Getting into medical school: You have to laugh to survive

From "Med School Talking Blues" (written by me while in med school):
      "If you want to be a doctor, I'll tell you what to do,
       You've gotta start premed by the age of two."

Written on a med school bathroom wall:
      Will Rogers said he never met a man he didn't like.  Will Rogers never met a premed.

      I had wanted to be a doctor since the age of 5, when I had a crush on my pediatrician.  I detoured slightly in high school, wanting to be a vet, but by the time I was sixteen, I had gone back to wanting to help people instead of animals.  But I finished college physically exhausted, financially broke, and wanting just to get out of town.  I got a job in Baltimore, and after a switch, ended up working as a cardiac cath lab tech.  A year later, I knew if I didn't apply to med school now, it would never happen.

      This was 1972.  The last of the all male med schools had just gone co-ed, but to some, co-ed meant five or six women in every 100 students.  Some schools were adamant about not taking "older students" and, at 24, which is what I would be when I started, some would consider me an older student.

      There was a thing called "The Green Book", a listing of all the statistics gathered about the 113 med schools that existed then.  I combed through it, eliminating:

• All schools that didn't have at least 10% women in their last 2 classes
• All schools outside of Pennsylvania that didn't accept a significant number of out-of-state residents.
• All schools with premed requirements I hadn't taken (some schools wanted genetics or embryology
• Schools that claimed not to care about MCATs ( Medical College Admissions Tests - my MCAT scores were really good, but I had not done well my last two years in college, so my cumulative grade point average wasn't great)
• All schools whose mean grade point average was so much higher than mine as to be laughable.

     That left me with 25 schools.  I took the list to the chief of cardiology to ask how to narrow it further.  He said "Don't and add Georgetown."  So I applied to 26 medical schools.

      After the applications were sent in, I waited for invitations to be interviewed.  I had five interviews!  I was delighted!  I was terrified!

      The first was at Temple University Medical School.  I nervous as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.  This was it; my whole future hung on these interviews.  I was living in Baltimore and took the train up to Philly.  I had lived in Philadelphia all my life, but couldn't for the life of me remember how to get to Temple from 30th street station.  It was pouring rain.  I started walking.  I walked from 30th street down Market to Broad (14th if it was a numbered street).  I knew the C bus ran straight up Broad, but I also knew the buses were sometimes very far apart.  I would walk to the next bus stop, look back, and not seeing another bus, walk again to the next stop.  I had an umbrella, for all the good it was doing me.  I never did see a bus; I walked from Market, which would be 100 I guess, to Temple at 3400 North Broad.  Got there in time for the 2 pm interview.

      I was directed to a corridor with applicants sitting in chairs on either side.  I waited 45 minutes, which at least gave me time to dry out a bit.  Finally my name was called.  Dr. Rodman introduced himself, asked me to sit and then asked me to wait a minute while he wrote up the previous student, before he forgot him.  Then he opened my file, said "I see you went to Chestnut Hill College.  What did you think of the place?"

      I thought Dr. Rodman was probably Jewish, but on the other hand, he had a thick Philadelphia accent and for all I knew his sister could have been dean (the dean was a nun but still, could be.).  So I gave a sort of non-committal answer.  He then said "Goodbye.  Thanks for coming.  I have 6 more students to interview in the next 1/2 hour, so I have to keep moving!"  I had travelled 5 hours for a less that 10 minute interview.  I took the subway to my grandmother's house in tears.  I was devastated!

     I didn't go to Temple, but I did do my residency there and my first attending on service was Dr. Rodman.  After we became friendly, I asked him about the interview.  He asked me if mine was the interview where he fell off the chair.  It wasn't.  He said he thought Chestnut Hill was a dippy school and wondered if I knew it.  He also said he thought the interviews were mostly to make sure the students matched their pictures, looked and sounded reasonable, and didn't have two heads or something!

     Next came Hershey!  I had three interviews there.  The psychiatrist asked me about my cardiology research; the pediatrician asked about my family; the radiologist, a specialty known more for their interest in small variations of the color gray than for deep psychological insight, said "Tell me about your love life" and "Why are you fat?"  None of this seemed to be going well.

     At Georgetown I was asked why I had great MCAT scores and mediocre grades.  Because I do better generalized testing than the day to day crunch?  That wasn't going to help.  I didn't really want to get into all the situations and stresses that had affected my college grades.  Well, Georgetown wasn't likely to take me anyway.

     Medical College of Pennsylvania was the school that used to be Women's Medical College.  It had gone co-ed nine years earlier and changed its name.  The current class ratio was 1/3 men, 2/3 women.  Yet it was the only place where I was asked, "Do you have any idea what it is like for a woman in medicine?  Do you want to get married?  Are you planning to have a family?"  I think those questions would have been considered not politically correct elsewhere, but the interviewer at MCP wanted an answer.

      Several years later I heard her story at a Women in Medicine conference.  She had married late, after residency, to a psychiatrist.  She was in private practice first, but when then invited back to teach at the med school.  They had no children after more than 10 years of marriage.  She was offered the chairmanship of the department of medicine at the college and several weeks later found that she was pregnant.  She gave up the chairmanship, though she continued to practice and teach.  She was entitled to ask the question on interviews.  Her son started med school the same year I did.  When he was 5, someone asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up.  At that time, his mother taught at an all women's med school, where most of the professors were women too.  He answered that he would have liked to be a doctor, but he guessed he would have to be a psychiatrist, because only women were doctors!
  

      I got my letter of acceptance from MCP in March, and was totally thrilled, especially since it came after 16 letters of rejection, when I was starting to look at graduate school alternatives.  I was going to go to medical school!  I was going to be a doctor!  MCP would not have been my first choice.  I had been in all-female schools since second grade and thought it was about time I went co-ed.   Then I got a request for an interview from Michigan State.  I would go to this interview with an acceptance in hand!

     We had a late spring snow in May.  I sat at Friendship Airport waiting for O'Hare to open.  I sat at O'Hare waiting for Lansing to open.  I sat in Lansing waiting for the taxis to decide to run.  I got to my friend's dorm at 1 am.  The interview was at 8.

      The medical school at Michigan State was one of the newer ones.  It was run by an experimental committee, and taught in small "problem-oriented" multi-disciplinary group sessions rather than by traditional classes.  First we had essays to write: "Explain all the consequences you can think of, financial, social, medical etc.  resulting from the development of a pill that would allow humans to photosynthesize." "Explain the consequences of the discovery of an inexpensive cure for all kinds of cancer."

      After that, there was the interview.  The administrative assistant pointed out the window and told me my interview would be in that building across the field.  She said there was no point in taking the long way around by the road.  I could see the building and just walk across the field.

     Two problems with that.  There was a storm fence in the  middle of the field.  You couldn't see it; the snow sloped gradually up to the top of the fence then fell away.  Soon I was chest deep in snow.  I actually wound up laying down on top of it and rolling up and over the fence.  Problem 2: the other half of the field had only a small crust of snow, not enough to hold a person up, under which the snow melt created mud.  That field was also in back of the large animal hospital, used as a pasture for sick animals.  So I went to the interview, snow to my shoulders and manure to my knees.  I don't even remember the interview!

      On the flight home, I read the college paper.  There was a letter from a community doctor who had mentored students from U of Michigan and Michigan State.  He said he thought the students from both schools were equally well prepared, but the students from U of Michigan knew that the knew what they needed to practice medicine.  The Michigan State students spent a lot of time afraid they hadn't been taught the right things.

      Thinking about all of this, I started to write the letter on the plane to withdraw my application from Michigan State.  How cool was this, to have a choice!  I would be happy to go to MCP!  I was going to be a doctor!