Taylor gets taste of medical career with internships at Stanford, Johns Hopkins

by Chuck Gordon

Leo Taylor never wastes an opportunity to bolster his medical-school resume.

Taylor, who aspires to one day be a cardiologist, grew up in Jamaica. From the beginning of his college career, Taylor's assigned advisor, Dr. Debra Davis, has been frank with him about his chances of getting into medical school.

"I drove it into his head very quickly that, as an international student, the likelihood of you getting into medical school is slim to none, especially right out of college," says Davis, a biology professor who also happens to hail from Jamaica. "At the end of the day, the seats are going to be prioritized for domestic students, so you really have to be on top of your game and show your potential."

Luckily, Taylor listens well. He's built an enviable resume, which he topped off this summer by doing an internship at Stanford University. His six weeks in the Bay Area followed a summer-long internship at another top medical school, Johns Hopkins University, in 2023.

At both stops, Taylor, a member of Wingate's Honors College, assisted with ongoing research, got some tips for getting into med school, and shadowed doctors as they cared for patients. Following doctors on their rounds provided moments of anxiety for Taylor at Johns Hopkins, where he was assigned to the cancer ward, but he's worked through those and is now all in on medical school.

"It was my first time being in that setting," Taylor says. "It's not like I was in a clinic first. I went into big hospitals, on the cancer floor. Those are pretty bad patients."

Shadowing renowned Stanford pediatric cardiologist Dr. David Cornfield this past summer helped assure Taylor that cardiology is a worthwhile pursuit.

"One thing I liked about it was the connection Dr. Cornfield had with his patients, the kids," Taylor says. "They seemed to truly like him. They had some fun conversations. They're sick, but you have to try to make them happy."

Resourceful and determined

Like a lot of college students, Taylor experiences a little trepidation at big changes, such as moving to Baltimore or the West Coast for the summer to work with people he doesn't know. But he's determined to become a doctor, and he knows he'll need internships and other experiences to support his strong academic record.

In the summer after his freshman year, he volunteered at a Covid clinic. During his sophomore and junior years, he applied for every internship possible, eventually landing the Johns Hopkins gig.

"He's been very fortunate, but a lot of it is just being resourceful, finding the right types of programs. He's good at that," Davis says. "He's not afraid to put himself out there, which is basically why you're here, right? A lot of students are petrified. He is not. Even if it scares him, he's going to go forth and do it."

At Stanford, Taylor did meaningful hands-on research. He studied bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a condition in which the lungs of some infants who are born prematurely are oversaturated with oxygen after the children are kept in incubators.

Taylor compared the lung tissue of mice that had hyperoxia (too much oxygen) and those with normoxia (a normal amount of oxygen). Because he spent only a few weeks on the project, he and the team didn't come to any conclusions, but he got hands-on experience experimenting on mice and learned to decipher what he was seeing through the microscope.

"I didn't get to quantify at what rate the cell was damaged," Taylor says, "but to see what it looked like under a microscope, that was pretty cool."

More important for Taylor's future, he got to make morning rounds with Cornfield. On Taylor's last day, Cornfield let him listen to a baby's heart through the stethoscope. It helped him understand that, although he enjoys research and respects the work of doctors who concentrate on it, he wants to be a practicing physician.

"With research, you might not achieve your goal in your lifetime," Taylor says. "Research takes so many years. With a medical practice, you're making an impact on someone's life immediately."

Another big benefit that came with the Stanford internship is free enrollment in a course that prepares students for the Medical College Admission Test, which Taylor will take in January.

If all goes well, he'll be able to add a high MCAT score to his already impressive resume, putting him one step closer to a career in medicine.

"Doctors make a big impact on society," Taylor says. "I want to see how much I can change someone's life, and doctors really do that for people."

Learn more about Wingate's biology department.

Oct. 25, 2024

Public link

Please use the above public link if you want to share this noodl on another website.