In this issue:
- Update on the ISA Survey
- Tip of the Month: Tips for medical school activities
If you haven’t taken the ISA Survey, please do it by tomorrow, Friday, Nov. 1
Here is a message from ISA Committee Co-Leads Nicholas Popp (MS4), Sarah Busch (MS4), Ben Henderson (MS3), Matt Lumsden (MS2) and Lila Faulhaber (MS2):
Many of you continued to complete the survey over the past week, which helped reach the highest rate across all student cohorts. Your cohort response rate now stands at 93% (up 3 percentage points over last week); 100% of Wyoming, Spokane, and Montana students completed the survey, followed closely by Alaska (92%), Idaho (90%), and Seattle (87%).
This means every campus well exceeded the aspired mark of 80%. All of us on the Independent Study Analysis team and the medical school administration are deeply grateful for your engagement with this important survey.
The survey will close Friday, Nov. 1, in order to give the rest of you the opportunity to add your voices. Once the survey closes, we will do random drawings of gift cards – you can see the distribution in the table below.
If you have not yet taken the survey, look for an email from eqi@uw.edu with the subject line “[Reminder] We need you to complete the ISA survey!”
Thank you very much for your enthusiastic participation!
Gift Card Incentives: Please see the breakdown below. There will be one $500 gift card for drawing from all four cohorts.
| Campus | # of Gift Cards ($10) if Campus Response Rates Reach 60% | # of Gift Cards ($50) if Campus Response Rates Reach 60% | Additional # of Gift Cards ($30) if Campus Response Rates Reach 80% | Total # of Gift Cards |
| Seattle | 3 | 1 | 3 | 7 |
| Spokane | 2 | 1 | 3 | 6 |
| Wyoming | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Alaska | 1 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| Montana | 2 | 1 | 2 | 5 |
| Idaho | 3 | 1 | 2 | 6 |
| Total | 12 | 6 | 14 | 32 |
*According to the UW policy, student employees (e.g., tutors, research assistants, hourly workers, etc. cannot receive a gift card. If you win the raffle as a student employee, we will send alternative items of the same value from Amazon.
Peer to Peer: Tip of the Month from Career Advising
You’ve now heard about our school’s summer Independent Investigative Inquiry (III) requirement. Check out the advice from specialty career advisors in the first two sections of the UWSOM Specialty Guides on “Advice for MS1s/MS2s Exploring This Specialty,” “Extracurriculars,” and “Scale of Importance for Medical School Activities.”
The Rural Underserved Opportunities Program (RUOP) is a great way to build up your clinical skills while making a real impact in a local community. RUOP, along with programs like Discovery and Integration, is valuable no matter which specialty you end up choosing. If you’re aiming for a more competitive specialty that recommends research, it’s a good idea to do some research next summer.
Don’t stress if it’s not directly related to your field of interest – that’s pretty common! Residency programs appreciate the experience and your ability to produce meaningful results in different areas of medicine. Research not your jam? No worries! Lots of specialties don’t need it.
Wondering where your career path may take you in med school? You can start exploring specialties with interest group events and the Career Advising Video Library.
- Reviewed by BIPOC MS4 Abraham Correa-Medina. Originally written by BIPOC alum Shanelle Briggs, MD.
ICYMI: Here’s the previous MS1 newsletter.