This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by David M Joseph, studied at Harvard Medical School My application was highly unconventional (and also highly controversial). I only applied to one medical school (on a dare by a girl I had a crush on). I applied without a college degree (I was still a junior, and wouldn’t have a degree by the time I entered), I refused to take the MCATs unless they admitted me first (due to a loophole I discovered in their application materials), I had D’s in organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry and a C in Physical Chemistry (hated those classes), ignored the essay topic and just recycled an essay I’d written about coaching little league baseball (because I was filling out my application at 4am on the day it was due and didn’t have time to write a new essay), made them schedule my interview on a Sunday after the cutoff date because I was on a ski trip 2 hours away and didn’t want to come back early, and then showed up 45 minutes late for the interview, after it had been pushed back from 9am to 11am because I (jokingly) balked at the 9am time. On the positive side, I already had numerous patents, starting when I was in 6th grade, and including medical devices that were in widespread use in Europe, had already been first author on several papers published in prestigious international medical journals (starting at age 17), had been qualified by a Federal Court as an expert witness at age 17, had been voted by the faculty at MIT as the top engineer in my class, had worked 40 hrs/wk throughout undergrad at MIT, had great letters of reference (including one from a full professor at Harvard who said that the committee would be “complete idiots” if they didn’t accept me), and had a phenomenal 3hr interview with the professor who had agreed to interview me on Sunday, and who it turned out, had heard rave reviews about me from his girlfriend (one of my TAs) about the numerous pranks I pulled. So after an apparently contentious battle at the admissions committee, I was admitted (and then, as I had agreed, took the MCATs after being admitted, with a pony keg at my side). My first two years at HMS were also quite controversial, but that’s another story! Source
