I wanted to post this new private message conversation, of course with identifying information removed and the PMer's permission.
First of all, I'm so glad that I had a fortunate chance to read your post. Because my situation is so similar to yours, I almost teared while I was reading.
I came to America(Georgia) after I graduated from Korean high school and spent a year for volunteer work at habitat for humanity. Then, I went to a community college in Macon, GA. I didn't do very well, but didn't do poor in college work except English class, which I made C.
During that time, I had to work at restaurant. After 1 and half year, I transferred to Emory university. I still don't know how I got into it, but I can tell you I was lucky.
While I was in Emory, the school work compared to the community college was too much I had to spend most of time to study and English was the biggest problem for me. Other than study, I did volunteer work at a hospital and I tried to do shadowing and contacted doctors in school, but I rarely got a chance. Fortunately, my school started clinical research class in my senior year for the first time, so I did that and it's my only clinical research.
I graduated from Emory last year like you, and studied for mcat last summer, but after graduation, I was burnt out and didn't do well on mcat. More importantly, I didn't know why I want to be a doctor since I aimlessly tried to have good gpa while I was in school.
So I decided to take another year off and am studying for mcat and preparing for application thinking about my personal statement.
After I didn't do well on my mcat and see a lot of classmates who have really good gpa and mcat score, I've been depressed and lost hope to apply to medical schools.
But after your application, I earned hope from you.
This is my story jotted down. And I hope you read this as well.
I lived with my grandmother since I was born. Because my mother were away in a bigger city to make money and send it to us. After my grandmother was passed away, when I was 7, I started to live with my mother. At that time, it was a little strange since I had never lived with my mother. We moved to the city she worked. As I became 13, I worked for a living since the money my mother was making wasn't enough to buy us food. I delivered milks and newspapers every morning except for Sundays. So I had to wake up at 4:30AM. Aftter working, I straightly went to school. We also moved our places so many times to find some place to live and stay.(I think it's about 10 times for 6 years). Some years we experienced homelessness, so we had to stay at a place where my mother worked.
At the beginning of high school, 2001, we were given Korean federal(national) assistance which gave us a place to live and more stipend(about $200/month), and it made our lives much better than before. However, I realized that with this situation, my mother couldn't support me to go to college that she eagerly wanted me to do. If I had gone to college, she had to find another job or she'd be in financial trouble. So I decided to see my father of whom I heard that he lived in US. Moreover, I decided to go to college in US only if he would support me.
It took 3 years to process to get permission to enter US with visa.
In 2004 Jan 27(I still remember this date!!) I came to Georgia, US. And I met my father for the first time. I also met my step-mother and half-sister. Then, I went to habitat for Humanity that year for Spring to Summer, and went to a community college to get used to class in English. I took 2 classes, but I don't have grades on them since I audited these classes. It was good experience though.
2005, I went back to Korea to help my mother with her financial problems. I had to work there for 6 months.
I came back again started a real college life in Fall 2005. I took classes but I made 3.35 with C on English class. Since this semester, I went to a hospital for volunteer works. And then I made 3.8 and 3.8 on the next 2 semesters averaging 3.7 and transferred to Emory University. In Emory, I made 3.714 for the first semester. But I didn't do well on the next semester 3.4 with B- on neuroscience class. So I decided to major in neuroscience because I wanted to do well and actually became interested in brain. I started research since my junior year because my community college doesn't have a lab. And I finished my last semester of junior with 3.85 with 6 classes. And I made 3.85 and 3.7 in my senior year. I also got scholarship during this year and had a class which is clinical research.
Summer after freshmen I took summer class. Sophomore year I went to Korea to work again but I did volunteer work there(tutoring). junior year I stayed at Emory for research since I started research pretty late, so I needed to make up for that.
After graduation, I came back home and did volunteer work. Also, with my friends I founded tutoring system or program which invited students to a Korea church in order to teach SAT and whatever they need for their school works. The reason I did was I realized a lot of kids of the first generation of immigrants stayed home after school. Because their parents have to work till late night, they are all alone at home that is illegal for really young kids, but the parents have to do for a living or bring their kids to their work place which isn't appropriate.
I'm sorry about this incoherent message because I just wrote it down whatever I could think of.
So that's almost everything I did in college. I tried to write down to give you some information. But if you have more questions about my stat and give advices. Please please let me know.
I respect your assistance to help students with application process. It's been hard to find someone like you.
Thank you
Hello,
From the looks of things you have a respectable undergraduate GPA (what's your overall GPA?) and you need to retake the MCAT. Get at least a 30. Do you have a US green card or citizenship? If it's possible for you to get that before applying to med school it will help you both obtain acceptance and financial aid.
Med schools don't care that much about disadvantaged status. To them you are an asian, not underrepresented, your English isn't great, and if you don't have asian-caliber stats, you don't stand much chance. This is further hampered if you are not a US citizen or permanent resident. It's clear that your American English isn't fluent from your PM, and any way you can improve this will help you in any career you choose in the US, besides improving your MCAT score.
Otherwise it looks like your extracirriculars are reasonable. What other questions do you have?
Good luck,
Eric
I added in my grades to AMCAS GPA calculator, then, I got Total 3.72 BCPM 3.80 AO 3.68. I think that GPAs are kind of lower than my classmates' GPAs since all of them have 3.8 or 3.9. So I have to do well on MCAT which is my last option.
As for citizenship and a green card, it's been 5 years having a green card since my father became a US citizen. That's why I'm having a little bit of hope to get into medical schools.
And do you recommend anything to improve on English in reading and writing?
Furthermore, I want to hear how you studied for MCAT.
And do you really think I rarely have a chance to get into med schools? I'm worried a lot.
And what's the difference b/w underrepresented and disadvantaged? Am I disadvantaged?
I don't know so much and thank you for your time.
Your GPA is reasonable. I'm not worried about that. The better you do on the MCAT of course the better off you will be. You want to be aiming for at least the average by the AAMC data for your race to be safe. See the asian catagory in the tables here:
http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/applicantmatriculant/table19-mcatpgaraceeth09-web.pdf
I am relieved to hear that you have a green card. I'm sorry though that being a native English speaker I really don't what to recommend when it comes to improving your English skills.
I took the MCAT in 2002 and I scored a 37. I took The Princeton Review's (TPR) course and did all of the materials they gave me. I thought practice questions were very helpful for me. I spent 3 hours a day studying for 3 months (i.e. each day I either had 3 hours of class OR studied at least 3 hours) over the summer while I worked full-time. I did a full practice exam every weekend. I was never much of a morning person, so two weeks before the exam I would get up very early every morning, go to the library, and do a full VR practice section. It used to be that VR was the first section at 8AM, but I don't know if that changed? I think one key is that I was scoring in the low to mid 30s on my practice tests before the actual exam. Do not take the exam unless you are doing this well. Postpone and study more if you are not there.
Underrepresented in medicine describes a group of races where the percentage of physicians of that race is less than the percentage of the population. See :
http://www.aamc.org/meded/urm/start.htm . Medical schools think very broadly (and IMO stupidly) about this topic. Since you are Korean, you are Asian, and asians are very overrepresented within medicine.
About disadvantaged, see this:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showpost.php?p=1003321&postcount=2
I think you would qualify as disadvantaged certainly, but there is no strict definition I'm aware of. Some medical schools care about disadvantaged status and others don't. There are no statistics on whether being disadvantaged helps one get into medical school. In my case, I think my disadvantaged status got me into a bigger name medical school and got me a few additional acceptances, but that's only because it was combined with a high GPA and MCAT score and an otherwise strong application. Even if I was not disadvantaged, I would have been able to get into a strong medical school, and this is what you should be aiming for to maximize your chances of success.
Whether you get an interview or not will depend on your story, how well you can convey that story on your application, and if the admissions committee members are sympathetic to your plight enough that it either makes up for other shortcomings on your application or just makes your application stand out so much that they want to accept you. It becomes a very random and arbitrary process then based on who reads and interprets your application, but to maximize your chances of success you of course want to make yourself shine in every way you can control (essays, LORs, MCAT score, etc).
...
I'll keep in mind your MCAT tips, and do you have any advice for writing personal statement?
I tried to put every important incidents in my life into PS, but it seemed it'll be too much for 5000 characters. So I've been gathering those incidents relevant to the question of why medicine.
My advice for your personal statement is to have people critique. I do not do personal statement reading/editing anymore myself. But you should have English majors/writers review it for clarity and grammar, as well as med school advisors read it for medical school topics.
