Co-resident: *announces birth of her baby boy (she’s one floor away rn) with photo to our group chat*

Now that we’re long distance, it’s equally sad and welcoming

Today it’s sad

(2) applying to med school this summer, and I know that I need to provide contact info for someone who can vouch for every activity that I put on the application. I don’t think that this employer would have great things to say about me if a med school contacted them, but I don’t want to leave over a year gap in my employment record, so I'm not sure what's the best thing to do.

Hey,

I can only answer from my own context but I’ll try to help.

1) From my experience, I only had to list “verifiers” of my activities submitted on my application. The med school didn’t have prolonged “reference letter” type conversations with my verifiers. They literally asked “did she do the thing she says?”

2) I don’t believe previous employers are allowed to give negative references. I would have to fact check this - but would encourage you to look into it.

It’s prudent to reach out to verifiers to confirm they are willing to be contacted by the medical school. If you do so maturely, I think it would be the right thing and the mature thing for your precious employer to at least verify that you did work for them for the given period you wish to list. If the misunderstanding runs so deep that you don’t feel their telling of their side of the truth would align with yours, even after talking to them, see if there is an alternate person from that organization who could be a verifier for you. I would be surprised if an agreement couldn’t be reached this way but if not, then I’d pursue conversations with some people around you who you trust about whether or not to list that work experience. I doubt that a gap in employment would make or break an application - I think evidence of honesty and professionalism in your efforts to handle this delicate situation would be more important. But that’s a toughie. Reaching out to your precious employer likely won’t feel easy but tough issues of professionalism rarely are.

Oh that’s a hard question. The med schools I applied to had very specific applications and boxes you needed to fit your experiences into. I didn’t have to write personal letters until I applied to residency.

In general though, START EARLY. Putting yourself into words is hard and will very likely require a ton of revision, reworking, and proofreading.

Know which points you’re trying to get across before you start. Your writing needs direction to be effective.

Think of illustrative examples if that’s something they’re asking for but figure out how to make them concise or which parts are non-essential that you can omit.

Ask your trusted circle for feedback and to help you think out loud about what you’re trying to communicate. My mom gave tons of her time to me as I worked on my residency letters and it was invaluable.

I scheduled my MCAT for the spring after I completed all my pre-reqs for med school and then consistently worked my way through a set of ExamKracker books, including their practice questions. I think I did about 2 or 3 practice exams as well but I can’t remember exactly.

I think the main thing is being disciplined, regardless of how you choose to study. The next thing is to know how you study. I need to see and write, so I read the books and made my notes. Doing practice questions is very helpful because it’s also about examinship and gets you used to the format.

To be completely honest, I was completely uncertain and anxious about it right up until the day I got in. I had been flat out rejected by another school the day before and was mentally gearing up for another round of applications and hoping I’d get interviews again.