An Unofficial Guide to Admission to Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (for NUSHS students ONLY)

This is a guest article, contributed by Roy Ang, class of 2008.

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If you are reading this article, you must be a prospective applicant for the course of Medicine in NUS – one of the most highly sought after degrees in Singapore. Well, young padawan doctor-to-be, read on!

Due to the high – possibly bordering insane – academic demands of the course, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (YLLSoM) has in place a highly rigorous selection criteria set in place to pick their students to study medicine. Out of 2000+ applicants, only 260+ lucky students get admitted to the school by September. With that kind of admission rates, it is almost as competitive as top universities in US and UK!

I applied for admissions to Medicine in NUS in 2009, and received the offer when I was still in OCS in May that year. While the offer of disruption from NS and joining the many doctors in Singapore was tempting, I eventually decided to reject the offer put forward by YLLSoM. (more details on that in my next article) Though the thought of being an M.D. has since long passed me, I still clearly remember the ardous process I had to put myself through to finally receive that precious piece of good news in that merry month of May.

Without further ado, here’s the rundown on the admissions process.

Read the rest at his blog: http://rangspeakyourmind.wordpress.com/2011/03/29/an-unofficial-guide-to-admission-to-yong-loo-lin-school-of-medicine/

Writing papers

After nearly a year of letting my brain atrophy, I finally gathered myself to write a 1500-word, 5-page paper. It was not an easy task, because I didn't know what made me tick previously. Only upon further reflection did I realize that there were some strategies I could've employed to get myself started earlier.

So, here are my tips for "forcing out" the first drafts of essays:

1. Outline your essay. It's as simple as writing out the points you're going to talk about and naming an example to support it. This is easy if you're given a prompt and all you have to do is to respond to it. But what if there's no prompt, and you have to formulate your own thesis statement?

2. If there's no prompt, and you have no idea where to start, just write a general introduction of the topic. Intros tend to start off with a broad view before you narrow your focus. So, write something generic (you can always edit this later) and see what sort of thesis statement your writing naturally brings you to. Then attempt to sketch out an outline of your essay with that. If you don't seem to be getting anywhere, start again, but tweak the words and see where that lands you. Repeat until you feel comfortable with your essay outline.

Remember this: Your gut instinct tends to be right. You will know, deep down inside, whether you'll eventually be able to "force" however many words/pages you need out of that sketch you just did, based on previous experience. (This assumes you've done academic writing before; if you haven't, your topic tends to be of the "prompt" kind, so you don't have to worry about this anyway).

3. Forget about breaking the essay up into tiny little pieces. Have you ever heard the advice to write 100-200 words whenever you can, just to make progress on your essay? Maybe this works for some of you, but for most, it just makes your essay sound disjointed, both in content and style. The fact is, you aren't going to be able to concentrate and come up with something innovative in that half hour between PE and dinner. Your brain needs to be "in the zone".

So: set aside large chunks of time to work on the essay. Instead of squeezing in four half-hour sessions, clear 2 hours of your time. During that two hours, sit down and squeeze that essay out of your head. You'll find that, once you get started, your ideas come much more easily, and the end result will be a more coherent, flowing essay.

4. While working on your essay... remove distractions. Turn off the internet, and more importantly, make it difficult for yourself to get back on the internet. If you need to research articles, do it before working on the main body of your essay. We all think we can multitask, but really, Facebook and MSN are far too addictive.

5. Make your habits (good or bad) work for you, rather than trip you up. What do I mean by this? Well, let's look at me. I'm extremely lazy in a physical sense. I don't like to have to get up and go somewhere, and I'd rather just sit in my seat if I can. So what I did was to shift myself to my bed (I'm good at resisting the temptation to just fall asleep, so this works for me, but it might not work for you), bringing my laptop and reading materials with me. I bought a wireless router but was too lazy to install it, so I'm stuck with my ethernet cable at my desk. Thus, being on my bed directly prevents me from using the internet because I'm far too lazy to heave myself off and bring everything back to the desk. And being stuck there, unwilling to move, did wonders for my concentration (and motivation).

6. Know your limits. Everyone takes a different amount of time to write the same length of paper. For me, 1500 words with a standalone prompt might take me 1.5 hours. But 1500 words with a reference (e.g. Comment on this article...) would take me 2.5 hours. And 1500 words with multi-article referencing (usually research/expository papers) might take me 3-4 hours to finish. If you know how long you take to complete the paper, you'll have a better idea of how much time to set aside.

7. Do not underestimate the reference section. It takes longer to write up references in the correct citation style than you think. Formatting also takes up a huge amount of time when you're trying to make sure the spacing and style of different text elements are consistent.

8. Finally, know your most productive time. Unfortunately for me, I tend to write better essays when I'm in a panic-induced focus between 10pm to 2am. This is probably due to a number of bad habits, but it works for me. Before my most productive time, I try to lay some groundwork on the essay (sketch the outline, write the intro, etc), so that I can focus on the actual writing during that time. Some of you work better by splitting the essay into 3 main chunks and doing one chunk per day. Some work better just setting aside 6 hours and head-bashing through the entire essay. It's up to you. Discover what works best.

That's all I have to say today. Cheers from Berkeley.

Takeaway from the Tufts Talk

The Assistant Director for Admissions at Tufts, Daniel Grayson, visited the school yesterday and shared some interesting insights both about the university as well as the US admissions process, more specifically, the essay.

When it comes to applying for university, a student's essay is the only way that they can influence the admissions officers into making choices - Your grades, teacher recommendations, CV, service learning projects and everything else can no longer be changed.

Thus, the essay obviously plays a large role in showing the university who you are as a person.

A few common pitfalls when it comes to essay writing are as follows.

1. Because the Common Appp questions follow the trend of "Describe ______ and its impact on you", some students end up spending more of their time describing that _____ instead of its impact. It is easy to write an essay that describes your grandfather without ever mentioning his impact on you as a person, but it does not help your application in any way.

The essay is about you. Make it about you.

2. In their essays, some students describe a service learning trip overseas, or a challenge they overcame, demonstrating hard work, diligence or perseverance. That's all good and fine, but hard work, diligence and perseverance can be seen from your grades. You aren't adding very much to your application, merely reiterating a point that the admissions officer already knows.

Your essay is an avenue for you to show off qualities that are not shown anywhere else in your transcript. Your transcript does not show that you are a kind person, or that you like . Your essay can.

3. Some students start off by thinking, "What interesting story should I tell the admissions officers?" and then go on to tell that story without knowing why they are telling that story. An essay should have purpose. A stranger reading it should be able to come away saying, "I learnt A, B and C about you through this essay" and this A, B and C should be things that you intended them to learn through your essay.

Don't think of a story to tell. Think of qualities/sides of you you want to show, and show them through the essay. Passionate about a foreign language? Don't merely describe your journey with the foreign language, show your passion for it in your essay.

4. There could be a concern that "I'm just not funny enough" or that "I'm too weird" and so students sometimes feel the need to tone down their essays or make them artificially funnier.

Don't. Your essay should sound like you because you are writing it and it is your essay. Admissions officers use the essay to get a rough gauge of your personality, and if what they get is false, you might not end up where you would fit in. And they might not be able to understand how cool/funky/weird you are, which could count against you.

5. A common misconception is that the essay has to be absolutely perfect with no grammatical or punctuation errors.

Admissions officers hardly sit around with red pens, circling out your errors and then dumping your entire application down the drain. In fact, what they are looking for in your application is not how perfectly you can write, but what you can bring to the table that can make their new incoming year more vibrant. In his words, "I am trying my very best to love you as much as I possibly can in the least creepy way possible."

Stylistic elements like (), [], -, . , and ... can be used at your own discretion if you feel that it helps the person understand your style of writing better, or if you feel that it helps you at all. After all, the essay is a window into your personality and style and you may bend the rules of the English language a little bit to fit that style.

Note however, that there is a difference between people who deliberately break the rules of the English language and those who unknowingly break them.

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These pitfalls make essay writing look like a horrifyingly daunting task, but when it's all boiled down, and if you tl;dr-ed this post, what you should keep in mind are two things.

1. The essay should sound like you.

2. The essay should say something about you that isn't already shown somewhere else.

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Hope that was useful and happy writing!

Some useful websites for those who're writing essays

If you need to write essays for your college application, there are a few sites that have provided interesting (good and bad) examples:

www.essayfroum.com

This site shows both the good and the needs-improvement essays. Those who post usually will edit the posted essay directly below so you can see how people think about essays. If it helps, it's a large collection.

www.brainyprep.com

This site is supposedly (according to the authors) good because it posts only the essays of successful applicants. It's your own take whether to believe them or not... Be critical!

Things to do after your APs

So, you've just finished your APs and you're bored, because you suddenly have nothing to do after the weeks and weeks of hard studying, assuming you studied hard for the APs in the first place.

Besides preparing for SIMC, if you have any role in that, here's a list of things you can do:

For Year 6s

1. Relax. Duh.
2. Do things that interest you - those that you've been putting off thanks to school. Maybe you've wanted to head to the pool for some splashing watery goodness. Or read a book that was released in March. Whichever... just do it!
3. Obviously, I have an ulterior motive for dishing out such pointers. It's good to discover what you really like and who you really are... for those all-important college essays. So do a little bit of reflection at the same time. You don't have to write daily journals or anything like that, but ask yourself probing questions from time to time. Do online personality tests ("real" ones like the MBTI, DISC or Big Five, not Blogthings or Facebook quizzes!) and ask yourself if the results apply to you. Et cetera.
4. More importantly, start writing those essays, especially if you are applying to Cambridge (deadline: September 20) or Oxford (October 15). But the deadlines for most other universities are still six months away, you say. Well, a US college essay needs a whole lot of drafts, and you'll probably throw the first two or three incarnations away before you even present it to a college counselor, and then he/she will tear right through it to help you make it better.
5. Start asking teachers for recommendations. When you email-invite them on Common App later, all you need to do is stimulate their memory. For UK applications, get them to email the rec to the college counselors, who will help them enter it into UCAS.
6. Have you looked at your graduation testimonial yet?
7. Finish up your research if you haven't. Collate a list of your research achievements, because research transcript review will begin at the end of May.
8. Contact the college counselors to ask about interview classes - they're not very free and it may be difficult to schedule one.
   

For Year 5s

1. Take a breather. These were your first-ever APs and now that they're over, they weren't that bad, right?
   
2. Form a group and pick two choices from the list of 2010 research projects. Apply for your projects by emailing the Office of RIE. This is extremely important as completion of an Advanced Research Project is a graduation requirement... I suppose this has been repeated many times already, but there's no harm in saying it again :)
   
3. Start looking up possible universities and courses/majors, if you haven't already. You'll want all this background knowledge by next year, when you can concentrate on writing your apps, rather than being lost and confused about where you want to go.
4. Consult the college counselors if necessary. Try to do it before August -- that's when the Year 6s desperately need them for essay reviewing and other related uni app stuff.

That's all for now. Cheers.

Preparing for graduation

Now, most of you would think that for your graduation, you attend Farewell Assembly and Convocation, get all your transcripts, and send them off to universities.

Simple, huh?

Reality check: No, this does not happen.

In actual fact there are a lot of things that need to be done to prepare for graduation. In other JCs it's simpler because all you do is take A levels. However this may be good practice for future university studies where you are require to file for graduation - meaning you should know when you are going to graduate, what are the requirements, and whether you've fulfilled them.

The requirements that students need to complete before graduation are numerous.

On Convocation Day you will receive your transcripts. This includes your academic transcript, research transcript, student development transcript, and testimonial.

I will talk about these in the order that you need to work on them.

1. Testimonial

I have written about this before, in this post. Please start on it early. Teachers will start writing them in September and it's good to get it out of the way. Yes, it's strange to be tooting your own horn but here's our first step into the adult world of selling ourselves to total strangers.

2. Research transcript

Presentations for your ARP should be over by mid-August. You will get emails about who to contact for ARP presentations. Some departments are nice and chase you to set up timings to present. Others leave it up to your own initiative. If you want to apply to UK universities (especially Oxbridge which are due earlier), you'd want all your research stuff to be shown, so do the presentation as early as possible.

In September, the Office of RIE will ask you to check through your research transcript. You have to look through it carefully and make sure everything is in order. They used the abstract from my very-long-ago research proposal to put in the transcript, and it's very out of date. This is an example of things you may have to change.

Other things include addition of research projects other than your ARP, addition of research-related activities, editing the activities, etc.

Once you are sure everything is done, you can click on the acknowledgement button at the button of the transcript and that's the end of it. No more editing.

3. Student Development Transcript

The headache of the bunch. Thankfully, I was able to remember most of the EC activities that should be on this thing. This includes all sorts of stuff like exchange programmes, participation in competitions, whatever. It's a conglomeration of every single non-research activity you've participated in.

Why is this the most annoying? Because you need to make sure all your activities are there, and the rojak nature makes it hard to collate. Also, you have to email Mr Chua Chong Ping and the teachers-in-charge to get your entries updated. If you want full credit for your leadership, your CIP, and everything else, it must all be here.

Another thing is the newly-added Personal Statement on a Key Achievement. As the name suggests, you have to write a short statement about something in the SDT that means the most to you. 300 words maximum (this is strict).

This can get aggravating because you don't want your statements to overlap. You could write about olympiad achievements, but chances are you'd already write about them in your essays/personal statements for university applications. Same for your CIP, or leadership. For me, I chose my least-elaborated-on event (Pre-U Sem) to talk about, since I didn't want the admissions officers to be reading about the same things over and over again.

The Personal Statement will be due in mid-September. Again, there is also an acknowledgement button. So far I've refused to press it because my transcript is riddled with errors.

4. Academic transcript

Self-explanatory. All your modules and grades, and all the different kinds of CAPs will be displayed here. You can't do much with it until after exams, and even so, there's the nifty algorithm that calculates your best possible CAP, so it's quite easy on the brain here.


Now, why is it important to get these done ASAP?

The reason: Early application.

While UK universities are generally due in early January, Oxbridge are due earlier as mentioned before. So it's nice to have everything done by then, so they'll get the transcript the way it's supposed to look.

But what if I'm not applying to the UK, you say.

Well, US early decision is usually due November 1, which means you need to submit your transcript request form by October 1. If you wait until then to sort out your transcript, you will have no time, because you have all your last-minute assignments and projects and EXAMS to deal with. The buffer space after exams til Nov 1 is just that: buffer. Time must be given to allow the transcripts to fly to the US.

But what if I'm not applying early anywhere, is your next reason for putting this off.

Here's my response: do you really want to be fussing over all this after your exams? You want to celebrate your liberation from studying. Who wants to deal with all the school's bureaucratic stuff then? What's more, for those who haven't started on their college essays (like me, oops), the essays are enough to deal with. Having to negotiate with various teachers for transcript amendments can get quite frustrating, if you are unlucky.

So, in conclusion, do everything early and relax, knowing you have the time to do final edits. It gives you a whole lot more to look forward to after exams :D

Writing essays and personal statements

Nowadays I am a little free-er before I get busier in 1 month's time (when school starts), so maybe I will post a bit more...

Today I will talk about writing essays (I am not an expert, Fiona is but maybe I will share some 'cliche' tips about what I know).

When I first tried to write my essays, I didnt know how to start either. Your essay seems like the key to let people put all your achievements into perspective and it seems to be the only thing that is really entirely within your control at that moment (you cant really change your grades by very much nor can you suddenly accumulate 5 years worth of extracurriculars, but you can change your essay) and you want to make it good.

The difference between UK and US essays is, from my opinion, US essays tend to be more 'storytelling', while UK essays tend to be more 'matter-of-factly". In US essays, they want you to tell them a story that will show them what your personality is like, instead of you telling them what you are like. In UK essays, you can emphasize all the achievements you want and they will be happy to take it.

To me, UK essays were easier to write, simply because all I needed to do was to write a list of my best academic achievements, put in some grades and elaboration of courseload, and then list more achievements again. One more reason why you can get away with a laundry list in the UK personal statement is that there is nowhere else you can list them other than your personal statement. There is no section in UCAS that says "extracurriculars" or "leadership positions" or "academic achievements". That gives you more reason to put it in your personal statement and emphasize your intent and passion for the course that you are applying for.

US essays are a little more tricky because they require you to tell a good story about yourself. Now it would be easy to talk about your friends wouldnt it, but it's always harder to talk about yourself. It is even harder to think of an incident that characterizes who you are, because you have been living with yourself for as long as you can imagine and you dont understand what makes you you. When you thought of that incident that characterizes who you are, then it's hard to show people what you are like instead of telling them.

Mr Allan told me that my aim in the essay is to make the reader (in this case, the admission officer) want to come up to me and shake my hand. So that's quite a useful tip, to know what you are aiming for.

The starting is always the hardest part, so I have a few suggestions:
1. Brainstorm. Think about the things that you enjoy, a turning point in your life, a conflict and how you resolved it, etc. Please dont write cliche things like how you went for a mundane CIP project and you felt so touched witnessing the smiles on someone's faces, because I think it sounds overused and uncreative. If you want to write about that, perhaps use a different choice of words or something?

2. How do you know if you are having a problem telling instead of showing: You write "I am a very happy person" instead of "I am always smiling", or "I like physics a lot" instead of "I am always seen with a physics book in my hand".
How to resolve it? The best tip I can give is to think about 2 words: For EXAMPLE. If you want to tell your friend that you like physics a lot, what will you say? "Oh I like physics a lot. For example you will always see me with a physics book. If you dont believe me I can show you 2 physics books in my bag right now". So you think about how you would tell your friend what your point is and support it using "for example", and there you have it, showing but not telling.

3. Start early. Cant emphasize this point enough. Starting early = more time for people to look through your essays = more time for corrections = hopefully better essay

4. Dont hesitate to rewrite. Expect many many drafts. Margy had 20 drafts, and I had maybe 10? or 15? including minor edits.

5. Dont assume that just because one person says it's bad, it's bad. One very important thing I have learnt is that every person views your essay differently. For instance, in one of my essays, there was this line that garnered many different responses. I thought it was funny. Some agreed that it was. Some felt that it made me seem pompous, some felt that it was extremely irrelevant, and some thought it captured the essence of my essay. So dont assume that just because 1 person thinks it's bad, it's bad - even if that person is the college counsellor because the other college counsellor may not think so. *winks*

6. It's your essay. When you have differing opinions about some of your content, remember that it is your essay and you decide whether it should be in or not. For me, I left that line in because I really liked it and I dont think it hurt me.

7. You = your essay, not your essay = you. See the difference?

8. Ask your friends/relatives/seniors/juniors/whoever to read your essay because you never know what they may say about it. Sometimes they may point out something that you never noticed, or offer a fresh perspective on yourself/some issues that you wrote in your essay, tell you that you spelt something wrongly, or even just give you encouragement by saying "I think it's very well written". Making that effort to ask may lead to a totally new inspiration for a better essay, changing minor details to reflect better English usage, or whatever - and ultimately a better essay. And all you have to do is just ask! Reading other people's essays to repay that favour may give you some inspiration too for your own!

9. Dont worry about the word count when you first start writing. Just write, and get something going. And people will then tell you which parts are redundant as they read your essay.

10. Every word is important, and can affect the meaning and tone of a sentence. In addition, 1 word saved is 1 more word you can use to express yourself.

11. Borrow books from Mr Allan. :) There is this green book by Harry Bauld which is quite good, and some others that are quite worth reading. --> THIS applies to year 4s too, it's never too late to start reading these books before people from your level borrow it away as deadlines approach!

As a guide, your essay should be about 1 page on Microsoft Word.

After submitting the essay:
1. Relax. Even if you regret writing some stuff in the essay, it's too late now. You have done what you can, so just let the adcoms do the rest.

2. Even if you dont get in the school of choice, remember that admissions involves a lot of luck, dont feel worse about yourself just because the school rejected you, at the same time, dont be cocky if you got accepted, because the place that you were offered may have easily gone to another candidate who was equally qualified but rejected because he/she was just unlucky.

Testimonials

I am in Year 6 Sem 2 now, my last semester of school. Which means I'm currently in the process of sorting out my uni apps, and I'd just like to share about some aspects of my (currently limited) experience.

Testimonials. Start writing your testimonial early. For those of you who don't know, a testimonial is written by your mentor and included in your graduation package. It's basically a list of all your achievements in prose form, and some good comments about your character.

In Year 6 Sem 1, teachers will start telling you to write up a list of the achievements in the past few years that you feel are the most important and beneficial. This will be used later by your mentors to write your testimonial. Some mentors will allow you to write your own testimonial, because it makes their job easier, they just have to edit it.

Whatever it is, write it before the end of Sem 1, because it not only gives you good practice, it's also the simplest "essay" out of the way. If you think writing your testimonial is difficult, trust me, application essays are much worse.

Testimonials are also a very good way for you to reflect on what you've done in the past few years, which will make it easier when you write your essays later on, because the examples will be fresh in your mind and you can use to them show your interests.

If you have a lack of material to write in your testimonial (it should be about 3/4 page long), then it's good to start doing something to put in it. This is another reason why you should do it early, because if you wait until Sem 2 to do it, you'll realise you have no time left.

In summary, a testimonial is one of the easiest things you have to write. Yes it seems difficult at first because most of us find it difficult to blow our own trumpet, which is basically what you're doing in a testimonial. But it will definitely make it easier for you to write about yourself in your essays for uni applications, so do start early, and give your mentor enough time to edit it.