From B-Minuses at Vanderbilt to Ivy League MD/PhD

SHOW NOTES: 

In this episode of The Oath Podcast, Dr. Jessica Freedman interviews Reed, a Vanderbilt senior who earned admission to an Ivy League MD‑PhD program without taking a gap year despite multiple B‑ grades in his premed coursework. Reed shares how an early focus on social life, Greek life, and “just enough” studying led to a 3.38 freshman BCPM GPA and serious doubts about whether he belonged on the premed path. 

You’ll hear how he built 2,700+ hours of neuroscience research, embraced “being wrong” in the lab, chose a neuroscience and communication of science double major, and decided to apply MD‑PhD straight through. Reed’s story shows why perfection isn’t required for top programs—and how reflection, maturity, and smart time management can turn early missteps into a compelling narrative.

What you’ll learn:

• Why B/B‑ grades early in college don’t have to end your MD or MD‑PhD ambitions.
• How clinical exposure can reignite motivation and clarify fit for medicine.
  
  
• How to build meaningful, longitudinal research experiences and talk about “failed” hypotheses.
  
  
• How to think about gap years, committee letters, and applying MD‑PhD straight through from college.

TIMESTAMPS:

00:00 – Why bumps, dips, and B‑ grades aren’t the end of your story.

02:20 – Vanderbilt freshman year: balancing fun, Greek life, and premed requirements… and earning B‑ in gen chem and intro bio.

04:45 – Shadowing neurology and wondering, “Is medicine even for me?”

07:00 – Freshman BCPM 3.38 and thinking about leaving premed.

09:20 – EMT course in an underserved Texas ER and rediscovering a love for hands‑on medicine.

11:40 – Shadowing a neurosurgeon and seeing immediate impact on patients and families.

13:55 – Dropping fraternity, joining two research labs, and using LifeFlight night shifts to master orgo.

18:30 – Building 1,800+ research hours sophomore–junior year and another 900 senior year.

20:50 – Neuro ICU care partner role, premed society, and early TA experience.

23:10 – “We were wrong”: the Mass General Alzheimer’s project that flipped its hypothesis.

27:40 – Turning rejection from a prestigious fellowship into a better‑fit research summer.

30:00 – Choosing neuroscience plus communication of science as a powerful double major.

32:20 – Deciding to apply MD‑PhD without a gap year and why average stats can be misleading.

39:20 – Reed’s unconventional MCAT strategy (paper flashcards, full‑lengths, and holiday study marathons).

If Reed’s story encouraged you, follow The Oath Podcast, leave a rating or review, and share this episode with a premed friend who’s worried about “imperfect” grades

LINKS AND RESOURCES

❓Need Help? Sign up for FREE 15 Minute Consultation with a MedEdits physician advisor.

📘 Purchase the MedEdits Guide to Medical School Admissions on Amazon

👋 Find MedEdits on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Transcript

SPEAKER_04 0:00

The bumps and the dips and the lows and the rejections and the bad grades aren't the end of the story. They're a chance to sort of pick yourself up and improve. And so even when you don't have the GPA you want, or you didn't get the fellowship that you want, or you have to move out of a social group, like changing out of a fraternity, it's a growing point. And you're gonna be all the better for it. There's always just sort of a way back onto that highway.

SPEAKER_05 0:28

This is the Oath Podcast presented by Med Edits Medical Admissions. You will learn about all things related to being pre-med, the medical school admissions process, and the residency match. I am your host, Dr. Jessica Friedman. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the ninth episode of the Oath Podcast. My name is Dr. Jessica Friedman. I am the chair and founder of MedEdit's Medical Admissions and the host of the Oath Podcast. And I am super excited that today we have a real applicant here with us who is going to be going not only to med school next year, but to an MD PhD program. And I'd like to introduce you all to Reed. He is a senior at Vanderbilt. And again, so he did not take a gap year. He went straight through. And we are going to discuss Reed's pre-med path. You are going to learn that perfection is not necessary to get to an Ivy League MD PhD program. I don't want to spoil anything. We're going to, we're going to go over Reed's path and sort of we're going to go through his decision making and we're going to disclose where Reed is landing come this summer to start his MD PhD program, but it's super impressive. So, you know, we're going to talk to Reed about his academic path, he decisions he made along the way, his overall application process. And the one big takeaway that I think so many listeners are going to have by listening to Reed's story is that he turned several B minus grades into a phenomenal success story, getting into an Ivy League MD PhD program. So I'm sure many of you have heard that if you get a B, if you get a B minus, even a C, that you're doomed and you're not. And Reed is a success story that speaks to that. So welcome, Reed. Thank you so much for joining us today. Of course. We're so happy to have you.

SPEAKER_04 2:27

It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_05 2:29

Yeah, thank you. So just to kind of get started, I want you to sort of explain your pre-med years and basically your freshman year. So, you know, you get to college, you chose Vanderbilt for college, ended up being a great fit for you. But just kind of walk us through when you got to college, how you dealt with freshman year, figuring out how to choose your courses, how to balance your social life with your academics and your extracurriculars, and just kind of reflect on, you know, how you felt at that time, which was what, nearly four years ago now, right?

SPEAKER_04 3:10

Yeah, I think definitely coming into Vanderbilt, I knew I wanted to go to med school. I wanted to be pre-med along with a lot of other people in my class. And so I there was sort of a standard coursework like general chemistry, general biology, and then a few electives that you could take. And so we all sort of loaded up on those classes and we all showed up day one to those classes. And I came in being like, I'm gonna, you know, just have a little designated bubble of time for those classes, but I'm gonna have more life outside of that. And that'll be my balance, is I'm not gonna compromise extra time to my work, even if I do need to give more time to my work. And that way I make sure to have time for working out and hanging out with friends and sort of checking out the Nashville scene. And given how my courses turned out, that was not a very wise way to do freshman year. Um, I got a few B's the first semester, and then I got a few Bs. I think I got a B minus in general chemistry and a B minus in introbiology. And then I would wind up getting a B minus in engineering physics sophomore year, but that was a whole other story. And so I really just thought that I could have a designated amount of time for my coursework and never have to really dig deeper into it. And I quickly found that I wasn't doing as well as some of my friends in these pre-med requirements, and it was fairly discouraging. I shadowed a neurologist at the same time because I was really interested in neurology, and it didn't seem like the sort of work that I wanted to do. It was an end-of-life neurodegenerative neurologist specialist, and it seemed like sitting in an office for six hours a day and delivering tough news. And so I just it didn't seem to be clicking with me. And I thought maybe medicine isn't what I want to go into. And so I sort of left freshman year actually wondering if I should stop being on the pre-med path.

SPEAKER_05 5:22

Interesting. Okay, let let's let's backpedal just a little bit because I think you bring up a lot of really interesting points here, and and I think that there are a lot of sort of learning moments here for people who are listening. So you get to college, understandably, you want to have a social life. I mean, Vandy is a fun school. There's a lot to do, there's an amazing music scene, right? I mean, so so there's a ton to do in Nashville, and you and you want to take advantage, which you we encourage students to do because having that balance is really, really important. You take introbio, you take general chemistry, both first and second semesters, you end up with B minuses in Gen Chem General Chemistry, uh, a B plus in, I think it was first semester, you had a B plus, but then you also had a flat B in your intro bio lecture, right? So this is all great, Reed, because you know, you're you're the comeback, you're the comeback story, right? So that that's why we want we want to offer some encouragement because we look at a lot, a lot of transcripts and we look at a lot of applications, and many students have a very rough first year in college. And so I think this is a really important lesson because look, you're away from home, you don't have the structure of home, you don't have your parents telling you that you know you need to be studying. So it's all up to you, and you're figuring out how to balance all of this. And, you know, there's just a lot going on, right? I, you know, I don't know if you were involved in Greek life, but for many students, freshman year is also, you know, distracting if there's Greek life at their school. So there's a lot going on. So you end up with a biochem physics math GPA, which is your science GPA, your freshman year of a 3.38. Okay. So, you know, there are probably some people who would say, you know, gosh, yeah, you know, you're done. Just give up, right? So, so, so, so then what you're telling me is that summer you have an experience that maybe wasn't an ideal experience for you, yet at the same time allowed you to learn something, right? It allowed you to understand what you didn't want to do. And and I think that those types of experiences are just as valuable as the experiences that help to clarify what you do want to do. So, so if you can kind of explain then coming back to school, sophomore year, okay. You say you're having your doubts, you know, you had what, you know, especially in comparison to some of your peers, which is always tough. There's so much peer pressure in college, you know, everyone's comparing themselves to each other. How did you come back sophomore year sort of motivated? How did you kind of, you know, change that narrative for yourself?

SPEAKER_04 8:09

Yeah. So the shadowing that I didn't really click with actually occurred during my spring semester. So while I was realizing, while while I was feeling like I couldn't hack it compared to my peers, I also was feeling like what I wanted to do for medicine didn't resonate with me. And so it's both relatively and personally, I'm like, maybe medicine isn't for me. And at the same time, I had signed up for an EMT course in May. And I'd already paid for it and I'd already made plans to go down to Corpus Christi to get my EMT certification. And I was just sort of like, I've already, I've already signed up for this. I might as well do it. I'm kind of not feeling it. And then I went down and for part of the EMT course, we had to volunteer in an ER at Spawn Shoreline in Corpus Christi, which is a massively underserved medical community. I think it's one of the largest medical deserts in Texas.

SPEAKER_03 9:08

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 9:09

And just based on demographics. And so we staffed that ER for a weekend. And it was I'm terrible with national holidays. I don't remember if President's Day or if Labor Day or Memorial Day is in May.

SPEAKER_05 9:25

Yeah, it looks like you were there in May, so it was Memorial Day. Yeah. Labor Day is always Labor Day in the fall. It's always the start of the year.

SPEAKER_04 9:32

I always get them mixed up. So I was staffing this underserved trauma center with a bunch of other recently certified EMTs on Memorial Day weekend. And so it's it's chaos. And we're we're doing EKGs. I'm getting to shadow as people are brought up to the neurosurgery ORs to get strokes cleared. And I actually realized I love this because I'm actually getting to help people and help doctors and nurses help people instead of what seemed like not having an impact in the classroom and seeing a specialty where I felt like I wasn't seeing an impact in patients' lives. I'm actually seeing the direct translation of how science is helping people in their day-to-day life when they need it. And so I really left that experience realizing, oh, I want to do medicine. I just don't know what kind. I'd also already signed up to shadow a neurosurgeon in Houston the following weeks. And so I was like, well, I know I want to do I want to do medicine again. Let's check out this neurosurgery deal. And I shadowed him. He was a spinal neurosurgeon. And while I didn't love operating in the spine, we'll talk more about my research experience and my love of neuroscience.

SPEAKER_03 10:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 10:51

But I thought how we could meet with people in the morning and then do procedures in the afternoon and tell their loved ones afterwards how well it went. Just seeing in an eight-hour period how well you can impact an entire family was just wonderful. So those two experiences really brought me back into wanting to do science and medicine and actual patient care. And so I think those really brought me back from the brink of not wanting to do pre-med. And then I signed up for organic chemistry going into the fall. I signed up for physics. I did some research that summer and I really felt competent in it, which added some more self-esteem. And so I really took that summer to fall back in love with medicine, which was very important and really essential for me at that point.

SPEAKER_05 11:43

Wow. That's amazing. And that's a good that's wonderful. So so just to sort of clarify, you are from Texas, which is why you were back home, you know, doing your EMS work and getting that exposure. So that's phenomenal. So you came back to Vandy, came back to campus. Did you change anything like in terms of your study habits? Because you had you had a really strong sophomore year. I mean, you really turned it around sophomore year. So you had what we call a line in the sand, minus the one B minus, which, you know, whatever was an outlier from sophomore to senior year. That's an outlier grade. So you really kind of had a line in the sand with regards to your academics, you know. So would you say that you came back sort of more motivated? Did you organize your time differently? Do you think there was just, you know, do you think you were more mature? What do you think allowed you to perform better academically once you got back to campus?

SPEAKER_04 12:39

Yeah, I think it was probably a good mix of things. So additionally, over the summer, when I was doing research, as you'd mentioned Greek life, I'd rushed a fraternity. And over the summer, I realized that I did love sort of getting to apply science, both in terms of people and research. And so I joined two research labs and I dropped my fraternity to make time for those research labs.

SPEAKER_05 13:04

Wow. Because I see, I see you started both of those in August.

SPEAKER_04 13:08

Right. And so I think just seeing the impact that science and medicine could have on people that summer, both in terms of I really matured from that and I fell in love with it. And I knew that's what I wanted to dedicate a lot of my time to. I really just reorganized a lot of my time around studying. I began studying for OCEM over the summer, and I would sort of use my extracurriculars to study. So one thing that I would do is I rode along with Vanderbilt's life flight program where helicopters and ambulances go to pick up patients who are in need of being brought in to the medical center. And these were, these were, I would do night shifts specifically. And so because I was working with the ambulance crews, we'd only ever go out for ambulance calls, but we still had to be in the hangar. And so I'd be sitting all night doing nothing until we got a call. And so I had nothing better to do than to study for organic chemistry. And so I did every problem in the textbook because I had nothing else to do. Wow.

SPEAKER_05 14:16

Wow, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 14:18

And so I think even later on, and I'm sure we'll get to studying for the MCAT. I would do night shifts in the ICU, and so I would study during those night shifts because there was nothing else to do. And so sort of managing time well and finding extracurricular where you get other time. So, like in research, if you start an experiment, you get to do if you start an experiment, you get to do homework during the middle of that. And so finding ways to manage your time, you can almost double the amount of time that you have if you sort of squint at how you're doing this.

SPEAKER_05 14:54

Yeah, but that's really using every minute, right? I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:58

But I was also I was also lucky to find things that allowed me to do that. So that's not everybody's experience.

SPEAKER_05 15:03

Yeah, right. I understand. But you weren't like scrolling on your phone and like looking at TikTok, like when you had downtime.

SPEAKER_04 15:10

I mean, you were at that time. I was doing chemistry problems all night long.

SPEAKER_05 15:16

Incredible. And we're gonna get to your academics. How do you like how did you, you know, because at a school like Vanderbilt, you know, for for some students, Greek life is a huge part of their experience. So how did that kind of change things for you socially? Like, how did you sort of adapt on a from a so on a social standpoint? Because it's a very different experience when you're in Greek life versus when you're not, right? Or or no?

SPEAKER_04 15:39

Uh it definitely can be. I think it depends how much you've personally invested into Greek life. And I wasn't sort of personally invested too well. I had some good friends in it. But the good thing about good friends is that even if you're not in the same organization, you're still good friends. I continued to get lunch with them. I continued going to football games with them. And then the people who I wasn't close with, I don't think I would have gotten close with anyway. So I I didn't really feel like I messed out too much in terms of coming out of it. I'm sure other schools, I mean, especially in like in Tennessee, in Texas, in Georgia, it's probably harder trying to sort of leave the Greek life scene. I can definitely imagine that. But I think because Vanderbilt's sort of a smaller private school, Greek life isn't as expansive as at some other schools. And so it wasn't, I didn't feel like I was missing out too much, and it wasn't hard to get out of that space. And yeah, I've I have friends who are pre-med who've been in Greek orgs all four years. They've loved it. They're yeah, they're great scientists, they're gonna be great doctors.

SPEAKER_05 16:44

Awesome. So it's yeah, it's really an individual choice. And freshman year, it's like, you know, look, you you want to fit in, you want to find your friends. There, there's there's pressure, right? To get involved in that way. And so as you grow up, you realize, okay, there are other ways for me to have friends. I don't, I don't have to be engaged in Greek life. So that's terrific. So I I just want to highlight, I mean, both of these labs, and I mean that was so ambitious of you, you know, that you you got engaged in these labs, and and so over the course of two years, so your sophomore and junior years, you accumulated between those two experiences 1800 hours, and then you also accumulated an additional 900 hours between those two labs this past year. So your senior year, you know, and these weren't even your most meaningful experiences. So I just I just want to highlight that, you know, because you're an MD PhD applicant. And so right away, once you kind of got serious, you were committed to that research in a really big way and engaging in these, in the both of these labs in in a very significant way in terms of your time. So that's terrific. And I also, I, you know, I love how you got involved in Life Light. I think that's different. I mean, it's it's different than being an EMT, which a lot of students do. So I think this is very distinctive, yet it's related to your EMT work. So, you know, it it's it's all kind of connected. You can, you know, as as as readers are looking at an application, they want to understand how your choices took place. You know, why why did you segue from one thing to the next? And this this just lends itself to a very, very clear narrative and understanding of how one experience led to the next. So, so sophomore year was a big one, right? You you ended up sophomore year with a 3.87 BCPM GPA. That's a huge increase from your 3.38, your freshman year. So phenomenal. So, so tell me then, let's let's walk through then after sophomore year, those were sort of your primary involvements, right? I think you you were a TA, but I think that was junior year, right? That you became a TA for some of your classes. Is that right?

SPEAKER_04 18:51

So I I began TA ing my sophomore year. Interestingly, I tried to TA my freshman year for a course that I took that fall.

SPEAKER_03 19:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 19:01

The teachers weren't amused by it. But by sophomore year, they were they were gonna allow it. And I I really loved TA ing as a sophomore because again, you sort of get to improve on your understanding of the material and being involved in lab work, you could see like, okay, here's what the professionals know about neuroscience, and here's what the class is being taught about neuroscience. And I'm sort of at the middle where I'm both doing research, but I also am helping other people learn sort of the canonical understanding of neuroscience. And I think as when I become a physician, hopefully, hopefully when I become a physician, but also you're there.

SPEAKER_05 19:43

I mean, you're you're you're you're about to get your white coat. I mean, it's happening soon. It's imminent.

SPEAKER_04 19:48

Yeah, I think in terms of talking with patients, it's important to understand they don't often have a lot of background when it comes to the science that's going on. And sometimes they have a lot of background, and that's wonderful. But being able to meet them wherever they're at in terms of their understanding and how much they're able to process at the moment is really important. And so being able to translate to what does a freshman know and what do they need to learn instead of how do I talk to other scientists? That was a skill that I tried to cultivate early on by TA as an underclassman.

SPEAKER_05 20:24

Terrific. And this is, you know, there's a lot of teaching in medicine, not just teaching your, you know, your underlings, your medical students, your residents, but talking to your patients, and you need to meet your patients where they are. And so that's really important. So yeah, so sophomore year, I mean, I'm just looking at this. So yes, so you started TA ing second semester sophomore year at the same time, and you mentioned this. You started working as a care partner in the neuroICU at Vandy. And at the same time, you know, sophomore year, you got involved in the pre-med society at Vanderbilt. So you really you jumped on board with so much your sophomore year. And, you know, and what I think is is terrific about this is that you had real longevity in these experiences. So you were a TA, it looks like, all the way through senior year. You were you worked at the NeuroICU all the way through the end of senior year. So, you know, you had you were really committed to these experiences, which is, you know, just phenomenal. Now bring us to sophomore year summer. Tell me what you did that summer.

SPEAKER_04 21:31

Yeah, so I I actually I'm trying to remember all the way back then. So this is another interesting learning point. So I thought I was still between an MD and wanting to do MD PhD. And so I wanted to do a program in Houston called the Rosenberg Fellowship. I don't know, I don't know if we can shout out the specific fellowship. This isn't sponsored by them, but it's it's a wonderful fellowship. You get to shadow a bunch of physicians and Surgeons at Houston Methodist. And so I, being from Houston, really wanted to do this. It seemed really prestigious. I'd shadowed a surgeon, the neurosurgeon at Houston Methodist. And I applied for it and I didn't get it. And I knew someone else who got it. And and they're they're and they're going to Stanford Medical School. They're going to be an outstanding physician. I'm incredibly happy for them. And they they really deserved it. And so I wound up having to do my backup, which was research that I'd previously done at Mass General in Boston. And I I should, it's an incredible opportunity. And it's it was immature of me to feel disappointed that I had to go back to working in a wonderful lab with great colleagues who support me. But I was a little disappointed by that. But I think that's just plans turn out differently than you expect. And it wound up being a transformational experience for me. So I really loved it. So the summer after my sophomore year, after having this sort of turnaround and how hard I was willing to work towards that, and the ways that I wanted to work towards my science classes, I went to do research back in Boston. And I really got to sort of take charge of a research project for the first time, which was really important to me. So I got to propose sort of a side project to what a researcher I'd worked with previously was looking into. And our hypothesis was actually completely wrong. It turns out. And we can go into it because I thought it's really interesting. But we we thought one kind of metabolism would help microglia to eat little toxic plaques in the brain. And we got results showing that forcing them to that metabolism did not actually clear amyloid, this junk. And so we tried a similar experiment with a little different setup. And again, we didn't seem to see it. And so we tried a good, a good negative control by doing the opposite kind of metabolism. And that actually increased the amount of clearance that we got. And so we were like, Wow, wow, oh, we're really wrong about this. And so we got to pivot. And now a master's student has taken up that project at Mass General, and she's doing incredible work.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

Wow. Phenomenal.

SPEAKER_04 24:24

It's that entire I think my entire underclassman years can be described as I was wrong, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

SPEAKER_05 24:35

And this is, you know, and this is why look, rejection is part of every single student's person's path. Whether you're an edge, like whether you're a student, whether you're applying for jobs, it's gonna happen again, right? So you you have to be able to bounce back from this. And oftentimes, as you've described, it's the opportunity you land in that ends up being formative and you weren't even anticipating that. So this work was all related to neuroscience. So again, it's sort of, you know, you're continuing with this theme of neuroscience. And you started this, you started this work at Mass General the summer after you graduated high school. So by doing this, you also kind of again sort of had this longevity in this experience. So yet another really impactful research experience on top of the others that you had, you know. So yeah, so I think that all worked out for you. When when you were doing this the summer after your your senior year of high school, were you was all of this work in person? It was all in Boston.

SPEAKER_04 25:38

Yes, this was all COVID restrictions had lifted enough that I could go in person. Yeah. In fact, I I've got a funny story that after my soft during my sophomore year of high school, I reached out to a researcher across the US and they were like, Yeah, come do research with us. And then COVID happened. And so I didn't get to. But I got but I got to write about it in my med school apps.

SPEAKER_05 26:02

So yeah, yeah, good for you. And and what this also shows is, you know, like people sometimes say, Am I allowed to include things that I did during high school? Like technically the summer before freshman year is considered college. But even if you had started this the summer after junior year, you can include that because it's it's it's still part of that experience. And and also when you write about this experience, the the you know, the Boston Research, the MGA research, you you write about kind of the personal connection that this had to you, you know, because your your grandfather, right, had Alzheimer's disease. And so, and those personal connections are also really important. They help to understand your motivation. So as I'm reading your application, I'm, you know, and I'm looking at all of these activities and your written documents, I'm again, I'm seeing all of these links so that you know, sort of your motivations and why you're doing things, why you're making these choices becomes very, very clear. And meanwhile, I don't even know you didn't get that fellowship. It it's it's it's it's a non-issue.

SPEAKER_04 27:00

So yeah, yeah, and I think given that I could do shadowing throughout the school year and like on the sides during breaks, yeah, I actually think I was way better off for having done this research and grown in confidence and maturity and leadership in a research project instead of shadowing physicians. And I'm sure the person who got to shadow them feels that he got the best out of it. And so it's sort of either way, as long as you're doing something that you love and that makes you feel competent, then it's gonna be an amazing experience.

SPEAKER_05 27:34

And as long as you're taking advantage of what's there for you and you're making the most of it. I mean, you know, there are there are usually ways to make an experience valuable and there are ways to make greater contributions, and it's a it's a it's an issue of being creative and asking for more responsibility or for looking, looking for places where you can make that impact, right? Um okay, so then at the end of Sophomore, you need to declare a major officially, right? Tell us how you declared your majors. Uh you were a double major, right? So so explain how you made that choice.

SPEAKER_04 28:07

Yeah. So my the majors that I chose for college is actually, it was a contentious issue when applying to Vanderbilt because my my parents had heard that Vanderbilt cared what major you applied into, and they wanted a few people for each major. And so they I I knew I wanted to do neuroscience. I'd been reaching out to neuroscientists throughout high school to do research with them. I was deeply impacted by Alzheimer's, and so I knew that I wanted to find a treatment for it. And I was like, I want to apply to be a neuroscience major at Vanderbilt. And they were like, Everyone's gonna apply to be a neuroscience major at Vanderbilt. You should apply to be something else.

SPEAKER_02 28:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 28:50

But I was like, if I got in for something else, I I wouldn't want to feel like I didn't earn my spot as a neuroscience major at Vanderbilt. And so I applied as a neuromajor, and so I knew I wanted to be a neuroscience major since the beginning. And the the neuroscience major is really like it has a cool setup at Vanderbilt. You have to do research, you have to take a lot of electives. But I also had seen sort of the impact of communications in science and in medicine. As I mentioned, TAing, learning how to communicate in the lab. What I'd found when I was leading this research project was you actually like I so so much of my feedback for my PI and postdoc would be about how I was presenting the science. And so I decided I wanted to be a communications of science double major alongside neuroscience. And that actually wound up, I think, being really interesting to a lot of the med schools that I applied to, especially the one that I wound up in, because I didn't even know this. Some schools have things like narrative medicine programs, where it's required that you learn some communication element or specialty or just a way to sort of relate and share patient experiences. And so in an interview, I was asked if I knew about this, and I was like, I don't know, but that's really cool.

SPEAKER_05 30:14

Wow. See, you're honest. That's great. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:17

Yeah. Yeah. I I was worried that it seemed like I hadn't researched the school, but it turned out to be a great sort of thing to have.

SPEAKER_03 30:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 30:25

But I think having that roundedness, and I know a lot of other students who are double majoring in a language, so people who are majoring in neuroscience and Spanish. And that also lends you a lot of breadth in you can now communicate with more patients.

SPEAKER_03 30:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:39

Or if you're doing like, I know some who are doing education in a science and they want to go into PEDs, for instance. And so, like, that's a those are all really cool combinations of majors. And some schools, it's hard to get multiple majors.

SPEAKER_03 30:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 30:54

But having a breadth of the courses that you take can create really cool stories in interviews and just gives you the skills going into being a healthcare provider.

SPEAKER_05 31:04

Yeah, no, I I agree with you. And, you know, what I always, whenever we're, you know, we're working with students, we sort of always explain to them, don't forget about your academics. You know, students are pre-meds are so focused on their extracurricular activities and their, you know, what they've done to show that they're interested in medicine and how they've explored medicine. But look, you're at college to get a degree and to take courses and and and you don't want to forget what you've done, how you've spent the majority of your time, I would hope. And and that's you know, in the classroom and studying. So I think I think that's great. And I think that you bring up a really wonderful point. Um, so going into junior year, do you know at that point, right, you're sort of at this decision-making point. Are you going to apply at the end of junior year, not take a gap year? Are you going to take a gap year? Was that a conversation? How did you make that decision? How did you make that commitment? You know, talk, talk about that a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 31:58

Yeah. So across the summer after sophomore year, I was, I told myself I was gonna study for the MCAT. It's more like I entertained the idea that I was studying for the MCAT. I would go through the Kaplan Biology book, and I think I went through two chapters the entire summer. Really bad study plan, did not stick to it. And and I'm and I'm I I know that about myself.

SPEAKER_03 32:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:23

And so I, by August, after I'd finished this wonderful research experience, where I'd proposed a project and led a project and been wrong and been able to turn that around. And I knew that's when I sort of knew, okay, I want to do an MD PhD because I love research. I love how this could be applied to how we could improve the metabolism of cells in the brain and could that help clear Alzheimer's plaques or amyloid plaques in Alzheimer's? And I was like, wow, that's a really cool sort of through line about how research can go from bench to bedside into a therapeutic. And so I was pretty sure about I want to do an MD PhD program. And MD PhD programs are long. They are they're they're they're more than several years, they're more than an MD program.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 33:15

But knowing that it could be six to seven years in this MD PhD program, I kind of thought, I don't want to have to do a gap year. And usually for people who want to go into an MD PhD program, we're gonna talk more about sort of that specific, what advice should go into that specifically later? But often those gap years are used to research more and develop more uh sort of independent research skills and be able to lead your own project and learn new techniques and maybe get some publications and posters out there. And I I had no publications, I had no publications on the horizon. I had done some Vanderbilt student poster sessions, but I also knew I really liked leading an independent project. And so I was doing a bunch of research, I was working in two labs at once, and I thought as long as I keep really, really working hard at research, if I work hard enough and I get into an MD PhD program without a gap year, I'm not gonna regret not having done those gap years. And if I don't get in the first time, I can always take gap years and do more research. And so I just figured I'm gonna try to do it without a gap year. Which is really difficult, especially for for MDs and also for MD PhDs.

SPEAKER_05 34:37

It's hard.

SPEAKER_04 34:38

The the requirements for entry are sky high. And I think what's important to sort of internalize is that that's across all applicants, even the ones who are 27 years old and went down one career path and have now decided to go to med school. It's people who have taken three gap years working as a medical assistant and doing research.

SPEAKER_03 35:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:03

And so you can't really compare yourself to those average and median statistics. You just have to do things that you love and try to do them as well as you can. And that will shine through when you apply.

unknown 35:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:16

So I I knew I loved research. I knew I was gonna try to do it as hard as I could. And so in August, there was an info session with our health professions advising office where they talk about our committee letter packet. And we can talk, we can talk about committee letters.

SPEAKER_05 35:31

I'm I'm very familiar with the Vanderbilt committee letter process.

SPEAKER_04 35:35

Yes, they're they're chaos, their beauty, their grace, they're they're whatever you make of them.

SPEAKER_05 35:40

I know it, I know it will. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:43

And at the start of the session, the this is like the day before classes start.

SPEAKER_02 35:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

One of the health professionals advising office leaders asks, so who all is gonna apply? We strongly advise you to take gap years. Who's gonna apply without a gap year no matter what we say? And I think me and two other students raise our hands.

SPEAKER_05 36:02

And he's like, Wow, okay. How many? How about how roughly how many students were there?

SPEAKER_04 36:08

Would you say there was probably 25 in this room? There were a bunch of different sessions. I wanted to get mine out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 36:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:14

From that point, I was like, I I need to take the MCAT, I need to study hard for it, I need to start getting all of my extracurriculars in order. I need to get my I need to do well in school these next two semesters. Like, I've got to polish everything up to be ready. And so it was sort of that after having that second summer of research, really third summer of research, that sophomore summer, was when I knew I was gonna go into it. And I I had friends who at that point didn't want to take gap years, who decided to take gap years. But I think that is sort of the final stepping off point where you have to really start asking for recommendation letters, figuring out what your extracurriculars are gonna be, thinking about essays, thinking about the MCAT.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 37:02

And so I sort of took the last ticket on to that train.

SPEAKER_05 37:07

Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. So, okay, so you decide at the start of your junior year, right? You're you're going to apply at the end of junior year. You're gonna apply as a what what what we used to call traditional applicant, which honestly now has become a non-traditional applicant. Right.

SPEAKER_04 37:23

Has become sort of a premature applicant.

SPEAKER_05 37:25

Because only 25% of applicants choose to apply as juniors, and you do have to have all of your ducks in a row. So how did you go into junior year, sort of coming up with your MCAT plan, which you took in January of your junior year? How did you approach that, you know, along with your academics? And at this point, you know, you're a straight A student, right? You know, you were a straight A student junior year. So how did you fit all of that in?

SPEAKER_04 37:54

Yeah. I what I got an A minus in biochemistry. So you don't you don't have to have perfect grades junior year.

SPEAKER_05 38:01

It's still an A. It's still an A.

SPEAKER_04 38:03

But the minus minuses are acceptable, even in upperclassmen courses.

SPEAKER_05 38:08

Yes, they're very acceptable. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:09

Yes. I I think I had managed sophomore year to sort of get a hang of studying in between times. Like I mentioned, studying for organic chemistry during shifts with life flight, during shifts at the ICU. And so the the courses probably stayed the same difficulty: biochem versus organic chem. They're probably as difficult as one another. You just learned to tolerate it by biochem.

SPEAKER_01 38:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:41

You've just you've accepted it.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:43

And I kept doing my lab work. I think my lab work also got more intense in that I was sort of more start, I started an independent project that my PI was iffy about, and then it worked out. But wait, in terms of how did I snurf the MCAT, I studied really unconventionally. And in talk, a lot of people that I've talked to about it have said that this would never work for them. So I'm not giving this as advice, but it worked for me.

SPEAKER_02 39:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:13

So I got the I think it's a seven-book Kaplan book. It's it's all the uh just rote information.

SPEAKER_05 39:20

Yeah. Most people who self-study, by the way, they use Kaplan books.

SPEAKER_04 39:24

Yeah, because they're and I don't think they really change much year from year. They put out a new set every year.

SPEAKER_05 39:30

Yes, they don't.

SPEAKER_04 39:31

Right.

SPEAKER_05 39:32

The MKit hasn't changed since 2015. So what we tell people is, you know, get a U set. As long as it's not, you know, completely beat up and you know written all over, like you can use an old set. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 39:44

Right. And so I I got the seven Kaplan books and I wrote paper flashcards for every bolded word that I came across. And they they stuck they stacked up. I can tell you they stacked up because I I started to make a desk where I just had these flat wooden boards because you know how people just accumulate things in college. And so I made I made a desk with my flashcards as the supports, it became a two-tiered shelf.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 40:17

So I wrote flashcards for every word in all seven Kaplan books.

unknown 40:21

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 40:22

It was probably it's not probably economical in terms of paper, yeah, but it was it was really good because I learned really well tact, like just writing things down. I took paper notes all through college. And I also know that my attention isn't great. And if I was doing Anki on a desktop 15 minutes in, I'd probably be like, wait, I was shopping for a thing online. Let me go to that tab real quick. Yeah, it's and then and then the last five minutes is down the wash because you've lost your focus and you're losing that time that you spend shopping, and now you think you've been studying for an hour, but you studied for 15 minutes that you remember 10 of.

SPEAKER_02 41:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:06

And I I just know that about myself. Yeah, and so and also not doing well freshman year is how I learned that about myself.

SPEAKER_02 41:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 41:15

And so by having those non-successes, I knew this is how I have to study for the MCAT. And I so I self-studied, I wrote all the definitions down on paper flashcards. I took a diagnostic AAMC test, I think in the middle of the semester, just to know where I was at.

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 41:34

And then I really focused in on what I wasn't doing well on, which was the psychology and chemistry physics sections. And so then I focused on those, and then I took another AAMC around Thanksgiving. And so I saw where I was at on those. And then so I sort of whittled my way into improving each of my scores.

SPEAKER_02 41:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 41:58

And so after each one, I would go back, I'd review all the questions, and I'd write down the actual answers by hand and why I got them wrong by hand. And then I'd review that chapter's flashcards just to make sure I got all the stuff down. It it was intense. I didn't see a lot of friends and family over Thanksgiving break. I was I was I was sitting at a table doing flashcards all day long, all of Thanksgiving break.

SPEAKER_02 42:24

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 42:25

And then winter break. So I knew I wanted to take the MCAT, I think on January 11th, that second week of January.

SPEAKER_05 42:33

Yeah, January 11th.

SPEAKER_04 42:35

Yeah. It's it's scarred, it's scarred into my so I I think every weekend I would take a practice test.

SPEAKER_02 42:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 42:48

And then I would review at the end of that day, so at the end of a seven-hour test, I would review all the wrong answers. And then I'd do flashcards for six days about and then take another practice test. So I did that for five weeks. Well, four weeks, because I guess we went out second week of December. And I didn't see a lot of family over winter break.

SPEAKER_02 43:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:10

It was a lot of studying. It was sort of like training for a contest, though. So I found what I wanted my outfit to be. And so I would wear, I wore, it was black sweatpants, a black t-shirt, and a black hoodie. And so every day I'd wear black sweatpants, a black t-shirt, and a black hoodie. It was it was neurotic. It was insane. I can't recommend it to anybody, but it somehow worked.

SPEAKER_05 43:34

It worked for you. So wait, let me let me let me let me ask you a couple questions.

SPEAKER_04 43:38

This is please interrupt me.

SPEAKER_05 43:40

I will digress. Okay, first of all, did you did you review your correct answers at all? Or did you only review the ones you got wrong?

SPEAKER_04 43:49

I don't think I reviewed my correct answers. I would note the ones that I was guessing on.

unknown 43:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 43:56

And then go back to check those because I realized a A lot of the MCAT is test taking strategy, it seems like at a certain point. So if I got down to two answers and I guessed and got it right, it would kind of be survivorship bias. Probably not the right word for it. But just to be like, oh, oh, I knew it internally. So that's fine. I'm like, no, you gotta hold yourself accountable.

unknown 44:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:18

And be like, I didn't know what was going on. I need to review that.

SPEAKER_05 44:21

Wow. Good for you. So you reviewed the guesses and you reviewed the wrong answers. I I realize you may not know this, but in total, how much time do you think you spent prepping for the MCAT? Not counting the summer, which wasn't really prep.

SPEAKER_04 44:36

I'd say it was prep. The summer was me going to fun coffee shops.

SPEAKER_05 44:40

Okay, fine. I mean it counts for something, but it probably wasn't it probably wasn't related to the MCAT. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 44:46

I don't think it improved my score at all.

SPEAKER_05 44:48

Right.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

Winter break, it's hard to do. Winter break was probably five hours a day plus a practice exam and review on the weekends. So that would be like 40 hours a week. Four weeks of that. So probably like 160 hours there throughout the fall semester. It's hard to know just because I would squeeze in hours in the lab overnight during shifts. Probably the same amount total across the fall semester. Probably maybe maybe less. So probably 300 hours total.

SPEAKER_05 45:26

Yeah, that's that's generally the what we're recommending is like the minimum. That's that's amazing. So you took, we're gonna reveal your score as long as that's okay with you.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

Of course.

SPEAKER_05 45:36

So so you took the test January 11th of your junior year, you got a 524, an absolutely phenomenal result. That's the hundredth percentile rank. Um, you're you got a 131 in chem phys, a 129 in cars, 132 in bio, and a 132 in PsychSoche. Phenomenal result. So you knew how to study, you knew what worked for you, and you nailed it. I mean, that is just unreal. So at that point, when you got your score back in February, a month later, you knew at that point, okay, I'm ready. I can I can apply. I've got this upward trend in my grades, you know, let's just the the BCPMs, you know, freshman year 338, sophomore year 387, junior year 396. So this nice upward trend, you know, phenomenal MCAT, you know, incredible involvement. So at that point, you knew that you were going to be applying to med school. Let let me let me just ask you do you do was there any advice that you sort of were hearing, either from pre-med advisors? I know they they sort of advised you to take a gap here, um, you know, but was there any advice, like sort of chatter you were hearing online? I mean, as you know, you know, students spend so much time on forums. Everyone gives very well-meaning guidance. Was there any guidance that you got that you sort of didn't listen to, that you said, like, no, I'm not gonna do it that way, or no, that doesn't apply to me because was there anything like that?

SPEAKER_04 47:09

Yeah, I think a lot of the advice that I got, I've sort of touched on in the sense of like take some a lot of my friends took MCAT prep courses, which are extremely useful, especially if they were doing a lot of other stuff and didn't they had like a chunk of time that they could allocate. And that way you're held accountable to that time. There are other people who are part of it. You have someone who's experienced who's helping you with it. That's wonderful. And they did great on their MCATs. I think that just I knew that wouldn't work well for my learning style since I just had to handwrite everything. So that's advice that I didn't take, but it's not bad. I'd say all the advice that I didn't take isn't bad advice at all.

SPEAKER_05 47:50

Right, of course.

SPEAKER_04 47:51

The gap year is definitely a big one. I think a lot of my friends are taking gap years and they'll have wonderful applications. For typical MD applicants, I don't think like a research publication will make or break an application. There, there's some schools, I know like Duke asks, like, what's what's your research been like in a secondary? So some schools probably weigh research really heavily and it'll really lend itself to that. I was told in meeting with one of my PIs about a rec letter. He was like, I'm gonna write you a rec letter. And like it's gonna be hard for you to get into an MD PhD program because you don't have publications or posters. And because there is that added research element, and to get your PhD during the MD PhD program, some schools require that you publish. And so having prior publications shows you can do that and you know the process. And so having a publication is incre in incredibly and extremely combined. It's incredibly and extremely helpful in terms of getting into an MD PhD program. But I don't think it's necessary. Especially, I mean, in my research, I led a controversial research project that turned out to get really cool results, and led a project where I found out I was wrong, but it became really important.

SPEAKER_03 49:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:11

And sort of those things, showing leadership, showing resilience, showing resolve, those are just as important to doing a PhD and being a physician and being a scientist as publishing a paper.

SPEAKER_03 49:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 49:26

And so sort of drawing those conclusions out of your experiences is as important as the end product, like a publication. I also know a lot of schools and a lot of pre-med associations sort of recommend service hours, which it's incredibly important to give back to the community, especially for like Vanderbilt in Nashville does a lot of community service, which is an awesome experience. Because I was spending so much time in the lab and getting my getting my clinical hours and studying in the wee time that I had between them, I didn't really have the opportunity to do that. And I think schools can also understand that we can't make 27 hours out of the day.

SPEAKER_03 50:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 50:09

And we're already working 21 hours of the day.

SPEAKER_02 50:13

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 50:14

And we and we need to sleep at some point.

SPEAKER_02 50:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:17

And so the service is incredibly important. It's a great way to show compassion and outreach and those skills that will be important as a physician. But I think for especially an MD PhD application, I didn't really need any of them.

unknown 50:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 50:32

Now, well, it's important to have them, but I wound up getting aware of it.

SPEAKER_05 50:36

But you still had some community service. So it wasn't like if we if we look at your application, and I I you bring up some really important points here, that every applicant's going to have different strengths. You know, and right now I feel like there's so much pressure on applicants they have to have paid, you know, work clinical work experience, which is not the case. So it it becomes a question of where is your strength? Like where is your focus? And there is no question, Reed, that your focus wasn't research. That said, you still had some service hours. I mean, you had it through your EMT, you had it through Life Light, you know, so so you did have service. And so, and that experience that you had when you were first exposed, you know, in Corpus Christi, you know, after freshman year, that's really important. And that was such a pivotal experience to sort of, you know, sort of leading you back to medicine after you were questioning things, that it wasn't as if it was absent. So sometimes people give this guidance because they erroneously think like this is what you have to have to get into medical school. But it's all about making these decisions based on where your interests are and where your strengths are.

SPEAKER_04 51:48

Right. So I think that's a much better way to put it than I did. Yeah, I think you're absolutely correct.

SPEAKER_05 51:54

You made smart choices and you made authentic choices, which is what we're always encouraging students to do. Don't follow a playbook, don't follow a checklist, make your own authentic choices that are authentic to you. And that obviously came through. So it's interesting. If we look at your most meaningful activities, one of your most meaningfuls was serving as a care partner in the ICU, in the row ICU, where you had about a total of, it looks like just over 400 hours. Another one of your most meaningfuls was being a TA, where it looks like you had two, three, four, like just like about 450 hours. And then your third most meaningful was one of your research experiences. You had three, right? You had three that were really significant. But this was the one at MGH where you were studying Alzheimer's, the one where you started after your senior year of high school. And interestingly, you know, you had more hours in your other experiences. And, you know, in your other research experiences, I think in total. But this one was the most significant to you. And that's something else that we're always trying to get through to applicants is don't just choose the thing that has the most hours. Like choose the thing that is genuinely the most significant to you. And you did that as well. So if we move on, okay, so here we are. You're now a junior, you're submitting your application, and you were great. You submitted your application on May 28th. You were verified by June 12th, which means your application was verified, was the within the first wave of applications to get sent to medical schools. Tell me how you made your MD PhD school list. How did you think that through?

SPEAKER_04 53:37

Yeah. So I think especially this past year or the past two years, it's been a complicated time to apply into MD PhD and just grad school programs because of changes in NIH funding. And so when I applied to MD PhD programs, I knew I would want programs that I was confident would stay funded. And what's interesting is some schools, when you research their MD PhD program, they mention that once you start, they will they will make sure as an institution that you are funded the whole time, whether federal funding changes or not. And so I wanted to apply to programs that I knew I would be able to do my entire sort of track there. Instead of doing two to three years of PhD research, and then there's there's changes in grad school funding, and you have to go back to being an M4.

SPEAKER_05 54:36

Yeah, too bad.

SPEAKER_04 54:38

And you no longer get a PhD out of it, you don't get to defend. Sorry about that.

SPEAKER_05 54:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:43

And it'd still be great to do the research. I just think I would have been really unhappy about that.

SPEAKER_02 54:48

Yeah, I think so.

SPEAKER_04 54:49

So I wound up submitting my primary application, I think, to 15 schools, which is which is drastically lower than a lot of people that I know.

SPEAKER_02 55:02

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 55:03

And out of those 15, is there 15 or 14?

SPEAKER_05 55:06

I think oh, right, because you you did you did two regular MDs.

SPEAKER_04 55:11

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 55:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 55:13

And out of those, I think I wound up not submitting secondaries to two of them.

SPEAKER_05 55:19

Really? Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 55:20

Yes, which which I I was, as you mentioned this summer of after June year, I was reminded of pre-med advice. That is really good advice that I didn't take, which is to not work a full-time job while you're while you're writing secondaries. But we can get to that, we can get to that later.

SPEAKER_02 55:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 55:40

Um, but in terms of making my school list, I knew I wanted programs that would stay funded and that mentioned they would stay funded. I also wanted ones where my research interest was sort of, I don't want to say like niche because a lot of people want to treat Alzheimer's.

SPEAKER_02 55:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 55:58

But I really wanted to look at translational therapeutics of we want to do this thing to a cell, and so we're gonna spend two years figuring out how to do it, and then two years seeing if it's safe in a mouse and a rat and what the impact is, and then apply for FDA approval at some point. And not a lot of programs are really doing that for Alzheimer's because it it's really hard to translate a therapy from an idea to a chalkboard to into a patient's hand.

SPEAKER_03 56:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:30

And so when I put together my school list, I really wound up looking at large institutions that served a large population and got a good amount of funding because they could do those sorts of investigations.

SPEAKER_05 56:41

Yeah. So so you must have done, I think, and and you know, especially for this is certainly different than MD programs alone, but you must have done a lot of your own background research and figuring out at which of these institutions you would be able because you had you were so directed. And I think that's why, in part why you were so successful, um, because you you're so focused and so directed, you really know what you want to do and you really understand how you want to contribute. I'm sure, you know, I that you were just had phenomenal interviews for that reason as well. You know, so so so yeah, so so you had you had it looks like you applied to 16 um MDPHDs, you applied to two MD alone, you didn't fill out two secondaries. So out of those, let's say 14, 14 MDPHDs to MD alone, how many interviews did you get?

SPEAKER_04 57:36

So I got three interviews, which I also wound up, I think for MD PhD, the secondaries are longer. Yeah, and so you wind up getting interviews back later.

SPEAKER_05 57:48

Yes, it's a very different process.

SPEAKER_04 57:51

Yes. And while I knew that in the in the frontal lobe of my brain, I knew that. Yeah, the the fear as everybody around me started getting interviews.

SPEAKER_05 58:02

It is tougher because it's basically two different committees. So so we explained to our MD PhD students this is a different timeline for you. You you you have to ignore the noise because you're you're on a different timeline. So when when did you get those three interviews? So you submitted, you were one of the earliest, the first out of the gate, right? So when did you get those interview invites?

SPEAKER_04 58:22

Yeah, so I got my first interview invite in mid-October, I believe.

SPEAKER_05 58:27

Or mid-that's early.

SPEAKER_04 58:29

I think mid-October, which is which is very like I know interview invites can go until January.

SPEAKER_05 58:35

Yeah, no, it's early later. I mean, we had we had students getting interviews still into February, not so much March. We had a couple in March, but like, you know, for MD alone, but osteopathics go later. But yeah, that's actually quite early for MD PhD. Can you do you want to say where you got interviews? I mean, you applied to a very high-level school list. Like this is a very you there, there, there are no there's no such thing as a safety school in medicine, first of all. Right. You didn't, you had none.

SPEAKER_04 59:04

Yeah, I I would yeah, I like I like the advice of like, would you let your friend do it? And I I wouldn't let my friend apply this list of schools.

SPEAKER_05 59:14

Unbelievable. You knew what you wanted, Reed. I I so respect this.

SPEAKER_04 59:18

So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_05 59:20

Do you do you do you want to say where you got interviews?

SPEAKER_04 59:22

Yeah, so my the first interview I got, I got at like 11 a.m. in class to Columbia University, Vigellos College of Physicians and Scientists, and surgeons, not scientists, Freudian Slip.

SPEAKER_05 59:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 59:36

And I I almost danced in front of my professor. It was a great feeling. Uh, and then I wound up getting an interview to Vanderbilt, which was also an incredible feeling. I got it like a week and a half before the interview was supposed to start. So I had to do a lot of research really quickly on who I was interviewing with.

SPEAKER_03 59:57

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 59:58

And then I wound up interviewing at Tufts University. And that one was fun because you got to schedule when it was. And I think everybody aimed for Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:07

That was so funny. All right. So you got three interviews before Thanksgiving.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:13

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 1:00:13

That's that's terrific. Okay. So when you interviewed, let's not talk sort of about the traditional MD interview, just because those are we, I think we we know what they ask, those are sort of more traditional questions. But explain the PhD part of it. So, like as an MD PhD applicant, first of all, tell me in total how many people you interviewed with and who you interviewed with, sort of from the MD part of it, and then as you know, from the PhD part of it.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:43

Yeah, so it it changes by the school. So with Columbia, I interviewed with one medical school admissions officer, which I thought that I flunked it, and four to five researchers, which is really cool. And you get to choose your researchers. And then with Vanderbilt, I interviewed with one meds one MD PhD admissions officer and five PhD researchers, and then with Tufts, you got one MD PhD admissions officer and two researchers.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:18

Interesting.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:19

But for all of them, they they sort of ask you put together a list of who you want to interview with on the research side.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:26

Wow. Wow, that's amazing. Okay, tell me what those PhD interviews were like in general, if you can sort of, you know, identify any commonalities among all of them. That's a lot. And I also I'd love to know over what time period those took place, like you know, and how long each of those interviews were.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:45

Yeah. So they Vanderbilt's took place across two days. Columbia's, I believe, took place across one day, typically. Uh, we had to postpone one interview to the following week, and I've got a I've got another fun story about that. And then Tufts took place across about five hours on one day.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:05

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:06

So they the way that it worked out, so you get to research, you basically get to, it's like being a kid in a candy shop, PhD applicant, you love science, and you love talking about your science.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:18

And you basically you get asked, who do you want to talk about your science with out of all of these star researchers?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:02:27

And so it's it's a great experience. You get to look through, you get like, I think 10 days put together your list. And so I chose a bunch of people who study immunology because I love the brain's immune system, and then neurogeneration and sort of just neuroscience in general. And so you put together about twice the number of professors that you actually interview with. And the I wound up getting a book that's like the like a guide to med school admissions interviews. And they're like they go over like 10,000 types of questions that'll be like, what's your go-to song and what does it say about you? And it's sort of these like like psychosocial types of questions. I think behavioral questions is how they're labeled. And the PhD interviews were just like, so tell me about your research, and you get to talk about it. And at one point they'd be like, just on average, they'd be like, So have you looked into this issue on that? Why or why not? And so you're gonna be like, Oh, we thought we thought about that, and then we looked into the literature, and like this part had already been looked at, and they're like, Okay, so like how'd you pivot from that? And so, like, it's sort of more like you just get to talk about your science.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:03:40

What became a challenge and what was really fun. I remember my first interview. So I'm I'm sweating bullets, my hands are shaking off screen, yeah, and I'm I'm talking to this guy. It's I'm really nervous, and he's like, so I see that you worked with, and then addresses one of my PIs by first name.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:00

Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:01

And I'm like, oh, so either y'all are really cool or hate each other. And he's like, he's like, okay, like, like we're working on a similar project. We see that we worked in organoids. How would you solve this problem if you had it?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:17

And I was like, oh, we had that problem. And like they they sort of published on it already, but like here's how we wound up solving it.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:04:24

And he goes, Yeah, that's what we're looking at too. That's a pretty good idea. So so it's really it's it's validating that it's like you're sort of just two scientists like chumming it up.

SPEAKER_05 1:04:36

Like having a conversation. That yeah, that's that's amazing. Like it's true, like it's truly intellectual and other level, which is also why when sometimes we'll have students who will say to us, you know, I really like research and I have this great research project. I devoted a lot of time. Should I it will be easier for me to get in if I apply MDPHD? And our our answer is always no. Like, you know, you should you should only be applying MD PhD if you genuinely love the science, because that's what you're that's going to be the focus of your interviews. This is exactly what we tell students. And that's why we also tell them when they're practicing for PhD interviews for the MD PhDs, they need to be practicing with PhDs. They need to be practicing with their PIs who understand their research as as well as the student, or you know, better than the student understands, because these are not traditional med school interviews where you're getting behavioral questions and you're getting, you know, tell me why you want to be a doctor. They're very scientifically based. So I think I think that that's all really wonderful information. So, okay, so so tell us where you got in and you know, and how you made the decision, you know, to go where you're going and all of that. Let's let's give the the final answer here, I guess.

SPEAKER_04 1:05:50

So I I wound up the the spring semester has been an interesting process. I sent a letter of intent to one school and have actually wound up getting. Rejection from it after the interview. But I've been accepted to and will be attending Columbia University for medical school. And I'm incredibly excited about it. I think it'll be an awesome learning experience. And I've loved everybody that I've talked to from there.

SPEAKER_05 1:06:16

Yeah. Yeah. No, phenomenal medical school, incredible city. I mean, here you are, you, you know, you're from Houston, you spent some time in Nashville, now you're going to Manhattan. It's good to experience science and medicine in different geographic areas because things are done differently in different places. And it's going to enrich your learning. It's going to enrich your experience. And it's going to, you know, help to make you a phenomenal MD PhD, you know, research, you know, a scientist and a physician, which I which I know you're you're going to have an amazing career ahead of you, Reed. Because not only are you so talented and brilliant, but you also have phenomenal interpersonal skills. And it's it's going to take you very, very far in life. And I have no doubt that, you know, you're going to be a smashing success in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:04

I really appreciate that.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:05

As you already are.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:06

So I appreciate that a lot.

SPEAKER_05 1:07:09

So so any parting words, you know, in terms of like, you know, final, you know, lessons that you think we should impart, you know, to our listeners at all.

SPEAKER_04 1:07:19

Yeah. I think one of the biggest takeaways, even from my first year in college to even like now as a senior in college, the bumps and the dips and the lows and the rejections and the bad grades aren't the end of the story. You know, they're a chance to sort of pick yourself up and improve. And so even when you don't have the GPA you want, or you didn't get the fellowship that you want, or you have to move out of a social group, like changing out of a fraternity, there it's it's a growing point. And you're gonna be all the better for it. And you're gonna do, you're gonna have things to talk about in interviews. And there's always just sort of a way back onto that highway.

SPEAKER_05 1:08:05

Yeah. Great, great points. And and I I agree with them all. And I thank you so much, Reed, for sharing your path with us. I know that other students are going to benefit from this. If anyone is interested in learning more about MedEdits, getting any help from us, you can sign up for a free consultation. I'll include that in the show notes. Reed, congratulations on a phenomenal college career and an amazing MD PhD admissions process. And thank you so much for joining us and for sharing your story on the oath.

unknown 1:08:34

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:08:34

Yeah, thank you for having me.