Anyone Seen My Self-Esteem?

No wait is as anxious as a Medic student counting the days to his/her Medical Interview

(Well, maybe except for a young husband feeling nervous as hell, waiting outside the delivery room 9 months after saying “I Do”)

My fellow seniors in college have started to be called for medical interviews from overseas universities of their choice. The interview, for medical and dental students applying for a place in universities from UK, Ireland, Australia, and/or New Zealand, is normally held locally be it in 5 star hotels or in meeting rooms in college, but some UK interviews do require the applicants to come over to the university itself. If one impresses the interviewers, who are usually Professors and representative officers of the respective universities, one will be sent a conditional offer. This means that the candidate is secured a place in the school of medicine/dentistry, be it that they satisfy the academic requirement (eg. score a certain minimum score/grade in the final examination, which will be sitting for in May 2007).

For UK applicants like me, we are required to apply to 4 universities of our choice. It is not uncommon for some students not to be called for all 4 interviews, as each year the universities receive around 2000-3000 applications from both within United Kingdom and from around the globe. Each university has limited allocated places for intakes every year, especially for entry into the Medicine course. As for international students, the competition is even much fierce, because the universities only reserve around 5-20 places for foreign students. The selection of candidates to be called for interview is based on the Personal Statement submitted by the candidates, as well as academic and non-academic criteria that may vary according to universities.

So far, I consider myself lucky since I’ve been called to 2 Medical interviews out of all the 4 universities I applied to, which are University of Southampton, University of Nottingham, University of Newcastle, and King’s College London. My first interview that happens to be for University of Southampton will be tomorrow, which is on the 18^th of January, at 2.50pm. The second is an interview with the representatives from University of Newcastle, on the 24^th of January, at 3.00pm. Even the thought of being called for an interview is confusing – a mish-mash of excitement, enthrallment, and anxiety. A stream of questions floods my mind, like:

WhAt iF I, LiKe, sAy soMetHinG so, LiKe, NeaNdertHal n’ duMb tHat maKes mE, like, sOuNd sTuPid?

What if I st-st-st-st-stutter and t-t-t-t-tumble up-p-p-pon my ans-s-swers?

What if I mumble like a mouse and speak like I have a lump in my throat?

Anything could happen. *shudders*

My only concern is that the interviewers ask me something out of my knowledge, like “What do you know about the evolution of protein in the H5N1 bird flu virus that causes the mutation of it’s structure?” Riiight. Or stuff that I know but cannot remember. I know, I have a small ‘RAM’ size in my brain. If I were a laptop, I’d probably have only 128Mb of DDR1 RAM.

Gold fish memory. Ehehehe.

Anyways, (do I always go off topic or what?) I am still grateful that I received 2 calls for interview, because by being hand-picked out of the thousands of applicants and invited to a Medical interview is a sign that my personal statement is good enough. And now I have the chance to show my enthusiasm and colourful personality, and what’s more to prove I am a worthy of a placement in their Medical school. I am 3 steps closer towards achieving my dream of doing the BM Bachelor of Medicine degree in United Kingdom, which is world-widely known for top notch universities and quality education. The 2 remaining steps would be receiving a conditional offer letter, and the last step to reach is scoring the at least the minimum points required in my IB Final Exams in May 2007.

*shudders again*

Being so close yet seemingly so far to my dreams have never been so enticingly anxious.

Pray I don’t say or do anything stupid. J

17/1/2007, 8:57PM

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 17th, 2007 at 6:16 am and is filed under Previously Written Entries. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.