Is the road to becoming a doctor all that it’s made up to be? “I don’t really think that there’s anything to prepare you for med school… You really have to like it; you really have to want it. It can’t be something where you saw an episode of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and say, ‘Oh, that looks awesome! I really want to do that!’ Because it’s not going to be like that.”

That was the revelation Viola Chen (GRD ’12), a second-generation Taiwanese-American and the first person in her family to go to college, had upon matriculation as a first year at Georgetown University Medical School.

But, first things first; it is apparent that the answer to the question, “What is the best way to get into med school?” is not just multiple choice; it’s free response. Pooja Sodha (GRD ’11), a second-year student, said, “My classmates … are phenomenal people, and come from extremely diverse backgrounds. People who study political science, psychology, sociology, anthropology and of course the more hardcore science majors as well.”

Undergrads take note: “Everyone comes with a skill set that helps them excel in medical school. I hope people know that they don’t have to limit themselves based on what they studied in undergrad,” Sodha explained. But high grades and excellent marks on MCATs remain requisite regardless of what field a student comes from.
“I would say nothing less than a 3.5, and no less than a 30 [out of 45] on the MCATs,” Chen added. “Anything better would be preferable.”

Sodha studied electrical engineering at MIT prior to coming to Georgetown, but even with a more traditional science background, she admited to undergoing an adjustment period. “I think more so for me than others who studied the sciences as an undergraduate, my undergrad experience was a lot more problem sets. It was less about memorizing information and more about applying some of the fundamentals, so there was a style of learning I had to adjust to,” she said.

Recently, the university made improvements to the medical school curriculum so that courses were more integrated in their instruction. “Last year they had a more traditional, discipline-based sort of teaching,” Chen explained. “This year they’ve tried to make it more integrated so it’s more fulfilling to learn about everything and see how it all comes together.”
In the second year, the focus is less on basic sciences and more on actual application of knowledge to patient care. “In the first year, it’s your basic biochem classes, it’s your neuroscience classes, it’s your physiology classes — it’s all the basic systems when the body is functioning normally. Second year is about saying, now that you understood normal situations, here are abnormal situations and how we go about treating that. So I think that’s what makes it more analytical and more integrative than first year. In your third and fourth year you apply those to real-time situations,” Sodha said.

Tracey Henry (GRD ’10), for example, is looking into getting a master’s degree in public policy during her intern year of residency. Having received her undergraduate degree in psychology, Henry is also passionate about providing everyone with necessary mental health care. “If you take care of mental health, then people are better able to care for themselves,” she said. “I think mental health is one of those taboo things still. People don’t want to say they go to a psychiatrist because there’s that stigma.”

To reach these goals, day-to-day life is demanding, beginning early and ending late at night, typically in the library stacks. Classes generally run from 9 a.m. to noon, and students average about 40 hours of studying per week to manage their course loads. And of course, aside from classes, individual students also have different activities they need to factor in.

“On Tuesdays, you have patient interviews, where you go to hospitals and interview patients for an hour,” Chen said. “Then for the next hour, you talk in small groups about your experiences.”
On top of her classes, Sodha does clinical research on campus a couple of times a week. One thing the three have in common, though: The afternoons, evenings and weekends are spent studying.

“I think I study four or five hours a night on weekdays and more on weekends,” Henry said. Chen said she averages nine hours a night on the weekdays.

When asked how they manage the stress of such a demanding academic life, all three students were in agreement: that balance is key. “I try to keep some normalcy. I spend time with friends on a Friday night or go out to the movies,” Sodha said. “It’s about maintaining a normalcy.”

She also stressed the importance of maintaining friendships outside of medical school. “I’ve found that most of my classmates have relationships with people outside of medical school. I think the reason for that is that it maintains some contact outside of the school. It’s critical to maintain somebody who knew you before you were doing all of this.”

Henry, a Christian, cites faith as her balancing force during her time in medical school. “Praying according to whatever your faith tradition is also important,” she said. “I wouldn’t have made it this far without faith.”

The passion to serve is a unifying characteristic among many medical students despite their diverse backgrounds. “What gets you up every morning is the thought of being able to do something amazing with your hands and your mind one day,” Sodha said. “That’s what keeps me going. There’s this faith that one day I might be able to do something for somebody that I might not have had the ability to do before.”

Both Sodha and Henry are actively involved in activities to improve and give back to the community using the tools acquired over the course of their training. Last year, Sodha founded a group called Georgetown Medical Student-Patient Partners. The group works alongside social workers, child-life specialists and art therapists, pairing medical students with long-term pediatric patients in the pediatric intensive care unit. In the last year, nearly 20 students have been paired with patients.

“We’ve had patients ranging from toddlers to 15- or 16-year-olds. We’ve had students who’ve come out with great experience. For instance, we paired two [students] with a mother and her young son with Down syndrome and a form of leukemia. The son passed away earlier this summer, but the boys spent a lot of time with this mom and her son and got to understand what it’s like to deal with a child with chronic [medical] issues and who is mentally disabled at the same time. I think they had quite an epiphany in that experience.”

Henry, for her part, has made the cause of universal healthcare her project. “I hate seeing people without health care,” she said. “It’s a really big issue, especially in this coming election. I worked with the Department of Health and Human Services just a year ago where I got to talk to a lot of people and learn about the business side of healthcare.”

Both agree that Georgetown’s emphasis on community involvement and its motto of “men and women for others” cultivate the perfect setting for their passion for outreach. “I think that Georgetown does a wonderful job of trying to get us out into the community,” Sodha said. “Being able to outreach into communities more is something I appreciate the school for allowing me to do. You should have the ability and desire to seek how you can not just work in school on your studies, but expand your horizons by working with people who need whatever services you’re intending to give one day.”

Of course, the most obvious question to ask anyone undergoing the stress and huge financial expense of medical school: What makes it worth it? Henry has one piece of advice: Don’t go into it for the money.

“You have to enjoy medicine, enjoy science and enjoy constantly learning. Thirty or 40 years ago, maybe medicine was a highly lucrative field, but it’s not what it once was. Other people are making that same kind of money now going to school half as long as you did, without accruing as much debt and without pulling their hair out studying,” she said. “There are fields that make more money than others, definitely, but this isn’t one where you can go into it for money without really loving people.”