Med School Meddling
Jacey Silver (not her real name) is the youngest of four children, and the only girl. She grew up in an affluent neighborhood, went to top-tier private schools, and with the exception of her industrialist great-grandfather, came from a long line of doctors, all specialists and all super-achievers, and all of whom had attended the same ivy-league medical school.
Despite the fact that she was determined to avoid “following the family line of work” by default, Jacey realized that she did want to become a doctor, too. She decided to break from tradition by going to a different medical school and becoming a family doctor – and she was determined to do it all on her own, without the help of the family office or her trustees. She applied to four medical schools, all of which were out-of-state, where she was confident that her family name would not be influential.
Of the four schools, one was her top choice, and the other three were distant seconds. She had done well in undergraduate school and achieved very high scores on her MCAT (medical college admission test), but Jacey wasn’t sure that her academic merits would carry the day. Weeks after she mailed the application and completed her interviews, she learned that she’d been accepted by her top school of choice. She was ecstatic.
A few months later, school began with orientation. She was with 80+ medical students with whom she would spend the next four years. They were given a tour of the labs, the classrooms, the hospital, and the soon-to-be-built clinic for family medicine, the Silver Clinic… made possible by the generosity of the Silver Family Foundation.
Despite her best efforts, Jacey will never know if she would have been accepted into the university on her own merit, without her family’s involvement.