Medical School Scholarships

Having retired and wanting to stay busier than a Maytag repairman but not as busy as and endocrinologist, I volunteered to review college scholarship application that a local charitable foundation manages for a variety of donors.  It was one of my more fulfilling tasks, 61 submissions, every one of them worthy of consideration.  There really are some terrific young folks floating around.

While the scoring of the applications was done on my computer on my kitchen table, a meeting was held to decide who gets the monetary awards.  At the conclusion of the session, I received eight more applications to review, these from current or entering medical and dental students seeking assistance from two available sources.  Each awards $2-4000 a year, which probably would allow the student to choose between a microscope and auto insurance but still leave each with a lot of loan debt.

While the high schoolers entering college had transcripts and SAT's, medical students with one year under their belt have a series of Passes.  High school transcripts have honors and AP courses.  Medical students all take the same curriculum and the description of the curriculum has lost much of its delineation to anatomy, physiology and histology, instead being lumped as either an organ system or the more amorphous introduction to being a doctor with no discernable curriculum.  As a result, I was left to evaluate personal statements.  Everyone wants to become a doctor for similar reasons.  Where the applications separated was by intended specialty and the background that generated that decision.  Again, some very good kids.  I was asked to rank them 1-8, which I did.  Probably 6 of the 8 would be competitive for the awards.  Choosing which is somebody else's task.