She Got 6 Interviews While Going Against Much of What I Teach | Mission: Accepted S1 E4

Today we talk with a student who got 6 med school interviews this year, despite going against many of my typical recommendations. Her personal statement in particular breaks strongly from what I teach—but it worked out! Let's dig in and see what there is to learn here.

Mission: Accepted features successful med school applicants. We dive into their full applications, looking at specifically what worked well, along with what they could've done even better.

To apply to be featured on Mission: Accepted, fill out the application at http://MissionAccepted.tv/apply.

So today we're chatting with a student who applied for the first time in 2020 and has gotten 6 interviews. Looking at her stats, she had a few classes with a C+ or similar grades, with a 3.63 total cumulative GPA and a 505 MCAT score.

We discuss:

• Why she believes she was successful with her application cycle.
• What I would've considered weaknesses in her application.
• How her application created intrigue.
• Why she included institutional actions on her application that weren't on her official record.
• How she wrote about her institutional actions, given that she honestly wasn't at fault.
• How she got 6 retroactive withdrawals in freshman year due to a death in her family.
• Why she stopped all of her extracurricular activities a few months before applying to med school.
• A potential trap when you're too selective and strategic about what you include or exclude from your med school application.
• Why her shadowing hours would concern me a bit.
• How her activity descriptions differ from my typical recommendation.
• How her application put together a picture of who she is and what she wants to do.
• Why her personal statement went against almost everything I typically recommend.
• How her unique personal statement actually falls into many of the same patterns of what most premeds do.
• Her advice for mistakes that other premeds should avoid.

If you like Mission: Accepted, be sure to check out my other series Application Renovation, in which I give feedback to students who got rejected from medical school. We follow a similar format with full, detailed application breakdowns: http://applicationrenovation.com/