34/4.0 Reapp Advice

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reapplyingnow said:
As for my LoR, I'm 90% sure I know which of my letter writers wrote it but I was thinking of asking my letter writers if they did. Is that a huge faux pas? It seems like people would get upset by that. Also, if my in state MD schools have my previous application, doesn't that mean that letter is still hurting me in reapps?
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It is a breach of confidentiality for you to know the contents of a Letter of Evaluation.
It would not help you to accuse all of your letter writers of writing something negative.
Yes, many schools will have access to you previous application.
As far as I know only AZ claims not to look at them.
If your suspicions are correct, new letters are in order as well as a list of schools to which you have not previously applied.
Mock interviews are also in order.
 
reapplyingnow said:
Well, the interviewer said something like: "On one of your letters of recommendation, it says: 'has poor interpersonal skills but ------------". It went on for a while but he basically quoted strait from the letter (he literally picked it up and read off of it) for a while so i'm pretty sure my suspicions have merit. Anyway, I guess i'll work on getting a different professor for this cycle and maybe a different physician. I'm 95% sure it wasn't either of them who said it, but I guess I ought to be certain.
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There is no need for a physician letter unless you are applying to DO schools.
You might want to consider if there is any truth to this claim and ask for an objective evaluation from your school's career preparation resources.
 
mock interview schmock schminterview. what's missing here is any hint of concern that you have a real problem that you should be trying to fix.

about 99% of the time, when a teacher/supervisor really wants to tell you a painful truth after observing your behavior, they either (a) don't because confrontation is scary or they (b) water it down so much you have to guess what you're doing wrong (assuming you care to fix what you're doing wrong). what's super valuable (and of course painful) is when a teacher/supervisor has the cojones to say directly to you "you really suck at getting along with others" or similar. faculty members think long and hard before they put a negative comment in a letter. they fully understand how serious it is to mess with your future. they are sending a clear "don't accept this kid" message to med schools. it's not unclear. sh|tty communicators are malpractice magnets.

getting feedback that says you have trouble interacting with people, and then not making it through interviews with your stats, should be a huge red flag to you, making you worry if you'll ever be somebody that other med students and residents and attendings and patients and co-workers want to be around. It's a minimum of 7 years of heavy personal interaction before you get to just have a job, and you have to go through a boatload of peer interactions and evals of your professional demeanor before then. of note, if you got a negative LOR before med school, that should make you terrified that you'll get the same kind of negative evals from residents and attendings during 3rd year (these go in your dean's letter, to every residency you apply to). and that's before we talk about residency LORs.

point being: you should care.

in your shoes I'd go work retail, where you have to successfully deal with the public or you don't keep your job.

one of my classmates is going through your potential future. unbelievably annoying individual. wants to be a particular kind of specialist SO BAD. evals are awful. this classmate is going to have a very difficult time matching at all.

best of luck to you.
 
Drop that letter, delete it, never use it again. It's really unprofessional for someone to write a bad LoR like that. Maybe you have poor social skills that make you a bad interviewer but your chances were gone as soon as adcoms read that letter. The 4 interviews gave you a chance to refute the letter because your stats are very solid.
 
100% agree!
Drop that letter, delete it, never use it again.

I disagree, but keep in mind that these are RARE.
It's really unprofessional for someone to write a bad LoR like that.


I suspect that the poor interview skills may have been even more lethal than the bad LOR.

Maybe you have poor social skills that make you a bad interviewer but your chances were gone as soon as adcoms read that letter.
The 4 interviews gave you a chance to refute the letter because your stats are very solid.

OP, Invest in MSAR Online and target schools whose median stats are closest to your own. Start with Emory, Rochester, BU, Hofstra, Einstein and USC/Keck.
 
Unfortunately, most people are poor judges of their own interview performance. If you know of anyone who works in HR, they might be able to advise you in interview tips.


While my interview skills were really poor on interview #1, both interview #2 and #3 felt solid. #3 was an in state school too and everything just seemed to fit.
 
Couple(ie more than a couple) thoughts here

There are two types of people that first come to mind for me who could get a recommendation of having "poor interpersonal skills"
1) The person who rarely has any social interaction and is devoid of social skills. This isn't particularly an uncommon thing amongst the endless amount of intelligent pre-meds who spend college devoted to hitting the books at all cost and not having the perspective needed to see how much more the college experience is about.
2) The dominant personality who always asserts their presence and needs at all costs without realizing how it is portrayed. They are stubborn to a fault and reek of arrogance and the feeling what they are doing is right at all costs. These people tend to have a fair amount of social interaction but their strong personality will rub some people the wrong way, including in this case a professor whom they got a rec letter from. Some of these people aren't always dominant alpha personalities either; it's the issue of outwardly acting and trying to portray yourself as one and being stubborn/unwilling to see others perspective while being completely oblivious to how you look which is what I'm highlighting. Lack of social interaction is hardly an issue here rather it is an issue of realizing how you are portrayed and an issue of listening to others.

You need to see which type of category you fit under(and there are other ones as well I just simply listed the two major kinds that first came to mind which could have this issue). If your issue is not listening to others and not realizing how your attempt to try to come across as knowing all and being a dominant personality is actually being seen, some self-reflection and lessons in humility are in order. Get as much perspective as possible from as many different types of people as possible about how you come across and how you are seen as being "stubborn" or something along those lines. How much you gain from this is how much you put into it and how willing you are to try and make changes. Practice working in team settings and group settings is what will make a big difference here.

The key thing here I'll also mention others necessarily haven't is it's hardly just about how professors and medical faculty see you as; this is as much about how much your peers and people your age see you as as well. That's really how you define a fair amount of social skill and social interaction ability particularly at the early adult age level; how you are at it with people your age and with your interests and similarities. Because look, you can read the hundreds of posts and blogs of advice on here and other sites about how to prep for med school interviews, what things to avoid saying, the best answers for generic questions etc. If you do enough research on this, do mock interviews and have a better idea of how interviews work this cycle, you'll probably get by and end up with an acceptance, particularly with your stats. But all of that is just a band-aid in terms of mastering the tricks to do well in a med school interview. That's not improving social skills and ability; it's just learning a skill set of specific tricks for a specific event like med school. Good enough to get you by but these same social issues will pop up again and cause major problems later on in life. And next time, the consequences could be alot worse than simply having to delay being a doctor by a year. It's a long term process of being able to fix this issue. And it damn well better start now for it to not cause problems later on in life.

If your issue is that you are just someone devoid of many of the social skills accustomed to college aged kids, much of my advice again stands the same as above. You need to start doing what it takes to improve your social skills NOW and it will be a long term process even if you can learn the tricks and methods to doing well enough to net a med school acceptance. Again, the focus to a large extent has to be on people in your age group and similar to you. If the issue is not having developed social skills, then you need to put yourself in positions to develop social skills. Many people will recommend get a job in retail or a job for a year in something with lots of people interaction such as a barrista. This is all well and good and I would recommend it as well. But to truly improve social skills, it needs to happen amongst people your age in informal situations and settings. To really develop as a person socially it is about becoming a person people not just like but want to spend their down time with and want to relax with. You have to be able to improve significantly in these casual social settings in situations where people are more laid back and situations where people are looking to have fun. To do this, you have to put yourself out there. As in really out there. I can talk about this because I was in a situation like this 3-4 years ago early in college with social skills that were rather mediocre and what I realized is the only way to really make improvement in this area is to get as much exposure and practice with meeting random people and putting myself in uncomfortable positions socially. For me, this meant on weekends going out and forcing myself to talk to random people(often of a specific gender). A process like this will be rough. Very rough. It'll be like this for a while in fact and it'll feel like it'll never improve at first. You just have to keep at it if it's something you really want to make a change at. Hell, it's still a work in progress for me and always will be to an extent. Now, everybody doesn't have to go to a bar and talk to people hammered off their ass(although this is a great way to). There are many scenarios on a college campus even if you aren't a college student to expose yourself to social settings that don't involve partying or alcohol. You just have to make an effort to find them.

@DrMidlife hit it on the head. Your perspective is clearly off. Rather than looking at this as some minor issue you make some tweaks to and as a result end up netting acceptances next year, this should raise some major red flags to you. For all the tales you'll hear about how difficult it is to get into medical school, 4.0/34 candidates don't just usually get completely shut out from admission without their being a significant problem, particularly if they have volunteering and clinical exposure which are usually the things that if lacking can kill them. For you to get shut out with a 4.0/34 means there is something seriously off with what you are doing. Your list might not have been good last cycle, but only nabbing 4 interviews in 24 applications with those stats also could highlight something wrong about you before the interview step(the LOR is only one reason for this potentially). I don't particularly have much respect for a physician saying they are open and willing to write a LOR and then putting something detrimental in it but there is a reason it was written and why these "negative" things in letters are so rare. You're that rare exception(in all the wrong ways). If you don't want to be that, you have to make a change a change that is more than just learning some tricks to get by in a med school interview.
 
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GrapesofRath said:
Couple(ie more than a couple) thoughts here

There are two types of people that first come to mind for me who could get a recommendation of having "poor interpersonal skills"
1) The person who rarely has any social interaction and is devoid of social skills. This isn't particularly an uncommon thing amongst the endless amount of intelligent pre-meds who spend college devoted to hitting the books at all cost and not having the perspective needed to see how much more the college experience is about.
2) The dominant personality who always asserts their presence and needs at all costs without realizing how it is portrayed. They are stubborn to a fault and reek of arrogance and the feeling what they are doing is right at all costs. These people tend to have a fair amount of social interaction but their strong personality will rub some people the wrong way, including in this case a professor whom they got a rec letter from. Some of these people aren't always dominant alpha personalities either; it's the issue of outwardly acting and trying to portray yourself as one and being stubborn/unwilling to see others perspective while being completely oblivious to how you look which is what I'm highlighting. Lack of social interaction is hardly an issue here rather it is an issue of realizing how you are portrayed and an issue of listening to others.

You need to see which type of category you fit under(and there are other ones as well I just simply listed the two major kinds that first came to mind which could have this issue). If your issue is not listening to others and not realizing how your attempt to try to come across as knowing all and being a dominant personality is actually being seen, some self-reflection and lessons in humility are in order. Get as much perspective as possible from as many different types of people as possible about how you come across and how you are seen as being "stubborn" or something along those lines. How much you gain from this is how much you put into it and how willing you are to try and make changes. Practice working in team settings and group settings is what will make a big difference here.

The key thing here I'll also mention others necessarily haven't is it's hardly just about how professors and medical faculty see you as; this is as much about how much your peers and people your age see you as as well. That's really how you define a fair amount of social skill and social interaction ability particularly at the early adult age level; how you are at it with people your age and with your interests and similarities. Because look, you can read the hundreds of posts and blogs of advice on here and other sites about how to prep for med school interviews, what things to avoid saying, the best answers for generic questions etc. If you do enough research on this, do mock interviews and have a better idea of how interviews work this cycle, you'll probably get by and end up with an acceptance, particularly with your stats. But all of that is just a band-aid in terms of mastering the tricks to do well in a med school interview. That's not improving social skills and ability; it's just learning a skill set of specific tricks for a specific event like med school. Good enough to get you by but these same social issues will pop up again and cause major problems later on in life. And next time, the consequences could be alot worse than simply having to delay being a doctor by a year. It's a long term process of being able to fix this issue. And it damn well better start now for it to not cause problems later on in life.

If your issue is that you are just someone devoid of many of the social skills accustomed to college aged kids, much of my advice again stands the same as above. You need to start doing what it takes to improve your social skills NOW and it will be a long term process even if you can learn the tricks and methods to doing well enough to net a med school acceptance. Again, the focus to a large extent has to be on people in your age group and similar to you. If the issue is not having developed social skills, then you need to put yourself in positions to develop social skills. Many people will recommend get a job in retail or a job for a year in something with lots of people interaction such as a barrista. This is all well and good and I would recommend it as well. But to truly improve social skills, it needs to happen amongst people your age in informal situations and settings. To really develop as a person socially it is about becoming a person people not just like but want to spend their down time with and want to relax with. You have to be able to improve significantly in these casual social settings in situations where people are more laid back and situations where people are looking to have fun. To do this, you have to put yourself out there. As in really out there. I can talk about this because I was in a situation like this 3-4 years ago early in college with social skills that were rather mediocre and what I realized is the only way to really make improvement in this area is to get as much exposure and practice with meeting random people and putting myself in uncomfortable positions socially. For me, this meant on weekends going out and forcing myself to talk to random people(often of a specific gender). A process like this will be rough. Very rough. It'll be like this for a while in fact and it'll feel like it'll never improve at first. You just have to keep at it if it's something you really want to make a change at. Hell, it's still a work in progress for me and always will be to an extent. Now, everybody doesn't have to go to a bar and talk to people hammered off their ass(although this is a great way to). There are many scenarios on a college campus even if you aren't a college student to expose yourself to social settings that don't involve partying or alcohol. You just have to make an effort to find them.

@DrMidlife hit it on the head. Your perspective is clearly off. Rather than looking at this as some minor issue you make some tweaks to and as a result end up netting acceptances next year, this should raise some major red flags to you. For all the tales you'll hear about how difficult it is to get into medical school, 4.0/34 candidates don't just usually get completely shut out from admission without their being a significant problem, particularly if they have volunteering and clinical exposure which are usually the things that if lacking can kill them. For you to get shut out with a 4.0/34 means there is something seriously off with what you are doing. Your list might not have been good last cycle, but only nabbing 4 interviews in 24 applications with those stats also could highlight something wrong about you before the interview step(the LOR is only one reason for this potentially). I don't particularly have much respect for a physician saying they are open and willing to write a LOR and then putting something detrimental in it but there is a reason it was written and why these "negative" things in letters are so rare. You're that rare exception(in all the wrong ways). If you don't want to be that, you have to make a change a change that is more than just learning some tricks to get by in a med school interview.
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Holy **** man, I just noticed that you've posted over 1k messages in 2 months!
 
If the writer of the LOR actually cared, as a solid human being, she would have shared w/ you why she would have problems writing you a gleaming LOR, and then hoped you would take such things into consideration and grow. That latter part would be up to you; but how solid was her approach after all? It smacks of tripping and sabotage. I have little respect for professors and "professionals" that trip and think it's their place to screw with someone's life. If you can't give a strong, positive reference, just say so. . .and be strong enough to say why.

I wish I could tell you that you will not see other people like this going forward; but you will. I don't know you, so I don't really know how valid her position is--and neither do those sitting on a adcoms.

My suggestion FWIW is different than others. Get more direct, clinical experience---in acute, critical, or emergency care. Nothing will bring out the worst and the best in you as you end up helping others and their families when they are often at their worst--along with the stressed out healthcare staff, who are not far behind in being at their worst sometimes. This is the place where the rubber meets the road.

Sure, get some other LORs; but there is nothing like working in the demands of the grueling healthcare reality to help us see things--either way--about ourselves and others. There are moments when all people are full of it and don't know it. No one is the exception here, and if they say they are they are still so FOI. And then there are times when we realize there is more to us and others than we realize as well.
Become part of a healthcare team--especially in one of the above settings. Talk about customer service skills--wow! And the need for them in HC requires more time and long-suffering than the average person working in retail.

The best to you OP.
 
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