My Journey Through the 2020 Application Cycle

Hello everybody! I know it's been a while since my last post. Since my last post, my life and job have gotten incredibly stressful. The last thing I wanted to do after working all day and cleaning and cooking at home was sit down and think about my last application cycle, or this upcoming cycle, for that matter. I've been procrastinating my preparation for my upcoming reapplication cycle, and I hope that writing this post and walking through my first application cycle will help motivate me to get back on track.

If you've been keeping up with my posts, you'll remember that I last left off talking about my experience as a genetic counseling intern the summer before my senior year. I came into my senior year feeling excited and confident about my final year of college and my pending application cycle. My research from the summer was being used for a publication, so I was still in touch with the GC team from my internship. The first thing I did to start my application cycle was ask my GC mentor to write one of my letters of recommendation. After she happily agreed, I asked the coordinator of my uGTA program for a letter, as he had written a couple for me over the years. These were the two professionals in my life that I felt confident could write me a recommendation. After both had agreed to write me a recommendation, I was stumped on where to get my third letter from.

Over the years, the biology classes I took had class sizes of anywhere from 75-400 people. Because of this, I struggled to form relationships with my professors. In the fall of my junior year, I took my biostatistics course, which, at the time, ended up being my smallest major course with around 75 other students. I had gone to office hours a handful of times with a fellow friend and classmate, and we had managed to talk about things other biostatistics during our meetings. I was very nervous about asking her to write a recommendation for me when those few meetings were our only interactions, but she was very excited to do so for me. I sent her, along with my other recommenders, a few rough drafts of my personal statements and my resume to help guide them.

Around the time the Match opened up, my closest friend and fellow biology major had begun to receive interview offers for medical school. I asked about his application and interview process, and I quickly realized how different it was from the GC application process. For most medical schools, you only have to write one personal statement, have your LORs submitted once, and only pay for one transcript and test score to all be sent to one portal. For GC programs, each program has a different requirement for personal statements, LORs have to be submitted to each individual program, and test scores and transcripts must be sent and paid for multiple times. Although I recognized that I needed to put in a lot more work than my med-school-bound friend, I didn't start on my application materials right away. I decided that October 1st was as good a day as any to start getting serious about applications.

Unfortunately for me, just a few days before my self-appointed start date, I was blindsided by a breakup. I was absolutely destroyed, and I struggled to find motivation to work on application materials. Every time I would sit down and try to write a personal statement, I'd ask myself "why do I want to become a genetic counselor?" I had known for a while that I had wanted to become a genetic counselor, and I knew that I liked genetics, teaching, and helping people, but I couldn't find a way to write an answer to my question in a more meaningful way.

I looked over the personal statement my med school friend had written, and I noticed that he wrote about a few experiences that he found meaningful. I reflected back on the appointments I had shadowed the summer before, and I wrote down what I could remember about a few appointments that I had found memorable. That semester, I had also started doing volunteer/advocacy work with young special education students. I had already learned a lot from the few hours I had spent with these children, and I found a way to connect what I had learned volunteering to some of my takeaways from the appointments I had shadowed.

I was applying to 7 schools, and 6 of the 7 schools required a personal statement essay. I started off by writing the personal statement that had the earliest due date and the personal statement that had the shortest length requirement. Coincidentally, these were also the schools I was most interested in, so I felt more at ease writing these two statements. I had my med school friend look these over for me, but I knew that I needed somebody more professional to look them over. I felt that it would be a burden to ask my GC recommender to help me with my personal statements, so I turned to my university's writing center. The writing center, of course, did not have anybody experienced in writing personal statements for genetic counseling programs, but there were some staff that were able to work on general grad school personal statements. The person I worked with helped me convey a few of my ideas better, and we discussed how to expand on certain points in my short essay for some of my essays with longer length requirements. One of my personal statements had no length requirement and a non-specific prompt, so we also discussed different ways to approach that essay.

After visiting the writing center, I had a new boost of confidence and motivation, and I started working overtime to make sure I got everything done in time. Due to everything that had gone on in my life that semester, I had ended up procrastinating doing the bulk of my application process until November. This meant I was writing personal statements and submitting applications while studying for finals (which I definitely don't recommend haha). Thankfully, I did get everything done in time, and I finished submitting my applications before the new year. I was relieved that the stress of applications was over and I could relax for a little bit.

Once mid-January hit, I found myself anxiously opening emails from the programs I applied to just about every week. It was an emotional rollercoaster, because for every interview invitation I received, I also received a rejection. Out of the 7 schools I applied to, I received 3 interviews. The 3 schools I had interviews with were the ones I was initially most interested in, the ones I had put the most effort in for the personal statements, and the ones I felt I knew the most about their GC programs. I scheduled two of the interviews to be in February, and my final one was scheduled for the beginning of April.

While I excitedly waited for my interviews, I searched around for interview prep questions specific to GC. Around this time is when I found the GC discord server, which I would highly recommend to any (prospective) applicant who hasn't joined it yet. I was hesitant to join because I thought discord was for gamers, but this was not the case. It was a safe place for past and present GC hopefuls like myself to ask questions and learn more about the profession and grad school application process. I was still learning how to work discord, so I didn't end up utilizing it much before my first interview. I ended up practicing and discussing typical interview questions with friends and family along with some basic questions like "why do you want to be genetic counselor?" Looking back on it, I could've prepared a lot better for my interview, but it ended up working out just fine.

I think that I'll end this post here and write a separate one for my interview cycle experience. As I said at the beginning of this post, life has gotten really stressful for me, and I found it easy to procrastinate working on my 2021 applications and this blog. Every time I've sat down to write this, I felt too anxious and stressed because it reminded me of all the work I needed to do on my impending applications. I know that I'm not alone in feeling overwhelmed and anxious about the application process, and I hope anybody reading this who feels the same can realize that they aren't the only one feeling this way. As always, if you have any questions about my internship, feel free to shoot me a message on here or on my Instagram! If you want to hear more about my journey, please feel free to subscribe to the blog at the bottom of the page, or you can follow me on Instagram @journey2gc!