In the line of fire

"This is it!" I printed out my autobiography, some 4 pages that I had gone over and modified a couple hundred times. It was undoubtedly the best piece of writing I had ever produced in my life. It was quite an experience because, when writing it, I had to re-evaluate my life and asked myself important questions. It helped me understand myself and my goals. I could have kept on polishing it, but I knew it was time to get it over with. One item off the check list.

The most difficult items to check off were the reference letters. In the past, what usually happened was that many "big-shots" were asked write letters for hundreds of premeds who they didn't really know well enough. So the letters that ended up in the admissions office would probably read something like: "Mr/Ms. X had achieved an A in my huge 600-student course. Although I don't really know him/her, I think he/she is good enough for medicine," where X was the name of the corresponding student appearing on each computer-generated form-letter that would otherwise be identical to those of the other 599 premed students. McGill University was smarter then, whereby its reference letter became a structured form with blanks and spaces to fill in. I wasn't trying to mock at this procedure, but the fact was that it was very difficult to know 2 or 3 professors in undergraduate studies well unless you "plan" in advance.

Luckily, because of my interest and involvement in medical research, I got hooked up with my research supervisors. Yet it was still difficult to ask for this big "favor". Fortunately, they had seen it all, and one of them even told me in advance, "Don't be afraid to come back and ask for a reference letter. This is pretty standard procedure and I am happy to do it for you because you deserve it."

When I received the instructions for my interviews, I got all tensed up. I tried to prepare for them but I didn't know where to start. Finally I went over my autobiography and made sure that I knew how to expound on some important points and how to present them properly. Because I applied to the combined MD/PhD program, I was amongst the first group to be interviewed in Canada. Contrary to popular believe, the MD/PhD program wasn't an easier backdoor to medical school. Instead, I was considered on equal footing with the rest of the MD applicants, the only difference being that I was also to be screened by an addition interview for my suitability in the PhD component of the program. So it was like what my supervisor once joked, "You have to win twice." In fact, one of my friends now, who was interviewed after me, was admitted to the regular MD program but not the joint-program.

It turned out that the first applicant could not make it that day and I became the first Canadian to be interviewed by McGill that year. The first interview was the PhD screening one, where the head of the Division of Experimental Medicine shook me up with a big one: "So, you will be the weird species who finish your PhD before going back to the clinical rotation. What makes you special then? What will you expected to have learned?"

I was so nervous and I wandered around with my answer. A thought suddenly came to mind: "I will will have learned to be more skeptical. In science and research, we take nothing for granted."

"Good. That's the answer I am looking for." He showed me around his lab after the interview and even offered me coffee. Bingo!

I got to know my second interviewer pretty well in recent years. He was a charming, humorous guy, but was dead serious during the interview back then. In fact, he purposely kept contradicting on what I said and tried to intimidate me. I decided that I was there to present myself; I wasn't there to please people, and so I held my grounds on things that I thought were right. Apparently that attitude was what he looked for, or otherwise I wouldn't be here now...

The last interviewer was a godsend for me. He was as much a computer-addict as I was, and so we actually chatted on computer stuff for quite a while, killing a great portion of the interview time. Except for some tough moments in the second interview, it went rather smoothly at McGill.

Before I heard anything from McGill, I got an invitation from McMaster University. Without hesitation, I drove to Hamilton, and God knew what I had gotten myself into- a War!

Although I admired the revolutionary curriculum at McMaster, I had reservations about its over de-emphasis on the scientific basis of medicine. They have a shortened 3-year program in which students go straight into the hospitals and acquire their knowledge through early patient interaction, small-group problem-solving tutorials and self-directed learning. No formal lectures or grinding scientific exams. The weirdest thing about the school was that it took a variety of applicants from diverse backgrounds. For instance, in my group of 6 interviewees, there were a F-15 pilot from the Canadian Air Force, a soil biologist, a psychologist, a computer programmer, a biomedical engineering student, and finally a guy (me) from physiology, which could be considered an eccentric field in that context!

The campus was so new and so nice that it would lure people to apply just because of that. Once you applied, however, you found yourself somewhat deceived, trapped and finally thrown into a brutle battle. McMaster managed to interview all 400 selected applicants in 4 days. So the war began early at 8am when applicants were divided into squads of 3. Each team would then be paired up with another team and the group of 6 was ushered into a window-less dungeon. That special room had a huge one-way mirror (like those police interrogation rooms), on the other side of which 3 assessors were about to decide your fate. The usher first explained the rules, after which she activated the stopwatch and the fight began. We were given 15 minutes to "discuss" a given topic. Oh well, a guy started a talking streak and never stopped. Everyone fought for his or her "air time". The ones with a less outspoken personality were left speechless. English was my second language and I was barely able to keep up. After the open discussion, each of us was given a minute of air-time to evaluate the group's effort, and then another minute to self-evaluate for his or her own contribution to the group. When done, the 2 squads were split and each was paired up with a different squad. The newly formed group was to repeat the same process but on a different topic. The topics were usually social problems with medical implications, specially "designed" for us the exercise our problem-solving skills in a small group setting. More often than not, however, the topics were highly controversial and what ended up was usually a fierce debate amongst the applicants, rather than a constructive discussion.

Another more personal interview followed these raging debates. There, I was interrogated at the same time by 3 interviewers: a doctor, a medical student, and someone from the local community. Although they did not introduce themselves, I could easily distinguish one from another by the questions they asked: (1) Why do want to be a doctor? (2) How do you handle stress? (3) Do you learn French in Quebec? Obviously, many questions were not at all interrelated. I had to swerve my head back and forth and switched to different topics accordingly.

I have described the whole interview process as a war. Nonetheless, they made an effort in making the process less stressful by providing coffee breaks between interviews, guided tour around the campus, and chances for us to talk to those charming first-year students. You could appreciate McMaster's all-out effort by estimating how much manpower was consumed in the process: many students as interviewers or tour-guides, enough doctors for 100 personal interviews per day, and some members of the local community who had the privilege to choose their future doctors in advance.

Their original goal was to assess the applicants' ability to work in small-group sessions, the major way by which McMaster students learn medicine in their curriculum. However, the one-way mirror and the stop-watched "air time" made the process extremely intimidating. Moreover, unlike personal interviews where applicants were at center stage, these "simulated tutorials" put the applicants together in the line of fire. I used to think that most chosen applicants must all be decent people, but at McMaster, I was led to consider them my enemies. In personal interviews, I could forget about the competition and concentrate on what I have to present. But the McMaster interviews totally deranged me.

Bewildered, I left the war zone the next day. Upon return to Montreal, I told people jokingly that the largest hospital on the Hamilton map was a psychiatric hospital!