Some premedical students have military experience before applying to medical school. Their military backgrounds provide rich stories and unique perspectives that should be showcased in medical school essays and interviews.
Medical school applicants can discuss values they exemplified and skills they honed in the military. These include discipline, resilience and grit, courage, teamwork, leadership, adaptability, ability to think under pressure and critical decision-making skills that may affect many lives and have financial and international consequences.
Many of the skills and experiences in the military reflect medical professions that involve high stakes, including working in the intensive care unit, emergency medicine, trauma surgery and disaster medicine.
The best ways to highlight your military experiences are to write about them in your medical school application essays and discuss them in your interviews.
[Read: 2 Medical School Personal Statements That Admissions Officers Loved.]
Many premed students downplay their military backgrounds because their experiences are not clinical. However, there are many values and skills that one learns while serving in the military that are applicable to being a doctor.
One effective method of showcasing your military experiences is to tell stories. The stories I have read from military personnel and veterans are riveting and action-packed. Stories include landing a fighter jet on a ship, rescuing a fellow soldier on the battlefield and deciding whether to launch a missile. Few other medical school applicants can write about the same experiences.
When you tell stories from your nonclinical military experiences in the military, it’s important to link them to medicine.
Devin Rojas, a student at the Oregon Health Science University School of Medicine, served in the U.S. Navy for more than five years prior to attending med school. He joined the Boy Scouts of America at the age of 8 and later enrolled in the Air Force Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, commonly known as JROTC, in high school.
[Read: What ROTC Programs Are and How They Work.]
As a premed, Rojas shadowed surgeons at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center in Maryland. Working in military hospitals was his first exposure to taking care of active military personnel and veterans. Interactions with patients and talking with survivors showed him that grief is displayed in a variety of ways.
Rojas says his most memorable surgery was a mass amputation session required after a Humvee hit an improvised explosive device, resulting in massive trauma to the lower extremities of 12 Marines. The positive attitude of the new amputees taught him how a support network can drastically improve a patient’s mindset.
Rojas wrote extensively in his med school applications about his Navy experiences on two ships. On the USS Comstock, he was one of the deck officers in charge of around 40 individuals. On the USS Pinckney, he was a training officer responsible for organizing drills, renewing certifications for the ship and drafting the daily schedule.
One story Rojas discussed in his application was when he was the anti-air warfare coordinator for his ship. As AAWC, he directed his team in identifying and classifying all airborne entities in the area. He constantly assessed the threat level of planes and possible missiles his radar picked up.
“Each time this decision was made, I balanced the misidentification of a friend resulting in a missile hit and hundreds of lives lost against a misidentified foe and a wasted missile costing millions of dollars,” he says. “Quick reaction times were required, as there was a small window of opportunity to defend one’s ship against an incoming missile.”
[Read: What to Know About Applying to Medical School Later in Life.]
In his medical school application, Rojas wrote: “The requirement for skilled teamwork, the ability to adapt in an ever-changing environment, and the pressure of performing while under the weight of the lives of others was starkly represented here… These leadership skills will enhance my performance as a physician by allowing me to make team-based decisions in a calm and timely manner.”
Rojas made sure to discuss his various leadership roles in the military. As another example, in one of his extracurricular activity descriptions, he discussed that he developed and ran dozens of shipwide emergency response drills. He explicitly discussed how such responsibilities directly applied to medicine: “I gained a strong time management aptitude and sense of prioritization. The ability to triage for what is most pressing is a skill well acquired, which will serve me well as a physician.”
Finally, throughout his application, Rojas expanded on the values he fostered while serving. For instance, he emphasized the importance of his devotion toward a goal greater than self. He expressed that his duty toward his shipmates was similar to the duty he will provide his patients in the future.
Medicine is often portrayed with military analogies, and premeds can convey several lessons from the military that can be applied to medicine as they seek to get accepted to med school.
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How to Highlight Military Experience When Applying to Medical School originally appeared on usnews.com
