Holly: So don’t sell yourself short in saying like, oh, well, I’m only of this. That could be huge. You don’t know that. So like that’s where it starts. It’s like there’s a lot of bravery and courage that has to come in writing these because you’re really putting yourself out there, but knowing yourself and knowing what those qualities mean to you is huge.

Pooja: Yeah, I think one of my favorite, one of my favorite discoveries as going through medical school was realizing that people inherently are profoundly interesting and profoundly unique. And I think the sooner people discover that, the better, because then they’ll realize that they are part of that people who are profoundly interesting and realize that they do in fact have something to bring to the table. So, thank you for clarifying that.

Pooja: The path to becoming a doctor is a whole range of things: exciting, confusing, anxiety-inducing, and gratifying, probably all at the same time. And the truth is that no matter how isolating it may feel, you’re not in it alone. Welcome to Pursuit of Practice, your go-to space for expert advice, real stories, and the kind of support that shows you what trusting the process actually looks like.

Welcome back to part 2 of our deep dive into the medical school application process. In part 1, we covered primaries, MCAT results, personal statements, and letters of recommendation. If you want to learn more about those aspects of the application process, go back and listen to our first episode. But now, it’s time to tackle the next crucial steps in the process, secondaries and the torturous waiting period.

Holly Proffitt is back for part 2. Holly is one of Blueprint’s admissions advisors, and she has been working with medical students to assist them in their path to residency for the last 7 years. Holly has been described by her students as their med school mom and not only understands the hustle of balancing schoolwork and play, but is also known for giving advice to students that uplifts and motivates them while maintaining necessary honesty and tough love. It’s great to have you back, Holly.

Holly: Hey, yeah, thanks for having me.

Pooja: So as well as secondary applications, we will also discuss how to handle the stress of the waiting game and keeping yourself grounded during the silence. So if you’re in the thick of secondary applications or you’re waiting for good news, you are in the right place. So, without further ado, let’s dive into the next steps of your med school journey.

Holly, for applicants who just submitted their primary, what should they expect when secondaries start rolling in?

Holly: Yeah, you should expect a couple different things. One, that they will not come immediately. So, it’s full of waiting games. So, from the time you submit your primary to your secondary can be any time of 2 to 6 weeks or longer. It really just depends on the school. But the application services verify things for admissions committees. So, they verify your transcripts, they verify your test scores, they verify things like that. And depending on where we are in the process, that verification can take up to 6 weeks. So, just because you submitted your application does not mean you’re going to get secondaries like tomorrow. There is a waiting game there. And like I said, sometimes longer than others.

The biggest things with secondaries and what to expect is a quick turnaround. So, the kind of the standard is that you have 2 weeks. Some give you 10 days to get that secondary done and turned back in. Some will be a little bit more broad of like, take as long as you want. It’s due in December. But you have to remember that the secondary is what’s waiting to get you the interview. So, it’s better to be efficient and get them done in a timely manner so that you can move forward.

From there, it’s really a crapshoot, but I could give you some trends on what I’ve been seeing and what I’ve seen consistently over the last couple years, but those are the major things to take away.

Pooja: Yeah, so before we dive into those trends, I just want to clarify something that you said. So, if you’re getting secondaries from a school that’s saying, oh, take as much time as you need. They’re due in December, but you kind of know that you have to give it in a timely manner. What is the globally accepted definition of a timely manner in this circumstance?

Holly: I would say two business weeks. So, like, okay, you know, if you get it on Monday, the next Friday is a good standard. And just remember, the longer you wait, the longer it’s going to take for you to get an interview. So, I don’t want you to hastily submit it and not do a good job, but 2 weeks is usually a good, like, I can take my time, I can have folks review it, I can go from there. But I wouldn’t go any further than 2, maybe 3 weeks at the most.

Pooja: Okay, got it. So before we go into the trends that you’ve noticed over the last couple of years, I want to talk about just kind of big picture for our listeners, especially those who don’t necessarily know, how are secondary essays different from primaries? And what is the, I guess, difference in how schools are using primary applications versus secondary ones?

Holly: Right. So, your primary application is really just like an appetizer of who you are. It’s a, hey, here’s all my basic information. Here’s where I went to college. Here’s a personal statement. And maybe you get a couple other questions in there, like if you’re applying to an MD PhD or something like that.

Secondaries really delve deeper into the who you are and why you are more of a fit to this institution. So sometimes, and this is without getting too deep into the trends I’ve seen, but a lot of times the themes are like, why did you pick this campus, if there’s multiple campuses? Or why did you pick this institution? Or the mission of our school is XYZ, primary care or urban primary care or whatever. And so, they’re really trying to get you to understand and align yourself and what you want with their mission.

And so, we talked about that in the first episode of like, does it make sense? Like, are you the same person from thing to thing to thing, and do you align with the mission of the institution? This is going to be even deeper into that, where they’ll often take pieces of their curriculum, or they’ll take certain aspects of what they do, and it’s really a challenge to say like, are you going to go to our website and look it up? Like, are you just going to talk about whatever you think it is, or are you going to take the effort to go learn about it and do what you need to do?

Pooja: Right. Right. And I think it’s something that we talked about a lot in our last episode about fit to mission. And I think that theme kind of comes again here, too, because it sounds like from what you’re saying, when you’re looking up stuff about a school and talking about what you like about it specifically, it kind of allows both you and the school to evaluate, all right, how good of a fit to our school’s mission are you?

Holly: Correct. Yep. And different aspects of it. And honestly, it’s really an effort statement, just like it is in the primary of like, how much time are you going to put in here? Are you going to go look at the websites? Are you going to get to know the institutions? Are you going to look over things and have them edited properly? Because it’s just as easy to make a mistake in any of these places and it looks sloppy and that you didn’t take your time. And so, a lot of the same practices that we say for primaries, but a deeper focus for sure.

Pooja: Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. So, I think you’ve kind of talked about the trends that you’ve been noticing over the last couple of years. I kind of want to open the floor to you and just let you share whatever you think is appropriate for us to hear.

Holly: Yeah, so something I’ve seen a ton, I’ve got one client right now with Blueprint who’s in the thick of these that she and I are working on together. And I think we’ve done, I don’t know, probably 6 or 7 already, and we keep seeing the same thing. Tell me about your background. And it’s super broad. So, it’s like, well, what do you mean? Where I was born, who my parents are, like how it’s very, very open ended.

And then another thing that all my students have really been challenged with over the last couple years that I’ve been with Blueprint is the tell me what you bring to this class. And so, students have a hard time with that. They want to say about, oh, I’m diverse or I’m this or that. And I’m not trying to minimize those things, but then they can’t unpack them. I’m like, well, why does that matter? Why does it matter that you consider yourself diverse? Okay, so I would say I’m not inherently diverse. I’m a white cisgender female. So that’s not, you know, at the top of underrepresented in medicine. But so then I would have to dig a little bit deeper and I’d say, okay, well, how did I grow up? Well, I’m a first-generation college student. That’s a little bit different than some folks. I’m a first-generation physician, pursuing physician. I grew up in the South, which a lot of people grew up in the South, but maybe not if you’re applying to Columbia. I don’t know.

You’ll hear these things. And so, those questions really make you dig a little deeper than just like the face value of who you are or like, I’m hardworking. Everybody’s hardworking. That’s applying to medical school. So, I think that those are the biggest ones I keep seeing is like, what’s your background? And sometimes they’re linked together. What’s your background and what are you bringing to the table that’s going to make you different and enhance those around you at the medical school?

So that’s a big one. And they love, like I said, the curriculum ones. So tell me about this specific part of the curriculum and why you’re interested in our school and align it with your career goals. So again, it’s like you got to know about yourself. You got to know why do you want to be a doctor, what kind of doctor do you want to be, how does this align, and how to put it all together.

So I think the, I haven’t seen a lot of politics, I haven’t seen a lot of, you know, really specific ethical questions or anything like that. It’s really been about the self reflection about like what do you bring to the table and how are you going to enhance those in the learning environment around you?

Pooja: Right. No, absolutely. And I think one, I guess, word of caution that I’ll add to the what kind of doctor you want to be question is only, and I only mentioned this because I think it’s something that I didn’t realize until I did a like a review of my own application and I got into medical school and talked to other people about like what they’re looking at in applications because obviously, like I’m very involved in my school and I talk to the missions committee a lot. And I found that for me, when I was applying, there were some schools that only asked me about career aspirations and didn’t ask me about anything else, like in terms of my interests. And I found that those schools didn’t really offer me interviews. And the schools that offered me interviews were the ones that asked me about my additional interests. And I realized that it was because when I was describing my own career aspirations, I was very specific on what I wanted to do and it was a very specific niche. And so, Holly, I wonder, I see that you’re nodding now. I wonder what your thoughts are on that and if you kind of agree with my analysis about what happened.

Holly: Absolutely. I absolutely do. And remember, like my background is being a career advisor. It is worrisome in some ways if people are hyper focused and hyper specific because what it says to us is like if you told me you wanted to be a pediatric neurosurgeon and I’d be like, uh-huh, yeah, like 1% of the 1% that go to medical school become pediatric neurosurgeons. Like that is a very tough road. And that if that is the only thing that you’re focused on, I have a lot of concerns on how you’ll do if that doesn’t work out.

And so, it’s totally okay to have an idea of like what kind of patient population you want to have, what your overall goals are. But when someone tells me for a fact that they want to be XYZ physician at this place, I’m like, “Oh, jeez.” Like, I don’t know if this is the place for you. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to deliver on that. I don’t know if you understand all the steps that have to go into become that thing. You know, if you told me you wanted to be a full spectrum family medicine doctor in a rural area, I’d say great, because that’s broad enough. But when you’re saying a very specific environment, patient population specialty, it gives us a whole lot of, I’ll speak for myself. It gives me pause in that maybe you don’t understand the entire process that has to happen to get you to that point.

There’s also literature that suggests that people who are hyper career focused actually struggle more when they hit failure. When something doesn’t work out, when something is, you know, you fail a test or you don’t get the board score that you want or something like that, that they are not as resilient to move on, to grow, to take new opportunities, because that’s the only thing you’ve ever seen. Or the only thing you’ve ever wanted. So it does give us a little bit of pause on the emotional maturity part, not to say that you were emotionally immature, but there is stuff to suggest that it’s like, wow, we need to talk about like, let’s talk about the foundation of being a doctor first before we go to the super specialty.

Pooja: Right. Right. No, I completely agree. I think that there were parts of me that were really grown and parts of me that weren’t. And I think that’s that’s the case.

Holly: You’re 22 if you apply right out of school. You’re 22 years old. There is, we can’t expect the world out of a 22 year old.

Pooja: Right. Like I and I know for me, I was applying, submitting my application right like during my senior year of college. And then I grew a lot during my gap year, which by the time I got to medical school, I had like fully been like, “Oh, I’m very undecided now, but I have ideas of what kind of doctor I want to be.” But a lot of what I wanted out of my career in the moment where I graduated college changed drastically over the course of that year. And so I think sort of similar to your point, I think becoming less fixated allowed me to be resilient throughout medical school. And so I’m glad I’m glad that we were able to talk about that because I think it’s a, it’s a misconception that I think people have. Like I think when people say, oh, have an answer of what you want to be, I think that it’s okay to say something like, I don’t know exactly what that, you know, field might look like, but I do have interest in these specific things, or I’m interested in advocacy, I’m interested in research, I’m interested in education, I’m interested in things that most doctors do regardless of the specific field they’re in.

Holly: Yes, that would be a perfectly acceptable answer. It’s the same thing when people say, where do you want to be in 5 years? You don’t have to know. Like I don’t know. I, you know, I hope that I’m doing things that are meaningful to me. XYZ, that is sufficient. And you have hit the nail on the head of the challenge with these applications is that don’t write what you think we want to read. Write what’s true because that’s what we want is what’s true.

And even this client that I’m working with right now, she’s so exceptional, but sometimes I have to bring her back and say, hey, you didn’t answer the question that was asked because now she’s done enough of them that the questions are similar enough that she’s getting the hang of it, but she also just wants to copy and paste. And I’m like, nope, read the question stem. And so I have to go back and I highlight like, you didn’t answer this. And she’s great. And she’s like, yep, you’re right. I didn’t do it. And then we work through it. But that is a common pitfall of what when these secondary start coming in, you just start busting them out because the pressure of like they’re all coming in at the same time and they’re all due at the same time and I know I need an interview from this and blah. It’s like you got to focus in. You got to take the time that you need to make sure you’re answering the question. And that’s why it’s so important, whether it’s one of us at Blueprint or a pre-med advisor or someone that you trust, to look over these for you, because if you’re just smashing them out and you’re not having anybody look over it, you may be missing something vital in the question stem or doing your research appropriately or things like that. And that can really hurt you and how it comes across.

Pooja: I completely agree. And I want to follow up a little bit on what you’re mentioning right now is that there are many prompts that are kind of seen similarly across schools and you mentioned your client who wanted to copy paste because the themes seemed similar. I wonder why do you think schools often ask the same kind of questions?

Holly: Oh, that’s a good question. I think because we’re all kind of looking for the same thing. I mean, we’re all looking for someone who can be thoughtful. We’re all looking for someone who knows how to reflect and how to see what their value is and to understand their value. And it doesn’t have to be that you completely understand every aspect of yourself because like developmentally from a young adult perspective, there’s so much that happens from that 18 to 22 and honestly till you’re 30, if not longer, I hope it’s forever, of like realization of your goals and to acknowledge what you said about when you were 22 and you’re applying to medical school versus what happened in your gap year, we want that lived experience. We want that understanding of like why what I’ve been through or who I am is going to be helpful to my peers.

My 22-year-old self, I don’t know that I could have said what I brought to the table at 22, to be honest with you. I would really have had to think about that. But now at 38, I could tell you this is what I’ve been through. This is what I’ve experienced. This is what I advocate for. And so I think we ask a lot of the same questions just to see where people are because we all kind of want to just see, are you there yet? Are you capable of looking around you and seeing what you bring to the table? Because you can attribute to like, you can totally affirm this for me. What I’ve seen in medical school is that there are going to be times that it tries you, that it really tests you. And these little questions can really give us an idea of like, do you have the, just the seeds. You don’t even have to have the full-blown ability, but the seeds to plant the tree to be able to do that kind of reflection that’s necessary of you in medical school and to be an excellent physician.

Pooja: Yeah, I completely agree with that. I also think that what I really like about the what applicants bring to the table question. It’s actually really funny at the time of, you know, us recording this, I’m just coming back from a panel that I served on, just, it was a panel of 2. I don’t know why I’m calling it a panel. My advisory dean had asked me and a peer of mine to talk to some like second year students about the clerkship year and talk about like just to quell some of their anxieties about the year and, you know, how to survive and thrive during clinical rotations. And I remember it was funny because I had told them that one of the things that I prioritized was like figuring out what my superpowers as a clinician were going to be, or figuring out what I’m really good at and like not only, you know, finding my weaknesses and being able to turn them into strengths, but also to figure out what I’m good at and make them even better. Like make that the thing that I’m really good at and develop a skill set that is unique to me that I can use in the future to kind of distinguish myself like for the rest of my career.

And I found that this question, I think, is the beginning of that process. Because I think the best doctors are the ones who know what they’re good at, they know what they’re not as good at, and what they need help from their other peers to do because medicine is a team sport. And so knowing what you’re good at, having something you can lean on other people for support for, and then being able to get that help, I think is really valuable. So I appreciate you answering that question.

Holly: Absolutely. You’re exactly right and you’re going to thrive in your residency interviews because you understand that and you get that because that’s really all we want is to be able to that you can demonstrate just the start of that understanding and the belief in yourself and the belief in your abilities and how you recover from that.

Pooja: Yeah. No, absolutely. So I guess just to recap for students who are not sure how to approach that question, it sounds like from what you were saying earlier that the best way for someone to approach the question of what they bring to the table, especially if they feel like they don’t necessarily bring a diverse perspective, is to think about anything in their life that has made them unique outside of their demographics and outside of the things that on paper may not be distinguishable among other applicants.

Holly: Totally. And here’s the thing that medical students or pre-meds love to do is don’t qualify it compared to somebody else, okay? What if like if you play, say you played college softball at the division 3 level. That’s more than I did. I mean, that’s more than a lot of people do. Like, what is being an athlete mean? What does being an oldest sibling mean? What does, like, I mean, honestly, it can be as simple as like talk to your best friend, talk to a partner, talk to whoever, and write down the qualities of how you would describe yourself and see how does that perspective change? Like what does that perspective bring to the table?

Like I was just talking to my oldest the other day. He watches this little show on Netflix where it’s one brother with ten sisters. And they talk about having a big family. And I said to him, I said, buddy, because we have four kids. I said, do you like being in a big family? He was like, oh, yeah, it’s super fun. And he doesn’t realize that one day that he could use that as a quality of like, I’m the oldest of four. I’m the oldest to twin brothers. I’m the oldest to brothers who have Down syndrome. I’m the oldest of, you know, whatever. Like that quality of being the oldest has so many facets that he could talk about one day when he wanted to. So, and that’s a 6-year-old. So just think of the potential of a wonderful young adult who’s applying to medical school and what they could do. So don’t sell yourself short in saying like, oh, well, I’m only of this. That could be huge. You don’t know that. So like that’s where it starts. It’s like there’s a lot of bravery and courage that has to come in writing these because you’re really putting yourself out there, but knowing yourself and knowing what those qualities mean to you is huge.

Pooja: Yeah, I think one of my favorite, one of my favorite discoveries as going through medical school was realizing that people inherently are profoundly interesting and profoundly unique. And I think the sooner people discover that, the better, because then they’ll realize that they are part of that people who are profoundly interesting and realize that they do in fact have something to bring to the table. So, thank you for clarifying that.

Holly: Let me tell you this too. We’re a bunch of nerds that work in higher Ed and we’re like, tell me all the things. Tell me all about you. I want to know all those things. So it’s like, you’re in the best audience ever to show to share those things because like, I would rather hear things like that. They’re like nerdy or whatever of what, you know, that wasn’t even nerdy, but like I want that different perspective. This is the best people ever to tell it to. So just remember it’s not.

Pooja: That’s true. People like us on the other side are like, yes, tell me all the things about you. Yeah, that’s very true. I feel like everyone who I know who are involved in my school who are also serving as like admissions interviewers are literally the nicest people I’ve ever met and all they want to do is hear about you. That’s true. That’s very true.

Okay, so I guess there’s a couple of things that I wanted to talk to you about. Some involving pitfalls, some involving recommendations that kind of circulate that I wanted to see what your thoughts were on. So the first is that some advisors suggest pre-writing essays after submitting the primary. Do you agree with that approach?

Holly: I may be the dissenter on that. I do not. It’s not my favorite because for exactly what I just said of that you may not be fully answering the question because each question has its own nuance. I also think that pre-writing is, it can cause a brain, like a cramp, a writer’s cramp. Yeah. Because if you pre-write and then it’s different than what you prepared for, which it likely is, then you’re like, ah, like I already wrote this. Like what was I doing?

Honestly, I think, and this is really hard for pre-meds, for medical students, because I work with students who do residency applications too, is like just take a break. Just enjoy your break for a second because the work is not going anywhere. So honestly, I prefer that you like take a second and you reflect on the work that it took to go into your primary. You sleep, you eat properly. Like the basic human things that we should be doing, and I’m not being facetious about that. I mean, like I’ve already got students who are like, can we start practicing for interviews? I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Like, take a half a beat. You just did like an endurance race, basically, to get this application done, like go sit in the sun for a little while and just take some vitamin D in and relax. And then we can talk about it.

So I’m against pre-writing for a couple reasons. One, I don’t know it’s super fruitful. And two, I think you need to take a break before you jump into the next thing because then after secondaries, it’s interviews. And after interviews, it’s waiting for acceptances. And then after that, it’s going to medical school and it’s like you’re never going to get that time back. So like please, just take it. And I’m not I’m really not being condescending. I’m like take a breath, like just enjoy the quiet for a second. That’s my, and like I said, I may be a dissenter in that way, but that’s my personal philosophy. We need to wait.

Pooja: No, I wish I wish I’d gotten that advice truthfully because I do feel like there were some applications where I felt like I was in a little bit of a writer’s block because I ended up pre-writing some stuff and I think, I think an in between for the person who is worried about, you know, not doing anything, but also giving them time to relax is maybe just having a couple of bullet points of topics that they would want to hit and just like a literal bullet point, like a couple of words or phrases to remind you of what you could write about to answer specific types of questions. But I think that could be helpful. Like I know for residency applications, when I was in my sub-I, I knew that like there would be patient stories that would kind of show up or things that people would want to ask about. And so I remember like thinking about, okay, like if there was a moment where I felt like, oh, I could talk about this on the interview trail, then I just like wrote down a couple of sentences to remind myself of what happened so that the details could be fresh, but that’s it. There’s nothing else that I think is really necessary.

Holly: Yeah, I would agree too that if you really want to do something, start getting to know your schools a little bit better. Look at where they do their clerkships. Look at what kind of clerkship environment they have. Like do they have longitudinal integrated clerkships where you’re doing everything over the course of a year in one space, or are they block specialty clerkships? When do they start clerkships? Lots of schools are starting at like a year and a half. Duke does theirs after a year. You do 1 year of pre-med, like foundational curriculum and then you’re in clerkships. And so that’s wild to me. And so like get to know your schools better. Get to know the populations that they serve. Get to know what’s their mission. Are they really research focused? Are they really primary care focused? Or they really like if they have multiple branches, you know, University of Indiana has 7 campuses. So like get to know there’s a huge difference between Indianapolis and Southern Indiana. So if you’re going to have to choose between one of those, you need to know why. And you don’t and you don’t want to say, oh, I want Indianapolis because it’s more urban.

Well, you don’t know. Maybe, I don’t know. I don’t know Indiana well enough to know tell you whether, you know, Indianapolis is the only urban area. There’s parts of Chicago, South Chicago that touch Indiana. So you could be looking silly by saying like, oh, I want only want the urban one and there’s other ones that are urban. So if you were going to if you feel like you need to do something that’s busy, I would be getting to know your schools better so that you can be better prepared to answer those ones that are more specific about the curriculum, about the whatever. That I would feel more confident if you needed to do something or you felt like you wanted to do something and you’re doing that so that you could be more aligned when the questions actually come.

Pooja: That makes so much sense. I completely agree with that. And I actually, I might steal that for myself because I’m kind of in the waiting for interviews season right now. So yeah, I might steal that one. Amazing.

So, I guess kind of similar to what you said about, you know, people looking into schools and understanding, you know, why that school for themselves. How do you think applicants can make their why this school essay, if they’re asked about it, feel authentic and specific rather than generic? Because the truth is, Holly, I’m sure, I’m sure you’ve seen so many different schools’ missions. A lot of them kind of sound similar and sometimes it can be hard to tease apart the differences on a website alone.

Holly: Yeah, for sure. I think it goes back to your career goals. So when you talk about like a suburban or rural or primary care, first of all, you got to be authentic and true to yourself if that’s what you want to do. If you don’t want to do primary care, then don’t lie about it because that’s going to come off as is not true. But really thinking about what will that school help you achieve. So you went to, you’re at Columbia. When we hear the name Columbia, we think Ivy, we think urban, we think research, we think these things. So as you’re a pre-med and you’re applying to Columbia, it’s like, okay, well, what is Columbia going to help me achieve? What is the name Columbia? What is urban New York City rotations? What is access to research? What is, and all of those things, and how does that align with what I want to do?

And so that may be different now as you’re a senior medical student versus when you were a pre-med, but there clearly was something there at Columbia that was like, ah, that is going to help me get to the goal that I want to do. And so I think looking at what, you know, I’m a list maker. If I had to make my top five things that I wanted from my career, if I wanted to be in academic medicine, I knew I wanted to teach. If I knew I wanted to see patients at a really high level, like a really high acuity, I know that I’m going to need to go someplace that provides that. I know that I want to have access to a certain population because I want to serve a community that’s near and dear to my heart or like me or whatever.

And so those are very broad things that you could very easily tie into that mission or that question that’s unique to you. Because you and I could both be looking and have those exact same things, but have very different perspectives because of our lived experience of how we grew up and what that experience looks like. So like I could say I want high acuity and high like really challenging cases because I want to go back to a rural area and be able to do everything for my patients. You may say, I want to stay in an urban area and I know that this is the majority of what I’m going to see. Very different experiences, but same like different answers to the same question.

Pooja: No, absolutely. And I’m so glad you mentioned that too, because I think that there’s a lot of different ways to make your answers like one of the questions that I had for you about this was how to show genuine interest in a school rather than copying facts from a website. And it sounds like from what you’re describing that the answer really just comes from being able to actually take what a school is about and relate that to yourself and kind of demonstrate your personal investment by saying, hey, you guys offer these things. This is why that is specifically valuable to me because of something that I told you about myself already.

Holly: Yep, absolutely. And just unpack it. So like just like I said, the appetizer, the or like your aperitif, if you will, of like getting yourself to the next thing of, you know, I told you that I grew up in the south. Well, let me tell you more about what growing up in the south is like. It’s lack of access to primary care. It’s lack of education. It’s lack of insurance. It’s lack of all these things. I want you to teach me, XYZ medical school through your master’s of public health program or your public health curriculum, how I can do better with these things in my home state.

So it’s literally just like puzzle pieces. Like here’s what I want, here’s the piece that fits together, but you got to tell me because I can’t infer that. As an admissions person, I cannot infer. I could guess, but I cannot infer why it’s important to you.

Pooja: Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So another question I had for you about common pitfalls that I think happens is about mistakes that you’ve seen, because I’m sure you’ve seen so many secondary essays at this point. And so I just want to open the floor and ask you, what are the most common mistakes you see in secondary essays?

Holly: Yeah, not answering the question that’s asked because you’re just like, oh, this looks similar. Like I said, I have to go back to a lot of my clients and say, hey, you didn’t answer this part and you’re out of characters. So we got to we got to run it back and we got to go from there. I think because so many essays have character counts, limiting yourself because you’re afraid of the character count, you got to write it out first and then you got to have someone who can go in there and help you cut weight because it’s not getting your, being too afraid of character counts and then not getting your ideas across.

The other thing is just being sloppy. You know, like I see misspelled words, I see, you know, I see all kinds of stuff where I’m like, man, punctuation, y’all, basic punctuation or what have you. And if you don’t have anybody who’s looking over your shoulder for that, that’s going to look bad. I mean, it’s as simple as, I don’t know have any clients that have done this lately, but they’re their and there. Like the appropriate use of they are, there as in possessive and there as in the place. Like that is a common or your and you’re. Those are like, y’all, that’s elementary grammar. But I see it. I see all kinds of things that have to be corrected. And I’m telling you, if you stick a blemish like that in a secondary application and we read it, it’s like, oh, that’s rough. So just taking your time, like don’t rush through it if you can, like give yourself appropriate time.

I think the other thing is the pitfall is not pacing yourself because if you get a bunch of them in at the same time and you just want to turn and burn them, that’s you’re asking yourself to make mistakes. And so giving yourself goals of like the client I’m working with right now, she and I set up, she’s like, I want this one done by this time. Great. So I hold her accountable to it. She lets me know when she needs me to review it, and we go from there. So if you have, like seriously, like get a piece of paper out and write due dates for each one and only look at one at a time. Don’t be trying to, I have people who write, read two books at a time. People that tell me they read two books at a time. There’s no way you can do that and enjoy that book. You got to do each one on its own. So doing each one at a time and being consistent with your deadlines for yourself to help avoid mistakes. So not giving the time that’s due, rushing through and making mistakes and not paying attention to all the things that matter.

Pooja: Yes, and not answering the question also. I will agree with everything you said. I will fight you on the reading two books at a time.

Holly: Okay, maybe you are capable of it. I am not.

Pooja: I think I will say my caveat is that I will never read two fiction at the same time.

Holly: Oh, okay. That’s fair.

Pooja: So I’ll read like a non-fiction, one that’s like a self-help or like learning something. And then the other one will be like fiction. So like sometimes I like to start my morning with a non-fiction book and then my nighttime with a fiction book. So that’s that’s what I…

Holly: I can come off that one. I just have people who are like, oh yeah, I’m reading two books at a time. I’m like, please. There is no way you’re keeping those characters straight. But that is fair because I really only read non-fiction. Or I really only read fiction. And so I am not capable of it, but I appreciate that you can be.

Pooja: So Holly, I want to divert the conversation a little bit to talking about reflection because we’ve talked about reflections a good bit, but it seems like there’s opportunity and necessity to reflect, right? Because people need to think critically about whether medicine or specific medical schools the right fit for them. And we’ve kind of talked about it already about like why it’s important for applicants to know who they are before entering medical school. But I think something we haven’t really talked about yet is how much do schools pick up on either authenticity or a lack of self-awareness in these essays, like specifically the secondaries?

Holly: Oh, so much. I mean, I can tell so quickly if it is an authentic, legitimate, thoughtful, like through the personal statement, through the secondary. And a lot of it’s how we’re trained to look at applications. And I will say too, you know, I think about one of my favorite personal statements of all time that I’ve ever read. And I read this like 10 years ago. So the fact that this still sticks with me… was about a woman who she was of a certain faith that was very conservative and she was in a marriage where her partner was abusing her. And she wanted a divorce, but that was not allowed in her culture, religion. And it was her doctor who listened to her, who was also of that same religion, and said, you got to get out. You got to like, I’m here for you. I’ll support you.

And she talked about how that person, that woman, showed her strength, showed her care, showed her like all of these things so that she could get out of this and have the strength to get out of it and pursue her dream to go to medical school because of getting out of this relationship. And the level of vulnerability it took to put that on paper, I was like, you can do anything. I want you here because you were thoughtful enough to realize the importance of a physician who did that for you. And I know that’s like an extreme example. Like not everyone has a lived experience like that. But I use that as an example to say, you watching someone break their leg, I’ve seen that a million times. But tell me why it was meaningful to you. Like what reflection came from that of that you felt helpless and why did you feel helpless? And like you got to unpack it.

And what she did in telling that story was not just the cultural aspects of it or that it was really powerful. It was that she understood the characteristics of an excellent physician to make you feel safe, to make you feel empowered, to help you walk across the line and that she wanted to be those things. And so that reflection, the difference in like telling a story of watching someone have a heart attack at the Sam’s Club, just watching something doesn’t mean that you gained anything from it. Like you got to tell me the reflection and how that’s going to make you a better doctor. And that’s the difference. Is it’s not the story you tell, it’s how you tell it and what reflection you bring out of it. And I can tell very easily if that’s a low level or a high level of reflection just in the way the story is told.

Pooja: I guess getting into a little bit of the nitty gritty here, it seems like how the story is told tells you a lot about the person’s reflection. How do you pick up on if a person’s being authentic?

Holly: I think just the way they describe it. So like if you’ve the vulnerability of if you’re willing to tell me things and they don’t have to be super deep things, but like the vulnerability of like if I saw something tragic happen to somebody, if I can be vulnerable to you on why it mattered to me and why it influenced me. Or, you know, I have a client who was talking about, they were getting ready for residency interviews or residency and they talked about being a non-traditional student in medicine and going back to college, like didn’t go to college at first and went to college to be able to go to medical school. There’s a lot of vulnerability in that. Like it’s not a huge, you know, like it’s not a big deal for a lack of a better term. Like it’s not the first story I told, but the vulnerability of saying like, I didn’t grow up with much. Like I know how valuable education is. Like that level of vulnerability showed me sincerity. Like that you were willing to give me a part of your story in that way is, and she wants to do emergency medicine. So she understood what it took to make the sacrifice to do emergency medicine.

I’ve got another one who came from a small town and she’s like, well, it’s not like my life wasn’t that hard. And I’m like, okay, but you beat the odds in coming from a small town because statistically, if you grow up in a rural area, you may not go to college, a small town of the South is specific, especially, you may not go to college, you may not have people who have college educations that are going to push you. And she wrote hers about it taking a village in a small town to go to medical school and to be a good doctor and the qualities she learned from that because of the vulnerability. So it’s, it doesn’t have to be anything huge. It’s just that understanding and that reflection and the vulnerability of being willing to show yourself. That’s how I can tell if it’s deep or not.

Pooja: Yeah. I appreciate that because I know, I think for me, I didn’t write about anything that was super unique. I wrote about my grandparents and like I remember it was it was funny because in my secondary applications, I wrote a little bit more about some of the activities I did, but I didn’t do anything especially unique. Like I was a peer mentor on a women’s floor and I think a lot of people are RAs, a lot of people do women in science clubs. And I think you’re right. I think it’s the way that you talk about it and the way that you relate it to your own self that kind of reveals the authenticity. That makes a lot of sense. And is there anything that you think people should know about in terms of things that reveal a lack of self-awareness? Is there anything that people should avoid in order to, I guess, prevent a lack of self-awareness from coming through?

Holly: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Making something a tragedy that’s not, or a hardship that’s not. Like, if you got a 510 on the MCAT and you say your MCAT scores low, read the room. That ain’t a low score. Read the room. There’s so much inequity in applying to medical school of like, I’ve got people who have 495s that are scratching at the door to get in and would be the most phenomenal doctors. But because of schooling or lack of resources to take a heavy prep course or things like that, read the room if you’re saying a 510 is a low score, or oh my GPA is low and I have a 3.75. No, I’ve had you look very out of touch and very unreflective if that’s what you’re saying.

If you try to make something, like sometimes you’ll get questions about like, tell me a hardship or an obstacle you’ve overcome. Maybe you haven’t had a lot of hardships or obstacles and that’s okay. Don’t make one up. Acknowledge the fact that like, no, I’ve been pretty privileged. I haven’t had a lot of obstacles or hardships, but here’s something that I did have to overcome. And so I think you beat inauthenticity with authenticity of saying like, I haven’t had a lot. It has not been a hard road for me because of my parents were doctors or my parents gave me everything or, you know, whatever. The biggest way to look bad is to not realize the privilege that you already have and acknowledge it by making something up or trying to make something bigger than it’s not in the scheme of what the reality of the world is. So that would be my biggest pitfall to avoid in that realm.

Pooja: Yeah. No, that makes a ton of sense. And before this episode is done, I do want to do a little bit of a rapid fire like topics that you remember being asked about in secondaries. But before we do that, I kind of want to talk a little bit about unique and abstract prompts. What are some of the more, again, we’ll talk about common ones soon, but what are the more unusual or abstract secondary prompts you’ve seen? Because I feel like sometimes I kind of noticed that some schools or at least when I was applying, I noticed that some schools had like one or two questions that were like a little out there. Like they had the basic ones that everybody asked, and then they had a couple ones that they were like, ooh, no one’s going to ask this. Like let’s ask this one. And so I wonder if there’s any that you recall that you think people should know about.

Holly: Yeah, I’m actually kind of like going through right now because I’ve got a couple in my inbox. I would say, so things that are different that are going to catch you off guard.

Pooja: Yeah.

Holly: Yeah. I mean, one that’s really difficult for students and this is one that I have open from one school is like an autobiographical statement. I saw that last year and this year. So it’s like your family, your childhood, your secondary and undergraduate years, and what you’ve done. And you’re like, you want from birth? Like what do you want from me? And so that one’s difficult for folks because you’re like, how deeply do you want me to go? I was born on a cold January afternoon. I mean, like, it’s that was tough of like, how do I and, you know, and especially if it doesn’t have a character limit to it, you’re like, uh.

So that can be tough. Other ones that can be difficult, I would say like, you know, what is professionalism? Because that’s so broad. So some folks will be really rigid about that of like professionalism is showing up on time, professionalism is this, professionalism is that. People get really stuck on that one because it is so broad. So I would say those are two for sure, but if questions that are very, very open-ended, I think are the ones that give people the most pause. And that could be anything along those lines of, tell me your life story to define professionalism for me. People like, like tell me a time when you saw something unprofessional, not what is professionalism mean to you. So those are ones where I’m seeing people struggle this year and last year for sure.

Pooja: Yeah. No, that makes a lot of sense. I want to kind of just circle back a little bit on logistics that we kind of talked about. So I know we talked about 2 weeks as like a typical timeline. Some schools will give you a you need to do it by this day or you have this many days and some schools will say give it to us in December, in which case we’re defaulting to 2 weeks. But I wanted to ask, some people recommend different deadlines. Is there an advantage to submitting secondaries early? Or should there be more of an emphasis on quality over speed? Because I feel like some people say 1 week as opposed to 2. And so I wonder what your thoughts are on that.

Holly: I think it’s negligible on 1 to 2 weeks to be honest with you because it still has to be reviewed and like when we’re reviewing applications, we don’t invite people to interviews typically one at a time. So even if you get it in, you may end up waiting another couple weeks anyway because we have to have enough people to send interview invites for it to be worth it to fill an interview day. So there’s not really a magic formula there as long as you’re doing it within the given time frame. Really, like I said, the only hold up is yourself and keeping yourself from an interview when you give yourself more time. But I would not lose sleep over a week versus 2 weeks because like I said, we’ve just kind of like got to put you in the hopper until we’re ready to send out interview invites for the next interview day to make sure it fills because it’s not it’s too much work to get interviewers together and plan these days to have one person come. So you kind of at the mercy of whenever the next interview invite list goes out.

Pooja: Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. That makes a lot of sense.

Holly: So don’t try to read too much into it. Don’t try to read too much into it, y’all. Like I’ve like, oh, they haven’t sent anything yet. It’s like there’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, okay? Like, someone’s on vacation, someone had a baby, someone, you know, like just had a bunch of other stuff to do. Like, yes, we are whole humans that have lives and while we usually do not take vacations during the busiest times of our work schedules, you know, sometimes we do because who knows what happened. And so or, you know, babies come when they want or, you know, what have you. Parents get sick and whatever. But so don’t then I used to tell my students and I did mean this kind of facetiously like, please don’t flatter yourself. Please don’t flatter yourself that you think that you are the only person in my life that like that it all revolves around. Like there are thousands of other applicants or thousands of other things that literally thousands that have to be reviewed before it gets to you. So please do not, no news is not bad news in some ways. Like if it’s been a reasonable amount of time, and a reasonable amount of time in the admissions world is 2 to 4 weeks. Legitimately.

Pooja: Yeah. No, I’m I’m actually glad that you mentioned that because I was going to ask you like, it sounds like some schools automatically send secondaries and some schools do not. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that.

Holly: Yeah, it’s just up to the school. Some folks will give everybody a secondary application and some folks will not do it until the application is verified. And so, and just because you get a secondary does not mean you’re going to get an interview. So one of those things do not equal the other. So you just kind of got to go with it. We’ll go back to the MSAR, the Medical School Admissions Resource that we talked about in the last episode through the AMC. That’s a really good guide to see when the secondary is due, when interviews usually typically come out. I would use that if you’re questioning it. I actually just met with a blueprint client the other day who was like, I haven’t heard anything. And I was like, yeah, I mean, you submitted on the first day. Like that’s actually not to your benefit because they’ve got all summer to lift your applications. So we went through them together. I was like, look, they haven’t they just started sending out interview invites. So, you know, you got to give it time. So it really, I would check on the school’s website and in the MSAR kind of just like see where you’re hanging out.

Pooja: So before we talk about the waiting period a little bit because I do want to talk about managing the silence before we wrap up today’s episode, but I do wonder if someone doesn’t receive a secondary application, like let’s say they apply to a school where they don’t send it out to everybody, what does it mean anything for the student? Like should they feel bad about it? Like what reaction do you expect or do you want people to have if they don’t get a secondary after applying to a school?

Holly: Well, you’re allowed to be disappointed because I think anytime we don’t get something like that, it’s disappointing because you had obviously you were applying there because you wanted to be. But if you want to take action about it, I would just ask for feedback. I don’t know that you’ll get feedback immediately because it’s within the admission cycle. And like I said, but in the spring, if, you know, just if you want to know or if you’re reapplying, it is absolutely appropriate to email the admissions folks and say, “Hey, I didn’t get a secondary from y’all. Can we have a conversation about why?” And most places will set up a 30 minute Zoom meeting with you and say, hey, yeah, let’s talk about it. This was our average GPA. Your GPA was here or your application had errors or your application like you didn’t have enough of this. And they will tell you point by point the things that kept you from getting it. And so it’s up to you. I always tell people don’t ask the question if you don’t want the answer. So if you don’t want the answer, then don’t ask. But if you’re trying to grow and you’re trying to learn from it, then I think it’s super helpful to ask for that feedback. But don’t be surprised if you don’t get it if you ask right now because like this is like we’re in the thick of it. Don’t ask now. You’re not going to get an answer.

Pooja: Yeah. I think we’ve talked about this before, but it kind of sounds like the best time to ask from what I remember is like, I think like May?

Holly: Yeah, that’s when the application cycle is reloading. So I would say really anytime from March to June is excellent because typically the class is pretty set. There’s still wait lists, there’s still movement, but it’s minimal comparatively. And so I would say anytime from March through the summer before the next application cycle opens. Because if you’re going to make changes to your application, you want to have enough time to be able to do that. And so I would say late spring is a good time to do that because the AMCAS and the come back in TD and, you know, every other application service we’re using these days, they all open at the end of May.

Pooja: Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, good to know. And I guess just to recap for people, schools policies on who gets secondaries, is that on MSAR or no?

Holly: No, I don’t think so. It’s about timing. So you may have to go to the school’s website and just see how they do their secondaries. And it’s okay to ask like, how do you do your secondaries? If you’ve submitted one and you haven’t heard from somebody. And they may just say like, you didn’t qualify or they may say, oh, I mean, shoot your shot. You never know. What’s the worst thing I’m going to say no if you weren’t going to get one anyway? Whatever. I’m always, like, to let them tell you no situation. So, but typically it’s on their website, I think on how they decide to do secondaries. Sometimes it’ll say like on the website or on MSAR, like for example, some state schools will say, we won’t even interview students or give a secondary if you’re an out of state applicant that doesn’t have this GPA or this MCAT. So sometimes it’s as simple as that.

Pooja: Yeah. No, I was going to say, I’ll be honest, I think if someone isn’t offering you a secondary after the primary, it’s probably because they realize that you’re not a fit to their mission, and so like you’re either, either you’re not a fit to their mission or they don’t think you’re going to go to their school for numerous reasons. Sometimes they will like shield from you, like if you were applying to a safety school and it’s too much of a safety school for you, some schools might be like, listen, we’re not going to waste time reading this person’s secondary, doing this interview, like they’re not even going to come here. I think sometimes that happens or sometimes I’ve seen that if your application is very clearly about like you living on the East Coast and you love it there and like you have family and they mean a lot to you and blah, some medical schools on the West Coast may not be convinced that you’re going to go all the way out there or that even if you do, that you’ll be able to thrive there because you don’t have a support system. So I think those are reasons that are just like outside of you as a person that are kind of out of your control and I think it’s okay to not get a secondary from a school for that reason.

Holly: For sure. And to your point then, that is where in your primary application, which is tough because it’s so broad that you have to really make it about a connection. So like if you’re applying to schools, if I was, I’m from Arkansas and I’m applying to schools in Chicago, like I said, my parents are from there, I would have to make an connection to Chicago or honestly, I would just email admissions and say, hey, it looks kind of crazy that you guys got this application for a girl from Arkansas, but here’s my connection. And I mean, you may or may not ever get a response, but you got to shoot your shot if it’s that important to you. So, but I don’t encourage a lot of communications with admissions if you can help it, to be honest with you, just because of the volume of what they get. And that’s not to say you can’t reach out to people, but if it is for something like that, for you to make that connection, for them to be aware, for them to do whatever, I think that’s a valid reason and they would want to know that and your genuine interest to be there. But just emailing every day, is my application in? Do you need anything for me? Don’t. I ain’t got time for that.

Pooja: Yeah. No, that’s so fair. I feel like I feel like for me, I learned that lesson too late. So now I’m just kind of doing it for med school. Like where I’m like not to listen about reaching out to people. I didn’t really bug admissions officers or anything, but I think for schools where it would look weird for them to be getting an application from me, like the East Coast, West Coast thing is something that I refer to a lot because I really wanted to go to California initially for medical school and I applied to 7 different California schools. And I didn’t get a single interview from any of them. And I think a lot of it is because like they did not think I was going to go there. They didn’t think I was going to thrive. I had family in California and I was planning on talking about it during an interview, but the opportunity never came. And I think eventually it ended up working out for the right reasons. Like I’m very happy that I’m on the East Coast, very happy that my family and friends have been nearby. But for residency, I’ve been a lot more strategic. Like I’ve decided, okay, I’m going to pick my regions and only really apply there because I’m not really I don’t think I want to be in the business of convincing people that I’m going to go there for its location because I don’t always know how it’s going to play out or how convincing I can be.

You know, that’s even aside from the point that at this point in my life, I don’t even know if I want to go too far away. I would like to be like I think I applied to 3 different regions and I chose those for a reason. I would only want to go there. So we’ll see. But yeah, that’s there’s just a point for our listeners that like even when you’re picking your school list, understanding that schools really care about you as a person and that’s why they ask these questions about you and realizing that you want to be able to demonstrate to them that even when things are hard, you have a support system to be there for you. And so geography can matter a lot of times.

Holly: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. It’s absolutely part of our selection criteria and like when we’re looking at applicants of if you’re from a certain area, connections to the area, and that has to do with like if it’s a state-serving institution and we have to serve the mission of the state. Well, I can’t take you if you’re not from here or you’re not first on our list to look at. So you’re exactly right.

Pooja: Right. I agree. So I want to now before we end, talk about the waiting period and what it can be like when you’re kind of waiting around once applications have been submitted, you’re waiting for an interview. So once secondaries are submitted, how long is that waiting period? Because I know we talked about like 2 to 6 weeks for submitting primary to receiving a secondary. What is this new waiting period now between secondaries and receiving interview invitations?

Holly: Yeah, that one’s tough. It really just depends on where we are on the in the cycle, to be honest with you. But I think it’s still the same amount of time, like 2 to 4 to 6 weeks depending on where they are and how quickly they’re reviewing. If they do rolling admissions versus if they do, you know, like a standard admit day. So I think we talked about this before, but rolling admissions is when you start admitting people on a rolling basis rather than like everyone gets their admission acceptance on October 15th. And I’m just using that because that’s usually what early admit programs are.

And so for example, if you apply to a program that’s an early admit where they’re admitting people early on October 15th, you may not get an interview invite until after that day because they’ve got to know how many people are in their early admit to see like if they have a class of 150 and they admit 100, they only have 50 more interview invites. And there’s rules that say you can’t invite this many more people than you have spots for, at least are in residency. And so we kind of follow that best practice in medical schools as well. So it’s like this it’s a numbers game of like, we’re trying to build our wailist appropriately, but we’re also trying to get enough people who are qualified to be able to interview and to work through that process. And then you have your normal amount of melt or people who, you know, get in off a waitlist somewhere else and then you have to pull from your waitlist and things like that.

And so it really is a numbers game and where you are in the admissions process. So this time of year, I would say it’d be a little bit shorter because if you’re going to get an interview, interviews are actively happening right now. And so if you apply in June, you’re going to be waiting for a long time because the secondary, we got to wait for that pool. So I would say during this time of the year, 2 to 4 weeks is the normal amount of time. I would say typically, if you’re a qualified applicant and you get a secondary, you’re usually going to get an interview. I mean, in my experience, I don’t have the stats in front of me from my clients, but most of the time, if it’s a place that’s not sending secondaries to everybody, I don’t know, that’s not fair because I had an MD PhD, but he was an MD PhD, so that’s different. I can’t give you stats on that, but I would say 2 to 4 weeks is my final answer.

Pooja: That’s so fair. Okay, that is good to know. 2 to 4 weeks. Okay, perfect. And then I guess during that waiting time, we talked a little bit about what happens during the behind the scenes, but I was wondering if you could unveil the curtain really quickly about what happens once the secondary is submitted.

Holly: Yeah, yeah. So once your secondary is submitted, typically we’re looking at your application in all places. So if we decided to send you a secondary and it was based on other things, we would look and we would say, okay, they’ve already met all of our criterion for MCAT, GPA, letter of recommendation. Review the secondary and say, okay, good. Yep. Review, send for interview.

Maybe it’s someone else where like we send secondaries to everybody and we’re like, you’re kind of on the edge, like your MCAT or GPA, like it meets our minimum standards, but like, I like you, but I’m not quite sure. So then you would go maybe into like a hold status. And then there’s folks who it’s like, no, you did not answer the questions properly, riddled with errors, we’re not doing this and that just goes into a no. Whether you get a declination of like, no thanks or not is up to the school at that point. Most schools will eventually let you know if you’re not going to get anything, but sometimes they wait until like the day classes start because technically you can admit people until the day that classes start or orientation week. And so sometimes you just won’t hear anything and you can ask them and then they’ll be like, yeah, no thanks. But for the most part, that’s what happens.

So if you are going to get an interview, you’ll typically know within that 2 to 4 weeks. But if you are maybe on the fence, no news is good news at that point. Like if you haven’t heard anything that’s like, no, we’re good, then you’re just kind of hanging out. And what I recommend every once in a while is like really like maybe monthly, not like every, not all the time, but monthly like if you’ve had anything going on, like if you finished a class or you’ve done a research project or you have something that’s happened in your application, you started an internship or whatever, you can email the admissions office and say, if they allow for updates. Hey, I have this update to my application and blah. And sometimes that will jog their memories be like, oh, who’s Pooja? Let me go look. Oh, yeah, we were if about her, but she’s done this, so let’s go ahead and send her an interview invite. So it really just depends. That’s where the stats play in a little bit more, but it really just depends on where you fit in those other metrics with all of the things together on whether we pull the trigger on an interview immediately or if you’re going to get one maybe a little bit later.

Pooja: No, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And I appreciate you breaking that down because I think it’s helpful for people to understand that there’s a lot that kind of goes into the behind the scenes. And so if things are taking a long time, it may not be because of you, it may be because of something else that’s kind of out of your control. With that in mind, I wonder if there are any healthy ways that you recommend applicants kind of stay grounded and I guess productive, but not necessarily productive, depending on what they’re doing in their lives at the time during that period.

I know for me, I was in like I felt like I was undergoing psychological torture truthfully, because I was waiting for interviews, but I was also waiting for my gap year job to start because my gap year job was supposed to start months before, but then because of delays because I was working for the US government, it was just taking a long time. And so I was just like, why am I waiting for literally anything to start? And so I wonder what advice you have for people to stay grounded.

Holly: Yeah, I mean, living life, enjoying your life as much as you can, because guess what? Even if you don’t get into medical school, life goes on right now, you know? Like, and if you’re worried about it, because you don’t feel like you’re a super strong applicant, maybe you do those things that I was talking about. Like if you’re worried about your GPA, do you take another course, if you can financially afford it, or do you get more volunteer hours? Like looking at those things that make you a little iffy in your application, the best action, the best remedy for anxiety is action. So like take some action or don’t do anything. I mean, some people are just like, I have side out of mind, I’m going to go surfing because that’s what I do, or I’m going to go on vacation or I’m going to work and I’m just going to enjoy my life.

And so this is the pot calling the kettle black, to be honest with you, because I’m very tightly wound. And I remember applying to PhD school and like checking my email obsessively on whether I was going to get an interview or not after I submitted my application. So I totally understand, but I still had to go to work. I still had to do the things that mattered for me. And so in your situation where you’re waiting to start a job, what do you like to do? We talked about reading books, like you read some books, like you just set goals for yourself to keep yourself engaged.

But if you want to be actionable to things that you feel like maybe need some help on your application, I would be seeking those out. And then you feel like you’re doing something to push you. What I would not say to do is like I was helping an applicant this year and she was like, I didn’t get what I wanted on my MCAT. Should I think about PA school? And I’m like, no, we’re not changing the route right now. No, we’re going to wait to see what happens this year before we like go do something completely different. So don’t throw the baby out with the bath water as I like to say of like just because you’re not hearing anything, we’re just like going to completely upend our plans and we’re not going to because then maybe medical school wasn’t it for you anyway if you could just that easily decide you’re not going to do it anymore.

So what I would say is to live your life and start working on things that you think would make you a better applicant and better medical student and what I don’t do is go for a completely different career path unless that’s what you needed to do anyway.

Pooja: Right, right, right. I love there was a phrase that you said that I definitely want to steal, which is the remedy for anxiety is action because I feel like the way I used to think about it was the remedy to anxiety is knowledge, but I think both of them kind of have the same end goal, which is just if you are anxious about something, doing something either about it or about other things can be really valuable and just like preparing yourself for what’s coming ahead. So I think that is really good to know. I know some other recommendations that I’ve heard that I think are valuable to share as well are staying really grounded with like your daily routine, like having a period of time where, okay, like this is the time where I’m going to check my email and freak out about this, but I am going to have times where I’m not looking at it. I think for interviews and stuff, you should kind of keep your eyes peeled, but you don’t have to necessarily like dedicatedly check and just only stare at your phone all day. You should have times where you’re like doing other things. Like an hour, like if you are not going to workout classes, you’re not going to the gym because you’re worried that you’re going to miss an email. Like that’s a bit much because 1 hour isn’t going to make a difference, you know?

Holly: Absolutely. Yep, absolutely. You’re exactly right. Yes. You got to live your life still.

Pooja: Yeah. Absolutely. So let’s run down our favorite takeaways from today’s conversation. I feel like for me, the big takeaway is similar to our last conversation, but I guess I’m just going to repeat it again because it’s so important is that it is very, very important to be intentional about not only yourself and the reflection that you put in, but also what you’re going to say about yourself. So it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it and the amount of thought that you put into how you present yourself in the secondary application. And it seems like from what we described that the secondary application is much more about like who you are and the nitty gritty details that kind of provide more substance than the appetizer that is the primary application. And so I think bringing that perspective in is really valuable.

Holly: Absolutely. Yep. Sorry, I already blanked out. Say that again. I blanked out on what you were asking me. We’re just giving our takeaways. Sorry.

Pooja: Yes. What is your takeaway, Holly?

Holly: Okay, sorry. Life. Waking up at 3:15. My takeaway for secondaries is that like just authenticity. Like just you got to take one step at a time and really think about what are you doing here? And what do I want to come across? And I think when we talked about pre-writing, the best way to pre-write is just what do I want them to see about me? And that’s where I always take it back to with my clients is like, okay, you got a lot going on here. What is the one thing you want them to see? That I really care about people. Perfect. Then let’s focus in on that because I’m not seeing that right now between all this other stuff. So I would say just really doing that thought exercise of what do I want them to see about me in this application is the most important thing because that will guide you through all the other things.

Pooja: Yeah, absolutely. Next episode, we are talking all about gap years. Whether you’re thinking about taking a gap year, either after college or during med school, or maybe you’re in the middle of a gap year and you’re freaking out about what going back will be like. This episode is covering it all. And so please, please stay tuned for that. Thank you guys for listening to Pursuit of Practice brought to you by Blueprint and we will see you next time.

Pooja: Regardless of where you are in the medical school application process, chances are you’ve got a ton of questions, and you’re not alone. In our very first episode, we tackle the ones you’re asking, plus a few you didn’t even know you should be.

The path to becoming a doctor is a whole range of things: exciting, confusing, anxiety-inducing, and gratifying, probably all at the same time. And the truth is that no matter how isolating it may feel, you’re not in it alone. Welcome to Pursuit of Practice, your go-to space for expert advice, real stories, and the kind of support that shows you what trusting the process actually looks like.

Welcome to Pursuit of Practice, the podcast for anyone on the road to becoming a physician and seeking a little or a lot of help navigating the way. The study of medicine and the pursuit of a career as a doctor can have a lot of unspoken rules and inside knowledge that could be hard to acquire until you’ve been through it. This can make navigating everything from choosing your premed courses and getting through the medical school application process to your starting days as a resident overwhelming, confusing, and isolating. Our goal is to help you get the answers to the questions you’ve been afraid to ask, find comfort in knowing you’re not the only one who is struggling, and build strategies and confidence in your, pun intended, pursuit of practicing medicine.

This show is brought to you by Blueprint Prep, one of the most trusted names in MCAT and medical school prep. I’m your lead host, Pooja Sonikar, an MCAT instructor with Blueprint and an MD candidate at Columbia University. In each episode, my co host and I dive deep into the real and raw challenges that many students face in their physician journey. We share honest stories, tackle tough topics, and dish out practical strategies for success. We’re here to give you the advice we wish we had heard when we started and remind you that you’re not doing this alone.

Today, we’re breaking down the med school application timeline and reflecting on our own experiences through the process. Joining me today is Holly Proffitt, one of Blueprint’s admissions advisors. She was born and raised in Fayetteville, Arkansas, went to school in Westminster College and has been extensively involved in mentorship ever since. She graduated with a degree in business administration and marketing, and English literature and got a master’s degree in journalism with a focus in public relations and communication. She also has a PhD from the University of Mississippi in higher education and administration with a research focus in career decision making behavior of medical students. She currently works as a curriculum director at an MD school in Fayetteville. She’s been working with medical students to assist them in their path to residency for the last 7 years, and she’s been described by her students as their med school mom and not only understands the hustle of balancing school, work and play, but is also known for giving advice to students that uplifts and motivates them. Holly, thank you for joining us.

Holly: Thanks for having me.

Pooja: So, we have a lot to talk about, but first for our listeners, I would greatly appreciate if you could walk us through your experience with admission so far.

Holly: Sure. My first role in higher education in general was I worked as an admissions counselor for undergraduate education, so working with students who wanted to do anything from agriculture to premed. So I worked with premed students a little bit there of what’s the right college for you and that was at a state school in East Arkansas. And then I transitioned into medical education. So since I had that background in admissions, even though I wasn’t an admissions advisor by title, I was actually the registrar and then the career advisor, I was always helping out with admissions.

So I was reading applications, I was communicating with students and giving them feedback on how they can improve their education. We hosted interview days. I would give feedback when we were looking at who are we going to admit. And so for 7 years at that school, I was part of that process. And now at the institution I work at, I actually serve as an interviewer for our admissions committee. So I’m not making the final decision, but I’m giving input on students, on when they’re coming and interviewing at this school, whether we should take them or not. So I don’t have the final say, but I definitely am giving input on that. So I love sitting on committees and getting to know students and helping them through their med school journey on both sides and now I do that for Blueprint as well. I’ve been a Blueprint consultant for 3 years. I’ve had a lot of success, thankfully. They send me really great students that I just get to help across the finish line. I had an MD PhD candidate last year get into Temple University. I’ve got some really great ones that are going to some really amazing schools. So, I can’t put it down is the problem.

Pooja: I mean, listen, it sounds like you shouldn’t. It sounds like you’re doing great work. And I also will say I appreciate you walking through all of that because I think it tells me and it tells our listeners that you are an expert in the room, right? You have a lot of authority in the space and you know what people are looking for from that other side because I think from our perspective, it just seems like the admissions committee is this holy deity of people who ultimately determine your fate. So it’s nice to have the curtain removed a little bit. So thank you very much for joining us.

Holly: We’re ominous for sure, but happy to show you how the sausage is made today.

Pooja: You guys are very nice people. In terms of the application timeline and primary applications, when someone asks you, how to make their primary application stand out? What is the first thing that comes to mind?

Holly: The first thing that comes to my mind is who are you and who do you want them to see? So a lot of times students think that there’s this magic formula of, I have to have this much research or I have to have this much clinician shadowing or I have to have this or that. And those things are true. We are looking for those things as threshold elements. But the most important thing to me is what do you want this who do you want them to see on paper? Because if you think about the admissions process, it’s like a meal. So the application is an appetizer and then the interview is the entree and then the acceptance is the dessert, right? Because that’s the best part. So really if you’re thinking about what do I want people to know about me, this should be the appetizer that really gets them ready for the meal. I want you to know my passion. I want you to know my interest in medicine and here are some things that I’ve done to demonstrate those things over the course of my life.

So the biggest challenge honestly is finding your voice and finding what do I want them to see about me? Do I want them to see a consistency of leadership? Do I want them to see a consistency of academic excellence? Do I want them to see that I’m very humanistic? All of those things can be there and happen, but if you don’t know the part of yourself that you’re trying to display, you’re not going to be successful in your application because it’s just going to be messy and it’s not going to be something that people want to dig into.

Pooja: Yeah, absolutely. So in terms of the different parts of yourself that you could display, you mentioned a couple of things. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of options that people can choose from? Obviously, everybody’s different and there will be a unique combination, but I think for those of us who are drawing a blank on even what to show about yourself, I think an overview would be super helpful.

Holly: So we can take you back to 22 year old Holly, which was many moons ago. But if I were applying to medical school, which I actually did consider for a half a second, and then I got into premed biology and I was like, I got a B, but this is not my natural strong suit. I’m not going to do this. But if we were back at mid 2000s premed Holly, if I was going to look back at my college experience, my college experience was really marked by leadership and who helping others. So if I’m looking at my resume, I wrote for the school newspaper. I was on SGA leadership. I was a leader in my sorority for all 4 years. I was a mentor, an academic mentor. All of those things were service to other people, right? I got paid to write for the newspaper. I got paid to be the intramural chair for SGA. I didn’t get paid to be a mentor, but all of those things were about helping. They were about informing, they were about supporting other people, they were in service to other people. But they also were things that taught me how to work effectively with others. They taught me how to manage difficult situations. They taught me things that are important for life.

And I think the biggest thing is looking at your tradition of what you’ve done. Literally, take a piece of paper, type, write, what have I done in college and where can I clump these things together? And honestly it was and then take them to a friend and say, what do you think this does about me? So one of my best friends said when I was looking for jobs and I was getting my masters, she was like, I don’t understand why you’re not a teacher. And I took that as the type of teacher that my partner is, of he teaches PE, a classroom teacher. I don’t want to do that. But no, I’m an educator at my heart. I’m an educator and all of these things that I’ve done have been a theme to that. And I think it’s just important to look at the things. For example, if yours is academic excellence, if you have excelled in every single course you’ve ever taken, if you were a tutor, if you were a researcher, if you were these things, put them in a group the best that you can and have that be the theme of your application so that you know who you are and who you stand for and what you stand for.

And the reason I say that is because when we start to look at building your application list for your medical school, there are certain schools that value certain things, right? You’re at Columbia. Columbia is an Ivy League institution. We know it’s a large academic institution. We know that they value research. We know that they value scholarship. So it’s important to know who you are to make sure that you’re making a good fit for the schools that you’re applying to. I mean, obviously you’re going to have onesie twosies. I was on the Dean’s list. I didn’t graduate with special honors. I value academic excellence, but I wouldn’t say that’s the hallmark of who I am. And so once you know that, you can also know how you’re going to address other things in your application where maybe you don’t feel as strong about them and how you’re going to compensate for those.

Pooja: Got it. Okay. So it sounds like the way for someone to stand out isn’t necessarily by trying to be this figure that they think is the best applicant, rather it’s better to lean into the strengths that you naturally have and accentuate those as much as possible.

Holly: Yeah, if you want to get real nerdy about it, there’s actually literature that in soft science, we call it soft science because you smarty pants do the hard science of the basic science. But in our social sciences, in our soft sciences, there’s actually literature that suggests that if you are aligning your career goals with what your natural strengths are, you’re going to have better success in your career overall and a higher level of job satisfaction. And so we say that with medical specialties too, when I was a career advisor, there are all these resources that say what are the things you’re naturally good at? How do we align that with the specialty that you choose? And it’s the same thing. Knowing who you are and having confidence of who you are as an applicant is going to translate into all the other parts of your application. So that’s why I would say just what are you trying to say? What, if you had to if you had to summarize yourself in three words based on your activities, what would they be? And if you’re having a hard time with that, then maybe we need to do a little bit of soul searching. And that’s not a bad thing. It’s just a, let’s look at it as a whole.

Pooja: Okay. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And it sounds like from what you’re saying that it is important to include that in the primary application and not just save that for other parts, correct?

Holly: Correct. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. And that helps you decide what are your experiences going to be, because you only get 15. It may have been different when you were applying to med school, but now you only get 15 experiences that you can do. So what of all these things that I’ve done, what fits this theme of who I want to be to the admissions committee?

Pooja: Right. No, absolutely. Okay. So in terms of what premeds, let’s take a big picture of what premeds understand. Do you think that most people understand what the admissions committee are looking for when they’re assessing a primary application?

Holly: To be honest with you, no. I think the admissions committee seems like the Wizard of Oz. Oh, we’ve got to have this magic formula and it’s not. I mean, it’s there are threshold elements, right? We need to see that academically you’re qualified and by that I mean sometimes there’s a minimum MCAT, sometimes there’s a minimum GPA, sometimes there’s a minimum science GPA. Those are minimums, y’all. There are averages, right? There are some things that we know statistically if you don’t have XYZ, you’re not going to be able to sustain the rigor of medical school.

But the other things that I don’t think that students realize that we’re looking for are people with unique experiences, people who are demonstrating their passion and a commitment to service because medicine essentially is a service field. You’re serving your patients, you’re serving others, you’re serving your community. We’re looking for people who are going to enrich the academic environment that you’re in. When we start to talk about secondary, I’m in full on secondary season with my Blueprint client. And one of the things that we’re constantly seeing is how are you different? What are you bringing that is going to enrich the classroom and educational environment that you’re in with your classmates. So knowing that and being able to show that, showing that you have a consistent track record of service, of leadership, of academic excellence, it’s a lot of things. You are not just your MCAT score, you are not just your GPA. You are all of these things and demonstrating those things. So I don’t think that students know that. I think it’s a box check… and I’m going to say the R word Reddit. People are on Reddit and they’re like, I have this and I have that. Should I get in? Well, I don’t know because I’ve seen people with really great scores not get in because they go to their interview and they’re ugly. And by I don’t mean physically ugly. I mean that’s a southern term for their personality of their arrogant or their pompous. And they don’t play well with others. So it’s way more than just these boxes that you’re checking of I have this many service hours or I have this or that. It’s the whole package. So I don’t think the students know that.

Pooja: Yeah, no, I appreciate that explanation because I think that one piece of advice that I was given was that the personal statement activities and interview, the interview that you give, should all be cohesive with one another and that you’re being yourself and that self, that authentic self is present in every single thing that you submit to a school. Does that match the advice that you’ve given and that you’ve seen help with people succeed?

Holly: Absolutely, absolutely. Because, let’s talk about the hot topic right now, AI chat GPT. Yes. If you have AI or Gemini, Chat GPT, whatever your preferred large language model is, write your personal statement and it doesn’t sound like you, and then you go to your interview and they’re like, who is this? That’s going to turn people off for real because they’re going to be like, who is this person? I think that I always tell my clients what are you when they’re writing their secondaries or anything like that, what are you trying to say here? Because you’re jumbling up what you think I want to hear or what you think the admissions committee wants to hear versus what you’re actually trying to say about who you are as a person. And so that precision of knowing who you are and what you’re trying to bring up. One question you get a lot is, tell me about how you grew up. And students are like, do you want the time of day I was born? Do you want what do they want? And that’s the point. It is supposed to be broad for you to say, I grew up as a, I grew up upper middle class as in the South as with two parents who were a stockbroker and an X-ray tech. a first generation college student on my mom’s side, they want you to analyze who you are and be able to bring that because at the end of the day, student development wise when you’re in medical school, we want you to eventually be actualizing to that person of what kind of doctor you’re going to be. That’s your professional identity formation, which is really important to us. And so not to get too deep, but that’s what we’re looking for. We’re looking for those seedlings of are you going to be able to do that in a very stressful environment, in a pressure cooker?

Pooja: Yeah, I mean, listen, Holly, we’re here to get deep, you know? So I appreciate that because I think it’s a misconception that I think a lot of people have. And you alluded to it earlier too that there’s this checklist of things that you feel like you have to have. But I’ll tell you right now, in my class, there are a lot of people who didn’t do research and there are a lot of people who didn’t necessarily have the top MCAT or the top GPA. But everyone who is a member of my class, I think has a very strong sense of who they are and what they bring to the table. And I think that’s really important and I think as you progress through medical education, you apply for residency, you apply for fellowship, you apply for jobs, that’s going to be more and increasingly more important. Even if you don’t know what exactly you’re going to do with your life, knowing who you are and what you value, I think is an important characteristic that never truly goes away.

Holly: Well, and as you are submitting your residency application next week, this is going to be the same thing of, okay, so now we’ve gone from this broad thing of I want to be a doctor to now I want to be this type of doctor and I want to be in this type of environment. And it’s just the whittling. Think of yourself as a big thing of clay and we’re whittling and making who you are. That’s part of life as becoming a professional. And it starts with your application. And that’s where we can see the maturity of this person’s ready to embark on this journey and we feel like they can handle it versus someone who is not quite there yet. And it doesn’t mean not now ever, just maybe not yet. There’s a little bit more soul searching, a little bit more activities and that’s why we want you to do activities. That’s why we want you to do these things so that you can narrow down that focus and show us that maturity.

So it’s not just putting stuff into boxes, y’all. Medicine is a journey. It is a financial commitment. It is a time commitment. It is an emotional commitment. It’s sacrifice. You can speak to all that, Puja. You’re living it right now and you got that ahead of you in your residency. And that’s we really are looking for those things on the application to see do you want this enough to give up all those things that we’re asking you to give up.

Pooja: Yeah, right. I completely agree.

Holly: Because it’s our responsibility. It’s our responsibility to ensure as much as you’re capable to be ready for that commitment. That’s a big responsibility for us.

Pooja: It is. It is and you guys you handle it well.

Holly: We try. Sometimes better than others when you’re up to your eyeballs and applications trying to decide who to interview and who to accept and all that. I mean, we take that seriously. It’s a big responsibility for the school and for your future success, but also for your future patients. Because I mean, I’m a curriculum director. I take very seriously what I’m teaching my students because that affects their future patients. And that affects generations of people who are going to see these people as physicians. So it’s a big deal.

Pooja: It is, it is, it is. So I want to move ahead into our second segment which is about the MCAT. And we’ve talked about it already, but I feel like there are there’s a lot of data that is built into your application. And the MCAT can be seen as an objective data point. And you mentioned, people will go on the R word Reddit, right? And they’ll talk about it and premeds love freaking out about it and it seems like a centerpiece of the application almost. And I wonder from your perspective as people are thinking about preparing their applications and applying to medical school, let’s start from the very beginning and just talk about when you think is a good time to take the MCAT.

Holly: So, I have to answer that question with a question. How much time do you need? So, I am not a strong standardized test taker. I need a lot of prep time. And so it depends on what application cycle are you looking to go for. There’s really this fine line of that and you can speak more to this than me. I never took the MCAT thankfully. that there are certain things on the MCAT that you need to have learned. So, do you need to have taken at least one semester of organic chemistry to be successful on the MCAT? I don’t know, do you? You feel like you do?

Pooja: I think so.

Holly: Okay. So typically, if that’s the case, that’s in your sophomore year, right? of college. So what I would recommend then is really sometime in your junior year, if you’re wanting to go forward with an application to start medical school as a traditional student, going from straight from undergraduate to graduate school or to professional school. So I say that in that maybe we start doing some prep in your sophomore year, just some questions or a self Kaplan course or whatever is provided through your institution. But really taking the exam in spring, early spring of your junior year of college because you will have had most of the things that were required on the MCAT. And then you have time that if you get your score in January or in February, March, applications open in May, if you need to take it again, you can because the last score that schools look for is October.

So unfortunately, I’ve got a client right now who she did not do as well as she wanted to, and now we’re having to talk through, are we applying this year to certain schools or are we taking a whole another year to study for the MCAT? And so it’s this really fine line of how much time do you need, where are you scoring on practice exams, are you going to take a prep course, being able to build that time in. So it really just depends if you know straight out you’re going to do a gap year, cool. That’s fine. No pressure. We’ve got time to be able to take the MCAT. If you are not going to do a gap year and you want to go straight in from college, then or even if you’re a non-traditional student and you’re doing a postbac, you got to back it up to the application opens in May, the last MCAT they’re going to take is in October. So how much time do I have to prepare in that amount of time?

Pooja: Yeah. No, absolutely. That makes a lot of sense.

Holly: It’s a really a weird game to play.

Pooja: It is a weird game to play. And I wonder we’ve talked about MCAT scores, so I think we should address the elephant in the room which is does the MCAT score actually mean something to an admissions committee and what can it mean?

Holly: As a threshold element. Just as a basic threshold element. So it can it can be the yes or no. It really can at a minimum. It can be the difference at a wait list versus a yes immediately. So most schools, and we this is the time to talk about the MSAR, which is the medical school application requirement tool for the AMC. The MSAR is a application you can pay $29 a year to be able to have access to this website and it provides information on all LCME accredited schools. So that’s your allopathic institutions in the United States and Canada. So I can go in and I can see wherever, whatever school I want to look at, Columbia, I can see what their average is and if they have a minimum. So if I’m looking at Columbia and their minimum is, I don’t know, let’s just call it 510, but their average is a 525, I know that if I don’t have a 510 at Columbia, I’m probably not going to get a look. But a 510 at a lot of state schools is you are in. What else do you want? What do you need? So that’s where you really have to decide of how much time and energy am I going to put in to get either, depending on what’s kind of school you want to go to. A lot of people want to go to Ivys, a lot of people want to go to MD PhD’s. Some people are like, I want to be an MD or a DO in my home state.

So that varies greatly. So it’s a threshold element to see if you’re going to get an interview and then a lot of times it’s a leveling out of, I would take a lower MCAT sometimes or recommend a lower MCAT person versus someone with a higher one if they were a better fit to the mission. So it’s a yes or no for a threshold element, but it’s a really a sliding scale once you have applied and have interviewed on whether it’s accepted or not. It becomes less of a value add when you get past the interview in my opinion.

Pooja: Okay. So it seems like it’s a threshold to decide whether or not you interview, but then afterwards, that number doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the context of the person and whether or not you said it’s a fit to the school’s mission.

Holly: Yep, that’s what I to tell people in residency too, they’d say, oh, I have lower board scores. And well, that doesn’t matter. If you get to the interview, we’re not worried about that anymore. You don’t even bring it up. Unless they ask you, you’ve passed that part. Same with GPA. If you’ve passed the threshold of the minimum to get an interview, don’t talk about it anymore. Box is checked. We will handle the rest. And before we get into interviewing, there’s a most schools have closed file interviews, which closed file means that if I’m interviewing you Pooja at my institution, I have no idea what your stats are. I have trusted the admissions committee that you have met those elements and I am purely here to get to know you and make my recommendation about your passion and your interest in medicine at my institution. So a lot of students think, oh my gosh, everybody’s going to look at my MCAT and GPA. Mostly only the admissions committee.

Pooja: So speaking of MCAT and GPA, I know those are metrics that people can use to evaluate how competitive they are for certain schools and meeting that threshold. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the MSAR tool and how students can use that to understand where they fit in a school’s typical score range.

Holly: So I love the MSAR for a lot of reasons. One, you can pick your schools. and by the way, we’re not getting paid by the AMC. No, no funding to Holly or Pooja for promoting the MSAR. It’s just a really great. I have no conflict of interest to disclose in this presentation. But it’s a really great tool because then you can build your stats around where am I? Where do I fit with other people that they’ve accepted before and what’s their threshold element.

So I love the MSAR to be able to start to build that list because people will say, well, there’s so many medical schools, I don’t know what to do. I tell students to talk about region, where do you want to live, what kind of patient population do you want to serve, things like that. But then we can go to the MSAR and we can say, okay, here’s the GPA, here’s the MCAT, here’s the average GPA of the accepted student from last year and here’s where I fall. And then what I tell my students is, if you’re a certain percentage under, that’s a reach school. If you’re right at, that’s a mid-level school, we’re probably pretty sure you’re going to get an interview and get in. And then one’s where you’re well over are typically safety schools. And so then we build our application strategy based on that. If we’ve got a lot of reaches, okay, what are we doing here? Let’s start to work back through this.

Unfortunately, there isn’t a tool like this for osteopathic schools, but a lot of osteopathic schools you’ll just have to do a little bit more research and go to their websites or ask admissions what, are their averages? And what I would tell students, they would say, well, I don’t know why I got in or didn’t get in. And I’d say, well, did you ask them what their averages are? And they’re like, oh, it was this. And oh, and you had this. So read between the lines. We can tell that the MCAT was or the GPA was the thing that we were missing. But it’s really important to guide your list based on data because then you can save yourself some money, you can save yourself some heartache of having an accurate self-appraisal of where am I in my readiness to apply this year based on these things.

Pooja: Yeah, no, absolutely. And for those of you who are Googling this as we’re talking about it, the MSAR tool is the medical school admissions requirement and it’s a portal that you can pay for. I think it’s like 50 bucks or something for a year subscription which

Holly: Oh, I think it’s 20, 39.

Pooja: Even better. Even better. But it’s roughly like $39 or so for a subscription for about a year and you can use it to access the data that Holly described and so for anybody who is interested in that, I definitely recommend it because it just allows you to be more informed in making your decision. Especially because Holly was saying, there is where you fit in the application process, but then there’s also the idea of how do you fit to the school’s mission? And I think both of those things combined ultimately determine a lot of your application and how you’re going to present yourself and present different components. And I know for me, it’s something that I used pretty extensively.

I definitely used the MSAR to evaluate, okay, I need to have, I think I divided it into thirds, so I had a third reach schools, 1/3 match schools and then 1/3 safety schools. And I found it to be super helpful in creating that list because then once I had my school list, I then looked at the missions and was like, all right, these are the things that I need to do and I worked backwards to combine what the schools I’m applying for are looking for and what I have to bring to the table. And I think that’s a really smart way to go about it for any of you who are working from scratch at the very moment.

Holly: Yep. It’s $28 and I paid $2 in tax. So it came out to $30.73. So for me, that’s four less, three, four less coffees from Starbucks.

Pooja: So, that’s so depressing.

Holly: I know. I know. But we could budget that appropriately to get the MSAR if we really needed to.

Pooja: Yeah, absolutely. So, in terms of our next segment, I wanted to jump into the personal statement. Because we’ve been talking about it a lot and especially in the context of the primary application, but the personal statement I find is can cause a lot of panic and I know it’s certainly did for me because the process of writing a personal statement and balancing what we think admissions advisors want to hear versus what we think is true to ourselves can be really tricky. And so I wanted to ask you first, if a personal statement covers topics that are cliche, is that okay? So for example, I wrote about a sick grandparent and a lot of people in my school actually wrote about grandparents. And so I wonder, is that okay to write something that a lot of people are covering or is that not ideal?

Holly: Sure. It’s fine if your perspective is unique. So what are you trying to say about your grandparents? I see a lot of my grandparent had cancer and I watched the providers and that’s why I want to be a doctor. Fine. But what specifically did you see about the providers? Was it that they were caring? Was it that they were committed to service? Was it their medical knowledge? It can’t just be this bad thing happened to me or this sad thing happened to me or this person was really great. If I was going to write mine about my grandmother, it would be that her work ethic was undefeated and I am so proud to have that quality because I know it’ll make me a great physician.

So I don’t have a problem with people talking about the same kind of things. It’s a matter of how are you going to talk about those things to make you unique and to draw a parallel to why you’ll be a great physician. So another one I see a lot of is that there was an emergency and I felt helpless. Okay. So why does that helplessness matter? Why does the helplessness, how is that going to make you be a better doctor? Because you want to serve a community that is often underserved and they can feel helpless at certain times. You just have to unpack it more. So topics are only cliche if they follow the same pattern of not being unique to your story and why it’s important to you.

Pooja: Now that makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. I guess I wonder in terms of topics that are cliche and things. Another misconception that I think a lot of people have is about the hook. And I think people obsess over having a hook that is catchy and that brings the reader in. Is that really necessary?

Holly: I actually would be opposed to it, having a hook if it’s not going to relate to the rest of your story. So I have it all the time. I see personal statements and what does this story have to do with anything else in your document? Literally nothing. And so you could have a hook, but it has to relate and weave through the rest of everything else. So if we were going to talk about my grandmother, I would start with the features that she had. So my parents are very fair complected, blonde hair, blue eyes, hazel eyes, and when I was born, I had jet black hair, which I now color to be a little bit darker, but not it’s not jet black. And my parents were like, who’s baby is this? This does not look like us. Well, it was very obvious I looked like my grandmother. And so I would probably tell that story about being born and the fact that I don’t look like my parents, but if you look at a picture, you can tell I very easily look like my paternal grandmother and that my paternal grandmother gave me more than looks like her. She gave me a strong work ethic. She gave me a belief in myself and the ability of what women can do. And so you can see there that I took this hook of a baby being born and not looking like their parents to these qualities about this woman that will make me a great physician.

I had a student who I was reading their personal statement yesterday, growing up and talking about growing up in a house of educators, but then the rest of the personal statement didn’t have anything to do with education. So what’s the point of you telling that story? And why just needed a hook? Okay, well, you also talk about growing up in a rural part of the state. What if we made these qualities that you’re talking about in your personal statement relate to a rural environment because she talked about adaptability, having grace with each other and teamwork. So we changed it to be, it takes a village to be successful because statistically people from rural areas don’t go to college or they don’t go to medical school. And that’s nothing against them. It’s just you don’t have the resources to do so. So we changed the hook to be that instead and it made her personal statement flow so much better. It was just this small change. And so you have to ask yourself, does the hook make sense with the rest of the stuff that I’m trying to tell? Or else we read it and what? Why are you telling me this story? It doesn’t go. You got to think about the bigger picture. It’s the same thing I said about your application. What do you want me to learn about you?

Pooja: Got it. Okay. That is super helpful. Thank you for outlining all of that. And I feel like it does seem like a catchy hook is helpful, but not at the cost of creating a cohesive application, sort of like what we talked about earlier. If you have to choose between a catchy hook and a cohesive application, the cohesive application that is true to yourself wins every single time.

Holly: Absolutely, because we can see that consistency and we can see that effort throughout the entire application.

Pooja: So I have another question and I ask this partially for our listeners but also partially for me because I’m working on a personal statement. I’m looking to submit it in a couple of days but it’s hard to know when is the personal statement done?

Holly: I actually answered this question yesterday for some students when you can literally give no more. So my husband is a coach I said and when we work out, it’s to failure. And I know failure sounds like a nasty word, but it literally is I can give no more of myself. And as an advisor, I can tell when a student, when I’ve sent it back for edits and the changes aren’t happening anymore and I have to say, okay, your muscles are tired, we’re done. Is this your best effort? So to give an anecdote from my dad, my dad when I was in college, I did not do so well a couple of semesters, had a little too much fun and my second semester that I had a little after a conversation that it was if you don’t do better, you’re going to come home and go to community college. I got a 2.8 and the rule of my dad was a 3.0. And he said he called me, I was on my way to go see a friend and in tears waiting for this call for him to rip me out of college and tell me I have to come home. And he asked me, he said, did you give it everything you had? And I was like, no, I didn’t. And that’s the problem. Do better. The next semester I got a 4.0.

So I have to say to my clients, did you give it everything you have? Even if it’s not perfect, even if it’s not the Pulitzer Prize winning, if they can look me in the face and say yes, and then we’re done. We’re done. You just have to ask yourself, is this my best effort? Is this the best I can produce? And if the answer is yes, then it’s good enough because you literally can do no more. So it’s the same thing when you’re studying, there’s a point of diminishing returns. We just got to be done. So that’s what I tell people. It’s to failure. It’s to I literally have given you everything I can. If you haven’t given me everything you can, then you have another revision in you.

Pooja: Got it. Okay. That is that is helpful. And I also feel like that’s a pretty good end marker for a lot of people too being like, all right, I literally can’t think of anything else that I can add, take away, edit. Therefore, I’m done. I know another follow up question I guess I have about it is for those of us, as you know, many premeds and med students are type A perfectionists. What do you say to the person who feels like it’s never done even if they feel like they have nothing to give?

Holly: Without being sarcastic, I would say, welcome to life and growth. That is life as a professional. There are going to be times where, I’m a mom of four, I work full time, I’m married. There are some days that I just don’t do a great job in one of those three things or in all of those three things. But I have to keep moving on. So I would say, it’s to whose standard? Is it not good enough for you? Because you have unrealistic expectations or it’s not good enough because there’s a lot of errors in it or the ideas aren’t unique or you haven’t put in your best. And so what I would say is that’s when you need to seek wise counsel. That’s when you need to have someone who knows you well, look at it, who’s going to be honest with you. You need to have someone an advisor at your school or something like that or a mentor look at it and see what they think. Because if it’s just an idea formation, sure, that’s fixable. But if you’re being unrealistic with yourself that it’s going to be the most perfect, beautiful thing you’ve ever written, that’s unrealistic. I was told during my dissertation, the best dissertation is a done dissertation. A best for the best personal statement is a correctly done personal statement. It’s never going to be perfect in your eyes because you’ve got too much weight put on it. This is the thing that’s going to get you into medical school. Uh it’s a part of the whole. So I would say is it the effort statement or is it the fear and the anxiety of the weight of this statement? I can’t really help you with the latter. You have to accept that.

Pooja: Okay. Yeah. I mean, listen, nothing about this is easy, but I think that’s part of the process.

Holly: Well, that’s the maturity thing again, right? You got to know when you got to be done. You got to know when it’s time to walk away and be good with it.

Pooja: So, another final question I have about personal statements is what is the biggest mistake that you’ve seen in them and is there anything that you think as a general rule people should avoid doing?

Holly: Yeah, I’d say the biggest mistake is not putting enough effort in. And so that can mean a lot of things, not enough effort in your idea formation, not enough effort in your editing. So having mistakes, spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, y’all, you heard my bio, I majored in English and I have a degree in journalism. Punctuation goes inside quotations, not paying attention to things like that we learned in sixth grade grammar, using the wrong there they’re their. Those things show a lack of attention to detail or just a lack of general knowledge that give pause. So I would say the biggest thing to avoid is just not putting the appropriate amount of effort into it because you don’t want to or you don’t think it’s necessary. It’s same thing goes for your application, reading over it with a fine tooth comb. People make mistakes, that’s okay, but not doing what you need to do to make sure it’s the best it can be, that’s a death sentence.

Pooja: Yeah. No, absolutely. I completely agree with that. And I think it makes a lot of sense that there’s two levels of effort. There’s the actual mechanical structure of your application, and then there’s also the content of it. And so it’s important for people as they’re going through it to make sure they’ve gone through both. And I know for me, I wrote several different versions and had many revisions and had many eyes on it. And for my residency applications, I’m literally doing the same thing all over again. But it’s that amount of effort that’s really important. And truthfully, I think there’s a lot of strength that comes from putting a lot of effort into your personal statement because it forces you to think about who you are and how you want to come across in the rest of your application and in your interviews and in everything. And it kind of at least for me, helps me do the soul searching that is necessary when you’re applying.

Holly: Yeah, it’s that precision.

Pooja: Yeah, exactly, exactly. Now that we’ve talked about the personal statement, I want to dig into the activities and experiences because it’s on the primary application and it’s a big part of it. But the focus of it, like we’ve alluded to earlier, is a little different and it seems easy, but writing those blurbs can honestly be deceptively hard because you have less characters to do it. Why do you think students struggle the most with the activity section?

Holly: I think it’s because they can’t decide how it needs to be done. There’s a couple different facets of that of what do you think we want to hear and what’s important and then how do I actually write it? So a lot of times, when I’m looking at applications, I get folks who are trying to be super narrative and tell me, and this is how I felt when I walked into the operating room for the first time as a scribe. Don’t care. You can tell me that story in an interview. That’s great. I do not need to know that on your application. I need to know what did you do and what was the context of it.

So scribing is a very common activity on a medical school application. I want to know what kind of an environment were you in? How many patients did you see with your physician in a day? How many physicians did you work for? What was the patient population? Because when I’m looking at your activities, I’m looking at what is your fit? What is your fit to this institution? What is your fit to preparation to medical school? And if you’re giving me a narrative about my heart was beating out of my chest, that tells me none of that. That tells me that it was good for you for that physiological response. So it really, I think students get really challenged on what’s important to show us and how do you actually do it.

Pooja: Right. No, absolutely. Okay. And I guess with that in mind, with especially when we’re talking about impact and we’re talking about the number of patients and the actual metrics of it, what would you say to someone who doesn’t think their experiences are impressive enough or they think I didn’t see that many patients or I didn’t do this many things.

Holly: I guess I would ask you a question, impressive to who? Because that’s… not most people don’t do those things, right? Like 1% of the population are physicians. So the fact that you had that kind of job, the fact that you had that kind of experience that you went out of your way. And honestly, we’re not looking at it being impressive, we’re just trying to understand. So, I you know, you live in New York City. I live in Arkansas. If I were to talk about an emergency room in rural Arkansas, it may only be one provider for 10 beds. But if that one provider for 10 beds serves a five county radius, that’s kind of equivalent to your New York City neighborhood. I mean truly, but with less resources, right? So it’s about context. It’s not apples to apples. It’s about what do you do with what you have.

And then the cool thing about the application is that you get these most meaningful experiences. So then you get to tell me why it was important. So it was really important for me to serve in the as a scribe in this rural emergency room because I got to see one, what a lack of accessibility to care does to patients and their visits to the emergency room. And two, how resourceful these physicians could be. I care way more about that. I care way more about what you learn from that experience. And it could be the same thing or a different thing in a New York City emergency department, right? Like I got to see what drug dependency does to an unhoused population. That could be the exact same thing in a rural environment. It’s just it’s just the setting is a little bit different. And so really we just want to and I didn’t mean that was not supposed to be a sweeping generalization. We just know that there are certain things that happen in urban environments versus rural environments. But the that’s what we want to know. We want to know the context so that it’s just a pure understanding because that goes with the fit.

And so people would say, well, I’m from a rural environment, they’d never let me into Columbia. I don’t know, maybe they would because can you draw a parallel between that urban and rural have a lot of the same problems or suburban have a lot of the same problems. It’s about context so that we can say, okay, this person gets it and they will do well here. It’s not about being impressive. But that’s the that’s the ego side of us of that am I good enough? Yes. Yes, you are. Just show us that.

Pooja: Yeah. No, absolutely. I completely agree and I also will say for your point about rural to an urban school, like Columbia, one of my classmates is from the University of Mississippi. Like there are people who come from rural populations. I think a lot of what a lot of people I think failed to realize is that just because you come from a certain environment doesn’t mean you’re not a good fit for a different one. Because I think that in any sort of training, you benefit from the diversity of your peers as much as you benefit from the diversity of your patients. And so I think there’s something to be said about being able to bring a perspective that a lot of your peers may not have. Um and so I think it’s just a matter of like you said, drawing parallels, being able to spin that, be able to say, I want to bring my rural perspective into this urban institution. And I want to learn how I can take elements of urban care and bring it back to my rural future or something like that. Yeah, I think it’d be really valuable.

Holly: So exactly what you said, you know, when we talk about secondaries, they’re going to ask you a question of like, what makes you unique? Like what do you bring to this area? And a lot of students will say, well, I don’t know what makes me special. Well, we have very different backgrounds. And the background that I didn’t grow up with a lot of ethnic or religious or racial diversity shows me that I need to be in an environment where I can learn those things and I’m recognizing those things. But if you grew up in an urban environment, you don’t know what rural people go through and I get to bring that to you and say, do you know what it’s like to have to travel 45 minutes to the doctor to be able to get care. And you can say, no, actually I can go to a doctor on the corner and it will be just fine. Or a doctor that looks like me or believes the things that I believe or things like that. And so the all of this, I’m hoping that people see all of this weaves together to be that you’re the same person that values these things in your personal statement, in your application, in your secondaries. and that’s why it’s important. So it’s not, am I good enough? It’s, what is my story and how do I fit to this institution?

Pooja: Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I think it’s really important as you said to play into your strengths. And I think that’s the theme that I’m gathering from a lot of what you’re saying is that it’s important to understand what you bring to the table and play that up as much as you can. In terms of our final segment, I want to talk a little bit about letters of recommendation.

So, letters of recommendation in my perspective and a lot of people’s perspective is a pretty scary thing because they seem like things that are out of your control. And one thing that premeds and people in general love are things that are in your control. And letters of recommendation can feel like they’re not. But I feel like I would argue and I think you would argue as well that they’re not completely out of your hands, right? Because when it comes to letters of recommendation, there’s a couple of questions that I wanted to walk through, but I want to bring this agenda on my end that you do have some control over the letters of recommendation. It isn’t just something that’s out of your control. So to go through them one by one, the first question I want to ask is who do you ask for a letter of recommendation because there’s a lot of options to choose from.

Holly: Sure. So that’s going to depend on what your school provides and what medical schools require. So some schools provide a committee letter. So a committee letter is where you go to the premed committee and they’ve got this panel for lack of a better word of people and they say, hey, tell me, they’ve got all your materials in front of you. And they write a letter as a committee to endorse and then there are individual letters from each of those people. And ideally those people, the way they’ve set the committee up is that those people have had you in class. So maybe one of them is the organic chemistry professor or one of them is the physics professor or something like that and then the other one is the overall premed advisor. So sometimes those are staff members or sometimes those are faculty members. And they will write what’s called the committee letter that has all of these things. So the first page will be, we recommend Pooja based on these qualities that we rank based in our in our department or in our college. And then each person will say, I had Pooja in class and she did XYZ or I was Pooja’s advisor for the academic Honor Society and she did XYZ. And so that’s one thing. If you submit a committee letter, you don’t have to have any other academic letters. That can be sufficient. You may want to include a physician letter if you if you shadowed, but there’s no other academic letters that are needed.

If your school does not do a committee letter, which a lot of schools don’t, you need two science faculty. So that can be chemistry, biology, physics, one of those basic science faculty members and then a physician or anybody else or an advisor or a boss, a supervisor if you had a job, a research mentor, whoever. And so the magic number is three in that way, but they want two science faculty. They know that not everyone has access to a physician to shadow. They know not everybody has access to a research partner. So I’ve written academic letters for students for their residency applications, just as a narrative to say, this is who they were in medical school, this is why they’re great, this is why they would be a wonderful resident. I’ve written them for sorority members of this is who she was as an advisor because all of those qualities still matter. So I don’t want people to hear, oh, well, I don’t have a physician, so my application’s not going to be great. Not true. Anybody who has a strong relationship with you who can speak to who you are and what you’ve done can make a huge difference in your in your recommendations.

Pooja: Okay. So it sounds like regardless of the background of your letter writer, as long as they’re able to speak to who you are and they at least know you on some level that kind of creates a strong and specific letter from a person.

Holly: Absolutely. Yeah. And their endorsement. 

Pooja: Let’s say you have to have a science letter and the only science professors that you had were people who had large lectures of 200 plus people and you barely talk to them and you don’t know them quite well. How can you help that person who has to write your letter? How can you help them make the letter less generic?

Holly: So there’s a couple things you can do. One is being intentional. So if you know you want to go to medical school and you know you have these big labs is to go to the professor. And this is the same thing I would give to a medical student as advice for someone who’s going to write them a letter of recommendation for residency is go tell them, Dr. so and so, Professor so and so, I’m going to ask for a letter at the end of this course. Okay? We’ve got an entire semester to get to know each other. What do you need to feel good about that to make that happen? And ask them, put them on the spot. Well, I need you to perform this well on your exams. I need you to do check ins with me, ask them specifically what they need from you to feel good about it, to know your name and to not give you a generic letter.

The other thing you can do is provide them with resources. So whenever I write a letter of recommendation for students, I always ask for their CV because I may not know them in the other things that they do, but I can speak to it and I can speak to the qualities that they’ve demonstrated. So I had an intern at my previous institution that she had asked for a recommendation for an award she was getting and then she’s also asked me to recommend her for a master’s program. It’s a master’s program and what I have my PhD in. So I wrote about her and I said, she was I wrote about the extent of our relationship. So she was my intern, she helped me with this kind of work. And then I would say, I also knew her because of her activities and her successes outside the classroom. She was a leader in her sorority. She was recommended for this prestigious award because of her work ethic. I can tell you that those qualities as someone who is a practitioner in this field will help her be successful in the course work for this master’s degree. So even though I didn’t know her as a Chi Omega or as a whatever, I can talk about those qualities and how those qualities translate to what we’re doing.

So it’s the same thing of if you are someone’s supervisor, even if you weren’t and didn’t go to medical school, you know medical school is hard and it takes work ethic. So I can speak to your specific abilities to work hard and finish things on time and show up on time and do those things, which are things that we expect of you as a medical student. So I don’t want people to harp on the like, oh my gosh, it’s not a doctor, if it’s not this or that. It does not matter. We know the qualities that we can write about you to make you a good doctor, that are required to be a good doctor. It doesn’t have to be this heavy science. So the two things, ask them what they need to write a successful letter and show up for those things. And then provide them the resources that they need to be able to write a thoughtful letter on top of the things that they already know about you.

Pooja: On top of the CV, is there anything else that you think people should consider giving their letter writers to help them write the letter?

Holly: I mean, I think a good conversation goes a long way. Asking them if you can meet for coffee at a public place on campus and say, hey, can I just tell you my story? Can I tell you why I want to be a doctor? Can I tell you what that motivation is? Because getting to know people on a human level makes a huge difference in being able to do that. And I recommend that for when you’re asking for one, even if it’s a boss that you’ve had for a long time. Hey, can we take some time and I can just talk to you. I know you know I want to be a doctor, but can I tell you why so you can understand this deeper understanding. And that puts the impetus on you too to be like, okay, now I got to get my ducks in a row of what do I want to tell this person about what my motivation is. And then they can be really honest. I’ve seen Holly demonstrate these qualities. I’ve seen her commitment or I understand her commitment to want to do this career and I believe that it’s genuine and sincere.

Pooja: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess the final question that I have about letters of recommendation is when is the latest that someone should ask for a letter if they’re applying this upcoming cycle?

Holly: So, most places will not interview you without a completed application, which includes your letters of recommendation. So you want to work backwards again. So when do they typically start doing interviews? MSAR has that. So if they start sending out interviews in August or September, you definitely want them in by then. So, the application is open in May, people are on vacation, they aren’t looking at it. I mean, maybe they’re starting to look at onesie, twosie applications, but I typically give people a deadline of mid-September. That if you’re going to tell somebody, hey, I need this letter in mid-September, ask them how much time they need to be able to do that for you. And just be honest with the expectation of, hey, the applications are due at this time, this is when I’m looking to submit. Will that be doable for you? And it’s better for someone to tell you on the front end that it’s not doable than for you to be waiting for them and then be in a hissy when you don’t have the letter that you need to be successful.

Pooja: Yeah, no that makes a lot of sense. Being proactive and being prepared is super important and having it prepared like months in advance seems to be the best recommendations for that.

Holly: Okay. Yes. It’s going to save you a lot of stress in an already stressful situation.

Pooja: Totally, totally. 

Holly: Can you speak to that with your application being due on Tuesday?

Pooja: You know, yeah, I fortunately, I am very lucky that my letter writers have all they’re all amazing people and very proactive. So they’ve already submitted things, but there are some things that I’m still waiting on and so I know that I know that they’re going to come. I’ve been told that they’re going to come, but it is definitely stressful because I’m just sitting here like, it says incomplete on my portal. I want it to say complete now. But yeah, I could definitely attest. The more the earlier you do things the better. And even now, I’m I’ve most of my application is done, but I have to put things manually into the portal and I’m like, why is typing things into something that I’ve already written out so stressful, but it is. It is stressful.

Holly: That’s why I’m saying alleviate the stress as much as possible. Give people leeway, give them people just want to know a deadline. Like if you tell me that something’s due October 1st, I’m looking at my calendar, I’m like, okay, I have like two weeks to get that done. If you tell me an indefinite time frame, it’s going to the back burner. I’m being real. It is the last thing on my mind. And so do people a favor and say, hey, I’m really looking to submit by this time, well, is this doable for you? And they can say yes, because if not, my husband’s a football coach, this is a terrible time of the year for me personally. And so if you ask me to do one more thing right now, the answer’s probably no. So it’s better if you can give me a leeway and I can be honest with you to say, yes, I can absolutely do that. Thank you for giving me that runway because it’s a big ask to invite someone to write a letter. We love to do it because we know it’s going to help you, but to do it well, just give people boundaries and give them timelines and that’s on you as the person asking to do that.

Pooja: Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. That makes a lot of sense. So, let’s really quickly before we end this episode, just run down our favorite takeaways from today’s conversation. So for me, I feel like the biggest takeaway is making sure you’re staying true to who you are and being genuine and by doing so creating a really cohesive application. I think that to me is the biggest thing that I think helped me stand out when I was doing this process myself, hopefully will help me stand out when I’m doing this process all over again. And I think it’s something that a lot of people have a misconception of because they obsess over that checklist. Holly, is there anything that you feel like you took away?

Holly: Yeah, I think just giving this the respect and attention it deserves. So a lot of times when I start working with students, they’re like, oh my gosh, this is so much work, so much more work than I thought it was. And it is, it is, it’s a lot. And a lot of that is the test to see if you’ll put the work in to do what you need to do. And so go in eyes wide open to know that this is not a one and done. This is not the common app applying to college. This is time and effort and thought and respect for your future career and for the process that you’re going through. And that then you submit the application and then you do this and I know we get that into that in future episodes, but it’s a long process. So being aware of that it’s going to take a minute and it’s going to take time and it’s going to take effort and giving it the effort that it deserves.

Pooja: All right. So to our listeners, thank you so much for joining us and thank you for sticking to the end of this episode to hear us out. We hope you learned something because I know I certainly did. Next episode, we will be digging into what happens after you submit your primary application once it’s verified and you get to those next steps, which are the secondary application and the interviews. Thank you guys so much for listening to Pursuit of Practice brought to you by Blueprint and we will see you next time.