Brandon is a UBC med student whose non traditional path to med school included a dual degree in music composition and biology and a gap year studying music composition in Paris. Watch to hear his advice for other non traditional med school applicants. Going forward, I want to show a diversity of paths in addition to science-> med, such as a variety of majors, extra years, gap years, etc. We filmed and edited this a while back so the video doesn’t include words of support. Please check out some educational resources and donation link regarding the Black Lives Matter movement. Read More
Category: Applying to Medical School
How to deal with failure as a premed, med student or pharmacy student
It’s Jamie and Shanna again. Since some got heart breaking rejection letters from med school, today is the perfect day to talk about how we learned to view failure and critical feedback as learning opportunities, set aside to feel down about the failure and then let go, and how to be kinder to ourselves and our team when failures occurs. We also share a couple light stories of times we felt like failures but these failures turned out to be nothing in the big scheme of things. (Mine was definitely petty in retrospect but my 17 year old self thought Read More
How to Deal with Toxic Premed Culture, Gap Year before Med, Reapplying to Med
This is an interview of an UBC Med Student’s journey from High school to Med school that includes a gap year between undergrad and med, applying to med three times, a discussion on toxic premed culture, and his current med school experience.
Non-Traditional Path to Medical School in Canada, and Fear of Failure
I interviewed a UBC Med Classmate about her journey that involves studying Piano Performance to become a Professor in Music, spending 5 years switching from piano to medicine, and applying to and getting into medical school. We also spend the last five minutes of the video discussing fear of failure.
How to get from High School to Undergrad to Medical School
Hope everyone is staying safe at home, and my heart goes out to anyone has been negatively impact by the COVID-19 pandemic! For those of you who have loved ones that are sick, have lost income and jobs, are struggling to balance childcare with work, and everyone else struggling, I hope that this will pass soon. I’m very privileged that my family is in healthcare and our jobs still exist. So we want to use our privilege to help where we can! My family’s involved in a lot of work to help out the crisis, specifically get more protective masks Read More
Should I do med school or grad school?
Shanna: This is a big question that quite a number of undergrads face. They’re interested in science and research but does grad school or med school seems like a better bit? I talk about medicine as the most amazing career in the world and encourage many people to consider it, but I’m super biased. Medicine is the perfect fit for my personality, my interests and what I believe is my purpose in this world (to help people). But, I acknowledge that that things that appeal to me in medicine are the downsides to some other people, while things that draws Read More
Medical School Interview Tips
Let’s discuss 5 tips to tackle medical school interviews. In particular we’re going to talk about the MMIs! This post will discuss what is the MMI like and then 5 tips: 1) Mindset, 2) Answer Structure, 3) Take a Pause, 4) Reflect, and 5) No need for a perfect answer. I’ll start with the disclaimers that I do not represent the official views of UBC’s Faculty of Medicine, or any other medical school, I can’t discuss any details of my actual MMI stations, and this is what has worked for me, but may or may not work for you. You’ll Read More