Brown Girl Vs Applying to Med School

Throughout this years application cycle, I have said to myself that I don’t want that many people knowing about my business. I mean, at the end of the day, not everyone needs to know every tiny detail about your life, right? But now, I feel like I am in a place where I am ready to tell everyone what the past two years have been like for me 🙂 .

Applying to study medicine is stressful enough. But being brown adds even more stress to the pot. The second people clock on to your desire to study medicine, they expect it to happen instantly and question why you haven’t started if you seem to be taking some time to get into med school. Not realising that in the UK (and I’m sure its the same case in places like America, Australia etc) it is actually a hoop jumping exercise. It literally takes over a year to do all of the following:

1. Revise for and sit some horrible entrance exams
2. Complete UCAS and your personal statement without sounding big headed
3. Research which schools appeal to you and narrow them down to a max of four choices
4. Wait a lifetime for interview invites
5. Prepare for interviews when you receive an interview invitation
6. Travel around the country for interviews and spend money on hotels and train tickets
7. Wait for weeks/months post interview until you hear something
8. If successful, start in September the following year

In between all of this, you will also without a doubt end up doing the following:

1. Question what the meaning of life is
2. Contemplate on whether you will ever get into medical school
3. Develop an addiction to checking TSR (The Student Room)
4. Have regular break downs until crying becomes the norm
5. Lose hope over and over again
6. Get obsessed with refreshing your emails
7. Jump at every time you see/hear an email notification
8. Start developing a strong hate towards emails from New Look, ASOS etc
9. Dread having to go through the whole process again

For me, not telling people was probably the best decision I made. This meant there was no added pressure from people asking how it’s going, whether I have had interviews etc. I only told those closest to me and my colleagues at work. I made sure not to tell the whole brown squad because before you know it, the whole community would find out. Funnily enough, somehow somewhere down the line it leaked and more people got to know. But let’s not get into that 😛 .

In this post from a long time ago (Brown Girl Vs. Asian Uncles) I mentioned how this uncle was telling me what he would’ve done if he was in my shoes, and how he would’ve just gone straight into medicine without leaving a year or two in between. This made me very angry, because he made it sound like I was wanting to delay getting into med for no reason. But it wasn’t.

In an ideal world, I would’ve liked to have gone straight into med school the summer after my first degree. It was me understanding how competitive medicine is, wanting to fully focus on completing my first degree and getting the grades needed to apply. Wanting to take time out to work in the NHS, gain valuable experience and save up.

Do I regret the choice that I made? Not at all. 🙂

So yes, my first application the summer following completion of my first degree didn’t go well. But it was my first application and this was expected. I applied to competitive universities with a weak UKCAT score. But I applied because I had nothing to lose. I ended up getting four pre-interview rejections. But this simply fuelled my desire to make the following years application worth it. I learnt where my weaknesses were and focused on them. I started working in a place where I was learning and seeing so much. I started my UKCAT revision early (but not too early) to give myself the best shot at achieving a decent score. I was also making new friends. I was loving my job. I was earning money. I was content with life.

I did the UKCAT again the following year and it went better than expected. A month later, I got a last minute interview invite to one of the universities that had initially rejected me earlier on in the cycle. Due to limited time to prepare adequately, I didn’t get in (and in many ways, I am grateful). But I went to the interview anyway, to experience what the process is like, see where I struggle the most, and make sure I work on those areas in time for the following years application.

It is so important to be smart with where you apply to. You need to apply to universities that are going to view your stats as strengths, to maximise your chances of getting an interview. Calling up and asking for cut off’s from previous years is key, to get a rough indication of where you may stand. When the national deciles were released, I was so relieved. My score was within the top decile. I had a chance. And I took my chances and applied to four competitive universities yet again.

The chance I took paid off. I got four interviews. I prepped. I felt overwhelmed. I received post interview rejections, one which really knocked my confidence as I thought I had a decent shot at getting an offer. But at the end of the day, it’s a number crunching game. There’s only so many people they can take on at each university. Getting a rejection doesn’t mean it’s the end of the road. Graduate Entry is known to be ridiculously difficult. But it’s so hard to remember all that when you receive a rejection, and you do nothing but feel like you’re worthless 😦 .

My first post-interview rejection I saw coming, so I was only down about it for a day or so. My second post-interview rejection really hit me though – I was down about it for a whole week. After that, I sort of became desensitised to the whole process? I literally gave up hope with the other two universities. I decided to take a month or two to forget about everything and just decide on whether I have the energy to apply for the third time, whether I really wanted this, or whether it was time to go down a different route for good.

Applying to medicine has taught me so much. Not just about myself, but about the real world too. It really is an emotional rollercoaster, even before you’ve entered medical school. I really want to share what I have learnt about the process with others who will one day be in my position applying for Graduate Entry. I want to share the things that worked and didn’t work for me, and hopefully a bit of what I have to share will help someone to achieve their own goal one day 🙂 .

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