It had been a long time since I visited LA, and frankly I have no recollection of the previous occasion except my family stopping over to see other family in the midst of a journey to Baja California. I was really looking forward to it; I had already dreamed up the possibility of experiencing California and West Coast living during medical school, an intriguing change after years of snowy New England.
I took a shuttle to Westwood, the neighborhood home to the UCLA campus. It was already pretty late, so I saw nothing except a host of strip malls, mid-size high rises, and lots of long roads and traffic lights. After getting off the bus, I followed my host's instructions to his apartment, where he and his roommate (both MS1s at UCLA) welcomed me with my first In 'N Out burger and plenty of descriptions of life at UCLA. Things I noticed: LA really is teeming with Asians; my hosts were very relaxed, laid-back, and friendly, hinting at the real difference in culture between here and, say, New York; In 'N Out burgers really are pretty good (great texture).
In what became a recurring theme during the interview season, I had really great hosts. My main student host took me the next morning to the front office get a separate key card for the apartment even though I was only staying for a couple of days, and his roommate graciously answered all my questions and outlined a good running path to take, as I had taken my sneakers and hoped to get a taste of Westwood by taking a jog. To put it succinctly, the run was smooth, sunny, and comfortable (as Southern California weather tends to be), with a decent amount of incline and the sights of arid hills in the distance. I could have gotten used to this.
Other things before the interview: I hung out in a coffee shop for a while; I ate at a sandwich shop my host's roommate recommended and was impressed (pretty sure it had avocado in it); I chatted with DM about my pending trip to Albuquerque right after LA.
Interview day: this was my second MMI. A little bit more on the MMI: schools like Stanford, UCLA, and NYU began adopting the MMI format in belief that performance on the MMI correlated better with performance later on than traditional interviews. Furthermore, the multiple stations in an MMI helps correct for any biases (such as those of the interviewer), while a traditional interview with just one person would depend heavily on the perception of that single interviewer. So, basically, there is some measure of rationale here.
The other interviewees and I (all of us just guys -- the only time this ever happened to me during the season) gathered in admissions office (a little bit difficult to find) and ate a bunch of fruit and muffins while waiting. A staff member then explained to us how the MMI would go down, how fortunate we were to be interviewing at UCLA and that that alone meant we must be at the top of the applicant pool, and how great life at UCLA and in the city of Los Angeles is. Honestly, not much else besides. No official presentation, no pamphlets. Very sparse compared to the other schools I had visited thus far, which generally gave out a folder with all kinds of details.
We were taken in a shuttle to another building on campus, given instructions by the admissions dean (who the staff member enthusiastically endorsed), and then... that's it! We did the MMI. I didn't enjoy it. In fact, it was a little worse than NYU. Questions that I remember, in my own words:
- If you have a car with a restricted parking permit but you are not disabled, is it ethical to use it to park in a restricted parking space? What if there is an emergency? What if there are no other cars around?
- A situation in which you are facing away from the interviewer and an assistant, and you are given a diagram for something they are to construct with your instructions. You cannot look at the interviewer and assistant. Afterward, the interviewer asks how the process went, how communication could have been improved, why this is relevant in medicine, etc.
- The interviewer presents a video of homeless person and how he feels about his life in the city, which is later revealed to be an actor. The interviewer asks for your reaction.
- You're doing some kind of survey of different households and you notice that one household is lacking in medical services (or something like that). What do you do?
- Someone has undergone a sex change and is now seeking additional surgical treatment for something cosmetic, but wants to retain confidentiality by not revealing certain critical body parts during the surgery. How would you accommodate the patient?
- Tests reveal that a patient has cancer (or some kind of terminal illness, I can't remember), but the patient's partner advises not telling the patient right away for fear of how the patient would react. Does the patient still have the right to know? How do you respond?
- One station has a computer with a prompt asking about your projected career in medicine and its underlying motivations. I basically ended up trying to sum up my personal statement as best I could, as quickly as I could. I stopped midway through a sentence, knowing that they had said they didn't expect any of us to finish writing anything too substantive.
- Have you ever done anything wrong? If so, what?
At the end of the stations, they had each of us go back to our original first station to have a more traditional interview for about 20 minutes, similar to NYU's format. This was probably the worst part. I perceived my interviewer to be a very old, conservative guy who seemed deeply skeptical of my motivations in medicine and aspirations to global medicine. He also found it concerning that I hadn't chosen a specialty yet. I honestly felt like I was just a bit unlucky here.
After the MMI, we were invited by the dean to give our own comments and criticisms of the different stations. I offered that the computer station was biased against those who simply didn't have the same typing ability as others. We then had a tour, which honestly was probably the best part of the day. It wasn't so much the tour itself, but rather, the two student tour guides, who were highly enthusiastic and friendly -- very different from the overall lack of presentation from the admissions office. We ended with a chat with Dr. Iljie Fitzgerald, the new Assistant Dean for Student Affairs who made it clear that she would work with students individually to direct them in whatever way they wish, whether it be additional support from the school or a connection to a suitable research opportunity. And John, one of the tour guides, offered his own feedback on the school, that he felt the school starts "cold," that it could do a better job selling itself to prospective students on interview day. Spot on. I was particularly appreciative when he offered his phone number and email for anyone to just reach out in case they wanted to chat, especially in the heat of the interview season and the feeling that the process was unfair. "I don't know how that guy got in, especially when I know for a fact that he just smokes weed all day." Hilarious. I had a good number of invites at this point, but I still made a point to reach out to him by email afterward and thank him for his empathy.
The day ended pretty quickly in the early afternoon, and my flight wasn't till late at night, so I had a good amount of time to kill. Another interviewee wasn't flying out till the next day, and he happened to have a car rental, so we decided to drive together to see the beach. I liked him: a refugee (along with his family) from Afghanistan, had had a difficult time growing up in upstate New York, was currently getting a Masters in something related to biomechanics, and applied to UCLA almost on a whim (just seemed like a good school in the west to apply to, he said). And we had a good time eating Mexi-Cali food and enjoying the weather:
A seal -- there's a video I might upload later
He graciously drove me back to campus, and as I had already said goodbye to my host before the interview, I just took off for the airport. I had mixed feelings about UCLA, but overall I felt like I could come here. (Especially with the David Geffen full scholarship a possibility...) But at the time, I wasn't really counting on admission, and of course, now that it's July, I won't be attending. But alas -- till next time, LA!
No comments:
Post a Comment