How do students make it so far?

[gamingmuscle]

Hello folks. Well i'm trying to get into the P.A.(Physicians Assistant) program at Western in Pomona, Ca but it's really tough to get in. Extremely competitive. Anyways I had the PLEASURE of hanging out with some current students for the most part they were an intelligent group of individuals but there were a few who were just crap. One of them didn't know that Native Americans existed on North America. He thought American has been U.S.A. since 1492. At first I thought he was trolling me but then, no. He was serious and then he said "well im not a history major." Another girl thought that paleontology was a medical term for PALE skin, and a third person, thinks "it would be dope if america took over the world and kill anyone who spoke bad about America"

Now. Im not MR PERFECT or MR SMARTY pants but I at LEAST know this land wasn't ALWAYS U.S.A... Also, this school requires a 3.7 MINIMUM GPA, a letter of recommendation, paid or unpaid medical hours, an essay stating why you should attend and the contribution you would do for the world AND a face to face interview.

Can someone please tell me HOW THE F**K they made it in? Does anyone have a similar story or at least an answer to my question?

Tl;DR - How do people make it past 5th grade and into medical school?

Being smart and being knowledgeable aren't mutually inclusive?

[Nish77]

I think I got tested with an IQ in something like the top 5 percent. I still think that it's learning that contributes to it being that you can teach yourself to learn and understand what constitutes intelligence. People with lower 'iq' are usually either having physical issues or they haven't spent time learning things like math or playing with objects like in a video game that might contribute to being better at iq testing. They also test for knowledge in iq tests which isn't quite right.

In the meantime, generally knowledge and intelligence seem exclusive but think in most cases knowledge and work lead to what you might consider a better 'intelligence'.

[Grakey]

Their daddies had deep enough pockets.

[Nish77]

Schools should be good everywhere.

[PBitt]

College often has little to do with intelligence or hard work. If you're good at taking tests and writing papers and/or have good studying habbits you will do well in college, and said people often overestimate their actual intelligence, grades don't say it all, especially if you didn't learn anything. Some people are just born able to do those things well while others have to work their asses off to get good grades. Back in high school one of my good friends who could write well and do well on tests without even having to try hard invited me over to play Xbox or something. He couldn't even tell me the number of his house he'd been living in for many years because he didn't know it, so he had to describe the house to me. And then, after I got there, he told me he forgot he was grounded before I came over. So, yeah, there are flaky people all over the place.

Also, money.

[Nish77]

Right, but the good at taking tests and good at study habits and working their ass off comes from liking it or not to some degree in a lot of cases. There's a guy I work with who I guarantee another racist guy I know would consider dumb. I guarantee I could teach the guy all I know about math up to my highest classes in biochem.

There is a good chance he didn't 'like' math when younger. He did not get some sort of satisfaction from doing it well. He would have to go back and learn it. He might not want to. He could, though.

I bet your friend who writes papers easily 'likes' it. I'm terrible at creative writing and fairly good at scientific writing insofar as when it's done it's good but it takes me forever to write pages of paper (generally I'm trying to get it to be as good as I can get so I go over it and over it). Then again someone could hand in a paper in half the time get a passing to decent grade but it not be good enough for an 'A' but they are not going in the direction of doing that for a living, so they don't care.

Anyways, there's some thoughts.