Writing experts say that your personal statement can be likened to a marketing strategy. You basically have to convince your readers that you have something good to offer and are definitely worth a try. But compared to copywriting, admission essays cannot be based solely on claims. You have to provide clear evidence of your skills and capabilities that will make you suitable to a medical career.
You can easily present facts and figures regarding your academic standing and accomplishments. But when using this style of evidence, your essay may seem like a mere summary of your TOR (transcript of records) and resume. You need to offer details that are not seen in your other application requirements. In which case, you can always use ethos and mythos as types of evidence in your essay.
What are ethos and mythos as types of evidence in an essay?
Ethos is all about building credibility in your admission essay. Readers should perceive you as competent and as someone who possess good character traits. Likeability is key to persuading the admissions panel that you’re one of the best candidates for med school.
Mythos, on the other hand, is about the beliefs and perceived values of your audience. When used as evidence for persuasive essay writing, you see yourself using metaphor, narratives, and sayings. This is a stylistic approach to stressing important points in your argument or discussion.
Benefits of using ethos and mythos
Why med school? Are you suited for the medical professional? Basically, these are the questions you need to answer in your personal statement medical school. You may have the heart-felt desire to help others or best intentions to become a doctor, but without stylish presentation of facts and arguments, you’ll have trouble getting this message across to your audience.
You can then use ethos and mythos to make your personal statement for med school more compelling and interesting. These types of evidence will best illustrate your suitability for a medical career. Rather than enumerating all your positive qualities, use personal experiences, thoughts, and inspirations to express yourself better.
Through your examples, your readers will know what type of person you are, if you are patient enough to get through med school or passionate about the profession.
How to effectively use ethos and mythos in your essay
Your admission essay should not sound like a term paper. It should feel like you’re directly speaking to your audience. A positive ethos can make you a favorable candidate. Focus on your positive qualities, but still be honest with your self-assessment.
Mythos as evidence is used to make your reader understand you better. You can use methaphors and analogies to best explain yourself and appeal to them. Through this technique, you must exhibit rhetorical control.
When aspiring medical practitioners get too engrossed into their medical textbooks and scientific concepts, they tend to forget that one of the most important qualities that every doctor must have is people skills. What does this mean? Being a doctor, you are not only expected to diagnose patients, perform operations or administer medication. The medical profession expects you not just to heal but to be well-rounded. To bring out the best in your job performance, you are expected to assume teaching and counseling responsibilities. Interpersonal skills or people skills are a must in the medical profession.
Better doctor-patient relationship
If you were a patient, how would you like your doctor to treat you? Most patients rely on their doctors to treat their medical problems. A patient would lean on them so doctors need to cultivate a patient-doctor relationship based on trust. This relations will ease the tension and allow the doctors to perform their duties more effectively. In general, patients prefer friendly and approachable doctors. Treatment is easier when a patient can explain his/her situation or forward questions to the doctor. To get a full picture of your patient’s concerns and feelings, you will need to be approachable and amicable enough to be entrusted with true feelings.
Healthier working environment
Just as keeping the doctor-patient relations is important, maintaining good working relationships with the other staff members of the hospital is necessary too. Bear in mind that medical practice and profession works best as a team – nurses administer IV fluids, hematologists perform blood tests, and radiologists operate X-ray machines. In general, only two kinds of doctors exist: the doctors we love and the doctors we love to hate. “Doctors we love to hate” designate most of their work and blame their mistakes to other people. On the other hand, “doctors we love” respect co-workers through polite requests and giving compliments for each job well done. Treat your colleagues as your equals because no matter what you do, the M.D. after your surname cannot aid you to accomplish work; you need your colleagues and team members to do your job better.
The real definition of a successful bypass operation or perfect surgical stitch suture is not sufficient to save a patient’s life. It actually starts after the conduct of critical medical procedure. Having established a reputable doctor-patient relationship can make you easily convince your patient to commit to a healthy lifestyle, and understand that the fastest way to recovery is your patient’s willingness to heal.
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It is a common thought that all medical graduates pursue medical practice. This however is not true to all graduate of medical school; some end up joining the corporate world. This does not mean though that you have put to waste what you have learned during your four challenging years in medical school. Medical education can still be maximized in a non-hospital setting. You can opt to pursue other alternative careers after graduating from medical school. Listed below are some tips you can check out on getting an alternative career after medical school.
Genetic counseling
Genetic counseling is a health profession that entails providing medical information and emotional support to families having histories of genetic disorders. Some medical students naturally excel and put more interest in genetics as a subject. If you do enjoy this subject, you will probably want to consider developing a career in genetic counseling. Being a genetic counselor, you perform a mix of doctor duties and social work: you gather information on a family’s hereditary background and analyze genetic patterns to assist them in understanding the risks of genetic disorders and their implications to birth defects.
Important courses: genetics, psychology, biology, and public health
Medical examiner
Test your interest: which do you enjoy watching – House or CSI? If you chose CSI then maximize your interest and medical education wisely by becoming a medical examiner. As a medical examiner, your job is similar to every typical activity in your gross anatomy class: to cut up cadavers. The difference is that you get paid lots of money and you are required to determine what caused the person’s death. You get highly paid because your role is very essential in forensic science; it becomes the main focus of the investigation.
Important courses: biochemistry, physiology, pathology and anatomy
When people are still kids, they dream of become great someday; a good number of kids dream of becoming doctors. This dream is founded on their ambition to do service and save peoples’ lives. Working in the hospital however is not the only way to render service. You can still apply the lessons gained in medical school to counsel people and give expert advice to different organizations and companies. This way you can still serve the people but not in the traditional medical practice.
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The toughest thing to manage is being in two serious commitments at a time – marriage and medical school. These are considered tough as they both carry the same weight in needing 100% dedication and responsibility. What would you expect when you fall into a situation as this? Do you have coping mechanisms to perform both responsibilities at the same time?
Juggling spousal responsibilities and medical school work
Being a married woman and attending medical school is a very complicated situation to be in. Duties of being a wife at home and to your husband are expected of you while you are equally expected to do well in medical classes. This can really be difficult for you and would need to find some coping mechanism to reduce some of your menial load and get doing more significant responsibilities in medical school. If you can afford it get some household help. It is very helpful to plan ahead for these multi-tasks if you have had the chance as it will help you unload most of lighter responsibilities to get the chance to accomplish heavier ones.
Balancing marriage, medical school work, and parenting
Parenting is the most complicated duty to juggle with medical school. It takes a lot of energy and will power to be able to take care of your children, maintain your marriage and at the same time. You must find a way to learn how to turn your difficulties into an asset. Managing your time skillfully and having the discipline to stick to it is a powerful tool for you to succeed. Being able to identify coping mechanisms and finally making it happen will head you on to success. With your time off in medical school, spend quality time with your spouse and child. What matters most is you have time for your family in any way possible.
If you are still single, better to wait before getting married until you have graduated or during residency before having a family. As much as possible avoid things that will complicate your studies. A baby deserves more time for caring the same as starting a family thus it is always wise to plan out when to get into marriage when planning to get into medical school. This is a fair way to treat your family, your career and yourself. So control your time and do things one step at a time.
In case it cannot de avoided, plan your steps and manage your time with the discipline needed. Besides, you will need an inspiration and a warm and sweet affection from your supportive partner when coming home after a stressful day in medical school.
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Aside from the pressure and stress of medical school and residency, doctors confront another rigid challenge in their medical career – to select medical specializations. Listed below are some of the most popular medical specializations:
* Plastic surgery
Plastic surgery is one of the most popular medical specializations. Medical students need to understand however that it is the specialization that it is also one of the most difficult to excel in. This is because it involves enhancement of physical assets and reconstruction of physical deformities, which are complex medical procedures. Plastic surgery is a highly techical field and is always coupled with a lot of risks that can include paralysis and death.
In spite of the complexity and risks involved, the popularity of this medical specialization stems from the undeniable obsession of people to enhance their physical beauty. So, plastic surgeons will never run out of patients.
* Pediatrics
Pediatricians, aside from diagnosing signs and symptoms as well as checking possible infections, provide medical care to maintain the total health of children in all aspects. Treating children is not that simple especially if your patients cannot really say what and where it hurts. By the pediatrician’s experience, the pediatrician makes his or her diagnosis.
Aside from enjoying the treatment of children as patients, the popularity of this medical specialization is due to the fact that parents will definitely pay any amount for their children’s safety and health.
* Obstetrics and gynecology
This medical specialization is perhaps the most popular medical specialization among female doctors, but it is also open to male doctors. This medical specialization remains close to every female doctor’s heart due to its focus on parts of the anatomy that are found only in women. It deals with ensuring medical care for the reproductive health of pregnant including non-pregnant patients.
The basic fact that women get pregnant and babies are born every day assures the proliferation of medical practitioners on obstetrics and gynecology.
In the end, do not make the mistake of choosing a specialization because of its popularity or even based on the amount of salary involved. Choose a medical specialization that matches your skills, personality, and interests. If you’re not a “people person” and your dexterity is topnotch, you may want to be a surgeon.
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The student-teacher ratio contributes to the effectivity of transferring knowledge by the teacher to the students. This refers to the number of teachers compared to the number of students in a specific academic institution. The ideal student-teacher ratio is between 10:1 and 15:1 to attain such a goal. Below are some examples of medical schools with low student-teacher ratios.
Washington University School of Medicine
The Washington University School of Medicine as a medical school maintains a low student-teacher ratio. This is done by admitting only a limited number of students to the St. Louis, Missouri medical school. With this system the school can preserve the quality of education to its medical students and keeping a higher standard for its graduates. By limiting its annual enrollees, the Washington University School of Medicine is capable of providing equal opportunities to each medical student.
Harvard Medical School
The Harvard Medical School employs over 10,000 faculty members to educate its medical students. With this much number of teachers, Harvard Medical School has one of the lowest student-teacher ratios in the country. Hard Medical School is a well-known medical school and would like to keep its rapport in preserving the school’s academic excellence. Each medical student is assured of the opportunity to become great medical practitioners with the faculty providing sufficient guidance and quality education. According to many experts, aside from having a low student-teacher ratio, the Harvard Medical School is also the number one medical school in the country at present.
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Believing in ensuring the quality of education to its students, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine along with Washington University and Harvard University maintains a low student-teacher ratio. Derived from the name Johns Hopkins medical school, the “Hopkins Model” of teaching evolved. This model is a combination of basic science education and intensive clinical mentoring.
Top medical schools have low student-teacher ratios
Annually, medical schools are ranked and those with low student-teacher ratios also do well in overall top rankings. Harvard Medical School, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Washington University School of Medicine all managed to get the top 5 spots in the 2008 list. A major reason for this excellence is that the teachers are more comfortable teaching in a small setting and a small crowd. It is easier to learn in a setting where you can share your ideas and be listened to than when you share a classroom in a lecture hall that can have room for almost a hundred people.
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Entering into medical school and becoming a doctor is considered by most people as a life-changing decision. Becoming a doctor entails having a significant portion of your life planned out in line with the path you have taken. The experience of getting a medical school education and of moving forward to become a doctor is filled with trials and hardships. It is in knowing and understanding why you chose that path that you will draw the strength to persevere in med school. Below are five of the worst reasons for wanting to become a doctor.
Financial gain
Money is a very effective motivator. However, in the field of medicine, money is not enough to encourage you to persevere. If money or financial gain is your sole motivator and reason for wanting to become a doctor, it’ll be hard for you to persevere in a career that involves a heavy physical, intellectual, and emotional workload. Those who want to become a doctor for this sole reason should understand that it takes a while before you can get to the point where you’re earning thousands of money and living luxuriously. The road to becoming a doctor is paved with trials that you may not be able to surpass if your focus is on the financial rewards.
Pressure from family and relatives
This is also one of the most common reasons people go into medical school and strive to become a doctor. However, you have to remember that it’s YOU who will be dealing with the daily hardships in medical school and eventually in the medical profession, not your family or relatives. If you want to become a doctor, you must want it for yourself, and not because you want to meet other people’s expectations.
Admiration and respect from others
While it’s true that doctors are widely respected and admired, the most-loved doctors are still those who entered the profession because of their desire to help other people. If your reason for wanting to become a doctor is merely to boost your ego and self-esteem, you will also only be admired and respected because of your position and not because of your ability to reach out to those who need your help. You may be an excellent medical practitioner, but you will lack the heart to relate with your patients on a personal level and gain their trust.
Purely intellectual interest
A lot of samples of personal statement medical schools focus on applicants’ desire to get into medical school because they find the academic discipline intellectually stimulating. Medical knowledge is abundant and seemingly inexhaustible, and this prospect of constantly enhancing one’s intellect lures a lot of students to apply to medical schools. However, being a doctor doesn’t just require neurons. It’s a profession wherein you will sometimes be forced to make decisions using both your brain and heart. And because you deal with people, and not machines, on a daily basis, being a doctor also requires interpersonal skills and being able to effectively communicate with your clients.
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