MS1 at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles

Jared Taitt

Two gap-years

First in family to attend medical school

Underrepresented/African American student

TL;DR

I came from a lower-middle class household
I was raised by a single mother, with little contact with my father
I struggled academically during my freshman year of college
I began a non-profit organization during my junior year targeting underrepresentation in medicine and STEM
I conducted neuro-oncology research during my two gap years

Update: Jan 2021

Even with the normalized unpredictability that the past year had thrust upon us, I could never have expected the extent to which external ambient stressors defined my first semester as a medical student at UCLA. Through the first couple of months, I’ve often told my friends and family that the hardest part of school, thus far, has been dealing with a whirlwind of negative news cycles while simultaneously being asked to perform as a medical student. Whether due to the abdication of equitable implementation of the law in the murder of Breonna Taylor, witnessing the gradual atrophy of democratic principles during the 2020 election, or the backdrop of thousands of Americans – disproportionately residing in communities of color – dying each day from the COVID-19 pandemic, I’ve found it extremely difficult to put on my blinders and focus on our pre-clinical curriculum. I’ve fallen behind on both sleep and school, felt out of place among my seemingly thriving classmates, and been profoundly confused as to what the kidney does; but ultimately – I passed.

With all of the challenges I faced during this past semester, I cannot emphasize enough how monumental my classmates have been through this process. I’m sure you have likely heard this before, but you will meet some of the most amazing people during your four years in medical school. The past semester has been challenging – I can’t lie about that – but at the same time, I went through it with some of the most bright and genuine people I ever met. I can’t emphasize enough how grateful I am to grow into the role of a physician alongside the friends that I have made in MS1. In addition to this and unlike my pre-med experience, there have been consistent reminders throughout our curriculum that what we are learning today will directly aid us in treating our future patients. On multiple occasions, I’ve found myself hyper-focused on the technical aspects of medicine but have been grounded by the real-life stories of patients who have shared their experiences with us. I’ve found it exciting and much more engaging to have the opportunity to learn of the experiences of those prescribed with furosemide, rather than focusing on the specific transporters within the Thick Ascending Loop of Henle. My first semester in medical school has undoubtedly been challenging, but I am excited and reinvigorated to continue my path towards becoming the physician that I have always dreamed of being.

Background

As long as I can remember, medicine has always been my lofty, seemingly unattainable goal. I wasn’t born into a family of doctors – quite the opposite to be honest. My mother worked as a solid waste management consultant, while my father was largely out of the picture since I was twelve years old. Neither had the faintest idea of what immersing oneself in the medical field would entail, much less how to usher a child along in that pursuit. In fact, if you had asked my mother which one of her two sons would eventually matriculate to medical school, I’m sure my brother, Brandon, would get the nod of confidence – he was seemingly on top of his academic and intellectual game for as long as I can remember. I, on the other hand, suffered several bumps and bruises on my way to becoming a competent pre-med student, and eventually what I hope will be a competent medical student.

I grew up in a lower-middle class household in a western suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota. My parents had divorced when I was five years old, so my experiences of a “complete” family unit were limited to vague memories and my ever-active imagination. I spent much of my childhood traveling between two households, unsure as to where I truly belonged. As I grew older, child support checks became less frequent, eventually dissipating during my middle school years. I can’t say that I truly understood it at the time, but we didn’t have much financial wiggle room whatsoever. I always knew there was something wrong when our family trips to McDonalds became more sporadic, or when I had to sit out of a year of football since the activity fee was so high. But I found out much later that there were several occasions during which we nearly lost our house during the course of my childhood. I owe everything to my mother’s resilience and dedication to ensuring that my brother and I had what we needed to stand a fighting chance.

On the other hand, I had a very different relationship with my father. I won’t go into too many details, but the last time I have seen my father was when I was twelve years old. While growing up, there were countless lessons, traditionally passed down from father to son, that were left untaught, which I eventually had to learn in unconventional and at times, difficult ways. However, much later, I’ve been able to come to terms with the fact that a father figure doesn’t always need to be a father. My brother and my grandpa played instrumental roles in teaching me many of life’s lessons that I carry with myself to this day.

Though I had decided that I wanted to be a doctor relatively early, it took me a while to truly understand the amount of work that goes into this process in order to make that dream become a reality. During my high school years, I worked just hard enough to get by. I got good enough grades, but never really went the extra mile academically in order to position myself for future success. If I’m being completely honest, I was much more focused on high school football than academics, much less medicine. In fact, the worst thing that happened to me was near the end of my senior year. In the days leading up to my chemistry final, I came down with a severe case of senioritis. No matter how hard I tried, I absolutely could not end my Netflix binge of the Walking Dead. It got to the point where the first real “studying” for the test that I did was the night before, where I spent 30 minutes going through a review sheet. I thought I had set myself up for an academic massacre. Instead, I ended up getting one of the best scores in the grade, which of course led me to think that chemistry came easy for me. Fun fact, turns out it didn’t…

Undergrad

Freshman year of college was rough for me. I confidently walked into my gen chem lecture thinking I’d see the same passive success as I had in high school, so I’m sure you can imagine how distraught I was when I completely bombed my first midterm. I’m not talking about a “pre-med” fail where you get shook over a B, I’m talking a straight up F. It took a herculean effort to drag my score from the abyss to a C+ final grade. My other classes didn’t go much better, and I ended up with a 3.09 first semester GPA. I learned the hard way that high school success means absolutely nothing when it comes to pre-med performance. On top of that, I was in the midst of an identity crisis as a black student taking STEM courses.

In nearly every classroom that I stepped into, there were shockingly few students who looked like myself. These factors compounded into a paralyzing case of imposter syndrome – I simply felt as though medicine wasn’t in the cards for me.

I think that what helped me turn things around was my willingness to accept the fact that I needed help. My study skills were clearly lacking, so I swallowed up whatever residual pride that remained from my senior year of high school and began working with a peer tutor. This helped me develop the habit that I think was the most instrumental in my subsequent academic success – proactive studying. Rather than focusing on learning material for specific midterms or test dates, I constantly reviewed material throughout the term with the goal of becoming familiar with the content. When the time came to get ready for a test, I felt as though I was honing my skills, rather than learning the material for the first time. This, along with a drastically improved work ethic, helped me to dramatically improve my GPA from my first semester.

Becoming more than a Pre-med:

As time passed during my pre-med years, I consistently thought back to my insecurity as a freshman, stemming from being one of the only black faces in my STEM lecture halls. Pre-med journeys can assume all different shapes and sizes, and looking back, I think that mine clearly was informed by that experience. While I took part in several academic and community-focused programs, I wanted to make a difference that was specific to the difficulties that I had faced during my pre-med experience. I ended up recruiting two other pre-med students from my school to begin a nonprofit organization focused on introducing African American high school students to STEM fields and professions. This was a pivotal moment for my pre-med journey, as it was the moment where, in my opinion, I became much more than a pre-med student. Anyone who has endured a general chemistry lecture knows that pre-med is hard and will suck away your life if you let it. But I believe that managing those stressors while being able to work towards something that I am passionate about is one of the things that I am the proudest of during my pre-med experience.

Post-grad Research:

As my college career neared its conclusion, I honestly had no idea where I was going to end up. I knew that I wanted to take some time off from school before applying to medical schools – partially because I wanted to gain more research experience, and partially because I knew deep down that I needed a break from school. During college, I had grown very curious about the fields of neuroscience, oncology and immunology – looking back, I think that this was because of the fact that they represent some of the true remaining frontiers in medicine. My heart skipped a beat when I found out that the Okada lab – a research group at UCSF studying immunotherapeutic approaches to treating malignant brain cancers – was searching for a new research assistant. Even more perfect was the fact that two of their members at the time of my application had also graduated from Macalester College. While applied to multiple other research positions with the aim of not putting my eggs into one basket, I always had my eyes on the position at UCSF. After a couple informative interviews with Dr. Okada, as well as other members of the lab, I was ecstatic to find out that I had been offered a 2-year research position in what would prove to be a life-altering event.

I won’t sugarcoat it, my time at UCSF was probably the most difficult period of my life. Don’t get me wrong, I loved the research and I loved the cause behind it. My project was a post-hoc analysis on a clinical trial aiming to improve treatment options for pediatric patients diagnosed with diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma – a terrible disease. I was honored to be in the position to make a difference alongside some of the brightest scientific minds that I had ever met. However, I often found myself working 60-70 hour weeks while frantically learning the seemingly endless world of immunotherapy. I constantly felt behind and constantly felt as though I had to prove myself. Looking back, I don’t think that I gave myself much of a break when it came to the mistakes and failures that everyone inevitably makes. While I gained much in respect to my scientific ability and resume in the form of a first-author publication, I think that the most important lesson that I learned was to maintain a concerted focus on my physical, social and mental health.

Application Cycle:

While I was getting my bearings in the research world, I was staring down the 4-letter word that could bring any pre-med anxiety: the MCAT. Using the LizzyM and WARS calculators, I had determined that a 515 was my goal score in order to “force myself into med school.” To say that this felt like a daunting task would be an understatement. I browsed SDN and the r/premed and r/MCAT subreddits religiously to gain feedback and devise a study schedule that was optimized for my needs. I ended up using a somewhat unorthodox strategy. I used Khan Academy for my Psychology and Sociology review. I used Kaplan for General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biology, and Biochemistry review. I used Jack Westin for my CARS studying. I also made a massive personalized Anki deck containing nearly every relevant topic that I had studied throughout the process. I was also in a fortunate position where the Jackie Robinson Foundation, an organization from which I earned a scholarship during my undergrad years, offered to pay for an MCAT prep class. I ended up taking an in-person Kaplan prep course, and while this varies from person to person, I do not think that this helped improve my score at all really. After finishing my content review, I moved on to using UWorld and the AAMC resources for practice questions, followed by taking AAMC full-length practice tests under realistic testing conditions. Eventually, I felt more-or-less comfortable with the test to the point where the actual MCAT just felt like another practice run. When it was all said and done, I was able to get a score that I could confidently apply with.

I applied during the 2019-2020 application cycle not having any clue about how it would go. My mindset was that my ultimate goal was to gain admission into the University of Minnesota – my hometown’s local medical school – and consider any other offers beyond this as pleasant surprises. Using the WARS calculator, I created a school list that I slightly skewed towards “safety” schools, thinking that I’d rather be safe than sorry. Having lived in both the Twin Cities and San Francisco over the past couple of years, the 25 schools to which I applied heavily featured Midwest and California schools. I was very surprised and grateful to receive interview invites from 20 of the institutions that I applied to. As both time and money were significant limiting factors during my interview trail, I decided to accept 12 interview invites spanning from September to January. Ultimately, I was accepted to 10 of those medical schools, with 3 clear favorites emerging towards the end of the process: the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago, and the University of Michigan Medical School.

I would be lying if I said that choosing a medical school was an easy decision. A significant part of me wanted to return home to the Midwest to be closer to my friends and family. In fact, I had spent a significant amount of the application cycle planning to matriculate to the University of Chicago. It wasn’t until I had learned that I was accepted to UCLA that my mindset began to change. There were two major components to my UCLA decision – community and financial aid. Applicants who had been accepted to UCLA began a Groupme in February, which also happened to coincide with the dawn of the COVID-19 pandemic. When the Bay Area became the first region in the United States to begin sheltering in place, my social interactions decreased significantly. However, students in the UCLA group began forming a unique bond, playing online games such as Mafia over Discord, and constantly discussing topics relevant to public health as well as medical school decisions. While I was in several group chats for incoming students at that point, there was a tangible component of camaraderie among prospective UCLA students. Parallel to this was the fact that UCLA was offering the best financial package out of any school I had been accepted to. I was blessed to be offered the David Geffen Medical Scholarship, which not only covered tuition, but also living expenses through a monthly stipend. As I had entered the application process with the expectation that I’d be staring down significant debt post-graduation, the thought of alleviating this burden helped eliminate stress that I hadn’t even noticed that I had. By the time April 30th rolled around, I was confident in my decision to enroll at the David Geffen School of Medicine, concluding my six pre-med years and marking the beginning of my career as a medical student.

Application：

Cycle Stats:

Applied to 25 M.D. schools - verified on 6/28/19
Submitted 25 secondaries (ranging from 7/7/19 to 8/10/19)
Received 20 interview invites
Attended 12 interviews (ranging from 9/13/19 to 1/15/20)
Accepted to 10 schools, waitlisted at 2

Applicant Stats:

Cumulative GPA: 3.53
Science GPA: 3.56
MCAT score: 518 (130/126/130/132)

Extracurriculars/Employment/Recognitions:

Oral Presentation at the Pediatric Society for Neuro-Oncology
Oral Presentation at the Society for Neuro-Oncology
Neuro-Oncology research at UCSF (5200 hours)
Macalester College Biology Department Leadership and Service Award
Emergency Department Volunteer at University of Minnesota (100 hours)
Biology Department Teaching Assistant (135 hours)
Founder and President of the Horizons Initiative (400 hours)
AVID Tutor and Mentor (175 hours)
Colorectal Cancer research at the University of Minnesota (500 hours)
Jackie Robinson Foundation Scholar
Shadowing at Department of Thoracic and Foregut Surgery (52 hours)
Literacy Mentor at America Reads (150 hours)
Eagle Scout
YMCA Fitness Center Employee (850 hours)