Lewis Associates e-Newsletter

Volume 1 Issue 11
September, 2002

Published by Lewis Associates. Dr. Cynthia Lewis, Phd., Editor
Email drlewis@lewisassoc.com with your comments. Enjoy!

=> Welcome to Success Stories Newsletter!

=> Important News and Useful Links - Factors influencing medicine as a career goal and selecting schools

=> Dates and Reminders - Getting your essay drafted for the Class of 2004; Secondary submission for Class of 2003

=> Important People, Schools and Programs - Medical Residency standards become more humane

=> Success Story of the Month - Joseph Allen, MD, St. Georges graduate -- The Seven-Year Odyssey!

=> Question of the Month - What are my chances of entering a California medical school if I am a California resident?

=> Focus on a Health Profession - Physician Assistant - How competitive is it?

=> Our Services

=> Contact

 

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Welcome to Lewis Associates!

This is the season for "back to school!" Hope all of you are rested up and raring to go. If this is "your application year" (for entering Class of 2003 and Class of 2004 students planning ahead), you need to establish a well-thought out strategy that will carry you through the difficult times coming up. Let us know if we can assist you.

Congratulations to the entering Class of 2002 advised by Dr. Lewis -- 94% acceptance for our pre-health applicants all over the U.S.! See our website http://www.lewisassoc.com/ for the Class of 2002 Progress Report; we also have a Canadian acceptance this year.

The entering Class of 2003 "Application Season" is just beginning, with most Lewis Associates applicants having received secondary applications already and our first three have been asked to interviewó at Vanderbilt Medical, Midwestern Osteopathic in Arizona and at Temple Dental School. This is the most important and exciting year of your life! Application submission, Letters of recommendation collection, selection of appropriate schools and secondaries - timing and quality of application account for 99% of an applicantís chances.

What are your chances? If you want to change your career or reach your career goal, but do not know how to begin or how to jump over all those hurdles, Lewis Associates can implement strategies that will change your life. Read about it in our newsletter and website, then phone or email us directly to get started!

Developing YOU to your potential is our goal, and people are our "most important product". Dr. Cynthia Lewis has been advising Pre-health students with an overall acceptance rate of 85% since 1985. Lewis Associates was launched in 1998 to provide long term, personalized advising services to students across North America, specializing in Medicine, Osteopathic Medicine, Dentistry, Physician Assistant, and Veterinary Medicine. Our success is real.

You may be like our Advisees---highly motivated and intelligent, but needing focus, guidance and specific technical expertise. Dr. Lewis is a trained biologist, having taught and directed her own research programs for many years at two universities. She received two postdoctoral fellowships (one at NIH) and received the 1990 NACADA Outstanding Institutional Advising Program in the U.S. She teaches Professionalism, Leadership, and Quality, and sets high standards for her Advisees.

 

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n e w s & l i n k s

N E W S : Factors Influencing Medicine as a Career Goal

From an AAMC poll, this data emerged:
In order of highest to lowest ranking were the factors influencing medicine as a career goal for matriculates:

Helping people
Intellectual challenge
Social responsibility
Use of special talents
Independence
Job security
Influence of others
Opportunity to lead
Interest in research
High income prospects
Status and prestige
Desire for authority

Factors Influencing Choice of Medical School for matriculates:
(from high to low)
Reputation of school
School curriculum
Geographic location
Teaching methods
Place in residencies
Financial/cost
Minority/disadvantaged programs
Offer of financial aid
Faculty Mentorship
School in home state
Research reputation
Med school graduate
Parents
Premedical advisor
Hometown physician

L I N K S : Useful Link of the Month

www.healthpronet.org/

The Health Professions Network (HPN), an organization devoted to communication, consensus and advocacy on behalf of allied health professionals, has recently developed a new website (above). One noteworthy feature is a spotlight on the "Allied Health Profession of the Month". Email to Information@healthpronet.org.

 

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d a t e s

Getting Your Essay Drafted for the Class of 2004
Secondary Submission for Class of 2003

Class of 2004 Applicants:

Yes, NOW, not next June, is the time to begin drafting your application personal statement for medical, dental, PA and veterinary or other health professions programs! Why? Because it takes time to evaluate your history and put together the most representative and effective statement that show admissions committees the "real" you behind your academic profile ("the numbers"). And, even when you understand the "how to write" your essay, you want plenty of time between drafts so that you can actually "put down the draft", let it sit for a few days or a week, then read it with fresh eyes for the next draft. For most students, writing is hard work. It is for me too. I have become very good at helping students present themselves effectively after doing it for 17 years. So, get started NOW...do not procrastinate unless you are not serious about your application process.

Class of 2003 Applicants:

Many schools now place their secondary applications online. Some must be downloaded and the hard copy submitted and others can be done completely online. Some schools indicate that you automatically submit their secondary application, and most will screen your primary application prior to requesting a secondary. However, it is done at any particular school, it is to YOUR advantage to complete your secondary in the approximately two weeks the schools usually advise and request from you.

What is a secondary?

It always consists of a form, sometimes with extensive essays and sometimes with only what may seem to you as a re-iteration of information presented in the primary application. No matter how redundant are the forms or questions, ANSWER them as asked, because that school wants to know this information in that format.

It always requests a fee.

It always requests for your letters to be forwarded to the school. Do NOT wait to request your letters to be submitted AFTER you submit the forms, fee and essays! Do all of these activities at the same time! I am always surprised by students who tell me they waited to request their letters "after they submitted their secondary". Why would you hold up your own application?

The name of the game is to complete your application file with each school ASAP...and this is only done when all of the above and test scores are received by the admissions office. Why? Because, only then, will the admissions staff screen your application for interview, hold or rejection.

 

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p e o p l e & s c h o o l s

Medical Residency Standards Become More Humane

The AAMC supports new standards for medical resident duty hours, approved in June 2002 by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.

The new standards include:

- Limit of 80 hours per week, with flexibility to increase hours up to 10% if the institution can show educational/safety rationale
- Strengthened limits on moonlighting
- At least one full 24-hour day out of seven free of patient care duties
- Residents must not be on-call more often than every third night
- Residents must have a 10-hour minimum rest period between duty periods
- Continuous on-duty time is limited to 24-hours, with additional time of no more than 6 hours allowed for patient transfers and educational activities

The new standards also address institutional supervision and accountability. Faculty and program directors are responsible for assessing resident fatigue and for providing adequate back-up support. The standards, which will go into effect July 2003, also include a new "Rapid Response to Egregious Accreditation Violations" system that will assure expeditious response to concerns related to duty hours. See www.aamc.org/newsroom/pressrel/2002/020612.htm

 

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s u c c e s s s t o r i e s

J O S E P H   A L L E N   M D : St. Georges graduate -- The Seven-Year Odyssey!

After having lunch with my alumnus, Dr. Joseph Allen, in San Diego a week ago, I asked Joe if he would write a short summary of the "path to his medical career." Joe was the President of our Premedical Student society at San Diego State University about 1989. I vividly recall his masterminding a large (50 or more students attending) year-end awards banquet (I still have the photos) and producing a great money-maker, the coveted Premedical Society sweatshirt. My sweatshirt (must have been a great buy to last me 14 years so far) has a crest and logo stating "Labore et Perseverantia Ut Prosim Aliis". Latin lovers -- send your translations please! I have to mention that I attended Joe's wedding in Pt. Loma, visited with him at St. Georges in his first or second year, meeting his first baby, kept in touch during residency and now Joe will be a Mentor to some of our local Advisees.

Here is Joe's story:

"Sometimes your career path isn't direct from point A to point B. Occasionally, you have to take the alternate route to reach your destination, or the path less-traveled. Before you begin to contemplate the journey, you must make up your mind one hundred percent that you "know" where you want to end up. There is no sense in making a long and arduous journey if you think that you'll be unhappy once you reach your final destination. You have to decide for yourself what you want to be in life, and then plan how to get there. If you have doubt, perhaps it would be better to think again and decide on a different objective.

Anything you set your mind to do you can accomplish. I decided to become a doctor in 1982 (while in high school). I wanted to practice in San Diego, my hometown. I thought eventually I would be a family doctor and high school team physician just like my original Mentor Dr. Reeb.

I didn't get into a U.S. medical school the first time I applied, or the second. But I didn't give up, and completed my Masters degree in molecular biology. Still, my third attempt drew no interest here at home. So I applied to St. George's University on the advice of Dr. Lewis, and went offshore for my medical training. It was the best thing I ever did.

After two years in the Caribbean, I went to Bath, England, for 6 months, moved to Brooklyn, New York for a year, and finished my clinical rotations in Oakland, California. The match put me in New Jersey for my residency training, during which time I decided I liked sports medicine enough to apply for additional fellowship training.

Well, to make a long story short, here I am back in San Diego after my seven-year odyssey of medical school and residency training. I kept in touch with Dr. Reeb, and have joined him in private practice. I'll complete that sports medicine fellowship I always wanted to do with UC San Diego part-time over the next two years. Did I also mention that my wife and I managed to have three beautiful kids along the way? I'm back where I started, living at the beach, with a great job and a young family. Just like I planned all along.

My advice to young, aspiring-physicians is to make a decisive conscious choice first, then plan the journey to your destination. Seek out Mentors. Be open to alternate routes to reach your goal. You might have fun along the way."

Joseph E. Allen, M.D., M.S.

Family Medicine Private Practice, Point Loma, California
Sports Medicine Fellow, University of California, San Diego 02-04
Team Physician, Point Loma High School
Chief Resident, St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center-Mt. Sinai
School of Medicine
Family Medicine Residency Program 2001-02
St. Georgeís University School of Medicine, M.D. '99
San Diego State University, M.S. '95, B.S. '91
Point Loma High School '84

 

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q u e s t i o n o f t h e m o n t h

What are my chances of entering a California medical school if I am a California resident?

The majority of California residents who apply to the 5 state medical schools in California are not accepted, but often enter private schools in California and more often, around the country. It is important for potential applicants to be up to date on the huge numbers of applicants in California. Read the Medical School Admissions Requirements handbook that is published annually. Each of the University of California schools have between 2500 and 4000 in-state applicants, of whom a maximum of 530 (and often many fewer) at any school are interviewed.

Many of the UC schools this year sent secondary applications to only about 25% of their applicants. At the private schools in California, where in-state residents are not necessarily given priority, in the entering class of fall 2000, Stanford had 2262 applicants, of whom 44 entered the medical school (they had more out of state applicants, 3684 of whom 42 entered. Loma Linda (religious-based school) had 1724 in-state applicants, of whom 74 entered and 1802 out of state applicants, of whom 85 entered. USC had 3358 in-state candidates of whom 134 entered and 2087 out of state candidates of whom 26 made up the total class of 160. There are also two private Osteopathic medical schools in California ó Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine in the Bay area and Western University College of Osteopathic Medicine in Pomona in the south.

We will feature an important question each month. Please submit one that interests you for Dr. Lewis to answer. Send your questions to drlewis@lewisassoc.com

 

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h e a l t h p r o f e s s i o n

Physician Assistant : how competitive is it?

Physician Assistant admissions is just as competitive and sometimes more so than Allopathic and Osteopathic medical admissions, as some programs average 10 applicants for every seat they have. PA school is NOT easy. Most programs are 24 to 36 months long including 12 months of clinical internships. Literally, the medical model is taught and some schools share classes with medical students and PA students together, like at NOVA Southeastern University in Florida. PA students will complete their program faster than medical students. Granted, that may mean PA students donít have the depth of knowledge that the medical students do, but they have studied most of the same subjects. Over 40% of the PA programs now are Master's level programs, which also means that students must maintain a 3.0 GPA to progress. Most programs will convert to the Master's level in the next five years. By 2007, most if not all programs will be at that level.

PA programs want students who are dedicated to being a PA. If a student really wants to use PA school as a stepping stone to medical school, they will not be viewed favorably. PA's know their role and like what they do. They want others who feel the same about the profession to enter it. Make certain that you investigate the role of a PA; shadow a PA for several hours and days. Many PA schools require shadowing experience as part of their application process and it will help you make a career decision and to fulfill the admissions requirements. Once you see what a PA can and cannot do, you will have clearer idea of your goals.

 

Lewis Associates specializes in personal, effective and professional premedical advising and placement for traditional and non-traditional applicants. Often, non-traditional students are older than 21 years of age, career changers, international applicants or second-round applicants for admission to health professions school.

Lewis Associates' services meet the needs of all types of students from pre-applicants to applicants, including hourly advising support for specific needs. Click here.

"It's never too late to be who you might have been."

If this is how YOU feel, then, maybe Lewis Associates is the place for you. Lewis Associates provides Mentoring and Coaching through the rigorous and often circuitous pre-health preparation and application process. Other consultants may support programs like Law and Business or graduate school -- not Lewis Associates. We are the experts in Health Professions based on 23 years of a successful track record.

Call or email today to set your first appointment!

805.226.9669 imaclewis@lewisassoc.com

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