Mentor of the Month
Behind Giving a Boost lies the invaluable contribution of our outstanding mentors. Learn more about some of our exceptional mentors below:
Justin Lyon Knapp
Hometown: Thomasville, GA School: Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine Year: MS2 |
What made you interested in joining GAB as a mentor?
I have had the distinct fortune of having had incredible mentorship through every stage of my journey thus far. It is difficult to overstate the impact that a great mentor can have on someone, and it is important to me to pay forward the good fortune I have had to meet such amazing people. So, when I heard about the opportunity to work with the students in GAB and provide guidance, I knew it was an opportunity I couldn’t turn down. What's one thing you wish you knew before applying to medical school? It is a long year, and it is important to pace yourself. I submitted my primary application roughly a week after AMCAS opened, and I was still waiting to hear back from various waitlists until early June – more than a year later! It’s important to make sure you don’t get too burned out and make time for yourself throughout the year. What helped you most during the application process? I was working full time throughout the year, and I think having something completely unrelated to my applications to hold so much of my attention was a great thing for me. It kept me grounded and intellectually occupied which was ultimately a great thing for my mental health. What's a tip you'd like to share with applicants? Secondary essays > personal statement. Ok, maybe this isn’t an either/or situation, but I feel like many applicants put so much effort into the personal statement, agonizing over every minute detail and overthinking the tone of each phrase, that they burn themselves out on writing before they even submit their primary application. The reality is that the people reading these applications often see the same themes and tropes each personal statement – after a while, they all start to sound the same. Not that that is a bad thing, but unless you have a truly exceptional story to tell in the personal statement, then the personal statement is just something you have to not mess up. Most likely, it won’t help you. You just need it to not hurt you. The secondary essays, however, are your chance to shine. Admissions committees know that people enlist advisors and peers to help revise and edit their personal statements, and so it is likely that your writing in secondary essays more accurately reflects your own writing rather than an amalgam of your support network’s input. So, don’t phone in the secondaries! They are equally as important as your personal statement, if not more. Any additional words of wisdom? Don’t be afraid to take a gap year (or four in my case). Gap years can really enhance your application and give you the opportunity to solidify your decision to pursue medicine, helping you stand out from the crowd. I think there’s an understated value in developing the maturity that you will inevitably develop during gap years. Holding down a job, paying your own rent, making your own food, and just generally learning all the requisite life skills that college life often never allows for is something that I think everyone should do before any kind of graduate education. |
