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School of Medicine Virginia Commonwealth University VCU Medical Center
in the tradition of the Medical College of Virginia

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Test Your Knowledge

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How well do you know Dr. Linda Costanzo? See if you can choose which of the statements below is not true?

A. She celebrated her retirement with a trip to Ireland.
B. In junior high, she was lauded for her skill with needle and thread.
C. She attended a high school where less than 20% of its graduates went on to college.
D. She played an accordion in a Klezmer band in college.
E. Physiology was not her first love; her Ph.D. was in pharmacology.
F. She put her own children to work running experiments in her lab.
G. When she first arrived at the Medical College of Virginia, she had tears in her eyes.
H. Her first attempt at a medical lecture was greeted by a stern response from her department chair: “This will never do.”

 

 

 

 

 

The most correct answer is C

Dr. Costanzo never played accordion in a Klezmer band in college, but you might remember that she did bring the instrument to her physiology lectures in order to demonstrate lung function!

To expand and enhance your knowledge of Dr. Linda Costanzo, read on!

A. Less than a month after her retirement celebration, Dr. Linda Costanzo took off across the pond with her husband and fellow medical school faculty member Richard Costanzo, Ph.D. for a driving tour of Ireland.

B. When Dr. Costanzo was 13, she begged her parents for a sewing machine and sewing classes. And in junior high her dedication was rewarded when she received a Singer Sewing Award. She still has the green suit that she made.

C. Dr. Costanzo graduated from Durham High School in 1965 and was one of the few in her class to go to college.

D. In addition to demonstrating lung function with accordions, Dr. Costanzo has been known to use rubber bands and even slinkies to communicate physiologic functions to her students. That skill in making complex concepts easily understood – whether face to face in the lecture hall or via her best-selling books – has been rewarded repeatedly with national teaching awards.

E. It's true that Dr. Costanzo’s Ph.D. was in pharmacology. And not only that: her research into renal calcium transport was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association and was published in premiere peer-reviewed journals. In fact, her seminal work at the single nephron level was recognized as a “Milestone in Nephrology” by the American Society of Nephrology in 2000.

F. When her children were very young, Dr. Costanzo flirted with breaking child labor laws on snow days. When Henrico’s school system closed due to inclement weather, her children were put to work running what they called “the water experiments” in her lab. Dr. Costanzo had convinced them of the importance of pouring green dye into water in order to measure volumes in graduated cylinders.

G. She did in fact start crying when she first arrived at the Medical College of Virginia. She was a newborn in labor and delivery at the time.

H. Contrary to common belief, Dr. Costanzo wasn’t born knowing how to lecture. In fact, following her last lecture to our M1s, she told them that her first try at teaching had ended in miserable failure. Following a two-hour dress rehearsal to prep her for her first official lecture at Cornell University Medical College, her department chair – sitting on the back row of an otherwise empty lecture hall – turned grim. “This,” he said, “will never do.” Costanzo said she learned several lessons that day, from that one sentence. It was the seminal event that made her a better teacher – and as others would later observe – a great teacher.
You can read more about her last lecture.

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

The medical school’s new education building is designed by I. M. Pei’s internationally acclaimed architectural firm Pei Cobb Freed.  Which of the below projects is NOT designed by his firm?

A. The East Building of the National Gallery
B. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
C. The New York Times Building
D. The Louvre Pyramid

The correct answer is C

I.M. Pei designed the East Building of the National Gallery, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Louvre Pyramid. 

Pei’s firm did not design the New York Times Headquarters Building.  That credit goes to Renzo Piano, the Italian-born architect, who like Pei, has been honored with the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jessica, who is a 24-year-old second-year medical student, just took USMLE Step 1 and is anxiously awaiting her score. The best predictor of Jessica’s performance on Step 1 is her:

  1. AP calculus score
  2. HDL level
  3. MCAT physical science score
  4. Myers Briggs type preference
  5. Performance in M1 and M2
  6. Score on a test of delayed gratification
  7. Usual seat in the M2 classroom

(Note that the answer choices, called “distractors,” are alphabetized and that there can be more than five choices.)

The most correct answer is E.

How well students learn in the first two years of medical school is the single best predictor of performance on Step 1.  Thus, on the MCV Campus, we emphasize that the most important thing students can do on behalf of their Step 1 score is to learn the material well in the first place!  AP calculus was a long time ago, and Jessica’s study habits may have changed significantly between high school and medical school. While HDL levels are important for good health, there is no known association with Step 1 scores.  MCAT scores have lesser predictive value than do medical school grades. Aspects of personality, such as those assessed on Myers Briggs or delayed gratification tests, may have implications for study habits in medical school, but the effect on Step 1 is not established.  Finally, contrary to some theories, performance in medical school has no particular correlation with whether a student was a "front-row gunner" or not.

 

 

 



 

 


What’s the most important aspect of a prospective student’s application?

  1. extraordinary MCAT scores
  2. exposure to the healthcare field
  3. drop the names of important people at your intervie
  4. major in biology as an undergrad

The correct answer is B.

The most important aspect of applicants’ profiles is their medically related experience.  Shadowing physicians, hands-on patient care opportunities and other health care experiences are the best way for prospective medical students to validate their true interest in becoming physicians.  The Admissions Committee wants to know the applicant has a real passion for medicine and that a first-year medical student won't get part way into the first semester only to discover "I don't like sick people" or "this isn't anything like Grey's Anatomy."  

Our average MCAT is 30 and average science GPA is 3.6.  Successful applicants to our medical school have a variety of majors from engineering to biology to french or philosophy.  We encourage college students to major in the field that interests them most.  That results in a diversity of majors, which in turn provides a very rich learning environment.

Letters of recommendation from celebrities and politicians have quite a wow-factor but the committee thinks that recommendation letters are much more helpful when they speak of an applicant’s personal qualities and have been written by individuals who have observed the applicant directly over time.












Before Winter Break, the first-year students were tested on their anatomical knowledge. Now test yours! Which of the terms below is not an anatomical structure?

  1. frenulum linguae
  2. pisiform
  3. umbra
  4. torus tubarius
  5. sustentaculum tali

The correct answer is C.

Umbra is not an anatomical structure. Instead it is an artist’s term referring to the darkest part of a shadow where there is no light.

The structures below - though they make us laugh - are all found on the human body.

  1. frenulum linguae (frenulum of the tongue): a small fold of mucous membrane that extends from the floor of the mouth to the midline of the inferior aspect of the tongue. If the frenulum is shorter than normal, the patient is said to be "tongue tied"
  2. pisiform bone of the hand: a small pea shaped bone of the wrist; with the palm of the hand facing up, the pisiform bone can be identified as the hard knot on the medial side of the wrist and at the junction between the wrist and hand; "pisum" means pea
  3. torus tubarius: a prominence in the nasal pharynx created by the cartilaginous end of the auditory tube covered by mucosal membrane; "torus" means cushion so torus tubarius is the cushion (the mucosal membrane) covering the tube (tubarius)
  4. sustentaculum tali: a horizontal, concave surface on the calcaneus (heel bone) that provides a point of articulation for the talus (ankle bone); also provides points of attachments of several important ligaments

Thanks to the first-year students who helped to identify anatomical terms that tickle the funny bone, and also to Anatomy & Neurobiology's Jeff Dupree, Ph.D., whose expertise and good humor provided the anatomical accuracy behind the tongue-tripping terms.

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When medical students want to learn how to recognize the cardiovascular conditions that plague their patients, they turn to:

  1. Academy Award nominee Harvey Keitel
  2. American radio broadcaster Paul Harvey
  3. the 1950s film Harvey, starring Jimmy Stewart
  4. Harvey, a full-sized mannequin that can morph from man to woman and from an aortic insufficiency diagnosis to mitral stenosis symptoms

The correct answer is D.

Harvey is a full-sized mannequin that can realistically simulate 30 cardiac conditions. Read more about how third-year medical students are working with Harvey to master the nuances of murmurs that wheeze, blow or growl and improving their approach to physical exams along the way.

If you'd rather read about the other Harveys, Wikipedia provides a nice list of Keitel's three decades of movies, information on Paul Harvey's full name and an explanation of the six-foot, three-and-one-half inch tall rabbit that befriended Jimmy Stewart.

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The Skull & Bones was:

  1. A monthly newspaper
  2. A great place to get onion rings and a milkshake
  3. An electronic newsletter
  4. All of the above

The correct answer is D.

Many of us know the Skull & Bones as a great place to get onion rings, tomato soup and a milkshake (maybe not all for the same meal). Others remember stopping in to have a talk with a colleague or escape the bustle of the hospital. It was even said that if you had business to conduct, most of the campus leadership could be found in Skull & Bones at noon. But that name has also been found on the masthead of student-produced news.

First introduced in the fall of 1915, the student-produced weekly newspaper called The Skull & Bones was available for an annual subscription of $1.50. Then in 2006, after an almost 25-year hiatus, the Skull & Bones got a new lease on life from the Medical Student Government in the form of a periodic electronic journal that serves as an outlet for students’ creative expression—from photography and artwork to poetry and prose.

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