Well I'm here to tell you how to avoid those 8 years of terrifying education! Just follow the check-off list below:
-Have no savings and zero family members willing to loan you money.
-Live in the northwest (so you have only 1 state school, and 1 other within 200 miles).
-Live in an area with high unemployment so you can only find part-time work as a chemistry tutor.
-Have a mother who makes a couple dollars above the FAP cutoff line.
-And you get bonus points if your father left the family when you were half-way through undergrad and left you (and your mother) with nothing more than a $50,000 past-due balance across a dozen credit cards.
Ok. Let's be serious now.
I DIDN'T start this thread to complain about life pissing in my cheerios. I DID start this thread to bring attention to the fact that the largest barrier to myself (and many others) is the simple fact that we cannot afford the required application fees or the airfare to actually interview at schools where the chance of acceptance is a couple percent.
If I finished primaries and secondaries to all the schools I wanted to apply to this year, it would come to a total of $3,000. If I attended interviews at all those schools, the total would come to $15,000. That's for less than 20 schools. I hope I don't have to explain that this is a completely absurd amount for someone who can barely afford rent and groceries every month.
The only reasonable thing for me to do is apply to my lone in-state school and pray that I get in. Even though my GPA and MCAT don't match their averages and my history does not really meet their mission statement, it is the only option I can actually afford.
Hypocrisy is a funny thing.
Let's rewind to early 2015. Why was the MCAT changed? Specifically, why was the social sciences section added? The most reasonable explanation I have heard is that there was a desire to see applicants have some sort of background and understanding of concepts of social justice.
So if social justice has become so important in the past years, why do we accept an application system which gives massive advantages to those born into wealthy (or at minimum, financially stable) households who have $15,000 or more sitting in a drawer somewhere.
I have known some very spoiled kids. Those who receive cars on their birthday and get to go on mission trips to Nicaragua, Namibia, and the Philippines (all in 1 summer) because they asked daddy for a check. The same kids who can afford private tutors and have 4.0's and do volunteer work at homeless shelters and hate every minute of it. The kids who complain about getting a B+ on a test and can afford to go through 15 mock interviews so they come off as completely normal and well-adjusted individuals.
I have $23.68 in my bank account right now, and I'm trying to compete against these individuals in a game where thousands of dollars are required to even be allowed through the door.
But yeah. Social justice.
What to do?
There are options available which would fix this problem, or if not FIX, at least level the playing field somewhat. Some of these could cost absurd amounts of money and/or valuable time. I think the simplest and least expensive is this:
Each applicant is allowed to waive the primary and secondary fees for up to 10 schools.
If this was a thing, every applicant would be able to apply to 10 schools regardless of their personal finances. If some applicant wants to apply to 40 schools, that's fine, but they have to pay for 30 of them.
But what about the more expensive part? You may ask. What about interviews? Those are less of a concern to me because one can't even get an interview if they can't finish primaries and secondaries.
Another idea would be to perform interviews via skype, but whenever that idea is brought up (either online or in person) it is shot down as: impractical, not providing insight into the applicant, and potentially confusing. It's a possibility, but I think it is much less likely to happen within my lifetime.
They already have that! It's called FAP!
FAP is worthless. I was told (in response to an "im confused" email) that I needed to provide tax statements for each of my parent's incomes. When I responded that I have spoken to my father a total of 2 times in the past 5 years, I was told that was not a consideration and I needed to provide official documentation of his income anyway.
On top of this, my mother makes slightly above the cutoff. So even though her greatest financial support of me in the past several years has been the occasional Subway gift card (thanks mom!), the fact that she has a job is enough to disqualify me. Even if my father was dead, she would make too much.
I suppose if both my parent were dead, I might qualify. Or if they were together and made less than $40,000/yr, I might qualify if I could convince them to provide me with official documentation of their incomes.
FAP strikes me as a charitable endeavor which was started up with the idea of acting like a charity, but was created with so many roadblocks and a ton of bureaucracy so they don't have to hand out money to anyone. Great charity.
I have nothing more to say.
It's dinner time, so I'm going to reheat some rice and old chicken, then wash it down with a big glass of tap water. Have a nice day.
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How to not get into med school with a 40 MCAT
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