Prompt: A one page (no longer) summarization of the objectives of your educational program and your long-range professional goals. Describe educational and personal experiences that you consider relevant to your career goals.
Once, as a child of 8 years, I truly believed I was destined for greatness, assuming to achieve the likes of invincibility only achieved by comic-book superheroes. I fully expected to cure the world of its problems, garnering international stardom and my own line of action figures in the process. It only took me a trip to the ER that summer (after failing to dodge paintballs from my friend while reenacting a scene of The Matrix) to realize that I was not superhero material. However, seven realistic years later, I realized that the closest I could come to achieving my dreams, was to be an authority in the medical field, both as a neuroscientist and a neurosurgeon.
I met the person who has helped me develop a passion for medicine on Jan 4th, 1992, the date of my birth. Since, I cannot recount a moment of my childhood years spent without my grandmother at her home in New Delhi, India. With my father only able to spend time with the family roughly 95 out of 365 days a year due to his hectic business tours, my grandmother assumed the role as the guiding and loving figure in my life for the remaining 270 days of the year. Being brought up in a different situation than most children established an inseparable bond between my grandmother and I. This bond persevered through the blistering hot summers of southern India through the numbing winters of the northern United States, to Boston, where I moved to live with my father in pursuit of a better life. However, on September 14th, 2007 this herculean bond was in danger of shattering permanently. My grandmother had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage; an intraventricular bleed involving the bilateral, 3rd and 4th ventricles. A woman who I once knew to tackle the chore of a fourteen-hour cooking spree during family reunions, was now bedridden, requiring a nurse to brush her teeth. My grandmother, who I boasted could share any one of her hundreds of traditional North Indian recipes from memory with alarming detail, now looked at me with a blank expression, softly mumbling to herself as to who I was.
The unclear diagnosis of the problem by the doctors in our hometown in India, led me to develop the simple but unanswerable question: Why can this problem not be solved right now? Meticulous research of this problem combined with the worry of my grandmother's health soon developed my interest in medicine into an obsession. The ardent love for my grandmother enabled me to realize my passion in Neuroscience and drove me to understand the science behind the intricacies of the brain. Through such an eye-opening experience, my passion for Neuroscience grew to such an extent that I was a National Finalist in the United States in the prestigious National "Brain Bee" competition, a competition designed to test the knowledge of human brain. Today, I continue to follow my passion by pursuing my undergraduate degree in Cell Biology & Neuroscience through the Rochester University Science Honors Program. With such enthusiasm in field of Neuroscience, I plan to pursue a combined MD/PhD degree to establish myself as an authority in the field of Neurobiology and regenerative medicine. While I plan to become a Neurosurgeon, I am currently involved as a Stem Cell scientist working with various laboratories such as [Lab Name] under Dr. ****, where I work with human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in order to evaluate whether hESCs require Insulin-like Growth Factors (IGF-1,2) for self-renewal. In addition, my interest has allowed me to work in the [2nd Lab name] under the guidance and direction of Dr. *****, as a research associate with the overall goal to enhance regeneration of the Central Nervous System from its resident stem cells and progenitors and to understand how brain damage and repair are influenced by neuroinflammation. Research, which I believe directly contributes to the scientific body of knowledge in helping one day solve neurological disorders such as traumatic brain injury, stroke and multiple sclerosis.
Once, as a child of 8 years, I truly believed I was destined for greatness, assuming to achieve the likes of invincibility only achieved by comic-book superheroes. I fully expected to cure the world of its problems, garnering international stardom and my own line of action figures in the process. It only took me a trip to the ER that summer (after failing to dodge paintballs from my friend while reenacting a scene of The Matrix) to realize that I was not superhero material. However, seven realistic years later, I realized that the closest I could come to achieving my dreams, was to be an authority in the medical field, both as a neuroscientist and a neurosurgeon.
I met the person who has helped me develop a passion for medicine on Jan 4th, 1992, the date of my birth. Since, I cannot recount a moment of my childhood years spent without my grandmother at her home in New Delhi, India. With my father only able to spend time with the family roughly 95 out of 365 days a year due to his hectic business tours, my grandmother assumed the role as the guiding and loving figure in my life for the remaining 270 days of the year. Being brought up in a different situation than most children established an inseparable bond between my grandmother and I. This bond persevered through the blistering hot summers of southern India through the numbing winters of the northern United States, to Boston, where I moved to live with my father in pursuit of a better life. However, on September 14th, 2007 this herculean bond was in danger of shattering permanently. My grandmother had a sudden cerebral hemorrhage; an intraventricular bleed involving the bilateral, 3rd and 4th ventricles. A woman who I once knew to tackle the chore of a fourteen-hour cooking spree during family reunions, was now bedridden, requiring a nurse to brush her teeth. My grandmother, who I boasted could share any one of her hundreds of traditional North Indian recipes from memory with alarming detail, now looked at me with a blank expression, softly mumbling to herself as to who I was.
The unclear diagnosis of the problem by the doctors in our hometown in India, led me to develop the simple but unanswerable question: Why can this problem not be solved right now? Meticulous research of this problem combined with the worry of my grandmother's health soon developed my interest in medicine into an obsession. The ardent love for my grandmother enabled me to realize my passion in Neuroscience and drove me to understand the science behind the intricacies of the brain. Through such an eye-opening experience, my passion for Neuroscience grew to such an extent that I was a National Finalist in the United States in the prestigious National "Brain Bee" competition, a competition designed to test the knowledge of human brain. Today, I continue to follow my passion by pursuing my undergraduate degree in Cell Biology & Neuroscience through the Rochester University Science Honors Program. With such enthusiasm in field of Neuroscience, I plan to pursue a combined MD/PhD degree to establish myself as an authority in the field of Neurobiology and regenerative medicine. While I plan to become a Neurosurgeon, I am currently involved as a Stem Cell scientist working with various laboratories such as [Lab Name] under Dr. ****, where I work with human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) in order to evaluate whether hESCs require Insulin-like Growth Factors (IGF-1,2) for self-renewal. In addition, my interest has allowed me to work in the [2nd Lab name] under the guidance and direction of Dr. *****, as a research associate with the overall goal to enhance regeneration of the Central Nervous System from its resident stem cells and progenitors and to understand how brain damage and repair are influenced by neuroinflammation. Research, which I believe directly contributes to the scientific body of knowledge in helping one day solve neurological disorders such as traumatic brain injury, stroke and multiple sclerosis.
