Table of contents
International medical student exchange practicum
Excellent opportunities exist for WISE students to engage in research in the Boston/Worcester area as a step in career development. This guide presents steps in the process of obtaining such positions. The effort requested in this guide constitutes a practicum in “steppingstone logic” (the philosophy of pragmatism), which leads to being a better doctor and a competent, satisfied individual.
Robert Humphreys, M.D., formerly Professor of Medicine and Pharmacology and Interim Chairman at University of Massachusetts Medical School
Currently, the strength of the WISE program lies in the good reputation its participants have built thus far and in the contacts it has with research departments at medical facilities in Massachusetts, such as Massachusetts General Hospital, Tufts University Medical Center, Boston University, Harvard University, and the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. WISE houses participants free of charge. In addition, each participant receives a small stipend of $100.00 per month. If, during the period of your stay, another institution assumes responsibility for your scholarship, the stipend and equivalent funding to support your accommodation will be substituted by the funds from that institution. Psychiatry students with Dr. Hanson may have a separate arrangement for a stipend, which would generally cover all basic expenses for the duration of the students’ participation.
WISE would like to be able to provide much more support than it can presently, but is unable to do so. Consequently, each participant is expected to provide for his or her own round-trip airfare and other expenses such as laundry and food. We encourage each person selected to search for other sources of funding, such as university or government programs in their homeland, charitable organizations, and other private foundations. Participants in the program have generally been able to find such supplementary sources of funding.
WISE students are very successful in obtaining good research positions and then continuing to fine residencies (either in the U.S. or their home country) for two reasons. First, they are exceptionally well qualified in terms of intelligence, academic performance, and personality. Secondly, they already have a good grasp on the issues of logic presented in this guide. WISE students are typically in the top 5-10% of their class by rank and have received academic awards or other fellowships. They are usually fluent in at least three languages and have studied abroad. They relate very well to others. They adapt to challenges and employ “steppingstone logic” in their daily life.
Visas
Your visa through the WISE program is a B-1 visa. It is best to get an initial 6 months approval, and file for the automatic extension to a total of 12 months at least 2 months before the initial period expires. Under the B-1 visa you are prohibited salaried employment, but you are permitted out-of-pocket living expenses. Sponsors handle this in various ways, which can be discussed after your arrival. Work with your sponsor, often by volunteering for some months to prove yourself. Later you might get a J-1 or H1 visa. The two-year-home-return rule is usually enforced for J-1 holders (a major inconvenience if you are seeking further training here). Often at Harvard, the preferred path seems to be H-1 visas, for whatever reasons. Other WISE students seem to have the details. It is best to talk with several after your arrival. In any case, students in the WISE program enter initially with a B-1 visa.
Travel
You will be receiving a letter of invitation, which you will need to apply for a visa and to present to customs officials upon entry. While in flight you will complete a white card called an I-94. It will be stapled into your passport when you pass through customs. Do NOT remove this card. Check to make sure that your departure date allows you to fulfill your plans. It is suggested that you photocopy the photo page in your passport, your visa page, and your I-94 in case your passport is lost or stolen. We would be happy to keep these copies in your file. Please let us know your travel plans as soon as possible. Someone will be glad to meet you at the airport.
Here is a short checklist of things to bring with you:
Personal medications. Make sure to bring prescription medications in marked containers.
Short white coat, if available. (Medical students wear them in the hospital, but you can also borrow one upon arrival.)
An international driver's license.
Towels and toiletries.
Household devices such as hair dryer, electric razors, etc. are very difficult to use unless you have a converter, which costs about $10.00. (The voltage for electrical appliances used in the U.S. is between 110-120V.)
Appropriate clothes for the hospital (men: shirt and tie, no jeans; women: professional yet casual skirts, slacks).
Insurance
All participants are required to have health insurance. It is most economical to purchase this insurance outside the United States.
Vaccinations
Make sure that you have received all necessary vaccines and have had your verification officially stamped. You will need documentation of immunity to measles, mumps, rubella, documentation of tetanus-diphtheria booster within the last ten years, and documentation of the results of a recent T.B. (tuberculosis) test.
Housing
Accommodations are provided part of the time by Dr. Hanson at his home in Orono, Maine and part of the time at the home of Eric Ranvig and Dr. Hanson in Acton, MA.
You are expected to maintain your own room and to share responsibilities in basic housekeeping. Please be advised that it is often necessary for two participants to share a room. You are expected to assist with WISE projects and housing maintenance for about four hours per week.
Students are offered invitations to a variety of cultural activities - fully funded by the foundation - during their stay in the United States in an effort to enrich their understanding of American culture.
Visiting target labs and judging mentors
Go to the websites of Massachusetts General Hospital, McLean Hospital, New England Medical Center, Harvard University, and Boston University to identify researchers in your area of interest. Make a long list, including areas of distant relationship to you.
Conduct a MedLine search (www.pubmed.com) for papers of target mentors. Although you can discuss this list of target mentors with other WISE students and Dr. Hanson, you will ultimately decide yourself. There are different theories for what type of lab to seek. Some favor working with junior faculty members, so you get to talk with your mentor. Others favor large labs with a pyramidal structure: the Professor, Assistant Professors, fellows, graduate students, technicians and you. In that situation, you ideally want to talk with the fellow under whose direct guidance you are to be placed. Such a person can be a phenomenally good teacher and friend for life. Others, not so. If you do very well in a big lab, the power (money, network, influence) of the Professor will come to support you.
Some WISE students in Boston have been promoted to semi-permanent Fellow positions on 3-year, renewable H-1 visas, with significant salaries. In any event, you need to hunt for an interval after arrival, being very alert and watchful for opportunities and pitfalls. WISE students generally do very well in this search. If you receive multiple offers, after you seal the deal with one, go thank the others for the offer that you decline.
Generally, it is not necessary to write to prospective mentors prior to arriving in the U.S. Pick a date after your arrival; then, armed with a complete attack list of target mentors, knock on doors, leave your “package” (i.e. CV, personal statement, letters of reference, transcripts), and ask for interviews. Plan a return visit (for example, three days later) for interviewing or inquiring again of nonresponders. WISE students execute this part of the hunting game well. Mentors seek students with fine “stepping-stone” thought processes. All of us know pieces, or even large segments, of deductive logic. But mentors are searching among WISE applicants for those with the most extensive use of deductive logic or pragmatic thinking. That is, one starts with an ultimate goal, in life, or for a patient’s well being given some significant disease. One works backward to identify possible steps of achievement toward that goal. In this “steppingstone logic,” given two choices of what to do tomorrow, the preferred choice is that which best positions one for the effort of a later day.
Steps which can be jumped over or leap-frogged should not be pursued. The greatest physicians and professors use this method of logic. The mentor interviewing a WISE student looks for such reasoning in the student's ideas and personal statement. The most successful WISE students are skilled at applying both inductive and deductive logic simultaneously.
Personal statement
The personal statement projects the personality, intelligence, motivation, and track record of the WISE student in a manner that makes the reader want to interview the student. A wide variety of styles in personal statements have been successful, often because they are written with a stellar quality and reflect the sparkling and unique personalities of the authors. Though the best statements vary from each other in content, they all reflect professional standards of writing.
The personal statement often starts with a summary paragraph of two to three sentences, condensing the entire story. To eventually become an outstanding physician in some specified area, the student seeks an intense experience in research to learn the underlying logic and method behind conducting fine research. Potential mentors are reading the statements more for their projected logic and patterns of thought than for details of specific tests or surgical operations performed. The rest of the statement elaborates on future goals and shows how past and present efforts are steppingstones to that end. These concepts are often woven into historical stories. The mentors want to understand the reasoning behind a student’s actions more than the activities themselves.
The most important value of the personal statement is what the reader deduces about the character of the student though the presented ideas, storytelling, and accomplishments. Numerical facts are in the curriculum vitae. Here, the student should write vignettes of experiences from which deductions can be made about intelligence, work ethic, ingenuity, resourcefulness, relationships, and sense of duty to ideals, patients, family, and self. One should not say “I am clever,” but one can tell a story from which the reader deduces cleverness and many other personal characteristics. The personal statement should be approximately one page, single-spaced with one-inch margins and a font large enough for comfortable reading.
Upon repeating this search process for a later residency or fellowship, the quality of your writing will be carefully judged. Most newly arrived WISE students do not understand the concepts of topic sentences, paragraphing, and clincher sentences. Might as well learn now. Great medical writers use this system in their papers, grant applications, essays, and letters of reference. The topic sentence is the first sentence of a paragraph that expresses succinctly the concepts of the paragraph. The sentences which follow in the paragraph explain in more detail the concept of the topic sentence. There are no new major ideas unrelated to the topic sentence, which are introduced later in that paragraph. Any new major idea becomes the topic sentence of a new paragraph.
When the essay is done, one could cover with a hand or mentally erase everything except the topic sentences, which remain to summarize the entire essay. Ideally, there is also a topical first paragraph of two to three sentences outlining the entire essay. Often, there is a clincher sentence at the end of the last paragraph, emphasizing the “take-home” message of the essay. Clincher sentences can also be used occasionally to end selected paragraphs in the essay. It is a lot of work to impose this discipline on one’s writings, but having done so, you will discover that many great clinicians use the same technique to great effect. In a future round of searching for a new position, your writings will be used to judge your patterns of logic.
This guide was adapted from the WISE foundation’s Twelve Year Report and updated to reflect more recent developments.
International music student exchange program
This program, in coordination with a few European academies and conservatories of music, offers an opportunity for the duration of an academic year. Each year, one or two students are selected based on audition or outstanding performance. The student is offered a program which includes study with preeminent musicians and instructors in the Greater Boston area, as well as advanced instruction to aid in the mastery of the English language through the benefits of immersion in an English-speaking environment and experience of the rich cultural offerings which the Boston area affords. Further details will be provided to each participant upon selection. The student’s program will be tailored to his interests and needs.
Award program for outstanding early career artists
Each year, one or more awards are granted to artists who have recently completed their training and have demonstrated world-class talent in performance. Awards are determined through a peer-review process utilizing paid consultants who are themselves early career artists and have experienced the award-winning performance. There follows a list of previous award winners.
Support to Artists Getting Education (STAGE) Action
Recognizing that early career artistic talent and achievement often go without due rewards, usually lacking the honors it deserves, our small foundation has taken a step towards responding to this injustice. Accordingly, in 2011, we launched a program of peer-review awards, which, based on contemplation with other early career artists, honors outstanding performances. A few performers selected each year through peer-review receive “Emerging Artist” awards.
Our foundation strongly deplores the high student debt with which students of some institutions become saddled, though we recognize that our advocacy in this regard has occasioned the displeasure of isolated conservatory administrators.
WISE Special Events
Special events include theater evenings for which the foundation obtains a block of tickets and distributes them to student and early career artists, often preceding or following a gathering with refreshments. The foundation also organizes reunions for alumni of the WISE program. Among the special events are also small house concerts (typically held during the December holidays), pre-theater music events in cooperation with the Peterborough Players in New Hampshire, and church music events.
WISE occasionally sponsors larger concerts (one or two per year) in Hungary and in Massachusetts. For example, WISE sponsored a large festival event in Acton, Massachusetts in October 2014. The foundation also hosted an event in September 2016 which included dancers from Kirov/Mariinsky Ballet and the Boston Conservatory.
WISE Foundation - Budapest, Hungary
The WISE Foundation has an affiliate in Budapest, Hungary and owns property in Budapest. For further information regarding the Hungarian WISE Foundation, please contact Keeler Ranvig (keeleraranvig@hotmail.com).