How To Keep On Truckin'

I've received a few emails asking how on earth I managed to keep my morale up when I failed as a pre-med. Like failing an exam, bombing an MCAT, hearing disparaging "advice", and whatnot. I guess the answer is that I didn't. I mean everytime something happened, I was distraught. And totally devastated. I started combing through my back up plans, applying to random grad school programs, looking up internships, and fantasizing about running away to the peace corps or becoming a writer or a chef or an FBI agent. It was awful. Awful because I had little perspective or knowledge that the path to becoming a physician is a long journey... marked by failures and successes. I'd see a few classmates or colleagues get right into med school with no sweat, and so I thought it wasn't meant to be for me. And so I'd head in another direction... like research, or public health, or epidemiology.... something that I THOUGHT would make me happy... as these are parallel fields to medicine.

And sure enough, these fields would keep me interested for about 10 months. Then I was bored. Soon I'd find myself back in the med school mode... tagging along with physicians, fantasizing about med school, plotting my next attempt at the MCAT or applying to med school. It was a series of try, fail, hibernate, heal, plot, try, fail, hibernate, heal, plot, try, sort of succeed (YAY!), try harder, fail, blah blah.

So I guess the answer is this.

1) Try to keep "success" in perspective. Know that when you're "up" you should enjoy it while it lasts because there will be "downs" too. And when you are "down" know that it's just temporary until the next "up".

2) After a "down"... don't be too hard on yourself, and don't make any drastic decisions that will alter your med school plans. The feeling of wanting to quit is soooo intense you can often fool yourself into thinking that you don't want to do medicine anymore.... even if you actually do. Give yourself some time to really regroup, re-evaluate, and make a better plan of attack. Immersing yourself in "parallel" fields like public health, etc. are great because they help strengthen your application while you regroup and get your ducks in a row.

When Someone You Love Bombs the MCAT

I've seen several Google searches with the above topic directed to my blog, so I thought I would address it directly. When I tanked the MCAT, the only thing worse than tanking was seeing my parents disappointment. Not that I think they really gave a rats ass about me tanking the MCAT. It was more that they were devastated that I was devastated. So here's my what to do and what not to do list.

1. DO NOT act overly disappointed. Empathize, but if you act like this is a huge fuck-up, the test taker will only feel more like a loser.

2. DO NOT push them about "what are you going to do now?" They have just been through a HUGE amount of work that was essentially wasted (well that's how they feel in the moment anyway)... and it is wayyyy too overwhelming to think about studying and taking the test again. They will get there in their own good time.

3. DO remind them that the MCAT is a nightmare for everyone. If it was easy, everyone would be a doctor.

4. DO remind them that there are many people who take the MCAT many times and still get into great US schools. If you don't know any, you do now. See the profiles on the right.

5. DO support them in their temporary "Plan B" options (like taking a semester off, getting a Masters in pharmacology, taking a research job), but encourage them to keep trying for med school. Try to dissuade them from doing anything drastic (ie. running off to the peace corps or joining the circus). The moments after bombing the MCAT are very fragile, and it is easy to convince yourself you don't want a life of medicine... even if you really do.

6. DO NOT tell others that they took/bombed/etc. the MCAT. They will figure out a way to disclose that information on their own time in their own way.

7. DO NOT undermine the importance of the MCAT score or the difficulty of the test. Tips on how to study better or stories of how you fucked up the SAT II will not go over well.

8. DO just be a friend and invite them out to do something to get their mind off the issue will help. When I bombed the MCAT my best friend brought over a bottle of wine and we got lit.

9. As a preventive measure, DO NOT tell everyone you know that so-n-so's MCAT results are due. That's just asking for trouble if it comes back bad.

10. DO send them a link my blog. At the very least, they will feel better that they didn't eff up the MCAT as many times as I did.

Just Bombed the MCAT?

I just wrote this to a reader who "bombed the MCAT"... thought it might help some others out who might be in the same situation.

Well, my very first advice is not to panic. Yet. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE who leaves the MCAT thinks they bombed it. I mean, your brain just went through a mental meat-grinder, right? It is the worst feeling in the world. If you left totally secure I'd be more worried. (see comments below). So I would sit tight and just wait for the results. Now if you KNOW FOR 100% SURE that you bombed (like you didn't finish the test, voided the scores, your practice scores were consistently low, or you got topics you didn't even remotely recognize), then you probably have a legitimate worry.

BUT, the good thing in medicine is that you can't get into medical school if you aren't ready. Really ready. And I promise, you'll want to be ready. When I am in my classes I am SO thankful that I had to get a good score and really learn all the material well before I started this stuff... because all the MCAT stuff (well, most of it) is your base foundation. And you don't want to start building more on top of that until that foundation is really strong.

I thought that because I did indeed put a lot of work into studying for the MCAT that I was ready, but that is not always the case. Sometimes you don't know the material as well as you think you do. Sometimes you know the material in your way, but not in the way that leads you to be successful on the exam. Unless you are a genius by birthright, the only way to be ready for the MCAT is to take FULL LENGTH practice exams until you get your target score as a practice score... for some this might be 2 tests, for others 40 tests. Until then you are spinning your wheels.

Now, I know what it is like to bomb the MCAT. I studied soft for a year and HARD for about 6 months before my first one, and I got a terrible score (you can find it on this blog :) I was devastated. Even more so my parents were devastated. I felt like an idiot, a loser, like I had no future, etc. To be expected, right? Well here's the second piece of advice I wish I knew then. Becoming a doctor has nothing to do with how smart you are, it has to do with tenacity. In medicine there is always going to be an "MCAT" situation to overcome. Whether its the application process, the board exams (you take 4 big ones in med school and residency), shelf exams, getting a residency, getting your Dean's letter, getting a fellowship, becoming chief resident, getting a directorship, making full professor, getting a big grant, etc. Its always something. And people fail. Someone has to. At the doctor level everybody is super intelligent and not used to losing... because earlier in life it was so much easier to succeed over people who weren't as capable as you are. But now, even smart people lose out. So the absolute one thing you must get used to is falling down and getting back up again.

Personally, when I bombed the MCAT I had a good backup plan. I applied to a Masters program in the health field and moved to a new city. It ended up being great, provided me some additional foundation building in the sciences, and gave me some great connections to eventually get into a great med school. Here's my issue. I am not all that smart. I mean, logically smart, yes, common sense, yes, people smart, yes. Book smart, not so much... and I'm a terrible test taker. The only reason why I'm in medical school today is because I do have the ability to work my butt off and I didn't give up. In fact when I finally got into medical school (4 MCATS later) the admissions committee basically let me in because they thought my application demonstrated "great diversity and tenacity".

Take the MCAT again if you bomb it. And enjoy the time you have before you go to medical school. Get an interesting job, study something you enjoy, travel, live in another city, or do something creative. Almost every 21 year old med student I know laments the fact that they never had another job or another life... and forever they will only be a doctor. This is a gift you just got to diversify your life before you will forever be a doctor. Start enjoying the ups and downs of the ride, because the road to being a doctor is really really bumpy.

* Oh, and 3rd advice? Stay off SDN. Especially now as you are vulnerable. Don't want to find any pre-meds throwing themselves into traffic.

Stupid Premed Questions

There are some premed questions that are just plain stupid. Well, scratch that, rephrase many premed questions that are just plain stupid.

This one makes me nuts. Because it's a circular question, to which the answer is so plainly obvious that I don't understand why it generates SOOOO much talk.

Stupid question #1: Do adcoms frown on taking the MCAT more than once?

My gut response: SCREEEEECH (pterodactyl noise of irritation).

My rational (somewhat) response: Um, who cares? I mean, in every situation who cares?

If you bombed it and need to take the MCAT again, having more than one score is certainly better than having a low score.... as you won't even get considered. Better to be "frowned" upon than to have your application thrown into file 13, right? Duh.

If you got an OK score, lets say 29, and you're shooting for a better school and better score, take it! If you can't get in with a 29, you have to? Right? It's not like the school who wants a 32 would look at an application with just a 29 and say "oh GOOD, he only took the MCAT once!!!!!!!" vs seeing an application with a 29 and a 33 and saying "well, this applicant clearly sucks as he re-took the MCAT".

If you got a ROCK STAR score, why would you bother taking it again? This might be a problem better solved by counseling and a good psychiatrist. Besides, what if you got a LOWER score? Mwahahahahahahahaaaa.

If your scores EXPIRED, again, you don't really have a choice, right? Better than the app going in the trash.

If you are scheduled for the exam but not prepared, why purposely put a low score on your transcript that you will have to trump later anyways?

If you have a string of low scores... you're never going to get into med school without a good one... so what's another score??

Top 10 Mistakes Pre-Meds Make

1. Not majoring in something you ENJOY, are GOOD AT, and you can get GOOD GRADES in.

2. Not listening to what an admissions officer tells you. Really listening. If they say, "I think you should consider the Carribean", don't waste your time applying there. If they say "I think you need 3 more points on your MCAT", don't apply to THEIR school until you have 3 more points. They aren't lying to you.

3. Asking people for letters of recommendation who suck at writing. Better to have a fabulous letter from some yahoo than 2 generic lines from a Nobel laureate.

4. Not taking full length practice MCATS. Timed. Lots of them.

5. LISTENING to pre-med advisors. Bleh.

6. Spending tons of money on high profile PBPM programs. Go to state school. It's cheap and adequate. Also, don't go to community college unless they have a VERY reputable science/pre-med department. Most admissions committees are not too keen on CC's unless they know their curriculum.

7. Focusing too much on "volunteer" work. No admissions committee gives a crap about you having a billion volunteer hours. They want to see that you are involved and committed to your community, that you are altruistic, and that you have clinical experience. If you are able to demonstrate these things in your application, racking up hundreds of hours of volunteer work is totally unnecessary.

8. Being too passive. American culture tells us that we shouldn't be pushy, that we shouldn't ask for favors, etc. That's fine if you have a stellar application with a 3.8 and a 40 on the MCAT and you've singlehandedly revamped the water system in Djibouti. For the rest of us, get assertive. Note: I am NOT advocating that you be obnoxious, pushy or annoying. But contact the Deans, make appointments, write letters, have a faculty member call on your behalf, etc. I lost out on an entire year because I didn't want to be "pushy" and the Dean simply forgot about me.

9. Stressing. About everything. But you can't avoid it. You're a pre-med.

10.Letting the MCAT and the application process affect your feelings of self-worth. I can honestly say that I do not know even one medical student that breezed through every single aspect of this process. There is a huge disconnect between a pre-meds perception of themselves and their perception of the ease to which everyone else supposedly gets into med school. And if you're going to be in the medical field, get used to going up against adversity. Because now its the MCAT and the application. But in med school you have to beat the USMLE. Then its residency application. Then competition for fellowships. Then competition for faculty, and tenure, and on and on. It will never be over. Get some perspective and enjoy the journey.

GOOD LUCK !!!!

Moments When I Almost Quit

Pre-med that is. So many emails from my readers have reminded me of these moments.. so I thought I'd write them down...

1. Freaking out before my first G-Chem exam when (Oh, WAYYY back when) I arrived and classmates were doing the classic pre-test freak out (asking questions and making me aware of the things I DIDN'T know). I got a C on my first exam. Subsequently, I failed the class because I stayed up all night studying for the final... and accidentally set my alarm wrong and slept through the exam. I was too ashamed to confess to the professor. So I took the F. I was 19 years old.

2. The pre-med counselor at my undergraduate university said it would be next to impossible for me to go to med school. I should essentially just drop the idea all together. I still remember his little pin-head. He probably wanted to go to med school, but gave up and became a pre-med counselor instead. Pin-head.

3. After finishing my first PBPM year at Harvard I had done pretty well in all my classes. But then at the very end I got a C+ in Gen Chem II. I was camping on vacation in Maine with all my friends... glad to be out for the summer. I went into town to check my grades and found out my final grade. I was literally not a happy camper for the rest of the trip. After that I decided I was going to scrap the whole med school idea, and I actually wrote an ENTIRE book about a girl who dropped out of med school. Hmmm. It was therapeutic I guess.

4. After MCAT disaster #1 I was devastated. I actually gave up on the med school idea for a while and went and got my Masters. After MCAT #2, I improved... but MCAT #3 was HUGELY emotionally disappointing.... as I actually went down 1 point. Uh. Thank god for MCAT #4.

5. The first round of rejections from med school weren't so bad because I was totally expecting it after my crappy MCAT #1. The SECOND round however, was awful. I was rejected by my current school right away. Then I had two interviews, both at state schools in my home state. In the first interview I was totally stoked. But my interviewer decided to be "brutally" honest with me because she "liked" me. And said that despite being invited for an interview that I should not expect to be accepted. I had a 28 on the MCAT... and although my application was great in many ways... she thought I needed 2 more points. And she was adamant about that. So I left, feeling horribly dejected. So dejected in fact, that I decided to skip my interview the next day at the 2nd state school... as emotionally I just didn't want to deal with that again. The interview was a couple of hours drive away... and I told my parents I was not going. They understood.

The next day my parents woke me up and asked if maybe I just wanted to get dressed for the interview... and we could drive on down to the University and see how I feel. If I wanted to go, fine. If not, we could spend the day touring around. I agreed and sloppily threw my suit on. With a too-casual shirt and a bag that didn' t match. We got there and I decided to go ahead and interview. But there was construction and I was late. And I forgot to spit out my gum. And I switched interviewers because some other kid was friends with his. And I was so so hot. It was a nightmare. But the interview started and it went rather well. I even ended up talking about my previous experience at the other school. And to my amazement the interviewer was really interested in me. And at the end he said "Well, I think you have a great shot at getting in. And I'M the chair of the admissions committee... so I can say that with authority. So consider yourself at the very least on the wait list. Possibly accepted right away" I ended up on the wait list... which missed me by about 12 people.

6. I had been working for a neuroscience professor for about 5 months. The position was extremely coveted...as all the pre-meds wanted to work for this specific professor. But she was really hard core. She expected year(s) long commitments...and most of the students had been with her forever. I was one of two undergraduate students that she allowed to work there. Unpaid and without the possibility of publication. I had a key to the labs and was assigned a project. And I worked HARD. I would come in at 2:00am and work until class started in the morning. Then I'd go to class, go home, study, sleep and start over. I did this for several months. I went to every lab meeting, prepared for journal club, cleaned the lab on my scheduled day. The whole bit. When the time came to apply to med school I asked for a letter of recommendation. And her response was "Well, if I write you a letter, I would be forced to compare you to the others in the lab. And you do the least. So I'm afraid it wouldn't look good for you". WTF???? Compare me to the others? You mean the other PhD and Masters students? Who get PAID and PUBLISHED and who aren't here at 3:00am? That sucked. A lot.

7. Um getting rejected by the Dean at my current school was crushing. The story is essentially that one dean really liked me and told me I'd be a great fit for the school. She pretty much promised me a spot. We'd been communicating pretty regularly... so I was pretty secure that I would get a spot. All of the sudden, communication stopped. And it was October and I hadn't heard anything for weeks. Since I was employed at the same school, my boss called the admissions office on my behalf and requested a review of my file. The next week I got a rejection letter. I felt so betrayed. The next summer when I approached the Dean again, she seemed shocked to see me. She explained that she had put me in for an interview the previous year... but she goes on vacation every year in October... and that's why she didn't communicate with me. When my boss called, Dean #2 must have pulled my file from the interviews, reviewed it, for whatever reason didn't like it, and rejected me. That's her story. True? Not so sure. But it made me feel better.

Some really GOOD MCAT advice

I suppose that since I took the MCAT 4 times that makes me either the biggest idiot in the world, or an MCAT expert. For the sake of this post, lets go with the latter :) In retrospect, I know that if I'd done the right things I would have done well the first time. But I didn't. So here's what went wrong.

I have always been a student who was a good reader. You can put a huge amount of material in front of me, I could read and know it all quickly. I have also, however, been a poor test-taker. Well, not exactly a poor test-taker... but a poor standardized test-taker. Timed exams give me extreme anxiety. And to avoid the anxiety, I avoided timed tests like the plague while I was studying. I just read read read everything I could. Kaplan, Princton review, ExamKrackers, EVERYTHING. I knew every scrap of material. And after every failed attempt, I went back to the books and read more. I would do lots of questions, but not under timed stress. Of course, I would get most of them correct during practice.

Finally, I wised up and realized that I wasn't lacking in knowledge... but rather I wasn't skilled at the test and my anxiety about it was preventing me from even using my knowledge to answer questions correctly and to finish the test.

I've seen a lot of other students fall into the "but I really don't know this material" trap. IT DOESN"T MATTER. I swear. No matter how much you don't believe it, the answers are almost always in the passage, and what you are required to know yourself is very minimal information.

The best advice I can give you is the following:

1) If you have tons of time (several months), then go ahead and read all the material.

2) If you are down to several weeks, FORGET reading the material. You need to practice full length, timed tests. Buy as many as you can, get them off the internet, synthesize them from practice questions. Time yourself, use real conditions, do as many as possible.

3) This is important. Always go over every answer. Right or wrong. You need to know why you got every single question correct or incorrect. You are actually "studying" during this process. Believe it or not, there is, I SWEAR, a finite amount of material that can be on the MCAT. Scenarios may be different, but there are the same concepts over and over. Correcting your exams thoroughly will make you very familiar with them.

4) You're practice score is very close to what you will get on the real thing. Don't waste your time and money if your practice exams are not close to the score you want.

5) Study courses. Wow. What to say. Here's my thoughts. Overall, I think these courses are gimmicky and not worth the exorbitant price-tag they carry. In fact, I straight out disagree with many strategies they advocate. I think many of them are time-wasters. For example, Kaplan will tell you to first off scan over all your passages and then pick which ones you want to do first. In my opinion that is a huge waste of time. In order to score well you'll have to complete all the passages anyway, may as well tackle them systematically and in order and save yourself a few valuable minutes. But hey, they have to come up with something to sell. I guess these classes are good for people who can't motivate themselves to study, but if you're in that boat you probably won't make it to med school anyway.

I do like their materials however. If you can pay for their online package just for the materials I think it is worth it... but otherwise I really feel it is a waste.

6) If you have severe anxiety, start addressing it. If the problem is that you haven't practiced enough, then practice. If the problem is deeper, then I really suggest being open to the possibility of working with a psychiatrist to see if you have a learning disability or other simple anxiety issues that can be treated with behavior therapy or possibly medicine. Don't dismiss this idea. You might be surprised at what a difference small adjustments (not necessarily with meds) can make in your ability to retain information and to remain calm during an exam.

Ok, that's it for now.

The Journey Thus Far

ABOUT ME....

I'm a "non-traditional" student (I hate that designation by the way... because really, it just means that I'm not 22 and blindly entering the field of medicine because my father was an OBGYN). In my case it means that I'm starting medical school at 30 and have had quite the time trying to get here.

I always liked the idea of being a physician, but I could never quite get my mind around the idea of so many extra years of school, and the amount of hard work I'd have to do just to get into school. I was an average college student to begin with, and certainly not anything special in the sciences. In fact I started and either failed or dropped my first chemistry class about 20 times over (only a slight exaggeration). I did however, have enough of a taste of medicine to know that I was somewhat interested. I'd been a lifeguard, a paid on call firefighter, and had volunteered in a few ER's. I had the "rush" every time I walked in a hospital... that adrenaline feeling that said "This is freakin' awesome!"

I graduated with a BA in political science from an expensive private university in southern California and absolutely zero idea of what to do with it. By this time, medical school was still on my mind, but considering how many people shot down my plans... I was pretty convinced it would never happen.

I call this syndrome "pre-med-itis". It's a phenomenon where you are trying desperately to jump through the frustrating pre-med hoops (which is the most miserable thing on earth), and you are evermore fueled by the essentially never-ending line of people who so thoughtfully and insensitively suggest that you'll never make it. Either directly "Oh, GOD. Don't do it. Medicine isn't what it used to be." or "What's your science GPA? Oh, you'll never get in with that".... or sometimes less directly "Have you thought about nursing?" or "Oooo... so much school!".

Anyway, fueled by my desire to go to medical school and a somewhat defiant personality, I packed up what I owned in a minivan I borrowed from my Mom and headed out to Boston with my best friend Michelle. Big plans. No money. Michelle was law-school bound and I was med-school bound. I'd been accepted into the post-bacc pre-med program at Harvard University to take my pre-med classes. We rented a fabulous brownstone apartment and stayed for a year. I finished general biology and general chemistry before I really ran out of money and had to move home to Arizona with my parents. I finished my pre-med classes at Arizona State University and got a full time job teaching chemistry at an inner city Phoenix high school. I studied for the MCAT, took the MCAT and applied to 30 med schools. Yay I was going to med school!

Not so fast! AFTER my applications went in, I got my MCAT results. I was devastated to see a big 19. A 19? Is that possible? For reference, a perfect score is 45, and a competitive score is above 30. You probably wouldn't even be glanced at by even the worst schools without at least a 25. And I had a 19. I knew I wasn't going anywhere.

A SIDENOTE

Ok, here I'm going to rant a little about standardized exams. For those of you who have done poorly on the MCAT, the DAT, the PCAT, the LSAT, whatever.... you know that these exams have the ability to severely affect the way that you feel about yourself. Really the whole process is bullshit. These exams serve one purpose, and one purpose only. That is that they are a weeding out process so that schools have a reason to review only 2000 applications instead of the 15,000 they receive.

In my opinion:

The theoretical "Pro's" of Standardized Exams:

1) Show's discipline

BS. I know several people who never studied a day, are horrible procrastinators, and are overall terrible teammates and have a foul sense of follow-through and got a 38R first time. I also know (many) people who studied 10-16 hours a day for months and eat, slept, breathed the MCAT and ended up with a 21. #1 SHOT DOWN

2) Shows you can synthesize a large amount of material and be successfully tested on it.

Again. So subjective. Perhaps you are able to regurgitate some crap about the properties of ethers, but does that mean that you won't tell a patient with a 4th grade education that he has hepatic cirrhosis? (If you're thinking, "What's wrong with that?" you might fall into this category). #2 Weak

3) You'll need those principles in med school.

Um hmm. Exactly where in medical school do we use Kirchoff's circuit laws? #3 Whatever


OK BACK TO THE STORY

Luckily, in the middle of one of my indecisive moments about medical school I had applied to a few Master's programs and was accepted. I still held several acceptances and within two weeks I'd quit my job and moved to the South to get my MPH. After a 6 month delay because of Hurricane Katrina (that bitch), I started the program and loved it from day one. It was health, it was prevention, it was environment, it was medicine, it was treatment, it was wonderful and it made me want to go to medical school oh-so-much-more!

But I couldn't. All thoughts of medical school made me want to break out into dry heaves.... the shame, the shame.... I'd scored a 19! Surrounded by those overachieving MD/MPH's in my classes I didn't dare breathe that I too, wanted to be a physician. For certain their first question would be "What did you get on the MCAT?" I couldn't handle it.

Secretly, I studied again for the MCAT. I scored a 25. Better. But not good enough. However, the improvement in my score was enough to motivate me to study harder. I studied again, harder, longer, better. I knew every speck of material inside and out. I was ready. I bombed it. Third time wasn't a charm I guess.

Right after that I went to Cali, Colombia to complete a practicum project for my Masters degree. I'd been invited by a group of researchers who were conducting phase II clinical trials on a vaccine candidate for plasmodium vivax malaria. I had a blast. I learned tons of stuff and of course lots of spanish.

I graduated with my Masters right after I came home from Colombia, and started working in clinical research in gastroenterology. By this time I was REALLY over taking the MCAT. I decided to try one more time. This time I was emotionally out of fetal position and mentally laughing at the arbitrary nature of this test. I didn't study even a day. I took one or two full length exams the week before the test... but other than that, nothing.

I got a 28. Finally. Not a perfect score... but certainly enough to get me in. I spoke to the Dean of the medical school I worked at, and she said to apply. My stats were competitive for the school. I was surprised because I'd continuously heard that this school wouldn't even consider you without above a 3.7 and a 33 MCAT. Whatever. I'd take it. I applied, and was rejected. Not even an interview. I was devastated and felt so betrayed. Why all this talk from the Dean, the back and forth emails that assured me that I was in the competitive range? Why the smiles? I worked for this school, I graduated from this school, and now not even an interview.

By the following application cycle, I summoned enough courage to write the Dean a less than fluffy email stating my interest in applying again, and asking what on earth I should do to improve my application. I'll paraphrase (and Hollywood-ify) our exchange below.

Email # 1

Hi Dr. Dean,

Well, I've managed to talk myself off the ledge for the past eight months, and am now ready again take the elevator to the 117th floor. Is there any way you can tell me what I can possibly do to get into your freaking medical school. I've done everything except set myself on fire.

On the cold side but cordially,

Ella

Email #2

Dear Ella,

Of course I remember you!!!! Your scores and stats are fine. In fact, I marked your application for an interview. Why did you withdraw your application last year?

With love,

Dr. Dean

Email #3

Dear Dr. Dean,

Excuse me? I DID NOT withdraw my application last year. In fact I have a lovely rejection letter that proves it.

Lukewarmly,

Ella

Email #4

My dearest darling Ella,

Could you possibly make it in at your earliest convenience for a meeting?

Best friends forever,

Dr. Dean



So maybe the above emails aren't verbatim, but they convey the gist of what happened. The Dean (whom I actually do think is an amazing wonderful woman), asked me to apply again... so I did, and I was accepted during my interview.

The rest is history. I was accepted early in the 2008 application cycle for the 2009-2010 academic year.