GW Interview Reflections

I had my second medical school interview on Thursday at GW--some reflections:

Last year when I was selecting medical schools to apply to, GW seemed like an obvious choice for three reasons. First, I spent a year and a half volunteering at GW's hospital and really enjoyed the people I worked with there and the work I was doing. Second, GW is in DC and I, obviously, love DC and would really enjoy to spend my medical years in such an awesome city. And third, by the numbers, GW looked like a school I might have a hope of getting in to.

Needless to say I was really excited when I got my invitation for an interview, but leading up to it, I realized I didn't really know too much about the school. Walking into an interview knowing nothing about a medical school beyond it's location is a huge problem, particularly when they ask you (which they will) something along the lines of, "Why do you want to come to GW?" I did some "research" on the bus on the way down--pretty much just read some general stuff about the school on their website and came up with a few specifics I could talk about when asked.

I ended up totally rocking my two interviews but even more exciting about my day at GW was how well they sold themselves. I left feeling totally excited about their program and everything it has to offer.

To start off the day, the dean of the medical school came and talked to all of the interviewees that were on campus that day. Everything he told us sounded great--from the fact that the whole 6th floor of their hospital is dedicated to teaching through standardized and robotic patients, to their unique 4th year capstone course to prep students for their residency, to their course that uses standardized students to train their teachers to give better feedback.

Most impressive though was how connected GW seems to be to Washington DC. Turns out that 4 years ago, the current dean started something called the Office of Student Opportunities (OSO) which is dedicated to getting GW medical school students involved with health care outside of medical school by taking advantage of everything that is avaliable in DC. Every first year student meets with a representative from the OSO and talks about his/her interests and then can choose a track--health policy, community health care, global health, emergency preparedness, etc. Then they help you apply for internships and other positions that are available in DC. They have partnerships with the WHO, IMF, World Bank, embassies, lobbyists, think tanks and capitol hill offices. Every year they have a student who gets to work in Ted Kennedy's office and they have a ton of international opportunities for the summer--everything from working with the UN in Geneva to working in women's health clinics in the Himalayas in India.

I was inspired to say the least. The past few months that I've spent with AmeriCorps at the Institute for Family Health have gotten me really interested in health policy and the more I read about it, the more I want to learn about how these policies get made and get involved with this process. And I've always been interested in going abroad and getting involved with medicine in underserved areas. It is so exciting to hear about all the ways I'd be able to do these things in DC and at GW.

I wont find out if I've been accepted for 6-8 weeks and I'm not sure I can answer the question "Do you like GW better than Maryland?" They're different and each has different things going for it (not the least of which is that UMD is at least $18,000 a year cheaper). Luckily I don't have to make any decisions yet, but at this moment, it's nice to be really excited about a potential opportunity.