Biochemistry Admission Essay

As a Biochemistry major working towards a Psychology concentration, I am captivated by the interface between molecular medicine and psychopathology. With my research at Dr. Frances Champagne’s neuroscience and molecular biology lab, I want to contribute to the discovery of genetic and epigenetic biomarkers for mood disorders. However, volunteering at the Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center and the pediatric clinic at New York Presbyterian Weill/Cornell, respectively, has reaffirmed my desire to seek out a career in clinical medicine. Hence, I primarily wish to devote my life to diagnosis and treatment of patients, with a supplemental aim of contributing towards the discovery of novel tools of diagnosis and treatment.

In the spirit of innovation, the scholarly concentration at Stanford would supplement my medical education with an investigation of Molecular Basis of Medicine and an application in Neurosciences. While completing my MD degree, I would still devote one year to laboratory research with one of the prominent faculty members at the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, perhaps renowned physician-scientists Dr. Amit Etkin or Dr. Zoi Samara. After obtaining my

Thus, another potential path for my future in medicine is to complete a PhD alongside my MD degree. Though I could perform research with only an MD, being at the frontier of translational medicine requires ample time invested in bench work alongside bedside care. As a physician-scientist, I would still be devoted to helping individual patients with my clinical practices, and to contributing to the knowledge of the larger medical community; however, I would be much more involved in basic biomedical research, with the potential of eventually coordinating my own laboratory while mentoring my own group of graduate and postdoctoral