By Ilana Yurkiewicz
What does it take to get into medical school today?
High MCAT scores. Pre-requisites galore, coupled with a stellar GPA. Research experience. Clinical experience. Volunteering.
It has become a series of check-boxes, many going through the process gripe. Worse, it’s an exercise in conformity.
Last week at TEDMED, Dr. Jacob Scott shone the spotlight on this system as a root cause of the lack of creativity among people going into medicine.
“You can’t take any risks, or you won’t get in [to medical school] – you won’t get into the club,” he told the audience. But, he continued, that means weeding out creativity. Future doctors are being trained to “memorize certainty,” rather than think imaginatively.
Having gone through the admissions process recently, I could relate to many of Dr. Scott’s sentiments. It’s true: preparing to get into medical school does little to encourage risk-taking. Admission criteria are rigid. And you know if you don’t do what they ask, there is no shortage of others who will.
Want to become a doctor? You can’t slip up, or you’ll fall behind. You can’t rock the boat, or you won’t get admitted.
This critique is not unique to medical education. Scott’s talk reminded me of a speech by former Yale English professor William Deresiewicz to the 2009 plebe class of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Skeptical of modern benchmarks of success, Deresiewicz told the young cadets:
“It’s an endless series of hoops that you have to jump through [to get into college], starting from way back… What I saw around me were great kids who had been trained to be world-class hoop jumpers. Any goal you set them, they could achieve. Any test you gave them, they could pass with flying colors…. I had no doubt that they would continue to jump through hoops and ace tests and go on to Harvard Business School, or Michigan Law School, or Johns Hopkins Medical School, or Goldman Sachs, or McKinsey consulting, or whatever. And this approach would indeed take them far in life.”
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