Vodka on the rocks - Harvard - Free example medical school statement
Hometown: Edina, Minnesota, USA
Undergraduate School: Private, Harvard University
Major: Molecular and Cellular Biology
GPA: 3.94
MCAT: 42. PS: 15, V: 12, BS: 15.
Free example medical school statement
Of all the doctors I had met, this one was by far the strangest, and I looked upon her with some suspicion. She was a sickly-looking young woman who could not have been much older than me, sitting on a dirt floor. She avoided eye contact as we walked in. None of these things did her bedside manner any favors, nor did the fact that her medicines were all stored in recycled Smirnoff vodka bottles. But looking around, I realized that this was probably what the practice of medicine had looked like for most of human existence. She was a healer in the original sense of the word, the sangoma of a Zulu village in the Valley of 1000 Hills, South Africa.
The first rule when one visits the sangoma is that one does not say a word. That is, not until she asks a number of questions which may seem mysterious to the Western ear. Do your bones hurt? Your son is strong? Your cows are fat? Your ancestors have spoken to you? A patient with a stomachache does not simply tell the sangoma, but rather waits and answers her questions until she asks if he has a stomachache. At this point, a cure can be devised. This roundabout way of diagnosis caused me to ponder the original concept of medicine. It also made me look back on the path that had brought me here in the first place.
When I arrived at college as a freshman, I eagerly looked forward to receiving a great education from the faculty and my outstanding peers. Little did I expect that I would learn just as much from the homeless people in front of the local CVS pharmacy. As a health resources advocate, every week I lead a team of volunteers to community dinners for the homeless and low-income residents of Cambridge, where we offer free health resource counseling and blood pressure testing. While we strive to help our guests obtain health insurance and find clinics, I’ve realized that one of the most valuable services that we offer guests is simply listening to them. For people who spend their days begging from strangers and being mostly ignored, finding a listening ear is therapeutic. And with open ears, I’ve learned a lot. One weathered-looking homeless man even quizzed me about the Krebs cycle and ATP synthase as I took his blood pressure, just in time for my upcoming exam. The seemingly one-dimensional profile of a low-income guest with a health problem is actually a complex 3-D narrative, full of social factors, anecdotes, and even fun facts. I sometimes wonder if this 3-D view of a person was something that the sangoma’s holistic questions were getting at.
The sheer simplicity of the sangoma’s hut also reminded me of one of the moments that touched me the most while shadowing physicians. While I have glimpsed medicine at some of its more dramatic moments, such as observing treatment of a patient with a life-threatening bone marrow infection, I have also seen its more mundane moments, watching a family physician patiently taking care of a patient’s earwax complaint. And surprisingly, it was at such unglamorous moments that the humanness of the patient-doctor interaction struck me the most. I realized just how much goes into being a caring physician: not just medical expertise, bedside manner, and work ethic, but true commitment to care in even the little things, including but not limited to cleaning out a waxy ear canal. To me, this kind of commitment to care is what makes a healer.
If I found the sangoma’s method of diagnosis intriguing, I wondered what she would have thought of mine. As a summer research fellow in the microfluidics lab of Dr. Frederick Balagaddé in South Africa, I was writing a computer program to help develop a small microfluidics chip that could serve as a point-of-care diagnostic platform for diseases like HIV and TB. As Dr. Balagaddé likes to say, we want to “fit 99 doctors into a chip,” enabling multi-purpose diagnostic testing in even the most rural settings. In this sangoma’s village, most people had barely enough money to take a crowded minibus to the city clinics. But what if we could one day give that sangoma a user-friendly “lab on a chip” that could allow her to conduct several tests with a single device without ever leaving her hut? I find possibilities like this nothing short of thrilling and believe that this is also part of being a healer: envisioning a better way to deliver better care. My dream is to be a physician who not only gives compassionate care on an individual level, but also contributes to the translation of new discoveries in science and engineering into better patient outcomes in the clinic or the village.
When I think of the sangoma today, I am reminded of the fact that the art of healing is in constant flux, and that is part of the great excitement of medicine. I can’t wait to see where the research questions of today take us, and how new understandings change the ways we treat patients. But I’m also reminded of the basic human commitment to care that defines and has always defined a healer, a commitment to care that I would be honored to be a part of. I can still see the dirt path leading away from the sangoma’s hut today. It is long and winding, full of exciting unanswered questions, and I can’t wait to get started on my journey. As I have learned, the answers often come from unexpected places.
Analysis
Michael immediately captures the reader’s attention by sharing his intriguing encounter with a sangoma. He compares the sangoma’s caring and thoughtful approach to healing to his experience becoming acquainted with the homeless people he met while leading community dinners. In doing so, not only does he showcase some of his volunteer work, but he also effectively highlights one aspect of why he is drawn to the medical field: a commitment to care.
Michael moves on to discuss his summer research, connecting it to a desire to expand medical innovations and discoveries, highlighting yet another reason he wants to enter the field of medicine: the opportunity to make impactful medical advancements. By emphasizing his desire to innovate, he highlights his long-term goals as a medical professional and makes himself an even more appealing prospective student of medicine.
Overall, the success of this essay lies in Michael’s ability to eloquently convey multiple experiences, both directly and indirectly relevant to the medical field, and then connect them to the core values that are indicative of his outstanding character.
From 50 Successful Harvard Medical School Essays edited by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson. Copyright (c) 2020 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group