Medicine as a Career - Page 10
stimulus for greater performance. Such analysis
may, on the other hand, call for recon-
sideration and a possible change in your career
goal. If this is the case, the change
should be made promptly after consultation with
your guidance counselor and parents,
in order to avoid loss of time and almost
certain disappointment at a later date.
The aim of the self-evaluation should not be to
determine if you are outstanding in
all the basic attributes necessary for a
successful medical career; rather you should
ascertain if you are above average in the sum
total, at least average in each, and do not
have very serious deficiencies in any. What is
to be sought is a determination of how
close one actually comes to a hypothetical
standard, realizing that there is a broad spec-
trum of acceptability determined by a balancing
of all factors.
FACING THE FUTURE
______________________________________________
The first step to becoming a physician is to
decide that at all times you will be realistic
and honest with yourself. Before you reach the
stage of applying to a medical school,
you should periodically reevaluate your
abilities and the sincerity of your conviction to
become a physician. You should determine if you
possess the intelligence, scientific
aptitude, personality, and inner strength--that
are essential for success as a physician.
Each prospective medical school applicant must
in time face the reality that he or
she will be but one out of more than 45,000
applicants competing for a place in fresh-
man medical school classes. The competition is
very intense and more than 50% of the
applicants fail to attain their goal (at least
on the first try). You should also be aware that
since each applicant applies to about ten
medical schools, there are more than 300,000
applications to be processed. This means
screening 500 to 7,500 applicants to fill 50 to
250 places. The initial screening process
rejects some individuals outright and ranks
others for further action, determining if they
merit a prompt interview or should be put
on hold for an interview at a later date. It
is, therefore, important to realize at the outset
that in addition to your intellectual
achievements and potential, the mechanics of the
admission process itself is critical. Knowing
which schools and how many schools to
apply to, presenting your qualifications,
writing your essay, and handling yourself well
at interviews are all vital elements in
achieving your goal. The admission process is the
culmination of your efforts to become a
physician. It involves marketing your personal
assets to the maximum extent possible. It is
therefore important for you to get to know
your strengths and weaknesses in order to make
sure that you accentuate the strengths
and minimize or, if possible, even eliminate
the weaknesses. The image that you indi-
rectly project by means of the transcripts,
recommendations, and MCAT scores submit-
ted in your behalf, and that you directly
project in your interview, will determine the
success of your attempt to secure a place in a
medical school. Once you have been
accepted for admission, it is almost a
certainty (because of the negligible failure rate)
that in due course you will be awarded your
medical degree.
Future Challenges
After completing their studies and training,
the challenge of the practitioners of the
twenty-first century will be (1) to maintain
the traditional commitment to service as the
central theme of their work in spite of
increasing regulation; (2) to remain committed to
life-long learning as medical knowledge has an
increasingly shorter half-life of validity;
(3) to seek to resolve the social and ethical
problems that arise as technological capabili-
ties increase within a humanistic framework.
For further discussion of these challenges,
see Chapter 16, Physicians and Medicine in the
Twenty-first Century.
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