VCU and Dartmouth

Greetings everyone!

I am back, safe and sound, in San Diego once again. This last week has been stressful and exhausting, but everything went really well. I flew into D.C. last weekend to spend a couple days with my uncle and cousin who live in Arlington, VA. They showed me all around D.C., and Sarah (my cousin) took me to NIH with her where she is doing an internship in a pediatric oncology lab. She too starts med school this fall. I got to meet several of the doctors she works with, and even went down into the NIH vivarium with her (the mouse house). Monday I took an amtrak down to Richmond, and settled in to get ready for the interview tuesday. Tuesday morning I found myself in a special "applicant waiting room" with about ten others. Some had interviews scheduled in the morning, some had them scheduled in the afternoon after the tour/luncheon part of the day. I felt so lucky to have had mine in the morning, so that I could relax and really enjoy the tour later. So about fifteen minutes prior to scheduled interview time, I was given a piece of paper with directions to find my interviewer's office. Despite being really crappy directions, I finally made my way to where I was supposed to be, right on time. My interviewer was a radiation oncologist and I interviewed right in the middle of his lab at the Massey Cancer Center. Once again, it turned into a totally non-stressful interview and really more of a casual conversation. This guy said some really wonderful things that I'm still not sure how seriously to take. He said that my file reviewer (the person who was responsible for getting me the interview) really really liked me, and at this point he felt that it was more of a recruiting thing on their part. So he spent a lot of time "selling" the school to me, and we even talked about my various housing options, including whether or not I should think about trying to buy a house there. At the end, he said if he were me he would be very confident. So......all that sounds great, but I have to wonder if the rest of the 30+ person admissions committee sees it the same way. Anways, it was very interesting. I really loved the school though. Absolutely gorgeous medical center, and the people were so warm and sincere. The first years have lecture in something called the egyptian building, which is the very same building that medical students had classes in one hundred and sixty-three years ago. The confederate white house (i.e. Jefferson Davis) just also happens to be on the campus, right behind the ambulance bay in fact. The school is really such an intriguing combination of history and tradition with modernization and 21st century medicine. It amazes me that VCU doen't even hit the rankings in most cases. That's where the problem comes in for me. People see this in different ways, but I tend to side with the people who say that it does indeed matter where you get your degree from. As much as I think I would be very very happy for four years at VCU, in the end I don't think I could choose it if I had multiple acceptances. So we'll see I guess. I would appreciate any insight on this matter if anyone is dealing with the same issue or has any ideas about it.

That's where Dartmouth comes in. I flew into New Haven, CT on wednesday afternoon and rented a car. I will not bore you with the details right now of why I flew into New Haven. Starting the journey to Hanover, I passed alongside the Yale campus, where I promptly flashed my middle finger in their direction. Three hours later, I settled into my room in West Lebanon, NH, where Hanover would be a quick six mile drive in the morning. Oh my gosh, this place is rural. I mean I grew up in a little rat hole called Sierra Vista, but even Sierra Vista looked like a big city compared to rural New Hampshire. Still, it was very beautiful. It snowed all day the day of my interview, and I was really excited about it because I've more or less never even seen snow. I was kinda scared driving in it though. But anyways, back to the interview. Dartmouth has less interview days, so understandably it was a larger group, about twenty-five. For the first time, I noticed that everyone was really really well dressed. Also, the general aura was much more tense, and it took a lot longer for people to start warming up to each other. I was absolutely blown away by the snootiness of some. This chick from Harvard had her cell phone go off, very loudly, in the middle of the dean's presentation, and she didn't even blink an eye but rather answered it and left the room. Wow. I don't care if she is from Harvard, that was beyond rude. So we had the usual presentation and then were shuttled off to have a tour of the medical center, which was very impressive. Despite its rural location, it is one of the largest and busiest medical centers in New England, drawing a patient base from a multi-state region. The Dartmouth campus itself, is also very impressive and beautiful. Everyone had two half hour interviews in the afternoon, and mine luckily, were both in the admissions office. Even now, I am still not quite sure what to think about my first one. It was with the chair of the admissions committee, this really really old guy who seemed to be in something of a coma. He basically went down a list, kinda reading out loud all the major points of my application as I sat there. He only asked me one major question (why dartmouth) and didn't really seem interested in my answer at all. He kept blabbing on and on about totally random things and basically repeated everything I had heard in the dean's presentation that morning. If he gave me the chance to say something, I tried to spin it into something I thought we should talk about, but he just kept blabbing on about how great dartmouth was and how much I would love it. So after much thought this is what I think: The fact that he has been doing admissions at Dartmouth for over twenty years means that within two seconds of meeting me, he has most likely already made up his mind. Maybe even before that. He has probably gotten somewhat bored and burned out after meeting and interviewing thousands of pre-med hopefuls over the years. But even if this is the case, I cannot be sure whether to interpret his behavior in a positive or negative light. Luckily, even if he is the chair of admissions, his vote still only counts as one. My second interview was absolutely wonderful, and I felt like I got some really powerful points across. It was my first interview with a woman, which I had been a little worried about (I'm used to interviewing with men). But it was definitely, to date, the best experience I've had. She had a lot of challenging questions to ask me, but I felt like I really nailed everything. So I left Dartmouth that day feeling pretty damn good about my prospects. I also felt like I would really love going there. Even the rural setting appeals to me in many ways. Unfortunately, they are filling a class of only eighty students, so maybe my prospects aren't so great after all. Who knows I guess....

So, I should be hearing from Rochester in about 3 or 4 weeks, same for VCU. Dartmouth said don't even bother checking the mailbox for six weeks. But I've waited this long, I can wait a little longer. Can you believe we started this whole thing last June? Wow. But I do hope that I will hear something before my New York Med interview rolls around, because I would really like to save the time, effort, and money by not having to go to that one.

I will be driving up to L.A. this thursday to have my USC interview on friday the 3rd. So stay tuned......