288: This is How UICOM Reviews Your Medical School Application

If you're applying to medical school in 2022 to start medical school in 2023, join me Wednesday or Thursday, Wednesday night at 9.30 p.m. Eastern or Thursday at 11 a.m. Eastern at premedworkshop.com, go register today, I'm going to show you how to tell your story in your application. Again, that's premedworkshop.com. If you are applying to medical school in 2022, be there or be square. The premed year, session number 288. Hello and welcome to the three-time Academy Award-nominated podcast, The Premed years, where we believe that collaboration, not competition, is key to your success. I'm your host Dr. Ryan Gray, and in this podcast we share with you stories, encouragement, and information that you need to know to guide you on your path to becoming a physician. Boy, do I have a great guest for you today. My goal when I started this podcast back in 2012 was to go right to the heart of medical school admissions. Trying to defeat that website that shall remain nameless, that three-letter website that shall remain nameless, I wanted to put out real information going to the people who are actually making the decisions. And now that I've been doing this for over six years now, and I get to travel to conferences, I get to meet amazing people. And our guest today is one of those people who I met back when I gave the keynote address at the University of Central Florida's medical school admissions symposium. Now, our guest today is the director of the Office of Medical College Admissions at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. She oversees the admissions at three different campuses for the University of Illinois. The one campus she doesn't oversee is the new Carl College of Medicine. Our guest today has been at many medical schools now having landed at the University of Illinois. And we're going to talk about how she has directed her team to evaluate applications. We're going to go from day one when your application gets processed and sent to the University of Illinois. How do they look at it for a secondary application? How do they look at the full application and the MCAT score to determine who gets an interview invite? Once somebody's interviewed, how do they determine who gets an acceptance? How does that process happen? And if you are a student who has applied to the University of Illinois and you've been rejected, now you can kind of see behind the scenes what goes on and maybe where your application fell short. We're going to dive in, it's going to be a great conversation, lots of nitty gritty stuff. We're going to say hello to Leila Amiri, the director, Office of Medical College Admissions at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. Leila, welcome to the premier deer. Thanks for joining me. Thank you for having me. I want to start by letting the audience know who you are, how you've gotten into your position and what your journey's been like in the medical school admissions process. So it starts a long time ago. I think, you know, oftentimes students ask me this question, how did you end up being here? And what I tell them is that no one goes to school to be a medical school admissions director. Most of us, if you look at us across the country, have fallen into this and fallen in love with what we do. So for me, it started with being a peer advisor as a biology undergraduate, working my way through the ranks as an advisor, becoming director of advising, really becoming engaged with and appreciating the passion that was there in the pre-med students and looking for an opportunity to be able to work with them exclusively. Physician opened up and admissions at the med school where I was working. I took advantage of it and I have never looked back. So the first time that I started work as an admissions director was back in 2009 in Florida. And I've loved it ever since. Being in your role as director of admissions for a big medical school, it's got to be the best of both worlds I'm assuming, giving students the golden ticket to fulfill their dream. But then also being on the other side and telling students, no, not this year. What is that dichotomy like for you? So that's a really interesting question. You know, all the time that I was on the other side of the table, that was where that was where my struggle was because I believed in my students and I knew that all they needed was a was a chance. And if one medical school would give them the opportunity, they could go there and prove how great they are and how they're going to enhance the lives of everyone that they touched moving forward. Then when I came to this other side, I realized the moral obligation that sits with admitting students. So obviously we all want good people and we want people who've traveled the distance and we want students who will really put their heart out there for their patients. The other piece of it is obviously does the student have the capability to make it through the curriculum. And that was the piece that I really learned about once I came to this side of the table. So, you know, it's the fun part of being on this side is obviously interacting with students who have it all and they're going to make it and they'll be great physicians. But also letting the students that don't know or that don't make it this first round, that there's always hope. There are ways that you can make that application stronger and better or submitted to the school. That's the right fit for you and that there's a way for you to reach this dream. It's your dream. You get to realize that no one gets to take it away from you. Yeah, and that's that that hope is something that a lot of students miss. So I didn't get in. I must not be a good physician or I won't be a good physician. I'm like, no, you're just you've been told no today, but there's always tomorrow. Exactly. Yeah. So in your role at the University of Illinois, you get thousands of applications for a couple hundred seats and you have to give feedback to a lot of students about why they didn't get in. So we're going to take that feedback and common pieces of information that you give students who don't get in and we're going to dissect that today in the podcast. Sounds good. That sounds great. All right. So I think to begin this discussion, we need to kind of look behind the scenes of what goes on. Right. And that's kind of one of the biggest reasons I started this podcast was to kind of remove that veil of secrecy that students think is there with medical school admissions. So every year the application cycle opens up and and you get your first big batch of applications, the end of end of June to start sifting through to see who you want to interview. But even before that, I'm assuming you guys are sitting down saying, okay, this is this is what we want our class to look like. Can you walk the student through the process of of what you're doing as an admissions committee to to really form the basis of of what that next class should look like? Absolutely. So I work at a mission driven school with a social justice mission and the commitment to the to the underrepresented and underserved that surround our community here, also at my regional sites as well. So every year we do have a process by which we screen applicants, but our committee sits down and revisits this process just to make sure that we're looking for all the right intangible pieces of the application. Right. So there's there's metrics that everyone should have in order to know that they can make it through the process and I'm happy to say that I'm at a school where our faculty are okay with students who've had some hiccups along the way. They record may not be outstanding, but they've they've stuck to it and they've persevered and they've tried as hard as they can to make it through the other part of the application or all the experiences and activities that a student has spent their time and invested in to make sure that they understand what it means to be a physician. What does the job look like? Who will they be serving? And do they understand that this is a lifetime commitment? If this isn't a job, right? This is a lifestyle that they're choosing and they're going to be expected to be able to take care of people for as long as as long as they can. So that's where we start. The mission is the same. Who did we accept last year? Are we happy with who we brought in? And what do we want it to look like next year? Does that answer your question? Yeah, it does. Thank you for that. Sure. Being a mission-based mission-driven school, a lot of schools will probably say something very similar. As students are looking at schools and they're digging through the MSR and websites looking at vision statements, looking at mission statements, they all seem to sound alike after a while. How should a student be looking at University of Illinois and say, "Oh, this mission looks like something I'm driven towards?" I love that question. So if you look at our mission, we're similar to ours. schools where we have this three-pronged mission which relates to research relates to service and relates to providing care. And the nice thing about our mission and our program is that I would say when we bring students in about a third of them fit each part of the mission. So not everyone's going to be interested in research and those are the students that have spent a lot of time and a lot of effort working with communities and working with patients. So they're meeting our service mission, they're meeting our providing care mission. And so it's not that each student has to present themselves as excellent and all three areas of the mission. And I really, so this is I'm closing in on my first year, well I've actually closed in on my first year here. And as I look at the students that we've admitted this year and I look at the students that we admitted last year, that's really how the class works up for me. That about a third of the students are fitting into each of these categories where we're looking in and they're exhibiting excellence. So we have students who've spent thousands of hours doing research, they've got publications, they were awarded small little grants that were available to them in their institutions. They've had some time in the clinic and they've had some time doing service, but those hours are much less in comparison to the time that they've spent doing research. And that's okay, we don't we don't detract from the application because that's there. They're they're going to walk with their faculty who are really on the research end of it. And the same can be said of the other two pieces. You talked earlier about making sure that somebody can can academically get through the curriculum. And obviously the two big elephants in the room are MCAT and GPA as kind of that very first thing that's easy to say yes or no to a student. How are you doing that at University of Illinois? So we don't really have a minimal threshold below which students won't be considered. Now we are one of the schools that doesn't release secondary to all students. So that's the first pass. If a student doesn't receive an invitation to complete a secondary, that signals to them that based on the academic credentials that were presented to us, we don't think there's a possibility that the student pass. Now that bar is is very low. So this would be a student who struggled in every single science class that they took, probably had a few failures and had to retake them and even those repetitions weren't weren't all that good. Then we come to the students who've received the secondary. And so I mean if you look at my average, we're sitting around a 3.6, 3.7, which is where where we are, but that range is so broad. You will see students with 2.5s and 2.9s who we've admitted as well. And so what we want is the student who's taken broad range of science classes, who's taken several science classes and if they struggled in the beginning, they managed to understand how to do well in science and they've helped that trajectory moving upwards as far as they could have until they graduate. Now in addition to that, we also have a post back program. And so for students who've done well in terms of their service and who've done extremely well in terms of their patient care, but their life circumstances have been such that maybe they haven't been able to dedicate as much time to their studies. Those are students that we invite to join us for our post back or some of our pre-matriculation programs. So they have opportunities to learn with our faculty to give them the academic skill set that they need in order to be successful. So you'll see the broad range of students in our class. As far as the MCAT is concerned, again, I really don't have a minimal threshold, but when we're looking at percentiles in the teams or teams or the single digits, those are the students who we're not considering for admission. When it comes to that student who has a sub-3, has a 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, whatever it is, they've obviously shown something else to you in their application. What is it that a student who is struggling right now who didn't or maybe completed their undergrad a couple years ago and is now thinking again about going to medical school or thinking for the first time about going to medical school? What are they showing in their application to to overcome that low GPA? You know, so there's reasons that students don't do well in school. And so when I sit with them one-on-one, I say to them, you're the only one who knows why the GPA is where it is. And I'm not asking you to tell me why this happened. Sometimes it's just that they were having a lot of fun in college. The first time that they're away from home, right? That's what colleges are. Exactly. And a lot of times we see with those students, they're really involved in a lot of things. So there's a lot of leadership, there's a fraternity or a sort of authority that they're involved in, there's a lot of service, they're leading, you know, health education types of programs or things like that on their campus. And so they were spread too thin. And because of who they are and because they're not quitters and because everyone is this A-type personality and they have to do well, they aren't willing to give those other things up and they don't give themselves the opportunity to do well, right? So we see that over there. And the thinking is, well, if we remove all of that distraction from you and just give you time to study, what will it look like? Right? The other student is a student who really didn't do a lot. So we look at the application and there's not a lot that's going on. They don't have a lot of experiences. And I think those students know who they are. They maybe fill out eight of the boxes or if they do these repetitions in some of them. And the questions aren't there. And for us, that is a student who really couldn't figure science out. And so that's the student that we're going to ask to take more science classes. And now that you're either reapplying or that maybe a couple years have passed and you think you want to do medicine now, you really need to take some science classes in order to show us what you have. And then that's where the manual process begins. Because as you know, and all of your audience knows, when they calculate the GPA, it includes all the undergraduate classes. And so sometimes it's hard to get that GPA to move. And so when we see that separation, we'll look at that separately. I'll calculate it manually just to see where the student's grade point average is. So it's it's taking them, you know, one by one and looking at what they've done. So you're really looking at that that trend. We always talk about upward trend downward trend. So you really want to see that trend or need to see that trend. Absolutely. Oftentimes, but so one of the processes that the committee has approved is to remove a full year, of course, work from a student's record. So if a student comes in, freshman year is really tough. First time away from home, you know, it's even hard to find a pair of socks that match. And that freshman GPA is really bad. And then everything is great. We just take that out. Yeah. And it's incredible, right? So they go from being a 2.7, all of a sudden, now they're 3.5 or 3.6 or something because obviously we've removed all of that. And then there's other work that shows. So they've got the good grades. They've been doing all of these extracurricular activities and they've done decent on the MCAT. We know that that was just freshman blunder. So I think what's important is for students to be clear with us. If there's a dip like that in their GPA or maybe someone comes in and they're doing great junior year, they break up with a significant other, all of a sudden everything drops and then they bounce back up. Let the committees know. If there's a school that's not going to take that into consideration, you know, that's okay. Not every school is the right place for a student. If that's the school that can't give student wiggle room for being person, for being a human being, that school probably isn't the best place for them to go. So that's what they need to be looking at. You know, look at the range of, look at the range of students who are admitted. Is there allowance for you to make a mistake and get up again or not? And if it's not, then this should be looking elsewhere. The next question that usually comes up is, okay, so I need to improve my GPA. How do I do that? I can go take classes. I can go get another bachelor's. I can do an SMP. I can do a postback. What sort of things are you looking for? Do you prefer students to do? Yeah, so that's again where we have the conversation. Why is it that you didn't do well? Right? Because as you mentioned, there's a postback. So the drawback to the postback, if it's a traditional postback, is it's undergraduate classes that feed into that GPA and getting that GPA to move is very hard. There's denominators too big to move it. Exactly. Right. So if you've built up already 50, 60 hours of science, you need that much and more to get the GPA to move. So then you look and see, why did I not do well? Was it because I was overextended or because I really didn't pay attention? If it's because they tried as hard as they could and they still couldn't get the A's, then they should definitely do a postback. It's going to be a longer process, but they need to figure out how to do well in undergraduate classes before we can have them move forward. But if it's really because they weren't paying attention to school because they were too busy enjoying life, then maybe they should be thinking about the next level. Now next level is some kind of one year master's degree or a master's degree. The beauty of the master's degree is that the GPA sits separately. So I don't have to look at the 2.5, I'll just look at the 3.89 that they give to me as a master's student. But only if the reason that they didn't do well was because they were spending time, you know, doing other things rather than studying. If they were studying, then the master's probably isn't the best option because if they come into the master's and do poorly, they've proven to me that really science isn't their thing because they've tried it twice and it didn't work out. Then you know it's the issue of how bad was the undergraduate GPA? Is a one year master's enough or not? So if a student jumps into a master's degree right at the end of the undergraduate and applies that same year, the master's isn't helpful because the transcript that we get is the undergraduate transfer. There's no new work on there. Right? And so are they applying to a school that will take updates or no? Right? So that's the decision for us again. If they're applying to schools that don't take updates, there's no point in applying because you can't update anything. If it's a school that does take updates, that's a consideration. But what does one semester of A's, which is about 9 hours, do in light of the past 4 years or 5 years where the student hadn't done well? Right? So they have to think, we have to think about this as well. And then is one year enough? Because sometimes it's when your master's degree only gives students about 20 hours of science. And some committees will say well 20 hours isn't enough. So for some students, the better option is to do a regular master's that's 2 years long. But if students are doing a master's to fix the GPA, this isn't for career changes, career changes, go for the one year master's. You did fine as a psych major. You're going to do fine in this. Move forward. But if a student didn't do well as an undergrad, the one year master's really they need to complete that and then apply the following year with that full transcript. So then it becomes 2 years. So it's all about the timing. So student gets a secondary application from you guys. So they pass that first hurdle. Their GPA in cats is good enough to get that secondary. What are you then looking at to get the invite out to that student for the interview? Right. So we put them through the screening process. And really our screening process looks for mission related aspects of the application. So what service does the student have, what understanding of the profession do they have? We have a very diverse student body, we live in a very diverse city. So what attributes does the student have that shows that they can meld well with our community and can have an appreciation and understanding and tolerance of the community that we have here with us. And then for the academic piece, we'll look for what they've done in the academic arena. Have they been a TA? Is there their publications there for them? How many times were they on the Dean's list and things like that? So student will go through the screening process as long as they are similar to the students that we admitted previous year or stronger than the students that we admitted the previous year will invite them for interview. The other piece that's really important for us is we have multiple campuses. And two of our campuses have a little bit of a different emphasis in that they are rural campuses and they were put in place to serve the rural community that we have here. So the secondary really addresses students fit to any part of our community. And so the question is on top of being a great physician, what else is it that you want to do? And those things that we're asking them to do are things that relate specifically to what we have available on the different campuses. And after all of that's been checked, we want to make sure the whole application makes sense, right? So the personal statement is well written and well articulated and what they've done supports what they've said in their personal statement. And we're happy to invite them to come meet us. Let's talk about the personal statement. The big thing that students seem to hate with the application process and they always are the most nervous about obviously besides MCAT and GPA, but that personal statement seems to be a big hurdle for everyone. When you're looking at a personal statement, what are you hoping to get out of it when you read it? So when I'm done, I say this to students and always say it with the smile so we laugh about it, but it's true. When I'm done reading a personal statement, I want to be breathless and wanting to meet this person. So the personal statement should help us understand where their motivation and commitment to dedicating their life to alleviating suffering for others comes from. And how will they maintain that? Because that school will be hard and they will question themselves and they'll question the faculty multiple times before they get through this. Multiple, multiple times a week. Exactly. There you go. And so they're going to have to dig deep. And so that's what we're looking for. And you know, not a regurgitation of what they've done in their experiences because that's obviously all there. Help us understand at the deepest level. So I wanted to be just a conversation almost between the student and us. And just as their parents and their significant others and their advisors can fill in the blanks, why is it that this person needs to be a doctor? That's where I want to be. We want that statement to really highlight who this person is and obviously to reflect them. So nothing is more disappointing than when a student walks in and they're not who we read about. Yeah. So let me let me rephrase that a little bit. So when you say breathless and you want to see that they're journey, you want to understand their motivations for becoming a physician, right? Why do you want to be a doctor? That's that's the ultimate question, right? Absolutely. And absolutely. I it's funny that students see that question and I spit it out at them all the time. And then they take that and they go, well, everybody else is writing about that. So I'm going to tell you why I think I'm going to be a great doctor or why I think I have the skills necessary to be a doctor. When you see those sorts of personal statements, what do you take away from those or how do you, if somebody writes a personal statement, they have great stats and great MCAT, great GPA, but then their personal statement is just totally off base. How do you handle that? Yeah. So that's a great question. You know, because I think students forget who's reading their personal statement. So when they, when they enumerate the characteristics that a good physician has to have, you know, their understanding of those characteristics may or may not be correct, right? And this statement is being read by physicians. So that's an issue because that always brings things up. Well, this is true or isn't, you know, or when they use an analogy that's not something that they are familiar with, like they talk about applying to med school and becoming a physician is like running a marathon and none of their experiences show that they have ever participated in that, you know, that's problematic. Or when they talk about a bad experience that they've had with another physician and how I'm going to change the world of medicine because that's how horrible it was and that's not who I'm going to be. You know, none of those speak to us because it comes from a place of lack of lack of knowledge. I mean, you know, until you've, until you've gone through the training and you, you've been there and you've held the hand of a dying patient or you've been able to treat a person, it's hard for them to say what the skills are. Now, if they say having been a patient, these are the things that I saw and I would love to emulate this. You know, that's different. That shows that they have this understanding there. So I think that's a risky perspective to take when writing a personal statement because there's always someone on the other and who's judging it. So the preference is always for it to be a personal, just a personal sharing of what is it that motivates them to be out there to take care, to take care of people. Yeah. When, when I mentioned that to students, I said, you don't need to explain to a physician what being a physician is like. Thank you. And, and understanding, and this is the other thing that, that I give feedback. I'm like, just because you understand or you think you understand, doesn't mean you should or want to be a physician. There are lots of people who understand, like nurses understand kind of what it's like to be a physician because they're in there all the time working side by side, but doesn't mean they want to be physicians. And, right. That feedback often gives positive students, and they take it as arrogance, like how, like the doctors are telling the students, like you don't know, but, but it's not coming from a state of arrogance, it's coming from a state of you don't know until you've been through this process. Yes, being a physician, shadowing all that stuff looks amazing, but until you're up for 24, 27, 30 hours straight, having numerous conversations with patients and patients families and talking about death and and being around death, until it's affected you at the core, you don't understand and you can't it's impossible, right? So, all right. So, personal statements don't tell the physician what it's like to be a physician. Exactly. Tell your journey, what's motivating you to go down this path and highlight those? What is the best personal statement you've ever read? What did what made you breathless about it? So, it was really it was so there's been several of these. This is the student who reflects on the experiences that they've had and it's the culmination of the experiences and the reflection that really leads them to the understanding that this is where I have to be and nothing else will work and they don't have to say that there's firefighters out there and teachers out there who also help people and you know I need to help people more than they do. It's none of that. It's just walking us through walking us through how they've reflected on life and how they can use the special skills that they have because they're the special person that they have at that point in time to make it better for the rest of us. I mean I love helping people but I absolutely don't want to do it by by being a doctor because I just I just can't and that's what's been and that's what's been great. You know the entire application is an application that shows reflection even when they write their experiences with a few words that they're able to use they've done things they've reflected on them because you know we all know that schools are not shy about telling students what we want them to do right we all have these lists of I expect you to do you know X Y Z X number of hours even some schools are very explicit I need at least a hundred or whatever hours of something. There's no checklist but there's checklist. There's checklist right and there's checklist and students are gracious enough to you know give us what we're asking for so I expect everyone to do the things that could they know they have to do but it's the students that really does them and appreciates them right so I've seen applications where students have said you know I did the best bench research and while I understand how research informs medicine and how it's necessary it's really not it's really not where I need to be and after having done that I mean do you know how many students with basic science PhDs get every year and that's where their story is where they do all this work and then at the end of it they realize it's not enough I need more you know I need more and so that needing more is really what makes you know socks go up and down in my committee here is that they're excited because the student needs more you know they're they will be satisfied and the other pieces it's not all about them right so their students who will say you know I did this and because of that I realized how good I am at this and because of that I realized how great I am at that and all of these things together help me because who I am is a scientist and a caretaker and so the patient is really lost in all of that I love it I love it you say what I say all the time to students and going back to the reflection I call it take away for students like I'll read amazing personal statements but I don't understand still why they're doing it they've had amazing experiences but I still understand why that's motivating them they're missing that reflection and so they need that reflection and the other part with the patient getting lost you'll read students who are like I I want the knowledge right I need to have more knowledge I'm like great look at Wikipedia like how is that knowledge going to affect the patient how are you going to to to affect somebody's life with that knowledge that you you're saying you want you know the most interesting conversation that I had one time with a student well I shouldn't say the most one of the interesting conversations that I had was a student who wasn't admitted who was just a superstar by the stress of the imagination and wasn't admitted anywhere and so when I sat down with her I said you know what at the end of the day I didn't want to be the context for your scientific investigation and she said what do you mean and I said that's what it was I saw in you a bright person very bright person a person who understands science who is curious you know inquisitive and you're always searching for the answer and it just seemed like you wanted to do that instead of a petri dish inside of a person's body and I didn't want to be that and she was stunned she sat there and started crying and I felt bad that she cried but then she said you know that's not that's not what I meant yeah and like but that's how it came across so you need to go back and think about this because none of us want to be that I mean at the end of the day we want you to care for us as as people and I want you to be bright but I don't want you to be experimenting on me either and I think students forget about that because we tell them to make themselves shine and to share with us about themselves and they don't think that we can look in the grades and see that they've got the A's and we can look on the MCAT and we can look in the experiences you don't need to repeat that for me because I know you've done research at the NIH in different places and I know you've got publications because it's all written there and I don't need you to tell me for the 40th different way that you like science and you want to help people exactly and this is tough I mean this is this is tough I get it yeah all right so a student passes the personal statement test that your left breathless yeah how how are secondaries used at University of Illinois how much are they weighed into an interview invite or they used later how do you look at those we use them for the interview invites and we use them for inviting students to the different campuses so the one question is you know which is very common tell us about a challenging situation and and how you got through it so again we're looking for the reflection piece and the other part of it is really to make sure that the students know what we have to offer right so we're a large state school we've got multiple campuses not all campuses have all the same things and as students supply and are admitted they're admitted to the system and we need some health and figuring out where they need to be placed but it can't just be that I want to go to Chicago because I think you know Chicago's in the big city and that's where where I think I want my education to be and so the secondaries are are very important for us to determine where the student will interview because it's very likely that they'll be placed there and also how much did they really how much did they really know about us so there's a reason that we ask them to tell us what other things they're interested in doing because we want them to be an active member of our community so we look in their application to see what kind of citizen they were as they were in school were they participating in the community that they had there and how will they be when they join us we have 180 students going through just on the Chicago campus every and we need them to engage with us with the community with the campus community and so the secondaries are really important for us for all those things but it determines fit we're doing our best to figure out are we the best place for this student and since we only get to meet a handful of the 7,000 applicants that we of the 7,000 applications that we receive we put a lot of effort in the secondary part to see you know is this visit that they'll make to our campus something that will be worthwhile for them and then we are on our best behavior to prove to them that we do deserve them as a student it's very easy for a student to look at a school's website and go oh this this is a rural school so I'm going to write about loving rural medicine and wanting to do rural medicine and serve the underserved how are you looking at a personal statement that may say that a secondary statement that may say that an extra curricula and putting all those pieces together to see if it really is true to the student yes so that's interesting so we have rural county indicators in Illinois and so we start all the way back from where did they grow up where was their high school you know are they understanding of the rural community because literature out there suggests that students who've been engaged in rural communities are the students who will have the greatest likelihood of going back it's not guaranteed that they will but of you know if you look at them proportionately those are the students that have greater likelihood of coming back in now we're we have a specific program for rural medicine it's called armed and it's located at a rockford campus they have a special application process that's separate from our regular admissions process so student would go through both processes and for them not only do they look at that but they also ask about the student's history in our state where they've lived what activities they've participated in in the rural communities and their interview is actually a committee interview with committee members or community members from all across the state including hospitalists. politicians, other faculty members, care providers, members from the farming community, and they really, what they're looking for is what they call morality. How much does this individual understand the needs of the rural communities? So there's expertise in that that goes beyond just the admissions office. But for a student that doesn't go through that track, again, it's looking at the entirety of the application. It's just like the student who makes the analogy of running a marathon, and they haven't done that. If they talk about rural matters and knowing that that's a big area of interest for us, and there's no indicators in their application, it doesn't really matter how strong they are. It's going to be difficult for us to invite them for interview because there's this disconnect between what they've done and what they're saying. So someone told me a long time ago that, look at your parents, where do they spend their money? That's what's important for them. So I bring that to the application process. I look at time. How much time have you spent doing these things that you're saying you really like doing? And if there isn't much time investment in there, then it's hard for me to take that at face value. Yeah. And I like that. You told me that a while ago. Right. I really like that analogy because if you're telling the admissions committee and your personal statement that you're really interested in serving and they're served, but you've done nothing in your extracurriculars to do that, then the thing that I always say to them is action, speak louder than words, right? What are you doing to show me that? Right. Looking through a personal statement, making sure all of those connections are there, what they're telling you are actually--they're doing from their extracurriculars. You look at their secondaries, they look good. That interview invite then goes out to them, and you invite them to one of the campuses to interview at. What are you looking for in a student on interview day? So as I mentioned, first of all, we want them to match who we read about. So that's the first impression when they come in. The--really, our piece will be their ability to communicate effectively with us. So the interviewers are generally two faculty members and a student or a faculty, a staff member and a student. And the faculty will be looking at the student for fit as a future mentee. Is this a type of student that I can bring in and I can mentor them and know that we can walk together to provide good care? Our students are connecting with them to make sure that they would be a good fit and they would want them as a classmate. And then for us, I mean for me is a non-health care provider as an administrator. What I tell the candidates is, you know, think of me as your future patient. I'll be looking at you for communication. How well are you able to articulate your responses to the questions that I formulate for you? Because as far as we're concerned, once they're here for interview, you know, they've passed all of these--did they have enough service, you know, is it believable that they really want to be a doctor? They've passed all of those things. So really the interviewers are just a chance to communicate with them and see how they are in person, and then to be completely frank, a good part of it is recruitment. Because we know students have lots of options. And if we've invited them for interview, there's probably 12 other schools that are out there wanting to recruit them as well. And so when we put all this effort into screening through these thousands of applications, bringing that one person in, we're going to try really hard to prove to them that we really appreciate everything that you've done at this point, and we have the resources and the people who can help you get to the next stage. So it's a little bit of both. A lot of recruitment and a lot of making sure that they're going to be a good fit with our community here. When you have somebody who does communicate well, shows that they have empathy in their interview, and you can see them taking care of your mom, your dad, or yourself. When it comes to comparing one student to the next, how is that done? And in the battle room of the admissions committee, how are you finally coming down to that last seat and picking one student over the other? Wow, that's a really good question. So we take everything that we have at our disposal. So it's the entire application, how well they did on interview, and can this person come in and add to what we have in our community, or what we need in our community? So if it's a student who has everything, as you mentioned, and it looks like they're really interested. Let's just pick simulation because that's what happens at Peoria. They're really interested in simulation. They're going to be a great leader in that area. That's where they want to do their research and comparison to someone else who may not be looking for something that's uniquely available at our campus. We probably go with a student who seems like we are a better fit for them. So really, we haven't had too many battles to come to it because we, over the 130+ years of interviewing students, there's a rubric in terms of the number of students that we invite for interview. And generally, as long as students come in, and there's no concern about the interview, it should be easy enough for them to secure a seat with us. If a student doesn't get accepted, what should be the first thing they do when evaluating their application? So I would say that, you know, we talk about experiences, attributes, and metrics with a double MC holistic review, and that's what they should be looking at. But if they had the interview, and the interview didn't go well, then I think it's really important for them to reflect on, you know, what happened as they were going through the interview day? And so it's, you know, when I tell students, you're on interview as soon as you step foot on campus, and the student may have three really good interviews, but if they're unkind to a staff member, or if they're unkind to another student, it doesn't necessarily mean that they'll be admitted just because they have three good interviews, and they had a strong application. So you know, so I think they have to reflect on the entirety of the experience that they had that day, and what happened during the course of, what happened during the course of the interview. Everyone is looking for a student who is going to be genuine about them, and the biggest negative comment that I get from interviewers, and I feel this way as well, is he or she didn't give me the opportunity to meet him or her. So they're sitting across from me, and I'm asking questions, and they're so concerned about, is she a Republican, is she a Democrat, what does she expect me to say in response to this, you know, should I be pro or against, you know, assisted suicide? You should have your own opinions, and whatever they are, you should be able to justify them, and I promise I really don't care what the answer is, unless if it's of course something really bad, but generally no one cares what the answer is, right? We want to see why is it that you have that opinion. And so to me, that's the worst thing that happens in interviews, is a student doesn't allow us the opportunity to meet them, and then there's all the standard things, right? They use bad words, they're not paying attention, they're fidgeting on their phone, or the, yeah. So those things, or they take the jacket off, I've heard some young men have taken their jackets off, loosened their ties before they sat down. So you know, some types of behavior that, or they've gone in and shook the hand of the physician and called them by their first name. And so I think that taints what happens afterwards, so it's really important for students to reflect on what happened while they were there. I mean, there are students who have citations on their application, and they're still invited for interview, and we reserve the right to talk to them about that, because it was on the application. Everything else is great, but there's this thing. Let me bring you in and for you to talk to me about what happened here. And it's that absolute lack of understanding of what they did was bad. And it was a school's fault, and it was unfair, and it didn't get a fair chance. So with things like that, I think that students should be, should be really thinking about. I also encourage students to take full advantage of all resources that are available to them. So they should take, go to their advisors, be honest about what happened during the course of the interview, have their advisor contact the medical school. I mean, there were things that maybe an admissions dean or director would be able to tell an advisor and not able to tell a student, and then the advisor can help the student understand that. So the interview for schools that way their interviews have a leak is really important. Did I answer your question? I think I talked a lot more than what I needed to. That was great and obviously great feedback. The one thing we haven't really hit on, we've talked about the nuts and bolts of the application, the interview, everything else. One of the most important things, if not one of the most important things, is the timing of it all. And as we're recording this, it's mid-May application submission opens up at the end of this month, typically beginning and of May beginning of June. And students are still in the process of writing their personal statement, writing their second area, so maybe they haven't even looked at it yet, maybe they haven't opened up the application, haven't requested transcripts yet. In your words, how important is the timing of the application? To me, it's everything. I'm a rolling admission school, and what I tell students, it's so much easier to shine in 500 than it is 7,000, and that's just the reality. As applications come in and they're completed, now students are invited for admission and they're admitted, and I say this to students, and I'm not being disingenuous about this. We reserve seats all the way through the process, so I will have seats to the last bitter day when the last group of students are being interviewed so we can accept students then. But by that time, we've seen a whole bunch of people come through. And so to me, timing is very important, as they need to apply as soon as they can, because seats fill up, and while we reserve seats, there's not, I don't have 305 when I'm interviewing in January, unlike I do when I open up the doors in the beginning. I think it's really important for students to submit an application as early, but they need to be ready. So don't just submit it and sit for the MCAT because people tell you to apply early, apply when you're ready, but timing is really important for everything. Request the letters in way ahead of time. Keep reminding your faculty members, get the letters in. I have every year, close to 100 students whose applications are not completed and they're rejected because we didn't get their letters in time. And they say it's not my fault, and it's true it's not their fault because they're not the one uploading the letter, but maybe it's their fault because they asked too late. Right. We're taking an MCAT late. Students are uncomfortable and they are concerned about how they'll perform on the MCAT, so they wait until a September MCAT. What does that mean? We don't get scores until October, probably. Many schools are done inviting people for that year in October. So then we're looking at spring invitations when most people are on the decline, except for schools that do batch admissions. That's a different process, but for schools that have rolling admissions or timing of the MCAT, it's important and the world doesn't come to an end if a student realizes that things can't happen this year and they wait to apply the following year. They should have all their science classes in place. I mean, we will look at students who don't have everything in place, but my preference is to see, have you met all my required classes and how did you do in them? So to me timing is important, and it's been important, I've worked at four medical schools, and it's been important everywhere that it been, so I don't think I'm the only one talking about timing. You're not. I talk to a lot of medical schools. You're not the only one. It's one of the biggest things, and students don't realize it. I like to place blame, I like to blame, I like to point fingers. I think it's a couple, it happens because of a couple of different reasons. Number one, students are used to deadlines. When they apply to undergraduate institutions, it's all based on deadlines. When they submit their homework, it's based on a deadline, all of their projects is based on a deadline, as long as you're in by the deadline, you're good. I have an issue, and this is just a personal issue, with the way that the AAMC and the medical schools have deadlines for the application process, because I think that's disingenuous, for the students who don't have the information, who aren't listening to this podcast and understand that the deadline for applications for medical school don't mean anything. Right, so how do we fix that? I mean, we can't move that we can, but it's unlikely that we'll move the deadlines. Yeah, we'll just remove that verbiage instead of a deadline, it's applications open, and we review applications first come for server, however the school wants to say it, but. Yes, the only problem with not having an explicit deadline is that beyond that, things will keep rolling in, and where does that stop? So for example, we're a school that requires a CASPER, and so when everything needs to be in for me by December 1st, the CASPER takes a full month to come out, so really students shouldn't be taking a CASPER that's after November, because the score won't come in in time, and they wouldn't have fulfilled all of my requirements. And every year I have, well, this is again my first year here, but last year I had many students who sat for CASPER's that were later, even though we said, "Don't take it after this date because we won't have the score in time." So I don't know how to change that. I don't really know how to change that culture, and I think this is reflective of the individual. Right? I mean, if a student is unable to follow very simple directives on how to do paperwork and want to send things in, I'm not sure that they're going to have it all together to be a great physician either. These are very simple things, right? Get your stuff in on time. Yeah. Sit for the exam. Or if you said, "If you told me that you're going to sit for the exam, take it." Right? So that was several students that we had this year. They just didn't take the test. They came in an interview because we took the registration for the test as what is going to happen. So we invited them for interview, but they never sat for the test. So while they did great on the interview and everything was perfect, we were unable to offer them a seat, and we had to reject them because they didn't sit for the test. So is this the person who's not going to take their board seriously? Or is this the person who's not willing to wake up, and you know I'm not a doctor, but I always worried about that person who's not willing to wake up and go look at the potassium levels or something, and then I will or won't get the drug that I'm supposed to get because they just decided not to do that. And maybe I'm exaggerating, I don't know, but that's, we don't have anything other than their behavior as an indicator of how they will be when they're here, you know. And so in a sense, I don't want to do anything. I mean, deadlines are what they are, you either meet them or you don't. And if you don't, well I'm sorry, there's always next year. Let's talk about the Casper for a minute because I wasn't aware that University of Illinois was a Casper school, and there's about a dozen, maybe a little bit more now of schools that require the Casper. Some schools are using it in lieu of a secondary, some schools are adding it to their secondary process. Why are you guys using Casper, and how are you using it to screen students? So right now we are, we haven't up until this point really used it as a tool for screening students. Still waiting, last year was our second year, and based on everything that we looked at, there wasn't really any correlation between Casper and how students were performing here, and that's to be expected because it's not in marker of academics. It's really supposed to show in other behaviors or how they perform in the clinics. But what we saw this year were students who came in with very high metrics who had high negative Casper scores and interviews didn't end up being that great either. So our committee has a retreat in June, and we'll be looking at that again this year. But up until this point we really, we haven't been using it explicitly in the admissions process. We've just been studying it. But I do have colleagues that do use it just as you mentioned. And mostly for them, it seems that it's been a way of considering a student who, based on their metrics, they maybe wouldn't have considered. But because they've got other great personal or ethical attributes that they think would be a good addition to their class. Okay. I like to call it for students who don't know what it is. I like to call it a personality test on steroids where it's just a lot of moral ethical stuff and as fast as possible, you need to give your answers to the scenarios that they're giving you. A lot of students are scared of it. I don't think there's anything to be worried about. You just need to just give your initial responses to the different scenarios. I think for some students, a big hindrance is typing speed. And so if that's something that a student is struggling with, they should start practicing. So, you know, the other thing, and I didn't know this until I actually had our end of the year debrief with the Casper folks, I was under the impression that typos weren't counted against students, and that's true that they're not. However, non-American students don't do as well on the Casper, because the responses are judged from an American lens. And so, first-generation immigrant students, or even second-generation immigrant students who have a very strong heritage presence in their home, for example, who have parents that don't speak English or whatever, may not do as well on the Casper. And so, this is something that they're working on and that we're talking about, so we're going to keep a close eye on that this year because, I mean, whether or not it's the right thing to do, it is what it is. You know, that brings up the philosophical question, as well, who says the American way of looking at things is the right way to look at things, right? So, I'm not in a place to have that conversation, but that's there as well, and, you know, that way is heavily on us. Because we do look for diverse students, because Chicago is such a huge melting pot, and we've got people from all over the world with all different languages. You know, we don't want to look at something that might hurt a candidate just because their first-generation student here, you know, with parents that immigrated from someplace else. That's good to recognize that implicit bias in the system and try to overcome it. Is there anything that we haven't covered through the application process, through the admissions process at University of Illinois, that a student should know about when reviewing their application, when kind of going through the process of getting those rejections and thinking about the next application cycle? You know, we didn't talk about letters, and I think students should review their letters as well. I mean, obviously, they can't see the letters because generally they'll wave the right to review them, but we think who they've asked to write the letters for them. We get letters from faculty members who really don't know the students well, and we've also received letters from faculty members who haven't been supportive of the candidates application. And regardless of what else is in the application, so depending on how the committee has felt, we haven't invited the student to come in. And obviously, we couldn't ever say, "Professor, so-and-so said this about you," but it was, "Let's bring them in and explore this one thing that was mentioned." So I think students should really think long and hard about who they ask to write the letters for them. I always tell them, "I want to like you more than I did after I finished reading your letters," because the letters supposed to give me additional information. Knowing that you got an A in Organic doesn't help me because I see that. Knowing that you were a volunteer at this place doesn't help me because I see that. So these letters, they're paying to ask for, they're paying to write. I hated writing them when I was writing them, but they're so important because that's the only other thing that we have to help us with the application. And don't submit the same letters. If you love the faculty members, they wrote them. Obviously, go to them again and have them put a new date in there. And make sure that the letters are good. For us, if I can just talk about my program, our letter process is manual. And oftentimes, a student's application may not be completed because we haven't had the opportunity to review all their letters. Once they look on Amcass and their letters are complete and they haven't heard from us in about a week, they should call the office and ask, because that'll be a trigger for us. Now, we do our best to keep up with them, but with 7,000 applications and three letters per student, that's a lot of letters that we're having to open and look at. So we're good with them calling this to figure out what's going on. Any last words of encouragement for the student who applies to Illinois, applies to any school and doesn't get that acceptance they're hoping for through the application cycle. Oh, I would say that, you know, it's not done. There are multiple ways to do this. And we started off with this. I mean, this is their dream. And it's their dream to realize that no one is allowed to take it away from them as long as they're doing the things that they need to be doing. So not giving up is the most important thing. Don't give up, but there has to be enhancements. So don't keep applying with the 2.5 and a 498 on the MCAT and wonder what's going on. You know, or don't keep applying when you haven't done the spot check. Look at the different parts of the application, see what's going on. And there's lots of opportunities, right? We talked about post backs, we talked about masters. I mean, there's so many ways for the student that wants to be a physician to be a physician and believe me, we want them here. I mean, every school, our goal is to bring in the best students that we can and to graduate the best doctors that we can. So we have a mutual goal here. So talk to us, work with us. You know, hold us to the standard. Ask, hey, what happened? What do you need from me so I can be part of your team next year? Good luck with it. All right. There you have it. Again, Layla Amiri, Director, Office of Medical College Admissions at the University of Illinois College of Medicine. An amazing behind the scenes look at how the admissions committee, their at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, evaluates all of their applicants. So if you've been rejected from that school, now you have an idea of how to go and look at your application, go and evaluate critically, right? Self-awareness is huge to this process. You have to be self-aware to understand what did you hear in this podcast go back and look at your application. Maybe have an unbiased third party listen to this podcast and then look at your application and see maybe where you fell short. If you didn't apply to University of Illinois, but you applied to many other schools, maybe you rejected during your first application cycle. What we went through here is not uncommon at many other medical schools. So use the information, look at your application, whether you're re-applicant or you're applying for the first time. Make sure that you follow the advice here. Get your ducks in a row, apply with the best application possible to make sure that you only need to apply once. Now still, only about 50% of students get into medical school MD-MDO. So there is a chance that you may not get in and that's okay. Figure out what you need to do to improve, maybe go back and listen to this, improve, figure it out, improve, improve some more, improve one more time, and apply again. I hope you have a great week. Let's see you next time here on The Pre-Med Years Podcast. [Music]