Confidence booster
When I interviewed at Dalhousie, I had somehow managed to be one of 50 applicants from a pool of 400 who interviewed for 9 out-of-province spots. With stats like that, Dal gets to pick the absolute cream of the out-of-province crop, and for the whole weekend, I didn’t meet a single person besides myself who wasn’t either working on or in possession of an M.Sc. or a Ph.D. It seemed like everyone had done AIDS work in Africa, or at least putzed around South-East Asia on a motorbike. What’s hardest to believe, they were mostly articulate, funny people with wide interests and good taste in beer. I don’t recall ever having been so humbled.
At Queen’s, we got a campus tour, provided by a couple of first year meds. Here’s how it started:
Student 1: Uhh… Here are some pretty buildings… That one’s the theology building…
Student 2: Wait, theology’s, like, religion studies, right?
S1: Well… Um… It’s part of the arts faculty…
Revelation: “Did I interview better than you two? Yes I did.” I hope they thought I was smiling at the pretty buildings.