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You can be a good candidate for Harvard Medical School having done well at any college. This means high GPA/MCAT score, with glowing LOR, research experience and evidence of leadership and community activism.UT Austin is a large school. I was lost when I went there to study Law (class size 500), coming from Rice Undergraduate (class size 900) and University Of Texas Medical Branch for Medicine (class size 200). UT Austin graduate departments are well regarded across the board. The benefits would be a greater variety of courses to choose from. Drawback is large class size. The top graduates from UT Austin can go anywhere; and it can certainly help you get into Harvard Medical School. There are many outstanding graduates every year.I chose Rice only because the school fits me. I like the small class size. The flexibility in terms of major(s) and distribution, faculty interaction, research opportunity, premed office, track record etc. When I applied, 100% of applicants were accepted to medical schools. This included engineering majors with 3.0 GPA. My classmates went to a variety of medical schools. One had the 3rd highest MCAT score that year nationwide. He chose Harvard Medical School.You meet a lot of smart classmates. Rice students would have done well anywhere. (Success may be based on the student themselves, rather than the actual institutions they attend). Below are some of the recent graduates from Rice who went on to HMS. One went to HLS, but his story is too good not to include.HOW SHE DID IT: Pursuing an MD-PhD at Harvard Medical School, with Diane Shao (MOGUL 2014)Published on Sep 20, 2014Featured on MOGUL (https://www.onmogul.com), Diane Shao presents on how her path towards becoming a physician scientist. Diane is a graduate of Rice University, and is currently an MD-PhD student at Harvard Medical School.Diane D. ShaoB.S., B.A., Rice University (2007)Ph.D., Harvard University in BBS (2013)DISSERTATION: Functional Genomics Approaches to Identify and Characterize Oncogenic SignalingM.D., Harvard Medical School (2015)RESIDENCY: Child Neurology at Children’s Hospital, Boston, MA____________________________________________________________________________________The Good Shepherdess | HMSHome/NewsCaretaking comes naturally to HST student Jessica RuizJessica Ruiz. Image: Rick GroleauBy BOBBIE COLLINSAugust 12, 2016For Jessica Ruiz, HMS Class of 2018, being a caretaker has always been a familiar role. The oldest of three children in a Mexican-American family in Texas, Ruiz learned from her parents, aunts and uncles the importance of setting a good example and being responsible for her younger siblings and cousins.“Being the oldest influenced how I approached life,” Ruiz said. “I want to take care of other people and be a source of both advice and comfort.”Ruiz has spent years guiding others; however, her own path—at least in biomedical science—hasn’t always been so clear. She is thankful that throughout her undergraduate and medical school years others have also looked out for her. The mentored research she has participated in as an undergraduate and at HMS, and the support she’s received from friends, have helped her find her own way in research and medicine.Watching over othersThroughout high school and college, Ruiz cared for others by volunteering as a youth leader at her church, tutoring middle-school math students in an after-school program, and tutoring adolescents at Texas Children’s Hospital who needed help with their homework.At HMS, the London Society student has been involved with the PHACE (Prevention Health Awareness and Choice through Education) program, providing sexual education counseling to Boston youth at high risk for teen pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases. She thinks the program’s value lies in providing facts and information, clearing up rumors about sexual issues, and allowing teens a safe environment in which to ask a physician-in-training questions about sex and get a candid answer.Hearts, young and oldAs a junior at Rice University, Ruiz shadowed a pediatric cardiothoracic surgeon at Texas Children’s. What started as a one-time visit turned into a semester-long experience, with Ruiz visiting the hospital several times a month to observe in the clinic and the operating room.“Just seeing those tiny, little hearts—babies a couple months old—and being able to help completely change their life, was an incredible experience,” she said.Although Ruiz hasn’t decided on a specialty, she said pediatric cardiology is now one of her top choices for a residency.This past year at HMS, Ruiz, as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Medical Research Fellow, did research on vascular calcification in the Aikawa-Aikawa lab at Brigham and Women’s Hospital.Although the work involved adult cardiology, Ruiz said her experiences in the lab have been integral to her scientific training and valuable no matter what area of medicine she chooses to pursue. She said the guidance she has received from principal investigator Elana Aikawa, mentor Joshua Hutcheson, and others in the lab has been kind, dedicated and encouraging.As a woman in science, Ruiz said it has been great to be mentored by a female physician and to have had the opportunity to observe Aikawa’s leadership in academia and science. Because of her experience in the Aikawa lab, she is now also seriously considering a career in research.Learning the art of scienceIn order to pursue research work as an undergraduate, Ruiz applied to several programs as a freshman. She was accepted into the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program and was paired with a senior Rice University researcher who was just beginning a new research project.“It taught me how the whole scientific method starts from the very beginning,” said Ruiz.The research combined biology and materials science and gave Ruiz an understanding of experimental methods she can bring to future research, such as how to do chemical analysis and spectroscopy. Ruiz has presented on her work at a scientific conference.Ruiz was able to stay on at the lab working a few hours a week until graduation. Over two summer breaks as an undergraduate, she also participated in research at the Yale School of Medicine as part of their Biomedical Science Training and Enrichment Program and at MIT as an Amgen Scholar.At HMS, Aikawa has given Ruiz the opportunity to see how the scientific publishing review process works. Ruiz has been able to contribute to review articles as well as help revise articles under review—both important skills for researchers.“I’ve been able to get some initial experience in the other side of being a scientist,” said Ruiz.Finding her own flockAt HMS, Ruiz has found a niche in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program (HST) where the students form close bonds and help each other through the pressures of med school.“I know we’re all going to maintain those friendships throughout the rest of our careers,” she said.Ruiz found further support from the network of students she met as an HHMI fellow. In addition to her year of mentored research training in the Aikawa lab, the fellowship program included travel, giving her the chance to learn from top researchers who talked with her about their most recent research and residency directors who answered her questions about the residency application process.In addition to mentoring sessions and other activities, HHMI fellows were able to share their aspirations and uncertainties with each other.Exploring new pasturesRuiz said that she applied to the HST program so she could get her MD while focusing on lab research, without having to elect to pursue a PhD quite yet.Besides pediatric cardiology, she is also interested in pediatric endocrinology and maternal-fetal medicine.“I haven’t found the one, big motivating question that I want to pursue for the rest of my career,” Ruiz said.She thinks the answer to that question may come when she decides what she will do clinically during her third-year Principal Clinical Experience._____________________________________________________________________________________School.https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-romar-71578a40George RomarPreviousJames A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy -- Rice University,School Science and Technology program - Rice University,Send George InMailHarvard Medical SchoolDoctor of Medicine (MD) 2014 – 2018Rice UniversityB.A., Asian Studies, Pre-medicine 2008 – 2013Beyond the Sallyport - A Portrait of Rice’s Graduating ClassAuthors: Jon Endean, Courtney Ng MAY 2, 2011As a top-notch research institution, Rice prides itself on having “No Upper Limit.” We like to believe that as a small school with many resources, it offers students experiences to challenge the status quo, demonstrate leadership, and grow both intellectually and personally. We herald the residential college system’s ability to bring together great minds with diverse interests day in and day out, believing that these connections will allow us to enter society as well-rounded individuals. As graduating seniors, we have four years of experiences that have in some ways proved this to be true. In others, however, we have been left wanting more out of our education.Most recently, our experiences with researching and deciding what our post-graduate plans will be have opened the flood gates for discussion about how we chose our paths and how our Rice education has contributed to that decision. We decided to interview our peers – thirty graduating seniors in total – asking them similar questions. What follows is information that we hope will both calm the fears of those (underclassmen and seniors alike) who do not yet know what they are doing after graduation, as well as challenge the status quo for these decisions in a way that will make Rice a better institution for those who follow us.In our numerous conversations with students, we noticed some trends in where people were going after Rice. There seemed to be a few prominent career choices that appear. They do not, of course, represent the entire graduating student body, only a select group of individuals with whom we found the time to sit down and interview. A large proportion of respondents – more than a quarter – are going straight into some sort of post-undergraduate education, whether it be graduate school, medical school, law school, or business school. Another four individuals were taking a gap year with the stated intent of applying to or attending graduate or medical school following their year off. The second most common path was to go straight into the workforce (seven respondents) in a wide spectrum of jobs such as teaching, working for an engineering firm, working in a lab, or bartending. There was also a large contingent of people (five respondents) who took a job in consulting, an industry which accepts students from a wide variety of academic backgrounds. Only two people stated that they did not know what they were doing after graduation, and another two had plans that involved a short-term fellowship or service opportunity, such as researching abroad or doing Teach for America (a two-year teaching commitment in a low-income school).For the most part, Rice students seem to be pursuing professional careers in medicine, law, business, engineering, or academia. There is less interest in public service careers like teaching, government, and politics. For a school that heralds its connections and contributions to both Houston and the global community, it surprised us that there wasn’t a larger contingent of Rice graduates going into fields that directly addressed major national and international problems. With major resources like the Center for Civic Engagement and the Baker Institute at our fingertips, we wondered why more students weren’t compelled to step off the beaten path and make the most of our supposed world-class education.For the most part, Rice students seem to be pursuing professional careers in medicine, law, business, engineering, or academia.A similar question seems to be behind the trend of taking a gap year. Students talked about “taking a year off” as a means of “doing something just for me” or “needing a break” from the rigor of school. There was a sense that the gap year was not expected to be a time when plans were formulated, but rather a brief hiatus from plans that had already been set in stone. If we imagine life as a game of chess, the gap year is like the pawn’s first step, moving forward in space but ultimately resetting the board when one goes back to graduate school. This desire for a break seems to imply that there is a rigor to Rice, which is, as one student explained it, “exhausting.” Furthermore, there is a way in which Rice students are afraid of the unknown, as if taking a year or two to explore, reflect, and follow one’s bliss is too risky and could lead down a dangerous path of non-commitment and ultimately, failure.So what causes this trend of students going into professional careers? As Rice students, we are perhaps inherently overachievers. We are addicted not just to succeeding but to excelling in all that we do. Furthermore, we like believing that our successes, no matter how small, are part of some larger plan that destines us for greatness in our careers. The flip side of this ambition and confidence is a heightened awareness of and anxiety about how others perceive us and our goals. When we asked our respondents how they felt others perceived their post-grad plans, most who were attending graduate school of some sort described the feedback they receive as “positive,” “impressed,” and “approval.” One respondent going to graduate school said that people perceive his decision as “the status quo.” A senior who does not yet have post-grad plans writes that people “think that I just didn’t get my act together…that I was lazy and didn’t focus” even though she describes spending large amounts of time researching career paths and talking to professionals in various fields. Another senior going to work in Dallas after graduation says that people think “it isn’t amazing, but I have something to do next year, so they are happy for me.” There was a sense from many of the responses that simply having a plan, especially a stable, lucrative, or prestigious one, was enough to satisfy those who inquired about what our respondents were doing after graduation. Perhaps not surprisingly, only one respondent said, “I don’t care how people perceive my plans.”Could perception be part of it? How much do we sacrifice our passions and interests in order to take the guaranteed path to success? Is our penchant for overachieving causing us to underachieve in the long run out of fear that taking risks might cause us to fail? During our interviews, we asked students what they were doing after graduation, what their career goals were, and where they saw themselves in 20 years. We also asked them what their dream career would be if there were no restraints or restrictions placed upon them. Interestingly enough, many of our respondents stated that their dream career would be something virtually unrelated to what they are actually pursuing. A student attending medical school next year said he would be a songwriter while a future business consultant dreams of being a pastry chef. Several others said that they did not have a dream career, which is why they had chosen to jump into careers and see how they liked them. We found it intriguing that some of our peers had not given much thought to what their dream career would be, and that others knew what it would be but had chosen to delay, sometimes indefinitely, pursuing those goals. We wondered: shouldn’t we be challenged to look inward, find what makes us happiest, and pursue that happiness?If so, where should that challenge come from? We asked each of our respondents to describe their interactions with the Center for Career Development, the office whose goal is to “enhance the knowledge and skills of students that lead them to make informed decisions and prepare them for professional advancement.” Many students described their interactions as limited to nonexistent (17 respondents). Most students had only their resume-reviewing services and occasionally attended a career fair or business etiquette workshop. Those who had used the office’s services more extensively had mixed reviews. One said that there were “so many resources – it’s a bit overwhelming,” while another raved about the help she received with the interview process and how she ultimately found her job through their website. However, some have been less than impressed with the resources available at the center. One CAAM major commented: “I feel like they cater to people who are ready to go into industry.” Another Sociology major said “it would be good to have more options than just engineering and consulting for social sciences and humanities students because there’s more that I want to learn about and more that I am thinking about but with these limited options we aren’t exposed to other potential career paths.” The Center for Career Development is undoubtedly an indispensable resource that connects students with incredible opportunities every year, but their resources (in particular, career fairs and advising) are strongest in areas such as engineering and consulting. To a certain extent, these resources are shaped by student interests and Rice’s focus on science and engineering, but by not offering the same breadth of opportunities for students with diverse backgrounds, the center may be reinforcing the notion that these paths are the norm.This brings is back to our Rice experiences – how much does this university challenge us to think critically about the world, to use our skills to challenge society’s norms? At a school like Rice, we expect to be challenged – it perhaps is reasonable to say that if you don’t expect to be challenged, you’ve come to the wrong place. Yet there were students we interviewed who said that they hadn’t been challenged or that the challenges they faced were not the type that they expected. Most students felt like they had taken hard classes, but some made it clear that there was a distinction between the challenge of turning in a massive amount of work and being challenged to think. One student stated, “I was challenged to work really hard, mind-numbingly, as opposed to thinking more. It was cramming for an exam or cramming through a paper more than thinking through it.”One student stated, “I was challenged to work really hard, mind-numbingly, as opposed to thinking more. It was cramming for an exam or cramming through a paper more than thinking through it.”Perhaps there’s a fine line, then, between intellectual rigor and a rigorous schedule that actually stunts true intellectual development. While many students appreciated their professors and classmates, their favorite parts about Rice were more related to the residential college system. As we’ve shown earlier, students love the residential college system. Students at Rice are known for their “Work hard, play hard” mentality, and while classes fill the “work hard” half of the truism, residential college life fills the “play hard” half. While the residential college system is certainly a wonderful aspect about Rice, we challenge the notion that it ought to be the favorite part of Rice’s culture. While important, we submit that the residential college system is part of what makes Rice special, but that ultimately it is Rice’s intellectual rigor that should be indispensable to all of us. Yet for the students leaving Rice, that does not seem to be the core takeaway value.One student points out a revealing fact: “I do find it disappointing though that many of my peers have not been challenged or that it is even possible to leave Rice with a fabulous GPA and never be truly challenged.” Do you disagree? Let’s compare Rice with Harvard. Harvard, of course, is notorious for grade inflation. Gradeinflation.com, a site that tracks grade inflation at various institutions, lists Harvard’s average GPA as a 3.45. At Rice, the average GPA is just a 3.3. Yet something funny happens as you go up towards the top. If you graduate from Harvard with a 3.67, chances are good you’ll be in line for magna cum laude honors, which comprises just the top 20 percent of the class. Yet take that GPA to Rice and you’ll graduate honor-less – you’d have missed the cutoff for cum laude by a full tenth of a GPA point, despite the fact that 30 percent of the class graduates cum laude or higher. In other words, while the overall GPA at Harvard is higher than it is at Rice, the top quarter or so of students at Rice have a far higher GPA than comparable students at Harvard.What does that mean for Rice? Why is it that such a larger percentage of students can get such magnificently gold-plated GPAs leaving Rice? Certainly there is an aspect of a solid work-ethic, but we argue that there might be something else going on here. Without any formal requirements (save for the writing course that most people test out of anyways) or a university-mandated capstone course like a senior design or a thesis, students can slide through Rice fulfilling minimal requirements and still getting all the awards and honors befitting of someone who has earned a high GPA.This is not to argue that Rice should seek to be “the Harvard of the South,” as it has so often been called. Indeed, even at Harvard itself there is concern about how much undergraduates are challenged to think critically. A recent article in Harvard Magazine critiques the extent to which Harvard students are asked to reflect on the meaning of their lives and what they hope to accomplish following their Ivy League education. The author, Madeleine Schwartz, writes: “I wonder at the idea of creating potential leaders whose decision-making has never been challenged in any way more demanding than by the critical-thinking skills that a history class or a Core lecture provides.” She describes how consulting jobs have become the norm for graduates, even quoting a roommate who said “I think mostly it seems like the thing to do after Harvard. And it pays.” If these are the goals of our nation’s greatest minds – to line our pockets with money and our résumés with prestigious titles – then how will we ever begin to tackle the massive problems that face our country today?The point of this article is not to argue that Rice students are unsatisfied with their experiences – after all, 28 out of 30 respondents said they were glad they had chosen to come here. It is also not intended to pass judgment on the choices that Rice students make about their lives. After all, that defies the impetus behind writing this article – a desire to inspire people to make informed, thoughtful, personally-fulfilling choices. This is a chance for us to reflect on what we have learned here at Rice, and how it has helped us decide where to go next. It is an effort to open dialogue that asks us to be critical of our experiences in a way that invokes positive change. The trends we have noted above are neither absolute nor representative of all Rice students. However, they do force us to ask difficult questions about the nature of the education we receive here. In what ways, for instance, are we being challenged? How valuable are the “academic” challenges mentioned above? Are we asked to think critically with any sort of regularity, to reflect and make sense of what we are learning? Are we using the tools and knowledge we gather here to impact the world in some way? If there is truly “No Upper Limit” to a Rice education, then why are we so afraid of the unknown?After graduation, Jon Endean will be working for a consulting firm in New York City. Courtney Ng will (hopefully) be teaching in New York City. Both are excited to see where those opportunities will lead. Stephanie Marten-Ellis and Cindy Roman contributed mightily to this research. Illustrations all by Wendy Liu.____________________________________________________________________________________Harvard Law School to graduate one of the youngest African-Americans in the school’s history - The Boston Globe (age 22)MICHAEL STRAVATO VIA ASSOCIATED PRESSCortlan Wickliff says he wants to own and operate a medical device company.By Akilah Johnson GLOBE STAFFMAY 30, 2013CAMBRIDGE — On a recent Wednesday afternoon, 22-year-old Cortlan Wickliff walks into a pizzeria looking every bit the college student, with headphones, braces, and slightly overgrown hair. Finals are over, and there’s not much to do but have dinner with friends and watch movies, lots of movies, until graduation.Oh, and start studying for the bar exam.When Wickliff dons his cap and gown, regalia his mother had to remind him to order, the Texas native will be one of the youngest African-Americans ever to graduate from Harvard Law School.Wickliff was 19 when he graduated from Houston's Rice University with a degree in bio­engineering in 2010. That fall he started law school, but said the age gap with his classmates, about five to six years, was not the biggest issue.Get Fast Forward in your inbox:Forget yesterday's news. Get what you need today in this early-morning email.“Being at a school where there aren’t any right answers when you have been in engineering or sciences classes, that’s a bit of a change,” he said with a shrug. “School was different because of my engineering background, being from the South, being from Texas, rather than different because of my age.”There is no age requirement for admission to Harvard Law; school administrators said the average age in the graduating Class of 2013 is 27. Students need strong test scores and grades. But more than anything, they must show an aptitude for advocating a point of view, something proven through work experience, extra­curricular activities, volunteering, leadership positions.“This is really about the classroom debate,” said Jessica Soban, an assistant dean and chief admissions officer at the law school. “In order to become an effective attorney, you have to be an effective advocate. And becoming an effective advocate comes with having your opinions and thoughts challenged in the classroom.”As a first-year law student, Wickliff seemed “puzzled and a bit overwhelmed” by the classroom comments made by his older and more experienced colleagues, said professor Charles Ogletree. But, as the ­semester progressed, Wickliff matured, Ogletree said.And by the time Wickliff submitted his final criminal law paper as a second-year student, Ogletree said, “I saw remarkable advancement in his ability to comprehend complex legal issues but also present them in straightforward fashion.”Wickliff’s paper was on the crack cocaine epidemic and result­ing mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines that mandate certain amounts of jail time for certain crimes.A law school degree is the second in a three-degree plan Wickliff created as an elementary school student. He decided to own and operate a medical device company, all before age 26. He learned that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. graduated from Boston University with a doctorate in theology at 26 and thought: “That seems really cool. I want to do that, too.”Wickliff initially wanted to be a doctor, but not being a fan of blood, he opted to build the devices that help doctors do their work. His resolve strengthened at 10 when his ­father died of a heart attack in a Texas town without a hospital.“That’s when I started learning about point-of-care devices, which are basically medical ­devices that are portable so a doctor can be anywhere,” he said. “Those are the types of ­devices I’m going to try and start my company with.”Wickliff shared his dream with his mother, and they hatched a plan, deciding he would need an engineering ­degree; a business or law ­degree (“Because if you're going to own a business, you either need a business degree or a law degree,” he said); and a PhD, which he will begin pursuing this fall at Texas A&M University, his mother’s alma mater. Ogletree will sit on ­Wickliff’s dissertation committee.‘Whenever you go somewhere you’re supposed to leave it better than when you came.’Wickliff opted for a law degree. When his mother was an MBA student, Wickliff sat through most of her classes and group discussions. He was there because his mother could not afford a baby sitter, but he managed to absorb many of the lessons, even offering advice to a study group or two.He was 10.Wickliff’s mother said she and his father “realized that he seemed a little unique probably about 3 years old.” They began working to feed his insatiable curiosity. The boy loved taking apart electronics to figure out how they worked. He skipped the first grade, the 11th, and the 12th. He started college at 15,, law school at 19.“He thinks it’s not extraordinary,” said his mother, Tanya Dugat Wickliff, who calls the youngest of her three sons “very unassuming.”Dugat Wickliff said she ­always encouraged her son’s passions. “I wanted him to be comfortable because he got picked on quite a bit by adults and kids because he talked too much, he asked too many questions,” she said. He would go to the field with his grandfather who was a farmer and want to know the components of the hay. “I felt I needed to be that safe haven to him,” she said.The first step in that plan came to fruition by happenstance. His mother was working at Huston-Tillotson University in Austin, and a guest speaker did a presentation about a special program at the University of North Texas for high-achieving high school students. Students lived on campus, took college courses, and earned college credits during the two-year program.She mentioned it in passing to her 14-year-old son, who said nonchalantly: “Oh, really? I think I’ll do that, too.” To him, it seemed like a natural next step. To his mother, it seemed like unleashing her barely pubescent baby boy unto the world.“My mom cried about it,” he said.She did more than that. “I had to pray about it,” she said. But she let him go.The week after Wickliff’s 15th birthday, he moved more than three hours away to live among his intellectual peers. Two years later, he transferred to Rice.Without drinking and partying, things he still does not do heavily, Wickliff said his was a pretty standard college experience. He tutored freshmen and mentored high school students, showing them that college and engineering were a possibility. He said he took “a few extra risks” with his grades by participating in so many extracurricular activities. But the risks, he said, were necessary. “When­ever you go somewhere,” he said, “you’re supposed to leave it better than when you came.”It’s a philosophy he carried with him to law school, where he had a déjà vu experience with people forgetting his age.At Rice, Wickliff often found himself hanging out with friends, not sure where they were headed, and ending up at a pub. “I’m like, ‘Y’all realize I’m 17, right? I can’t get in.’ ”It was the same thing at Harvard, except he was 19. Classmates kept inviting him to meet up at local pubs and ­assumed he was being antisocial when he turned them down. “People would think ‘I can’t come’ meant I was busy studying,” he said. “It never dawned on me that people didn’t realize how much younger than them I was.”Akilah Johnson can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @akjohnson1922.