University of Washington School of Medicine

Show Summary

In the 601st episode of Admission Straight Talk, host Linda Abraham speaks with Dr. LeeAnna Muzquiz, Associate Dean for Admissions at the University of Washington School of Medicine (UWSOM). Dr. Muzquiz, a graduate of UWSOM and a family physician with ties to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, discusses the unique five-state WWAMI (Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, Idaho) curriculum, which allows students to complete their foundational training in their home states.

The School of Medicine emphasizes training for rural and underserved communities, offering special programs like TRUST (Targeted Rural and Underserved Scholar Track) and CUSP (Community Urban Scholars Program) aimed at fostering future physicians committed to these populations. Dr. Muzquiz highlights the comprehensive and transparent admissions process at UWSOM, including the importance of personal storytelling in applications and interviews.

Show Notes

Welcome to the 601st episode of Admission Straight Talk. Thanks for tuning in. Are you ready to apply to your dream medical schools? Are you competitive at your target programs? Accepted’s Med School Admissions Quiz can give you a quick reality check and you’ll not only get an assessment of your chances, but tips on how to improve them. Plus it’s all free.

Our guest today is Dr. LeeAnna Muzquiz University of Washington School of Medicine’s Associate Dean for Admissions. Dr. Muzquiz graduated from the University of Washington School of Medicine herself in 2000 and received a Native American Center of Excellence certificate for successful completion of the Indian Health Pathway at the University of Washington. She did her residency at the Seattle Indian Health Board Clinic through the Swedish Family Medicine Residency Program in Seattle and was chief resident from 2002 to 2003. She has tribal citizenship with the Confederated Salish and Kuteni tribes, CSKT, and you can correct my pronunciation, in Montana. She has worked as a family physician with CSKT since 2003 and in 2011 became the medical director for CSKT Tribal Health. She has also taught medical students and physician assistant students for the University of Washington School of Medicine for the past 12 years. She assumed the role of associate dean in 2018 after serving as assistant dean for approximately one year.

Dr. Muzquiz, welcome to Admission Straight Talk.

Hi, Linda. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Delighted to speak with you today. Today’s podcast will have some review, possibly of a previous podcast interview that we did three years ago, but not a lot.

Dr. Muzquiz, can you give us an overview of UW’s curriculum focusing on its more distinctive elements?

The University of Washington School of Medicine is a five-state regional medical school that is in partnership with the states of Washington, Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho. We have six campuses across those five states, two in Washington state, one at the sort of original site at the University of Washington in Seattle, and one in partnership with Gonzaga University in Spokane on the eastern side of the state.

Additionally, we have campuses in, as I said, Alaska, which is at the University of Anchorage, in Montana at Montana State University, in Idaho at the, University of Idaho, and in Wyoming at the University of Wyoming. And with that, really the mission of the School of Medicine is to train the next generation of physicians to serve the workforce needs of our WWAMI region. So WWAMI stands for the first initial of all five of those states. So it’s W-W-A-M-I, WWAMI. So you’ll hear me reference that throughout. And the unique part of our curriculum is that we utilize the medical education resources in all five of those states to deliver a one of a kind curriculum that allows students to do their first 18 months of their curriculum in their home state. So that’s their foundations phase.

So each of those campuses has a cohort of students that are selected from those states to be at those foundation sites. The sizes of those classes vary. Seattle is the largest site with 100. And some of our smaller sites have 20 students in those foundation phases. Once students finish their foundation phase of the curriculum, it is integrated block style learning with clinical skills in, you know, right from the very beginning intertwined throughout. And then they sit for their step one exam and then they go into the patient care phase, which is our next phase of our curriculum. And that’s really kind of the exciting part, which is when our students have the opportunity to do their required clerkships in one of many locations across any of the five states within WWAMI. So I, for instance, was a Montana WWAMI and did my sort of basic science learning at the Montana State University campus. And then once it came time to do clerkships, I was able to do a variety of clinical experiences throughout the WWAMI states. So I did some in Washington, some in Montana, Idaho, you get to travel around to the five different states. It allows our students to really have exposure to, of course, kind of urban academic high level tertiary care in Seattle and some of our larger cities throughout WWAMI but also have access to rural sort of sometimes frontier medicine as it’s practiced with independent private practitioners outside of the academic setting, which is oftentimes what many of our students aspire to do.

The strong, you know, sort of other parts of our mission or goals within our mission are to serve underserved populations, primarily understanding the importance of primary care, and with, you know, special consideration for rural medicine as well. So our students come with that passion and so then we’re able to provide them an experience of learning medicine in those situations.

So regardless if they decide to eventually practice in rural medicine or not, they’ve had that exposure and they’ve had those experiences and they have a good appreciation for what medicine can look like in a variety of different settings.

When I was preparing for the call, at one point I was thinking that UW could really be U-WWAMI. There already was the connection to WWAMI and it was a WWAMI school, when we talked previously, both three years ago, and I think we even had an interview before that one. It was even more pronounced this time, from my perspective, as a visitor.

Does everyone at UW’s school of medicine have a connection to the region?

In terms of the students who matriculate or students who matriculate, exactly.

Yes. So, you know, I think what you’ve hit on there, Linda, and what we’ve really strived to sort of help build a community that’s really of WWAMI and for WWAMI, that our mission really is about the entire WWAMI region. It’s not just about Washington, although that is our, you know, sort of our original institution that really saw this vision and partnered with these states. But we really wanted all of our students to feel like they owned and they were part of this larger community and family. What you have observed has been intentional to maybe decentralize it a little bit so that we understand the importance and the value that our students from Montana and Idaho and Alaska bring in addition to the importance of the students who are located in Washington and particularly in Seattle.

So yes, everyone who comes to the University of Washington School of Medicine has some, we actually call them WWAMI ties. So either you’re a verified legal resident of one of the WWAMI states, or if you’re not having legal residency or verified residency through the academic institutions and you must demonstrate that you have some connection to WWAMI and that can be through a variety of different ways, perhaps, and we actually list them on our website and there are very specific criteria. And it can be something like being a member of a federally recognized tribe whose traditional or customary travel boundaries include portions of any of the WWAMI states, having been born in a WWAMI state, having graduated from high school, having family members who currently reside in one of the WWAMI states. Sometimes folks currently live in the WWAMI states, but they’re not verified as residents. We’ll still consider those folks, but then they have to go through a little bit of extra… So all of the people who come from out of region go through a little bit of extra screening to ensure that their mission aligned with us in some fashion.

Also active military members and also folks who participate in any of our enrichment programs that are sort of specifically targeting different communities that are either sponsored by or in partnership with the University of Washington School of Medicine. And then there’s always that option of like, if you don’t meet any of these criteria and you still think you have WWAMI connection, please tell us what that is. And then those are actually manually reviewed and decisions are rendered based on the information that’s shared. Other than that, everybody has a connection to WWAMI.

UWSOM has two programs. One is CUSP and one is TRUST. When these two programs compliment each other, can you describe them?

Yes. So TRUST, we’ll start with TRUST, TRUST was the original sort of, we call them special programs.

And the idea really is to tailor an opportunity and an experience for our medical students who particularly have some interest in a specific service in a specific area. So TRUST stands for Targeted Rural and Underserved Scholar Track. And those folks in both of these programs, special programs you apply to during the admissions cycle specifically, and you’re considered for those programs all throughout the admission cycle. TRUST originated in the state of Montana where it has one of the most robust special programs there. Nearly half of the class end up becoming TRUST Scholars in Montana. It’s a cohort of 30 and they reserve around 12 seats in their class for TRUST students. What that amounts to is that TRUST students, TRUST scholars, will actually be partnered with a rural community or an underserved clinic in a small city or a smaller location. And they’re partnered with that community and educators in that community from actually prior to starting medical school. They have a pre-matriculation experience where they go to the community, meet the medical community there.

They kind of get immersed in the community, start to understand the community. And then in between this, in the summer between their first and second year, they actually go back and do a four-week rural underserved opportunities program kind of rotation. They’ll also do a community project. And then once they get into their patient care phase of their education, they go back to that community and they do a longitudinal clerkship experience called WRITE.

So one of the things that’s interesting about UW School of Medicine and WWAMI, we have a lot of acronyms.

All medical schools have a lot of acronyms.

Yes, it’s alphabet soup. So WRITE is our WWAMI Rural Integrated Track Experience. And so it’s a longitudinal clerkship experience that TRUST students do. Other students do it too, but TRUST students are required to do a WRITE in the community that they’re assigned to.

And then they have the opportunity to even come back and do electives if that’s what they choose to do. But the idea is really to give them that continuity to get them immersed in a community and understand what rural medicine or medicine in an underserved space looks like and have that mentorship and the support from the medical educators in those communities. So that’s TRUST.

Then students who participate in TRUST and complete all of the requirements, then graduate with special distinction as a TRUST scholar. And, you know, they’re likely to be people who are looking to go into rural medicine or underserved medicine, and that serves them really well as they’re looking at residency sites and being competitive in those spaces.

CUSP is our Community Urban Scholars Program. Similar in structure or an idea to TRUST but really focused on recruiting people who are interested in serving urban underserved communities and have a sort of a connection with those communities either being from them or having demonstrated some specific interest in and experiences related to that part of the workforce, which is, we’re often struggling to find practitioners for physicians particularly who will who will serve in that space.

So CUSP scholars also go through a special admissions process. And then once they matriculate, they too are sort of paired with some mentorship. They often participate in one or more of our pathways programs as do TRUST, but CUSP particularly where we have some particular rotations that are outlined for them. They get preference in certain rotations in certain clinic sites that serve those populations that are relevant to their CUSP work. They also do some special elective, non-clinical elective learning around taking care of populations such as this. So in the same kind of fashion that TRUST is designed, CUSP is, it’s a little bit of a smaller cohort and currently only exists in our Seattle cohort. So there are four CUSP scholars in Seattle.

The original grant and idea about it was to be able to expand it to all of our WWAMI sites. So that is still in the works. Just, you know, when the pandemic happened and lots of different things in the transition of different kinds of forces, as you will, within academics have occurred, there has been a little bit of shift of it, but the vision is still eventually to offer a CUSP opportunity in all of our, in all of our sites.

Obviously they all have cities, but the biggest city in the WWAMI region would be Seattle. So it’s just the reality of it.

Let’s turn to medical school admissions at UW. You are one of the few medical schools that actually posts your four 250 word secondary essay questions that make up the UW SOM secondary application.

What do you glean from the application that you don’t get from the primary? What are you looking for there?

Yeah, well I think, you know, part of our, what we at the School of Medicine, particularly in our admissions team, part of what we strive for is that we want to be the resource for education in terms of what the admissions process looks like.

So we really feel responsible for that. So we want to be completely transparent. So when people are interested in going to medical school and they’re looking specifically at UW, we want to ensure that they have as much information and resources they can have that we can provide them to help guide them on this very complicated and very expensive and very time consuming venture. So we pride ourselves in being very transparent.

We publish, you know, our secondary questions, we publish examples of questions you might have in the interview, et cetera, et cetera. We want people to be prepared.

You have a great, highly informative website. Students listening to this, even if you’re not in WWAMI and you’re not applying to UW, go look at that site.

Yeah, thank you for that. So when we ask our committee members, you know, what is the information that you need to know about our applicants? What are you looking for? We review that regularly.

That’s who informs the information that we’re asking for on our secondary questions. And we’re really looking for who are these people? We know that applicants oftentimes approach it in a checklist sort of way of like, everybody knows you need to have good grades, you need to have some volunteer experience, you need to have sort of this, that, and the other components to it.

But what we want to know is, how does that prepare you to be a good medical student and physician? Those experiences that you tell us about in your primary application, come to the secondary and really kind of dig a little bit deeper. Reflect on that. What are you bringing? My first question is, what are you bringing, you know, sort of to the class? What is your unique characteristic or what perspective do you have? And that’s really important because as we try to build our class and our community, we value a variety of perspective of diversity of

experience. And so we want to hear from each applicant what they think about themselves. It also demonstrates that they’ve really thought this through, right? Like they are understanding a little bit more about what they’re getting into and how, you know, it’s not a one way street. Medical education is not a unidirectional experience, right? We are expecting our students when they show up to be ready to participate and to you know, to some degree, educate and, and help others learn based on their experiences. And so we’re looking for people to tell us that.

Our secondary questions are really designed to help us really get to know those applicants in that context. You know, primary tells us a little bit about your metrics and your grades and about where you’ve been and kind of what you’ve done and you get a little tiny bit of the space to look from that.

It’s more the stats and the, you know, vitals, if you will, about applicants and the secondary is really meant to kind of dig a little deeper. So our questions are framed in that way. Again, we try to review them periodically to ensure we’re getting the kind of information that we need. There is one secondary question that people ask a lot about it, which is our final one, and it’s around the competency in social sciences and humanities. We recently, or not recently, years ago, kind of, and periodically look at our prerequisites. And we decided that we really wanted again to dig a little bit deeper about… people can check a box about I took this class in this class and does that satisfy? Does that help you be prepared for the kinds of conversations that you’re going to have as a medical student and eventually as a physician around kind of the human aspect of medicine? Do you understand something about the humanities? Not just that you took a course, but what is your understanding? So we ask people to explain that and we really, you know, that does help frame, you know, sort of what maybe an experience you had or maybe a class that you took that really sort of helps you get to the heart of practicing medicine, which is about people. And it’s about the human condition and those sorts of things. that’s kind of how we landed on the variety of different secondary questions that we have.

Years ago, I was with a friend who was an English major and somebody was kind of teasing her like, “What’s the value of an English degree, a degree in English? What are you going to do with it? What’s the value of it?” And I think I said (I was not an English major) I said, you learned about human nature.

There’s so much more to it. I mean, obviously, medicine is very much a science driven profession, it blends that. I mean, I think that’s the beauty of medicine, right? It blends the science and the humanities. So we just want to, you know, and that actually stemmed, we had students on our committee that looked at our prerequisites, and our students really value having conversations with people who have thought about these things and have, and or experienced them and can bring that perspective and understand that boy, seeing a patient is more than, you know, what is their, you know, sort of genetic abhorrence or what is their, you know, pathology that’s in front of them, but how does that pathology show up in them as the total human being? And so that’s what we’re striving to understand to some degree as much as we can in a written application.

Since we last spoke, it was about three years ago, AI, chatGPT, et cetera, have really burst onto the scene and into our consciousness, whether we know what it is or not.

One of the Accepted consultants, Dr. Karin Ash, recently posted the following on our Slack channel. And it’s a little longer than I normally take, but I’m going to take it because I think it’s a really good question. She wrote, “it is such a pleasure to read an essay that reflects the client’s personality, experiences, and goals. But this year, I have noticed more clients are using ChatGPT to, quote, refine their essays”. I’m seeing similar phrases across different clients, sentences like:

“I experienced firsthand the financial and structural barriers that limit opportunities for many developing countries. Yet even in these challenging circumstances, there were glimmers of hope. Education became my beacon, promising a path to overcome financial and gender biases.”

She asked me if I could ask admissions officers if these robotic sentences, cliche ridden, harm the client’s chances for admissions, or do you overlook this kind of verbiage given the age of AI?

That’s a great question. I don’t have the exact answer because it’s ever evolving. I mean, just in this current admissions cycle from last June, from when it started, we were just having very early conversations about the possibilities and what might happen all the way through to literally two days ago.

During an orientation of one of the regional committees, we had a very in-depth conversation about utilization of AI during the interview, because as you know, we do virtual interviews. And we’ve had some committee members who have the suspicion of applicants actually perhaps having enhancement during their interview, or thinking they were having enhancement. It seemed like the cadence of their response and just the way that it was going, that they seem to be relying on some external force. So we are constantly having discussions about what does it mean to have AI enhancement? How do we feel about it? How do we evaluate folks equitably then? You know, sort of thinking about that and where we’ve landed thus far is really, you know, we’re

We’re understanding that it’s here. It’s here to stay, people are using it. How do we, I don’t know if we’re quite ready to embrace it yet, but how do we at least acknowledge that and understand that it’s happening and then take that into the grain of salt of whatever’s in front of us. Because some people will use it and some people won’t. The couple of places we’ve landed on is applicants have been asked to attest in their application and prior to their interview with us in the system that we use, that they are not utilizing external sources, including AI, that everything that they’ve submitted is of their own creation.

Now, does that, it’s a boxed check. Nobody’s checking, doing a background check beyond that. But medicine is also a profession of integrity and honesty. And we are hopeful that if folks are truly sort of the people that we want to have in medicine will find value in that. Knowing that people are going to use AI also, we just asked our committee to read their applications thoroughly, to look for some of these aberrations.

And I will just say, from the applicant perspective, if you are going to use another resource like ChatGPT to help you refine your statement, it is in your best interest to really read what you’re submitting.

We’ve had a couple of instances and just in this season where people have forgotten they’ve copied and pasted whatever ChatGPT provided them. And then they forgot to delete the part that says, here is a better or more, here’s a more concise and eloquent way to say that, or whatever the, the feedback that ChatGPT gives you. They forgot that was included.

You know, so then you’re tipped off and we’re not going to throw your application out, but that is going to count against your communication skills, right? Like that’s just not great in terms of attention to detail. You know, sort of those sorts of things that you need to have. And it’s those tiny little things that make a difference when we’re comparing equally impressive applicants to each other. But with the one person who forgot to delete their prompt from ChatGPT, that doesn’t look great.

Similarly, we also say in the interview about communication, if it feels like there’s a weird cadence or there’s an awkward pause, and then the verbiage that comes out doesn’t really sound like how, you know, they are talking, they’re speaking otherwise, our committee members are going to pick up on that they’re they’re trained, we’ve done enough of this virtual interviewing now, that we can, you know, sort of pick up on that. And again, they’re not going to stop the interview and say get out or they’re probably not even questioning it. But when they’re assessing the picture as a whole, they’re going to be like, this person’s communication skills obviously lacked or their confidence was lacking because they’re not able to sort of, or their analytical skills are lacking because they’re not able to, you know, sort of, up with an answer. And part of being a physician is thinking on your feet. Yes, we have resources at our fingertips all day long to help take care of patients. So that’s the reality. And that’s what we’re trying to incorporate into this.

But sometimes we have to think on our feet and we have to rely on our own experience, our own expertise and our own wisdom. And that’s what we’re trying to get out in the interviews. So, I don’t know if that answers your question, but we don’t know the answer yet. We’re just cognizant that it exists.

Are you seeing more essays? I mean, in this cycle that appear more robotic, more cliched?

Our committee has reported that. I’ve looked at lots of different applications, and you can kind of sometimes see that. And I take that in the context of the whole, right? I mean, I think it can be super helpful though for some people if you’re an English language learner and so your communication sometimes in your written language, your trying to write in English, if that’s not your primary language can be complicated and struggle. So it doesn’t hurt to have that proofreader and if ChatGPT is your source. But if it suddenly sounds like you’re just speaking in sort of these standardized, really sort of fluffy, plasticized… We’re trying to think of strategies to help our committee become more aware of that as well.

We, like I said, have this ongoing conversation throughout the season about the influence of AI.

Well, I think it is still evolving. I think the question was a good one though.

And I think, I would have to poll individual committee members. I think some of them are probably really good at sort of seeing that. And some of them are like, this just sounds well written.

Because you could, I know some of our consultants have said that they’ve seen essays, well obviously that Dr. Ash has, but others have said, you know, that they’ve said to clients, did you write this or is this from ChatGPT, and almost always they were right. It was ChatGPT.

There’s just something about it because it uses a lot of the same things over and over and over.

You mentioned the interview a few times. What can someone invited to interview at UWSOM expect on interview day? Is there anything else for applicants in addition to the 30 minute panel interview?

Yeah, so as you mentioned, we are still doing more of a traditional panel interview. So it’s kind of a not super traditional one-on-one, but we do a three-person panel interview. It takes 30 minutes. There is, of the three people, there’s a senior person called the executive committee member. And then there are two like adcom committee members. These are made up of people from all across the WWAMI community and various, some of them are faculty, some of them are students, some of them are staff, some of them are community members who have vested interest in the WWAMI program or UW medicine. And they’re bringing their different perspectives, but they’re all interviewing the same candidate at the same time. And we really feel like that does help mitigate the bias to some degree.

And it really provides a variety of perspectives on the same situation. So that executive committee member also sort of knows a little bit more. They’re privy to things like MCATS and GPA, that sort of information that the other two interviewers are completely blinded to. So they’re basing their impression of the applicant based solely on what’s in the application outside of metrics and their interview performance. So that occurs.

And then they, as a committee, individually score each applicant, and then they come together and make a recommendation to the larger decision-making committee. So each applicant who interviews goes through that process. Additionally, depending on your cohort, so for the Seattle-based applicants, there is one, what we call WWAMI First Look Opportunity.

Once they’re invited to interview, they’re also given a calendar of WWAMI First Look dates where we host a virtual experience that lasts about a little over three hours where we introduce our applicants, interviewing applicants to the school. We introduce them to all of the sort of support players throughout the different programs. They have an opportunity to interact with faculty and students. We do a student panel where there’s no administrative people, you know, sort of in the room where they can have, you know, sort of open Q &A with our students.

So that’s offered to the Seattle students. That’s the one of the additional things offered that’s actually open to everybody also from throughout the way, I mean, region, we do we do them on weekly or every other week for the entire interview season, essentially. Interesting. We just did one this morning.

Yeah, and we typically have somewhere between 30 and 50 applicants who show up, sometimes smaller.

And it’s all virtual, right?

And it’s all virtual. And it’s mostly just about being able to give you a little bit of information and ask questions and meet the people. Additionally, if you’re applying and interviewing at a regional campus that’s outside of Seattle, so any of the other five locations, they actually have their own admissions subcommittee, support folks who guide admissions at each of the the regional sites.

And they also put on an information session for their applicants, sometimes including students, sometimes at the same time, or sometimes having separate student panels. So each site does it a little bit differently, but there are definitely information sessions that are specific to each of the sites, as well as the overall WWAMI First Look.

So those are a couple of the things that are available. Once folks are, if you’re accepted, if you’re offered a spot in the class, you’re also then invited to do campus visit days. So then there’s the in-person component where, and we just, you know, it’s a big lift to travel and do all those things, so we kind of reserve that for folks who’ve been accepted so that, you know, people aren’t wasting their resources coming to an institution and visiting when they, if they are not successful. And each of our locations does that just a little bit differently as well as a campus thing.

Am I correct that all interviewing is finished by the end of February? So are you still sending out invitations?

We are. And it’s just sort of depending on, like right now, it’s the middle of January. We have finished with our Seattle cohort. And now we’re focused more on what we call our regional cohorts. And over the next five weeks or so, we will complete all of the interviews for all of those sites. We do them in blocks. So this week, for instance, we are interviewing for Wyoming. All of the folks who apply to us from the Wyoming cohort are being interviewed this week. There will be a decision-making meeting on the Friday, and they’ll receive their notification sometime probably over the weekend or by Monday.

Wow, that’s fast. That’s fantastic.

We like to do the cohort. So they waited. They submitted their application back in July. Once they do their interview, we try to get the cohorts done. The larger cohorts take a little bit longer. So like Idaho, we often do a whole week of interviews. And then their decision meeting is the following week. But we are on schedule to be done mid-February with everybody’s decisions.

So one question occurred to me, it probably would have been better asked earlier, is there a set number of people that you admit from each state in the WWAMI region?

Yes. And I was going to mention that earlier too. Yes. So our total class size is, well, it’s 280 total. Because all things go well. It’s been 275 last year and 270 for years before that.

And I say that because our Alaska cohort is in the middle of expansion. It’s exciting. There’s more seats for Alaska residents to join our medical school. So, Seattle site is our largest with 100 students in each of the cohorts based out of Seattle. And that includes Washington residents and those who are from out of region. So if you’re an out of region applicant, you only apply to the Seattle campus. It’s the only place you can apply to.

Spokane has 60 seats and those are Washington residents, can be from anywhere in Washington, doesn’t have to be from the Eastern side, but preference is sort of there because looking to build that workforce for Eastern Washington. Idaho has 40 seats, Montana has 30 seats, and then both Wyoming and now Alaska had 25 and with plans to go to 30 this season if all things work out well.

And then Wyoming still has 20. Variety of different sizes and cohorts kind of based on population, really. You think about where the more populated parts of our WWAMI region are.

Now I noticed that the admissions committee consists of over 200 people, including faculty, students, community, physicians, and representatives from the lay community. There’s also a 20 member executive committee with one representative from each of Wyoming, Alaska, Montana, and Idaho, and I assume Washington as well.

How does that evaluation process work with such a large committee? I mean, they don’t all do all applications, I assume.

Our process is complicated, when you put all of the little pieces together, I think it really serves our applicants very well.

Their application is reviewed by multiple people. You know, lots of different people have input on them. So as they move through the process, there’s a lot of deliberation that goes on through each of the applicants. And I really do think that having a variety of perspectives really does serve our applicants really well. So the way that it works is yes, the overall admissions committee or anybody who does interviews for us. So everybody on the admissions committee, regardless of if you’re executive or not, does interviews. That’s the bulk of the work that gets done. And again, it’s a volunteer situation. It comes from all over the WWAMI region. It can come from all of the different, you know, sort of types of folks that you described. And that’s how you enter, you know, that’s the introduction to admissions. for folks who really, you know, there are terms, three year terms, and, know, you can renew for another three years. And so people get really involved in admissions and they like it.

If they really become involved and want to become more involved, then they’re invited to become part of the executive committee. That’s the smaller committee. The responsibilities there are not only to do the interviews and they kind of lead the interviews. They’re the lead interviewer in any panel, but they also are responsible for screening applications. So those that meet our you know, sort of our metric requirements that get pushed into screening who are invited to complete secondaries.

Those are all screened by a minimum of two people with eyeballs on applications. So our executive committee does that as does our admissions committee plus some retired executive committee folks, because we have so many applications to screen. We need the help of other folks. But our executive committee also, like I said, does the interviews and then they also are responsible for the decisions. So they hear about each applicant who’s been interviewed and render a decision on acceptance or not, you know, sort of based on those presentations. So they vote, that’s the voting body, essentially. It’s also the body that helps us do our quality improvement or quality assurance. So they review the process for us and anytime we want to make a change, they’re the body responsible for deliberating that and voting on whether or not we implement something different in our process. So they’re also kind of the governance for the work of admissions. So yes, so that’s probably the folks that we work mostly with, but our admissions committee members, we ask them to do about 20 interviews a year. So 200 people, 180 of those being admissions committee members.

You know, because we end up doing roughly, you know, it has varied in previous years, somewhere between 650 to 950 interviews over the course. And there’s three people on each of those panels. And so we do need that, that big of a workforce and it’s distributed as well. Each of the regional sites, those states select their committee members in their own fashion, that is something that’s autonomous to them. So some of them utilize their commissioner of higher education or their education department in their state. Because all of those seats are funded in partnership with the state legislatures. So we work closely with them to ensure that we’re meeting their needs in terms of who’s selecting or the next generation of students for them.

Let’s go looking at the evaluation process, kind of stepping back a little bit.

How does UWSOM evaluate multiple MCAT scores? That’s a question that a lot of applicants want to know.

Yeah, so I think, and everyone sort of looks at this a little bit differently. The sort of very basic answer is that we consider your most recent MCAT score.

So whatever your most recent MCAT score is, the score that we use to determine whether or not you meet our threshold. Having said that, any MCAT that you’ve taken over the course of your basically lifetime, I suppose, is visible in the AAMCAS application. And so our executive committee members do have access to that information to see what kind of trends you might have. So if you took it multiple times, what does that look like? Did you improve each time? you, you know, those sorts of things.

And I will say during the interview, if there is a question that arises out of, you know, sort of somebody’s MCAT scores that things just aren’t adding up or it doesn’t make sense, or there’s just question, our ex-comm might ask that independent of the other interviewers, because we’re in a virtual space, we can kind of go into a, you know, another room and ask some of those questions. It’s kind of the exit interview.

And so applicants should be prepared to, it’s part of your story, right? Like, I don’t know if I’ve said this enough or at all today, but you know, we’re really looking to hear people’s stories. Like what has the journey been and how does it all make sense? Put your application together for us. And that’s part of the story. So if you’ve taken the MCAT multiple times, there must be a story behind that. Help us understand what the decision-making behind that was and how you improved or perhaps what impeded you from having your best performance, those sorts of things. So we try to look at it holistically. I guess that’s what I would say. But the basic answer is, it’s your most recent MCAT that tells us whether or not you meet our threshold.

Now, for those applicants who are regretfully concluding that their application wasn’t successful this cycle and who want to reapply, do you have any advice for them?

I’d also add that applicants should read the advice on the UW page devoted to applicants who are screened out before the interview. And again, I had several notes in my notes about how excellent and informative the UW website is.

That’s great to hear because we spend a lot of time trying to cultivate that so that it can be repository of information for anybody who’s interested in medical school, particularly ours, but really anybody who’s looking to be involved.

I end up visiting a lot of med school sites. And I’m very happy to call out one that is a cut above in terms of the information provided, with you providing the secondary so somebody doesn’t have to run to some third party site to get them. I mean, why not?

To your point, I mean, we recognize that the minute we produce anything, you know, it is getting replicated somewhere else. And we don’t, there’s no reason to hide it.

So advice for unsuccessful applicants, people who think they might be unsuccessful, visit our website because like you said, we do provide a ton of information there specifically for re-applicants. We also put on some information sessions in the late winter, early spring around, you know, sort of information updates for our school, but also some sessions for re-applicants specifically. Places that we recognize people stumble at times in terms of their, what our committee is telling us around, you know, sort of people who look like or seemed like they would be on the verge of being great applicants and what they could do to improve. One thing is, if you apply to us, you are unsuccessful. We do offer one time, and you’re from within the WWAMI region, we do offer a one-time feedback opportunity. So we will provide a written review of your application and or interview if you got that far, summary to you about what the committee said and what the committee said, where their concerns were to help you improve. So you do need to request that. It’s part of our communication that says, we’re sorry, we couldn’t have you in our class this year, but if you would like feedback, here’s what you do. And so disappointed applicants do have that opportunity. We do it just one time, even if you were a multiple you know, applicant, we try to reserve the capacity and the, resource that we have.

It’s retired committee members and our admissions team staff that actually do the feedback. So it is, you know, it, it does take time and it does take some effort and review, but we think it’s a, it’s important that particularly our WWAMI folks who are applying who seem, again, like I said, it’s often those folks who just maybe need a little bit more seasoning, a little bit more experience here or a little bit of just life here. Or maybe the feedback is, go retake that MCAT because we just don’t want to not confident about your academic ability. So that’s available as well.

But I think the advice is, again, it’s about the story. It’s about your journey. It’s about being able to articulate that well, to be sure in yourself that you are confident in your preparation. So the things that you have done have adequately prepared you for what your expectation is of being a medical student and a physician, and making sure that that is communicated through your application and if you make it to the interview in your interview responses. Because I think when we…

The most common thing is, I still don’t know why they want to be a doctor. They don’t seem like they know what they’re getting themselves into. They, I’m trying to think of the other, or they just haven’t reflected really well on the experiences they have had. So you might’ve, for lack of a better term, and I don’t like this term, but you might’ve checked all the boxes for a school application.

But if you can’t reflect on what that means to you personally and your journey into medicine and why that’s important, that usually just doesn’t fly with our committee. The other place that people often lack is service. We are very, we take service very seriously at the UW. Swim medicine, part of our mission. We’re just a very mission driven institution. And so oftentimes if it comes down to comparing one person over the other, that might be the space that we go looking for in terms of somebody’s demonstrated service to other people, because that’s what medicine is about. It’s a very service-oriented profession.

And what would your advice be for a first-time medical school applicant, either planning to apply this cycle as a 25, 26 cycle, or perhaps further into the future?

Yeah, going forward. I think

I learned this from my admissions team, most of whom have been doing the admissions game longer than I have. And one of the most, I think, important things that they have imparted to potential applicants is don’t apply until you’re ready. This isn’t a game of like, I think I’ll just throw my hat in the ring and see what happens. Like sometimes we can get away with that in life. Like I’m just going to explore this and it’s okay. Applying to medical school is hard.

It’s emotional, you know, it can be just a lot. It’s expensive, and it takes a lot of time. So apply when you’re ready. And if you don’t know if you’re ready, employ some resources to help you figure that out. And it doesn’t have to be invest financially and something like that, but look for things like this podcast. Look for, you know, free.

The UW website.

Our website. Yes.

We also have drop-in hours for prospective applicants that are available throughout different parts of the application process. We are not doing them right now because this is a very busy time for us with interviews. But throughout the different aspects of the year, do have information like a drop-in office hours that our staff does just to help answer those kinds of questions. But really it’s about, can you reflect, internally and look at your experience and say, feel really confident about what I’ve done, what I learned, what I know and what I know about what I want to do, that it all makes sense, that I’m ready. Because again, I just think we see a lot of people who just aren’t quite ready yet and we like them as people. We think they’re fabulous and there’s always that lot of potential, but it’s a little bit heartbreaking to have to say no when people aren’t ready, but we also are not willing to, you know, sort of offer acceptance to somebody who isn’t ready and put them in a position where they won’t be successful.

Is there any question you would have liked me to ask?

Gosh, this has been great. We’ve covered a lot. We have. Thank you. Yeah. And I appreciate that. I think one of the things that we talk a lot about in medical education across the country, in particular at the University of Washington, is what are we doing about, you know, sort of health equity, the or equity in medical education, the ability for different kinds of people to access medical education and the profession. And I would like to say that this is a, so yeah, what are we doing about it? Or what is our position? Or I don’t even know what the question is exactly, but I think it’s important to recognize that while we are a, because we are an institution that partners with a variety of different other institutions across multiple state lines that spans almost a quarter of the landmass of the country. That within that comes a variety and a great diversity of thought and values and perspectives.

And we as an institution have long recognized the importance of that. We haven’t always gotten it right in terms of what that looks like for our students, for our faculty, for our staff, but it is something that we value highly and that is part of any sort of strategic plan or thought going forward is ensuring that our students have an experience and for me, because I do the admissions work, that our applicants have an experience that is as equitable and inclusive as it can be. And so we really put that in the forefront and it’s part of the fabric of how we approach all we do in admissions and the majority of what we do at the School of Medicine. And I think that’s an important aspect to highlight because there are parts of our WWAMI region that perhaps aren’t the most racial or ethnically diverse areas, but beyond that, hold a wealth of diversity and hold a wealth of experiences and perspectives that actually add to the just brilliant tapestry that is sort of the school of medicine and the idea around WWAMI.

So I just wanted to, we often people want to know about you know, how do we select students after SCOTUS and, you know, sort of all of those sorts of things. We’ve talked a lot about that, but I think at the core of all of it is really just valuing equity and inclusion and diversity in their, in the context of we need that in medicine in order to take the best care of people that we can.

Wouldn’t it also imply what you know, if you’re to value diversity, you’re going to value difference. Right.

Okay, then applicants are much better off being themselves. In other words, getting back to the whole ChatGPT thing and generic writing, the more generic you are, the less you are a brilliant threadin a tapestry. Tapestries are made up of lots of different colored threads, usually gorgeous colors if it’s a good tapestry.

Right? Yes. Yes. And that’s how we view WWAMI really right. Instead of our individual factions of you know the different states where we’re all you know sort of coming together to blend that in, and I can’t couldn’t agree with you more on that and people always want to know how to stand out like what do I need to do that’s a question we get a lot. What do I need to do? What do I need to say to “stand out,” and my answer is always you know like be you because there is no other you right.

But whatever that looks like and whatever your unique you feel is your strengths and your unique features of you, help us understand that and how that applies to sort of moving medicine forward, moving, helping a community that you’re interested in, whatever that is. That’s how you are unique. But if you try to duplicate your friend’s application because you think it’s great, that’s going to come through because you won’t be able to speak to it. You won’t be able to get into the detail when my excomm asks you a specific question about your application because they will. They ask you specifically about your application, not the generalities of sort of all medicine.

I wanna help people. Not how that is.

I like science and I wanna help people.

Where can listeners learn more about UW School of Medicine?

Well, as you said, our robust UWSOM website is available and from there, you can navigate. There’s a variety of different places and spaces you can go. But if you look for the admissions page specifically, you’ll learn all about what our expectations are and what we have to share.

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