MD School list, need some critical feedback and opinions

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My stats and ECs:

GPA: 3.45 sGPA / 3.45 cGPA
Major: Biology; Minor: English Literature
MCAT: 36S - 14/11/11/S

I am a California resident, graduated from UC San Diego.

GPA trend: generally upwards in the last 2 years of UG, lots of solid A's in upper division biology courses including Physio, Mol Bio. B in Biochem though. The low sGPA and cGPA are due to a string of B's from Gen Chem and Ochem as a freshman/sophmore. I'm hoping the 14PS score will help offset some doubt about my abilities in gen chem.

ECs:

• ~240 hours of hospital volunteer with direct patient contact (lots of cleaning and bathing patients)
• ~300 hours as a volunteer coordinator and trainer for the above hospital program
• 160 hours as a peer Health Educator, primarily talking to college students about Sexual Health. Some of those hours were also spent as a TA for the training course that the health educators had to take.
• 20 hours shadowing an internal medicine doctor
• Worked part time as a children's swimming instructor throughout most of college
• Supervisor at a summer day camp for children and teens during 2 summers
• Currently working full time at an alcohol/drug addiction treatment center
• I don't have research experience, I decided to go premed late in the game and chose to allocate my time to the aforementioned activities instead of research. I'm considering looking for research to do this summer though just to have some under my belt.

Letters of Rec:
I know my writers well enough to know that I have strong letters.

• 2 Bio professors whose classes I aced (molecular bio and molecular bio of human disease)
• 1 Literature professor with whom I took 2 classes - he loved me because I loved the subject
• The doctor I shadowed - he was part of the ad com for a top 10 med school
• Director of my hospital internship, where I took a leading role and contributed a lot to the program's development
• Coordinator of my health educator organization.

Whew, now for the school list. This is my preliminary, tentative list. It's a little top heavy at the moment, and I need some opinions. With my GPA, I figured I had no business listing anything as a safety.

Tentative School List

Reach:

• UCSF
• UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint program
• Stanford
• UCLA
• UCSD
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Dartmouth
• Duke
• University of Pittsburg
• Brown University
• NYU
• University of Virginia

Target:

• UC Davis
• UC Irvine
• Keck (Southern California)
• George Washington
• Georgetown
• Rush
• Tulane
• Oakland
• Albany Medical College
• Albert Einstein
• New York Medical College
• SUNY Downstate
• SUNY Buffalo
• University of Colorado, Denver
• University of Rochester
• Drexel
• Temple
• Jefferson Medical College
• Virginia Commonwealth University
• Oregon Health and Science

My current plans: Keep working at rehab, but search for research to be done this summer and into next year. I'm also very interested in technology in health care and health care information systems (I'm a child of the Silicon Valley). I'm actually considering taking classes in health care IT/software development at UCSD's extension right now and getting a GPA boost while developing my toolset. I actually hope to play a part in developing health care information systems that are more efficient, cost-effective, user friendly, and consistent across various hospital systems. I hope that in itself makes me a more interesting applicant, assuming I survive the GPA screen-outs at the top schools.

Thoughts on how to sell myself? My ECs? Improvements to be made besides research? My overall fitness as an applicant?

anybody?

If you really want critical feedback, I'll tell you that you have next to 0 chance at most of your CA reach schools with a 3.45. It simply won't cut it. Whether you're spending your own money or somebody else's on your apps, applications to those reach schools is the equivalent of making a very bad gambling choice.

Your MCAT will get you in somewhere, but hoping for any CA school may leave you disappointed. It's simply too competitive these days to think you have anything more than a slim chance with a 3.45

Originally Posted by NinersFan0

If you really want critical feedback, I'll tell you that you have next to 0 chance at most of your CA reach schools with a 3.45. It simply won't cut it. Whether you're spending your own money or somebody else's on your apps, applications to those reach schools is the equivalent of making a very bad gambling choice.

Your MCAT will get you in somewhere, but hoping for any CA school may leave you disappointed. It's simply too competitive these days to think you have anything more than a slim chance with a 3.45

Hmm, fair enough. What do you think about the CA target schools? Davis, Irvine, and USC? My feeling is that they are doable with a 3.45, but I'm new to this thing so I might be wrong. I'm mainly concerned with the targets because GPA repair for the reach schools would be impractical, but GPA repair for the target schools not so impractical.

I would say definitely apply to Davis, Irvine, and SC, but don't get your hopes up unless you can pull the GPA around 3.6. It's just too much of a gamble to get optimistic about.

Your MCAT will get you interviews for sure, so make the most of those and you should come out of the cycle with at least one acceptance.

The reason I'm skeptical about your CA schools is that there are plenty of examples of very qualified people not even getting interviews. My best friend had a 3.9/37 and didn't even get invited to interview at Davis or Irvine, for example. Some people may say "he must have had a red flag" but he ended up at a top 10 school so you can pretty much throw that argument out the window. You just never know....

Originally Posted by NinersFan0

I would say definitely apply to Davis, Irvine, and SC, but don't get your hopes up unless you can pull the GPA around 3.6. It's just too much of a gamble to get optimistic about.

Your MCAT will get you interviews for sure, so make the most of those and you should come out of the cycle with at least one acceptance.

The reason I'm skeptical about your CA schools is that there are plenty of examples of very qualified people not even getting interviews. My best friend had a 3.9/37 and didn't even get invited to interview at Davis or Irvine, for example. Some people may say "he must have had a red flag" but he ended up at a top 10 school so you can pretty much throw that argument out the window. You just never know....

That's pretty crazy, and yeah actually I've got some acquaintances to whom that happened as well. I've heard that it's possible that some mid tiers don't send interviews to those people because they are certain that they'll get accepted at top 10 or top 20, and would therefore use the mid tier as a backup and decline the acceptance anyway. In any case, thanks for making that point. I'll be focusing especially hard on those if I get the secondaries.