Most Common Questions

Question 1

Tell Me About Yourself?

Answer 1

NYU:
-I grew up in New York City near Washington Square Park because my mom is a professor at NYU. I think because of that I grew up on a college campus in a very academic environment where I was always encouraged to spend time reading and thinking. I was exposed at a very young age to chess and that was one of my favorite things to do growing up.

Chess:
I would always go to Washington Square Park and they have chess tables there so I would go and play with the incredibly good chess players and get beat by them every time. I still play chess today, although I took a large break so I am definitely not as good as I would like to be.

Movies
In terms of my other influences, my grandma was also a movie critic for the Wall Street Journal, so I was always around movies growing up and my grandma would show me a lot of her favorite movies from the 70’s, like Raging Bull.

Soccer:
I grew up playing soccer and squash all the time and I would always go from one to the other. I stopped playing soccer after freshman year of high school to focus on squash, but I love watching English premier league soccer and I am a die-hard Manchester United fan I have watched every game since I was 6 years old.

Dogs:
I also love listening to all kinds of music and I love dogs and have two at home, Posey and Pepper.

Question 2

How do you envision using your medical education?

Answer 2

1. Academic Medicine
   I am very interested in academic medicine so I really want to be doing research and learning more about my field as I go along. So, I want to see as many patients as I can but also be learning more about the specific topic and become an expert as I go along.
2. Strong Interest in the Brain and Strong Interest in Children
   I am not sure exactly what I want to go into to be honest, but I am obviously very interested in the brain and I love working with children. I also, as I have mentioned, hold a strong interest in pursuing applications of artificial intelligence as applied to medicine so I want my research to have a big data aspect. I want to find ways to more effectively combine artificial intelligence with clinicians in a more symbiotic relationship where it helps clinicians be better at their jobs.
3. Education
   - I’d also like to teach and do advocacy work on behalf of the patients that I treat.

Question 3

What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?

Answer 3

Strengths: working with others, persistence/motivation, independence
Weaknesses: asking for help, can sometimes get way too absorbed into topics and find it hard to give them up.

• I think one of my major strengths is getting along with people and communicating well. I think I am generally able to work with just about anyone and understanding that everyone has different ways of communicating and different ways of showing different emotions. I am very good at staying positive and encouraging people in reinforcing ways.
• EX: One major example is working with my friend on this brain tumor project who’s bipolar and one of my best friends. So, he goes through major periods of being so excited about the project and about life in general and then would totally forget about it and not care at all. It’s challenging at times when I wanted to get something done and he just wasn’t in the right frame of mind, but I was able to very sensitive to that and to learn more about his needs.
• I am very independent – I have always prided myself on that. I was the first one to walk to school alone in my grade and the first one to start taking the subway alone. I wrote my high school essay about how I would make myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every single day after school because I prided myself on not having to depend on my parents at all.
• I am very persistent, sometimes too much so. I find it hard to let things go when I am doing academic assignments, but it drives me crazy when I can’t figure something out or something doesn’t feel right.
• I think one of my biggest weaknesses has been I find it difficult to ask for help when I am struggling with something. I think this goes hand-in-hand with maybe putting too much pressure on myself at times to figure out problems. I have gone a long way with this and a lot of the times when I ask for help it used to feel more like admitting weakness or that I wasn’t good enough, but that’s a little childish frankly. I think my brain tumor (and I actually wrote my college essay about this) helped me in a way to ask for help more, but it’s still something I struggle with and I am trying to get better at.
• Getting way too absorbed into specific activities.

Question 4

What do you do for fun?

Answer 4

1. Athletics
   I love playing squash and soccer. Obviously, I have played squash for a while and I love it and it’s great way to keep active. And I love playing soccer as well with my friends. I used to play in the Spring at Middlebury and I was planning on joining an adult league in New York City before the pandemic and I definitely will when it’s over.
2. Music + App / Movies + Grandma
   I love listening to music and watching movies – my grandma was actually a film critic and she would always come over and watch movies with us and she was very opinionated so she would always tell us when the movie sucked or when it was the best movie she had ever seen.
   Favorite artists: Thundercat, Steve Lacy.
   Really enjoy jazz – I just watched a Miles Davis documentary and I really love Kamasi Washington and Herbie Hancock.
   Favorite Movies:
   Documentary: Searching for Sugarman
   Movies: Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Do the Right Thing, The Lives of Others
   Animated: Kung Fu Panda
3. Spending time with my dogs
   -Posey – 6 months old we got her last summer as a yellow lab
   -Pepper – 11.5 so she’s been with us for a while and they have a funny and cute relationship and I love spending time with them.
4. Ceramics
   I really liked doing ceramics in high school and did some in college as well. One of my best friends from high school actually just opened up his own pottery store so I have been going over there and working a little bit.

Question 5

What qualities do you look for in a physician? Can you provide an example of a physician who embodies any of these ideals? How do they do this?

Answer 5

1. Kindness and Empathy and Warmth
   I think that people often focus too much on the scientific knowledge of doctors, which is obviously crucial. But, given enough time, a lot of people can learn the knowledge and memorize information.
   Kindness, empathy, comfort.
2. Dr. Allen
   Dr. Allen – is an incredible example of this. Every single time I went into his office, I knew it would be at least an hour and I was always late in getting to see him. But he would ask me how my day was – was I dating – how was my squash game – how was my family? It would be 20 minutes before we even talked about how I was feeling physically and my condition. And it’s important here because it helped to diffuse the tension and nervousness of me seeing my next scan. He recently retired but was in his job for 50 years.

Question 6

What excites you about medicine in general?

Answer 6

1. Constant state of flux – way I am treating patients at start is different from beginning. ANY CONTRIBUTION. I MAKE DIRECTLY GOES TO SOMEONE TO HELP.
   The way I am treating patients at the start of my career is going to be completely different than at the end of my career. It really excites me that the field is not static, things are always changing and because of that, there is a real opportunity to improve and innovate within the field. The opportunity to actually make a contribution to the field and improve a field. Any contribution I make to the field, actually makes a difference in someone’s life is the most exciting to me. My individual effort is put doing something I really like and all of the work is directly going to make a real difference in someone’s life.
2. Problem solving and puzzles of diagnosis and like being challenged.
   - Love Chess and board games
   - The puzzles and problem-solving – I always have loved mental challenges, which is why I play so much chess and I love doing difficult riddles and puzzles.

Question 7

What do you know about the current trends in our nation’s healthcare system?

Answer 7

1. Rising Cost of Healthcare
   Rising cost of Health Care and the large inequities in the system that come with it – somewhere close to 4 trillion dollars. I read one paper that showed that up to 30% of people either don’t seek treatment or delay treatment until it’s absolutely necessary to do, which makes any condition harder to treat. So, it’s preventing people from getting the care they need. Prices for medical care grow way fast than inflation and the higher spending hasn’t generally correlated with better outcomes with our life expectancy and infant and maternal mortality rates lagging behind. We’re almost double the next country when it comes to healthcare cost as a percentage of GDP.
2. Physician-Patient Relationship and Empathy Deterioating
   The physician patient relationship is a big one. Most of the time for appointments is spent just entering information into a computer. One of many reasons for the high rates of physician burnout. The lack of time and ability to really know a patient is also a major reason for the overordering of tests. Of the 80 million CAT scans 30-50% are unnecessary, there were 12 million missed diagnoses a year. 1/3 of all medical procedures are unnecessary. US is the worst offender in studies that have looked at wasteful procedures in all countries. The average appointment lasts 7 minutes and 12 for new patients.
3. Lack of Technology
   Drawbacks with digital implementation. Way behind in technology. You can use a debit card to pay for something like anywhere in the world, but you can’t send an electronic health record across the street to a different institution.

Question 8

What do you believe to be some of the most pressing health issues today? Why?

Answer 8

1. Science Denial – for COVID, like if we can do all of the science and then present it to the public and then the public doesn’t believe it or doesn’t trust it, then there’s almost no point. You are losing the benefits of doing the research in the first place if the very people it’s meant to benefit don’t buy it. Anti-vaccine sentiments.
2. Big looming health crisis is antibiotic resistance, where it’s only a matter of time before bacteria become antibiotic resistant to anything we can throw at it evolves to become resistant. It’s almost like a race because we also use so many antibiotics for live-stock, 80% of all antibiotics used on live stock.

Question 9

What do you feel are the social responsibilities of a physician?

Answer 9

1. Educational Responsibility:
   Help educate their patients and the public about medicine and health. Empowering them to make the right decisions that lead to less disease like promoting vaccinations, promoting healthy habits like eating and exercise. They should be heavily involved in health messaging and in helping to guide health policy in the right directions. Countering anti-vaccine sentiments.
2. Advocate Responsibility:
   Responsibility to speak out politically against inequities in the healthcare system, about things you see in the clinic.
   That’s the only way physicians can be true patients advocates is to advocate for their patient’s in all ways and speak about of the social determinants of health.
3. Responsibility for their Clinics:
   Responsibility to create a safe, accessible health-care experience that enhances the well-being of the whole community. To make people feel comfortable when they access the resources, when they enter your office.

Question 10

Can you think of any examples in our society when healthcare is a right? When is it a privilege? When is it not clear?

Answer 10

Healthcare is generally always a right when it comes to procedures that improve the health of an individual. Unfortunately, we still have a ton of uninsured people and vast inequities in the healthcare system. About 30 million people are uninsured still. Insurance companies prior to affordable care act could just say no you’re too sick we don’t want you because we don’t want to pay because you have a pre-existing condition.

I think it’s a bit easier to take cosmetic or plastic surgeries as elective. It becomes a little more difficult if you start thinking of cosmetic procedures as perhaps improving the mental health of an individual or their own self-perception, but generally this is a privilege to me.

Question 11

If you are not a minority, how might you best meet the needs of a multiethnic, multicultural patient population?

Answer 11

1. I am lucky enough to have some amount of training already
   I am lucky enough to have grown up in a place where there is immense cultural diversity and I have learned and benefitted from that. I mentioned my soccer team already as an example because that’s the most obvious one, but I was one of only one or two people on that soccer team with American born parents. I have had the privilege of having very ethnically and racially diverse friend groups, and I have been able to help out with underserved communities while helping out at the Hudson Guild and at StreetSquash, which I have spent a lot of time at.
2. Acknowledgement that cultural competency is built over time
   That being said, I think it’s important for me to acknowledge that I don’t know everything about every culture and cultural competence is a skill that can be built and improved over time. I don’t pretend to and that’s why being willing to listen to people being respectful of them and everyone can constantly be improving their cultural competence and understanding. And it’s most important to realize that some groups may have (earned and understandable) distrust, that may cause them to avoid the medical industry as a whole until it’s a last resort and I need to do my best to understand and accept that and do the best I can to reach a place of trust and understanding.

Question 12

To what extent do you feel that you owe a debt to your fellow man? To what extent do you owe a debt to those less fortunate than yourself? Please explain.

Answer 12

1. Squash A Good Example
   I 100% owe a debt to those less fortunate to me. One example of this is that I was able to start playing squash in the first place. While I didn’t know how inaccessible a sport squash was when I first started playing it when I was 5. I couldn’t have chosen to different sports to play growing up, with soccer where all you need is a ball and it’s so readily accessible, compared to squash which is so much more difficult to to start. I actually started playing a public affordable club, but it got bought out by equinox and they tore down the squash courts, and that’s happened all over and the most common places to play are the Harvard, Princeton and yale clubs.
2. Goal to Make it More accessible – I enjoyed and profited from sport, so have a responsibility to make it more accessible.
   One of my ultimate goals in life is to find more ways to make squash and other sports like that more accessible. My dad actually recently started a non-profit squash club in Manhattan that offers tiered memberships and free memberships based on income level to make it affordable to all. I helped combine that club with an squash program for young kids at the Hudson Guild in High school. I want to continue that and continue to contribute. Things like that, where there is such a blatant disparity in access to a sport is something that needs to change.

Question 13

Discuss your decision to pursue medicine. When did you decide to become an MD, and why?

Answer 13

1. Brain Tumor In High School
   So, it started as I was saying when I had a brain tumor in high school. I was pretty scared, I barely even knew what that was, was I going to be okay? It was scary. And they were so patient and kind and took the time to explain everything to me and to comfort me. I really idolized them and the idea of spending your life dedicated to helping sick children to feel better physically but also emotionally was so admirable to me. Wow, I really want to do this when I’m older. They made it look so simple and easy.
2. Finding Out the Real Story
   I went back to spend the summer with them my freshman year and I was like this was not what I was expecting at all. It was so much harder and more draining – it was emotionally difficult to be dealing with all of these children, it was mentally difficult trying to keep all the information on each patient straight, it was physically difficult walking to the ICU and to different patient locations all day. It’s kind of like when you see the end product of like Lebron James and you’re like wow that’s so amazing and it looks so easy but you don’t see the behind the scenes of how difficult it actually is to make it look so easy.
3. Why I liked it
   It was different than I was expecting and also much more exciting in a lot of ways – it was never static, it was chaotic and you were always learning new things, which really appeals to me.

• I love to learn and I am excited about a job where nothing is simple, you never know what is going to be thrown at you. Being in a job where I can communicate and empathize and build connections with and help people is important to me.
• Puzzles of medicine really excited me. I remember going home and telling my parents how excited I was.

Question 14

What will you do if you are not accepted to medical school this year? Have you an alternative career plan?

Answer 14

1. Apply again – work on areas of application that aren’t good enough
2. Work on projects, especially in data science in the meantime.
   I will apply again, and take feedback and try to improve aspects of my application that didn’t work because I am really set on patient interaction being a central part of what I do. If I literally was prevented from being a doctor for the rest of my life, I would set my focus on using my data science background and providing improvements in health care. I think I would continue practicing my health data science skills and work on projects because I love that.