to tell interviewers about.

2. I can’t imagine long hair being much of an issue – except that he may eventually be asked to consider altering that to work in a hospital setting, but it still isn’t very important. Med school students are remarkably diverse, both inside and outside.

3. Working to support yourself and maintaining a high GPA and scoring high on the MCAT is impressive.

4. Can he handle the work and does he know the basics? That’s the big question. That’s what grades, coursework, and MCATs are for. Classes at a community college are generally considered less challenging and thorough than their 4-yr university counterparts, but if he did well at the university and on the MCATs that shows they don’t need to doubt his community college coursework.

Med schools care about just a few questions: Will you be a skilled doctor? Will you be a good coctor? and Do you really want to be a doctor? The tough part is distinguishing the answers of thousands of applicants to these questions. You’ve gotta be as thorough as you can be.

Also, 10 schools is actually a slightly small number depending on how competitive those schools are. He should apply to plenty of top 50 schools, even top 20, but also a few out of the top 50 that may be easier to get into. Of those 10 schools, whatever they are, I’d bet that he’d get into at least one, but what I found was that you learn a lot more about the school when you go for an interview and in the end you’ll be glad to have a few more options to choose from — especially where finances may be concerned. At the same time, the applications are expensive, so you have to weigh that against having more options.

[Author]

Posts