by Brittany Warrick
SDN Staff Writer

The online world has evolved substantially over the past decade. Today it is commonplace for students to have a presence on social sites such as Facebook, Xanga, LiveJournal, or MySpace. But what most students do not appreciate is the fact that potential employers and schools may use these sites to evaluate their applicants.  They use them to weed out candidates for their positions and to decide if a potential employee is the type of person that would make a good “fit”.  Thus, our pages on Facebook and MySpace have become additions to our resumes and personal statements. One survey conducted by ExecuNet in 2007 found that 83% of recruiters use the Internet to evaluate their candidates and 43% of those have turned down a candidate based on what they saw online. The burning question is: how can students protect their personas on the Internet?  Read the full story

by Christian Becker, Author of The Official Student Doctor Network Medical School Admissions Guide

In my last article for SDN, I addressed the importance of physician shadowing and clinical experience. This time, I want to focus on recommendation letters.

Recommendation letters are used by admission committees and are part of your application. To get good letters, participation in extracurricular activities and positive interactions with faculty and physicians are important.

Admissions committees see on the application what activities you have listed, but recommendation letters tell them how you interact with people, what type of person you are, and (hopefully) stress your good qualities and support your application to medical school. Read the full story

by Charles Daniel and Michael O’Brien
SDN Staff Writers

For some, the answer to the question, “Why do you want to study medicine?” is a simple one: to make money.  These individuals, however, are in a shrinking minority, a recent survey has found.  Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions examined the responses of 914 students in its medical and law school preparatory courses to examine their motivations for professional study.  It seems that even as the traditional financial windfalls associated with medicine continue to wane, students’ passion for medical study is as fiery as ever.  In fact, less than half of pre-med respondents indicated their future earning potential “very much” or “somewhat” influenced their decision to study medicine.  But what does this mean?  Pre-professional students are notorious for their exaggerated claims of altruism while the true and ulterior motivation remains the big salary.  …or at least that was the belief.  Read the full story

Medical school admissions committees comprise anywhere from a handful to two dozen members, and are generally made up of a combination of full-time admissions staff, faculty, students, and doctors from the community.

There are often a variety of medical backgrounds represented, from clinical to general science, and from M.D.s to Ph.D.s to students. Because decisions are made by voting, this variety helps to eliminate bias and ensures that your application gets a fair trial.

Although there are a few schools that will set a cut-off point based on MCAT scores and GPA, it is rare that your application would be summarily rejected based on numbers alone. More likely, it will be read in its entirety by at least one of the members of the committee (usually one of the faculty members or second-year medical students). They will consider all aspects of your application, and if they like what they see, you will be invited to interview.

When we asked admissions officers how much time they usually spend looking at each essay during this first read, the answers ranged from three to ten minutes. Below are the comments of one admissions officer who assisted in the creation of this course:

“The time spent reading an essay can vary from a quick overview to a lengthy dissection of content and grammar. We will always look to the essay to prove interest in and research of the intended profession. If an applicant has an unexplained period of below-average grades in an otherwise strong academic record, we will look to the essay to explain the circumstances. If an applicant did some or all of their prerequisite coursework in another country, we will look to the essay to ensure strong English language skills. The standard of evaluation varies with each individual application package.”

We then asked how many statements admissions officers read in a day and their answers were not surprising: Admissions officers can (and often do) churn through 40 to 50 essays a day during peak weeks. This is more than just interesting; this is important. It means that your personal statement must stand apart from dozens of others read in the same day. The same two pages that will take you days or even weeks to put together may get only a few minutes in front of the committee.

As a result, your personal statement needs to function both as an essay and as an advertisement. If you are not convinced, then ask yourself this: When was the last time you read over a dozen short stories in a day, spending only a few minutes on each one? Now ask: When was the last time you spent a few minutes each on a dozen or more commercials in a day? However, please do not interpret this to mean that your statement should be gimmicky, cutesy, or include a sing-a-long song.

What it does mean is that the best essays, like the best ads, are going to be interesting enough to grab the reader’s attention on the first read and powerful enough to hold it even if it’s the fortieth essay the reader has read that day. But unlike most ads, the essay must also withstand longer, more in-depth scrutiny.

Lesson Menu:

• Lesson One: The Audience
• Lesson Two: What “They” Look For
• Lesson Three: Brainstorming a Topic
• Lesson Four: Tackling the Question
• Lesson Five: Introductions
• Lesson Six: Editing Checklist

Source

From Essays That Will Get You Into College, by Amy Burnham, Daniel Kaufman, and Chris Dowhan. Copyright 1998 by Dan Kaufman. Reprinted by arrangement with Barron’s Educational Series, Inc.

Materials for Essay Statements Workshop 101 are provided courtesy of EssayEdge. Copyright 2002 EssayEdge. All rights reserved.

NEWS RELEASE

Students enrolled in a full-time health or health-related undergraduate or graduate course of study are invited to submit a poster presentation for the 2008 U.S. Public Health Service Scientific and Training Symposium. The conference will be held June 9-12 at the Tucson Convention Center. More than 1,000 public health administrators, providers, clinicians, professors and representatives from business employing public health professionals are expected to attend. This is an excellent opportunity to obtain experience presenting and to network with others in the field. Read the full story

Press Release

In our first docLive chat, Dr. Harry Rosen, author of The Consult Manual of Internal Medicine, will lead a live discussion wherein he will answer your questions about surviving 3rd year medicine clerkships. During this Sunday, April 20th session, participants will be able to ask Dr. Rosen their questions and receive real-time responses.

The chat session will take place at 8:00pm Eastern Time on SDnet, the SDN Chat Server. A temporary link to the docLive web client will appear in the Clinical Rotations forum at 7:30pm ET. For those wishing to use their own chat client, simply point it to irc.studentdoctor.net:6667 and join #doclive.

Please post in this SDN Forums thread to indicate your plans to attend, as space is limited. Come meet Dr. Rosen and walk away with strategies to make your Medicine rotations go much more smoothly!

Reprinted with Permission

Benefits and Risks of Immunization
Over ten million childhood vaccinations are given to children (birth through 5 years) annually, and many millions of doses are given to adults.  All medicinal products, including vaccines, have risks and benefits.  Vaccines protect many people from dangerous illnesses, but, like drugs, can cause side effects, a small percentage of which may be serious.  The benefit of vaccines is measured as prevented disease, and the risk of vaccination is measured as potential side effects; both are monitored as part of the US public health system.  Read the full story

With this interview, Student Doctor Network begins a new series of interviews relating to “community-based medical education” and with it a new forum on this subject. To launch the series, we interviewed Gerard Clancy, MD, the Dean of the newly established University of Oklahoma (OU) School of Community Medicine in Tulsa.

SDN: Dean Clancy, how do you envision your School of Community Medicine in Tulsa differing from a typical medical school?

Clancy: First, it is important to recognize that all the students in OU’s Community Medical School in Tulsa will graduate with the same MD degree as the students in OU’s traditionally organized medical school in Oklahoma City. They will learn the basic core information about medicine that they need to be successful as a physician. Read the full story

by Samir P. Desai, M.D.,
and Rajani Katta, M.D.

Authors of The Successful Match: 200 Rules to Succeed in the Residency Match and 250 Biggest Mistakes 3rd Year Medical Students Make And How To Avoid Them

In researching our book, we asked applicants what they found most difficult about the residency application process. A number of applicants commented on the same issue. “There’s so much conflicting information out there. How do you know what to believe? Who should you listen to?”

Applicants with mentors have a decided advantage. A joint committee of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine described a mentor as “someone who takes a special interest in helping another person develop into a successful professional.”¹ In defining the term, the committee described a fundamental difference between mentoring and advising. Read the full story