**** The Official University of Detroit Mercy Dental Class of 2020 Interview/Acceptance Thread ****

RANT HERE thread

Thank goodness this b**** is out of our lives, so I'm not as fuming as usual about her, but since there's a thread, here goes...

I work in a tiny lab with 2 faculty researchers, 2 technicians, 1 post-doc, and 1 MD fellow (plus the PI who never sets foot in the lab). The post-doc is probably the biggest nightmare this lab will NEVER forget. Because:

She is a mega dumbf*ck b****. She screams at her boss when she hears what she doesn't want to hear. This shouting match goes on for at least 30 min sometimes in the middle of our lab, making it very uncomfortable for everyone else. So the rest of us have to swiftly make an exit to another room and chill there until they're done. Once the boss leaves and we go back into the room, she corners all of us and starts bawling "I only got a PhD because I hate being bossed around, and I thought if I got a PhD, no one would be able to boss me around!"

She tells the new technician (on her first week) who had a slight cough that she should have taken the day off. The technician says that she's not that sick, and besides she hasn't accrued earned time yet. Then she goes "well, my dad in NY has cancer, and if i catch anything from you and i go visit him in the next few weeks, he's going to die!"

She also told the new technician, "no offense, but YOU should not be wearing a size small or extra-small" hmmmm....

I was talking about how I personally have no idea what my mom saw in my dad when they first started dating because based on what she told me, my dad was a terrible date. Then this b**** tells me that I don't know enough about them to make that kind of judgment. to which I was thinking "well duh... they're still happily married after 4 kids and 30 yrs of marriage, obviously something worked" But then, just after SHE told ME that I didn't know enough about my own parents to judge their relationship, she goes "I hope you don't get married to your boyfriend, because he sounds like a LOSER"

Her favorite topics are politically charged topics that have no place in the work environment (e.g. abortion), and she chastises everyone who doesn't agree with her.

Her other favorite topic is about how she hates douchebag PhDs who are stuck up about the letters they have after their name, and how she's not like that at all. However, she is the first person to bring up in any conversation she can that she should be treated differently because of her credentials. She tells our pathologist (who was doing her a favor by reading her brain slides) that perhaps she should "help" her since as an MD she doesn't have the expertise that a PhD might... Talk about insulting! Also, we have issues with environmental services bringing us biohazard bins when we need extras. Someone will call and just say "hi, can we have 10 bins delivered to room ____" and they'll say "Sure!" but for some reason it doesn't happen. B**** will then be like "maybe I should call, 'cause I think they might listen if someone with a degree called." Um... what the hell was she planning on saying to indicate that she had a degree???

She was also the dumbf*** who thought that not eating sugar was going to prevent her from getting fat. So she refused to eat anything with sugar (as in added granulated sugar). But instead she would eat a whole bag of dried mangoes in one sitting (like a whopping 1000 calories in that bag), or a whole can of macadamia nuts. But apparently she liked to bake ****. So she comes in with this tupperware filled with pieces of this nasty looking chocolate cake. She tried baking one for her friend and f*cked up so the cake ended up flat instead of fluffy. She explains this to us and goes "so I dunno how good it is because i didn't taste it, because you know, I don't eat sugar. But I thought you guys would enjoy it so go ahead and dig in." Throughout the day, we all kind of opened up the tupperware to take a look... but the thing had dog hair (she has this nasty chow that's bitten two children) all over it, sticking out of the sponge... so we all just left it there. At the end of the day, b**** was infuriated that no one ate it and goes "Fine, I'll take it to the dog park people, cause I'm sure they'll appreciate it. I guess this means I'll never be bringing anything for you people!"

She was so incompetent at her job that everyone in the lab had to come in on our thanksgiving weekend (plus many others) to dissect out embryo brains. After we finished the dissection, my boss and I disappeared to the animal facility to check on the mouse colony, and when we came back, the b**** had left with 4 people's worth of dissection set ups left out(bloody surgical instruments and all) as well as a bunch of other things for ME to clean! We even have an explicit policy in the lab that technicians are NOT there to do chores for post-docs. My boss was FURIOUS! He ended up cleaning with me and was like "why is it that we get called in on our Thanksgiving weekend because she doesn't know how to plan well, and we end up with the cleaning?"

Ugh... there are so many more of these infuriating stories, but I'ma gonna stop now. Only thing is that if it was just an abrasive personality, I could deal with it, but this chick was soooo incompetent... It was difficult when she sucked and couldn't do a thing right, and I was told to fix something for her by my boss, but I had to tip toe ever so lightly as not to offend her mighty degree.

She has a PhD in molecular biology... but she can't do a single thing! like literally. She had 1 paper published in all of her 7 years grad school + 3 yrs post-doc. And that last paper only got published because her experiments had to be done in duplicate by other people in the lab. She can't do DNA or RNA extractions (and she doesn't even notice when her OD readings are way off). She can't do PCR (in the past she's used 2 forward primers, didn't heat the lid, only ran it for one cycle, her stock primer was growing bacteria). She can't clone (she doesn't know how to pick the right enzymes, she tries to ligate things that don't have compatible ends, doesn't know how much insert/vector to use, she tried to ligate insert/vectors that both lacked phosphates, etc...). EVERYTIME something goes wrong though, she'd ask me to order super expensive reagents because she thought the stuff we were using wasn't good enough for her experiments . She also doesn't understand scientific notation, and we realized 2 years in that all of her calculations were off by a factor of 10. And everytime I'm talking to someone on troubleshooting an experiment I'm working on, and we're going through logical breakdowns of where something went wrong, she has to bust in and start suggesting the stupidest ****. and EVERYTIME, I have to find a way to politely decline her suggestion because any organism with a brain could tell that it would not help. But she would be offended anyway.

ugh. oh well. she's gone now. and as my boss says "she's someone else's problem now" but it does feel good to get it off my chest

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RANT HERE thread

Worst Interview Answers!!!

Interviewer: I have a nephew that goes to MIT. He's one of the really smart kids. One of those whiz kids.

Me: Yep, I've met quite a few of them.

Interviewer: Maybe you're one of them (piercing stare).

Me: I don't know about that. (small laugh)

Interviewer: Well you certainly did very well there.

Me: (now totally confused, my undergrad gpa was 3.1) Well, they let me graduate! (haha)

Interviewer: (weird look)

<On to discussion on other topics>

Interviewer: So, did you apply to many schools?

Me: Yes, I applied to 28.

Interviewer: Wow! Why so many???

Me: Well, my undergraduate GPA is below the average at most schools.

Interviewer: What? I thought you had a 3.8 at MIT!

Me: Um, no, actually that was in my post-bac coursework. (He had only glanced at the first page of AMCAS for maybe a minute.)

Interviewer: Oh. (long pause) Well. Why were your grades low at MIT?

Me: Well, a few reasons. First, MIT is a really intense place. There is an overwhelming amount of work to do all the time and my peers were really smart.

Interviewer: (weird look)

Me: I guess that sounds a lot like med school, huh? On to reasons two and three...

Anyway, I guess I dug myself out of the hole. I got accepted a week later.

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Worst Interview Answers!!!

Vote for President

Blade, you know I love you in a totally platonic way, but if you think Trump will be the GOP nominee, you're totally off your rocker.

It's unpossible. The establishment won't stand for it.

If I recall correctly, last election the GOP poll leader changed about 6 times, and every single time you jumped on the current leader to be our Obama savior. It was BS then and it's BS now.

Polls mean N O T H I N G before the first primary. It's just 24-hour news cycle bull****. He's leading a broad and splintered field during a period of time when 95%+ of people polled by phone HANG UP as soon as they hear it's a poll.

It'll be Bush, Rubio, or Cruz, god help us. Of those I think Rubio is probably the most electable vs Clinton.

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Vote for President

2015-2016 Drexel University Application Thread

I'm pre-writing secondaries now and am assuming Drexel's secondary essay prompt will be the same or similar to last year:

"Please give details about any interruption or time away from your education, which includes the time since graduation. Detail your activities for each year away from school."

I looked through last year's thread but was unable to find a character or word limit for the essay. Does anyone know if there is a word/character limit on Drexel's secondary essay, and if so, what it is? Thanks!

Also, as a non-trad, I have 4 years between graduation from college and applying to medical school. Most of my 4 years is pretty well-documented in my Work and Activities section on AMCAS, so is it necessary to go in-depth in terms of what I did these four years? Or will a paragraph simply stating what I did each year suffice?

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2015-2016 Drexel University Application Thread

USMLE - Official 2016 Step 2 CK Experiences and Scores Thread

Hi guys,

I got the result yesterday. It was 256. I benefited a lot from this forum while preparing for Step 1 and Step 2 CK. I hope my experience can be helpful to you.

Preparation

I watched Kaplan Video twice. (I didn't read the books because they are too thick!)
Then I did Kaplan Qbank with an average of 61% (the mean for that Qbank was 58%).
I was a bit disappointed so I read the explanations of Kaplan Qbank carefully twice (literally words to words). I learned a lot from that.
I started doing U World Qbank 2 months before the exam. I only did it once (random, timed), my average was 78%. Again, I read the explanations carefully once, wiki or uptodate the stuffs I am not familiar with, and reviewed my markings three times.
My Fred 150 was about 88% (one month before the exam)
I only tried the NBME 4 questions offline (two weeks before). My score was probably 235-240 based on the answers in the forum.
I activated UWSA, but I was too nervous to do it.
I scanned through MTB 2 and MTB3 during the last week, which I was surprised to find there are stuffs that are not covered in U World Qbank or Kaplan Qbank. You don't need to read everything, I guess only those "questions and answers" in these books are useful for the exam.

My feeling is that U world is the most useful resource. U world + MTB 2 and MTB 3 will get you above 250 if you can master 90% of the knowledge. Do Kaplan Qbank if you are shooting for 260 or higher.

Exam experience

I have read tons of posts where people complained about how ridiculously difficult the exam was. So I was totally stressed out before the exam. However, the real thing turned out to be quite doable, at least for me. Yes, the stems may be a bit longer than U world, but not significantly. Besides, there are stems that are very short. So overall, you should not have time management issue due to "long stems". I guess the key is to be very disciplined. Don't dwell on questions that you are unsure about, pick whatever you instinct says and move on.

There will be questions (10-15% for me) that test knowledge that you have never prepared for. However, remember that the USMLE is not going to trick you. Don't over think, just choose the answer that sounds best to you.

Another important point is that almost everyone will make silly mistakes during that exam, believe me! I knew that I got at least 5 questions wrong in previous blocks before I finished the exam! Don't worry, just keep going! After the exam, several questions that I was unsure about haunted me for the next three weeks. I guess it is normal for people to concentrate on the questions they didn't do well and ignore the questions they kicked ass of. That's probably also why people felt a bit down after the exam. But just remember that you can still get 250+ even if you made several mistakes.

I took Step 1 four years back and got 246. I think it would be an advantage if you start prepare for the Step 2 CK right after Step 1 because there were at least 5 questions that tested mechanisms of disease using Step 1 knowledge which I was unsure about. However, you can still eliminate and guess based on the residual knowledge for Step 1 in your mind and what U World has taught you. So don't overemphasize the importance of Step 1, and I don't recommend you to review FA Step1 thoroughly because that would be low yield.

I hope my post can be helpful to you and cheer you up a bit!

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USMLE - Official 2016 Step 2 CK Experiences and Scores Thread

Below 3.0 gpa Support Group/Thread

To give you all some hope:

Graduated with a science degree in 2006 with a cGPA <2.4 and an sGPA slightly above it. All that was mainly due to a year of Fs, where a lot was going on in my life.

After working for a few years, I went back for a DIY post-bac, where I basically took all the pre-reqs and some retakes (many courses were only offered at my alma mater), getting ~3.8.

I applied late in the last cycle to a few MD, a lot of DO, and a couple Carib MD schools with a mid-30s MCAT score and ~3.0 GPAs, tons of ECs (volunteering, MD and DO shadowing, research, leadership, etc), and basically applied prematurely due to some time constraints and personal circumstances.

Result: Multiple interviews (mostly DO, but some MD), acceptances at all the Carib schools I applied to, and all my US interviews ended in waitlists and one acceptance (so far??).

I made a lot of mistakes in the app process (mainly timing), but I also couldn't afford to wait longer to apply, so I took a shot. Even with that it ended well. I don't recommend it, but it ended well.

In reality, I should have waited to apply with GPAs far above 3.0 (would've taken 1-2 more semesters). My recommendation for everyone in a sub-3.0 situation is: make good use of grade replacement and get those GPAs above a 3.0 to make it above cutoffs, shadow a DO and get that LOR, apply early and broadly, and study all you can for the MCAT until you are getting above your target score on practice tests.

No matter what your situation, if you want it, you can get it. Good luck to all of you, and I hope to see you in the future.

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Below 3.0 gpa Support Group/Thread