Why Do You Want To Take Up Medicine?

Is it:

A) You want to change the world?
B) You have nothing else better to do?
C) You don't want to work, so you continue studying and living off of your parent's money
D) I always wanted to be a doctor/ Eversince I was a kid...
E) I love the sciences
F) My parents are doctors
G) Other reason: (please state)

Med Schools...Eeny Meeny Miny Mo!

Like what I stated in my previous blog, I had four schools in mind:

1. UP
2. UST
3. UERMMMC
4. DLSHI

And again, I chose these schools because they were the only ones that didn't require extra units. I initially wanted to go to Pamantasan ng Lungsod ng Maynila (PLM) and Ateneo School of Medicine and Publich Health (ASMPH) but they were requiring me to take up additional units in Physics, Chemistry, Biochemistry, Microbiology, and some Natural Sciences.

I really did plan on taking them up, and I went to several schools/universities within our area to see if they all the subjects were available to be taken up for the 2nd sem of their school year. I was lucky enough to find one school, University of Perpetual Help for it.

The campus is big, and spacious, new buildings, and the admissions office was very accommodating. I took their entrance exam, which was about 20-30 minutes or so, and I was then admitted. Since I required about a sem's worth of units, I had to go through several different departments and choose specific classes to get into. What really struck me with this school is how awesome and helpful the professors were there. They personally escorted me to the different colleges and spoke with the other deans of the college, and even gave me tips on which subjects were better to take up to prepare me for Medicine! Wow lang talaga. Hahahahaha. Their college of medicine wasnt bad either, all the professors are from UP Medicine/ UP Public Health (which is similar to MedTech) and their facilities are topnotch!

So I was pumped, ready to take on those extra units, and just get into the whole I'm-gonna-be-a-doctor mode.The day of enrollment arrived, and I went to their auditorium to start choosing my subjects. Pretty simple enough. I was able to get all the subjects, and a great schedule.

Then...the hard part.

I had to have my subjects assessed, and boy, was the line long. I finished around 11am, and ran to the line. It stretched around 3/4 of the quadrangle. Good thing there were chairs, but, sitting/standing in the heat at noon is not something to laugh about. After 7 hours of waiting, I finally reached the assessment room. A student took my schedule and printed out the cost. Unfortunately, one of the subjects hadn't been encoded yet with the proper amount so they sent me up to another room where I waited for another hour or so where a woman was shifting through papers looking for my subject. While waiting, I glanced at the partial cost of my 6 subjects...and my jaw dropped. It amounted to about 60k (well, it was kind of understandable since 3 of my subjects were lab), that cost more than my 4 years in college!!! I didnt know that that amount was perfectly normal for private schools. T_T And to think, I still lacked 3 units on top of that, so it was going to amount to about 70k or so in its final assessment.

And it came to pass, that at 9pm, I headed home, and told my parents that I wasnt going to take up the extra units. I reasoned that the 70k could instead be used to pay for at least half of my 1st sem in Med School. They still offered to let me take up the additional units just as long as I was sure that I wanted to get into PLM or ASMPH, but with parents approaching the retirement age, I thought better of it to just let it pass, and focus on other schools.

Such a shame really, that I bothered all those professors, and they were sooooo nice. :( Oh well. Sometimes things dont work out the way you planned them.

So back to the 4 schools that I enumerated earlier. Again, UP wasnt an option anymore since my NMAT score was below their requirement, and then I had to cross out UST (due to a very unfortunate incident), and then I was down to UERMMMMC and DLSHI.

Both schools are very good, but based on forums and the general opinion, UE is more established in terms of their Med school (around 60 years, I think) compared to DLSHI, which is fairly young (30 years or so).

DLSHI had a fairly easy  application process. Pay Php600, fill out their application forms and bring the necessary documents. Since I passed it around December, I had to wait until January for the interview. The interview took about 30 minutes where the Director for admissions, Dra. Tesoro I think, asked the usual questions --Why do you want to take up Medicine? How will you finance your studies? How do you handle stress? and others. They said that in a week, I'd know if I was accepted. By the very next day, I received the acceptance letter through email and I just had to pay the Php 5000 reservation fee.

Oh but wait, I still had to wait for the results from UE. Grrrr. That would be in the next month, and I was kind of scared to lose my slot. So I decided to wait.

What really attracted me to DLSHI was the generous scholarships for those who graduated with honors. Although UERMMMC also had one, DLSHI's was guaranteed once you enrolled.

Well, of the four schools, DLSHI was by far the most expensive one in terms of tuition. But with the scholarship, it became the one I could most afford without getting my parents bankrupt.

DLSHI and UERMMMC had what they called, the Entrance Scholarship. For DLSHI it is providing 50%, 75%, or 100% scholarship for those who graduated as cum laude, magna cum laude, and summa cum laude. UE also has a similar scheme but based on forums at Pinoy MD, they said that only 30-40 students in total, get the scholarship, whilst in DLSHI, all those who applied, regardless of the number, just as long as they fulfilled the requirements, they could get the scholarship.

Oh, before I forget (being a scatterbrain and all), here's some info about each school

UP:
- NMAT Cutoff: 90%-95%
-No. of students accepted: 160 (40 slots are reserved for Intarmed students)
-Tuition Per Sem: Php56,000
-Has an interview
-Application Fee: Php 1,000

UST
- NMAT Cutoff: 70%-80%

-No. of students accepted: 400

-Tuition Per Sem: Php102,000 (last I checked, and they increase every year by 4-7%)
- Has 2nd level exams (MCAT)
-Application Fee: Php2,000

UERMMMC
-NMAT: 70%
-No. of students accepted: 300

-Tuition Per Sem: Php96,000
-Has an interview
-Application Fee: Php1,600

DLSHI
-NMAT: 40%
-No. of students accepted: 310
-Tuition Per Sem: Php106,000 (and they increase by 3-7% annually)
-Has an interview
-Application Fee: Php600

Gotta cut this post short, gotta rush. Arghhhh, will continue. :))

The Boredom of Waiting

So, as I said before, I took my NMAT last December. What have I been doing since then?

Well, getting fat doesnt count. And its a good thing too, that I was able to save enough money to last me up until now.

I have tried looking for a part time job, but my mom was against the idea because she thought I might change my mind about medicine and get hooked again on being a corporate slave.

So I tried to do something that I enjoy and can make some funds off of. Art.

Since I was a kid, I have been drawing like crazy. I was an addict for Crayola and its wonderful assortment of colors and smells. Its like heaven with these things, its like crack for kids. :))

I then started with drawing Garfield, since it was the only decent comic book in our library at the time, and then I moved on to drawing Jon, and then funky monsters. Right? Right? See the evolution? Hahahaha.

Going back to what I've been doing while waiting for the results of the Med Schools, I just draw. I started painting some stuff, and tried selling them, but I guess, there's no market for it right now. But I still continue drawing these little buggers in the hopes of making time go faster, getting lucky and selling at least one of them, and just enjoy the time I have left before Med School harasses me.

Here's a few of my works:

 Well, I hope that this boredom streak will come to an end. Hahaha

Choosing a Med School......dundunduuuuuuuuun

Ok...now we're getting somewhere.

I took up the NMAT last December 4, 2011, and I have say...two months of studying on your own will not prepare you at all. Well, it was pretty difficult for me since I had no background at all in the hard sciences. A whole day of feeling dumb, sleepy, and hungry, in a cold room with a thousand other students vying for those top  spots that can admit them to any school in the country.

By 5pm, the test was done, and I was ready to go home, my stomach turned upside down with dread because I knew that my score wasnt too good, but I did my best.

Anyways, after 1 week, the results were out. Tadaaaa! My results werent that bad, somewhere in the middle. The lowest score I got was in Biology (that was cruel sonofa-----). But its all good, the scores were good enough for me to qualify for several good schools.

I applied for the following schools:
1. UP College of Medicine

2. UST Faculty of Medicine and Surgery

3. University of the East Ramon Magsaysay  Memorial Medical Center (UERMMMC)

4. De La Salle Health Sciences Institute (DLSHI)

I applied specifically to these schools because they were the only ones who  didnt require additional units. I actually wanted to apply to St Lukes, PLM, and Ateneo School of Medicine and Public Health, but there were waaaay to many units lacking on on my part (lets just say that it would have taken from 16-26 units of hard sciences).

Well, after seeing my score, I knew UP was out of the question. Hahahaha. But there were other equally great schools to go to.

I was actually tormented with which school I would actually go for, even though their results weren't out (or even starting), I just wanted to set my mind on a specific goal. It always helps to set your mind on a specific school so that your thoughts arent all over the place.

Anywho, after finding myself lost, hopeless, and all over the place, I asked advice from my cousin who is practical, objective, and methodical when it comes to decisions (being the manager of one of the largest fast food chains, she was trained to be that way).

She told me: when deciding on something, I use a 5 point system. I list all the factors that I can think of that would have bearing on my decision. In my case, which med school should I go to? Well, the factors that I listed were (and in no particular order):

• Location
• Accessibility
• Tuition
• Availability of Scholarships
• School reputation (yes, Im still a sucker for this one)
• Safety
• Availability of Dorms
• Dorm costs
• Environment inside the school (is it conducive for learning?)
• Professors
• Affiliated hospitals
• Board Passing Rate

And under each school, I rated them between 1-5 (1 being the lowest, and 5 being the highest). And voila! an objective decision made.

My cousin also told me that if it still seems a little too subjective ( in terms of rating), I should list down facts to support the score/rating against each criteria.

Well, hope this helps you with your decisions!

NMAT? Done. Passing Requirements? Done. Med School? Uhhhh...

Well, this will be the first time that I would be writing about my journey into Med School here in the Philippines. Yes, I do specificy that my current location is in the Philippines because I had a damn hard time trying to look for really helpful sites about taking up Medicine and schools here. Hahahaha.

Anyways, for all you aspiring med students, here's a really, truly, helpful site for you to check on if you want to know about which schools to apply to, tips on the NMAT, 2nd level med exams in other schools such as the MCAT, and whatnot.

Pinoy MD, http://pinoy.md/ipb/ is a really awesome and educational site. Nearly 60% of my decisions were based on my interactions with students and doctors on this site. I think by the end of this month, they'll be moving their site to http://pinoymd.net/.

Anyways, I had to go through a lot of hell before I made up my mind to take up Medicine. I was employed, and it was nearing my regularization period when my mom suddenly offered to let me study for Medicine. God knows, how happy I was to hear that. Eversince I was a kid, I wanted to become a doctor, but during graduation, my parents hinted that I should just work since I had two other siblings who were studying still.

I let it go, and worked for 2 years, and then BOOM! My mom suddenly asked if I still wanted to become a doctor. I laughed it off and thought she was just joking. But after a few serious minutes, I got scared, and said no. I told her that I was going to be regularized, it was a pretty good company too, the snag was, by my 6th month, the two year bond would have started. So I had about a week to decide.

Whoa boy, was it nerve wracking. I loved my job, but deep down inside, I knew it never really was for me, and I always had that feeling that I never fit in in the corporate world. Say what you will, and say its corny, but its the truth. I FELT that I wasn't for the corporate world.

By the end of the week, I told my boss, and wrote my resignation letter, and the rest is history.