An Unconventional Approach to Medical School
28 January 2009
2 Comments
An Unconventional Approach to Medical School
Pre-med applicant Erika Jones has a good thing going for her: she has received fifteen interviews from medical schools across the country. Out of those fifteen, she’s already been accepted to four schools – USC, Northwestern, Case Western, and the University of St. Louis.
We thought we’d find out why things went so stunningly well for Erika, so we invited her to INQUARTA to answer a few questions. Erika was really sick of the whole interview process – she hates talking about herself – but she was generous enough to oblige INQUARTA with yet another interview.
INQUARTA. First of all, congratulations. What was the general response at your interviews? Erika Jones. Virtually all of my interviewers liked three things: the fact that I was an older applicant, that I had taken some time off from school, and that I had done many extracurricular activities.
Your major was art history. Did your interviewers mention your unusual major? Yes! All the time. Never in a million years did I think that my situation would work to my advantage. I would often end up talking about museums that I had been to, or my paintings, or just art history in general. The interviewer at UC Davis said it was “refreshing” to see a non-science major among an otherwise boring and repetitive list of science majors.
Were a lot of your fellow interviewees science majors? For the most part. But, at UC San Francisco, all of the applicants I talked to were something other than a science major – one was a business major, one had gone to law school, and another was in communications.
Why were you so successful in garnering fifteen interviews? I think it was a combination of factors. As I said, my unconventional major helped. So did my letters of recommendation. I received letters of recommendation from professors who knew me very well, and some of my interviewers commented on the letters my professors had written. My MCAT scores must have opened doors, too, because my GPA definitely didn’t!
How did you get such good scores on your MCAT? I studied my ass off! On my first practice test, I got a 17. I knew two things at that point: I wasn’t good at testing, and I needed a better score. I found that taking as many full-length practice tests was the best way for me to prepare for the real thing. So I went all out. I took twenty-two full-length practice tests. Of the twenty-two tests, I took fourteen of them under the same time conditions as the actual MCAT.
Do you have any advice for prospective applicants? I would definitely recommend INQUARTA to a pre-med. I remember coming to INQUARTA in March, completely oblivious as to what was required to get into a medical school. When I met with my advisor, Don Osborne, he showed me the course I needed to take. It was eye-opening. Don advised me to take a year off to do “GPA repair.” I retook some courses that I had not done so well in. I completed eight science classes at the local junior college and got all A’s. That boosted my science GPA from a 3.3 to a 3.6. These courses also served as a review for all the material that was on the MCAT. Taking Don’s advice was the best thing I did. Get help with your graduate school application process. Call Don Osborne at 949-417-1295 x. 211 or email
[...] An Unconventional Approach to Medical School Pre-med applicant Erika Jones has a good thing going for her: she has received fifteen interviews from medical.$anchor_text[$anchor_choice] [...]
In Erika’s interview she said that Don Osborne recommended that she improve her science gpa by taking classes at her local junior college. What i have heard is that med schools question taking pre med requisite courses at a junior college because it looks odd that someone who is taking classes at a 4 year institution is taking classes at junior college that is lower level or might be less rigorous. Obviously it didnt hurt Erika’s chances because she got 15 interviews but is what i heard false?
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