MD School List Advice

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Stats:
34Q (12 PS, 10 V, 12 BS)
cGPA/sGPA: 4.0/4.0
Major: Biomedical Engineering
AZ Resident

ECs:

Clinical Experience
Volunteer in ER, 4 hours per week since January, ongoing
No Research, Negligible shadowing

Paid Employment
Yogurt Shop Evening Team Lead -- 6 months
Science/Math writer/consultant for a test prep company -- 3 months, ongoing
Chess Tutor -- 1 year, ongoing

Non-Clinical Volunteering
Little League Baseball Umpire -- 12 hours per week for 5 years
Assistant Coach for my old high school's Academic Decathlon team -- 2 years, ongoing
Scoring Chair for Arizona Academic Decathlon -- 2 years, ongoing
Event Coordinator for The World Scholar's Cup -- 1 year, ongoing

Hobbies
Combat robotics club -- 3 years, ongoing

Other
Dean's list every term, National Merit Scholar, received a scholarship for being "an outstanding student in the life sciences field"

School List

Here's what I have so far:

Albany
Mayo
Medical College of Wisconsin
Oregon Health and Sciences
Rosalind/Franklin
U of Arizona--PHX
U of Arizona--Tucson
U of Minnesota--TC (strong ties)
USC (Keck)
Wright State

Those are 10. I'd like to add 5 more to get to 15 just to be on the safe side. Any suggestions and/or comments about my current list? Any feedback is appreciated!

Consider Ohio State, Cincinnati. They take a decent # of OOS students if I recall correctly.

And just noticed that USC requires 30 hours of humanities. As an engineering student, that's pretty much impossible since my major consists of 120 non-humanity hours :P

So that's out. Anybody have some more suggestions? I added OSU to the list so I'm still at 10.

Originally Posted by BigBlueBear

Stats:
Clinical Experience
Volunteer in ER, 4 hours per week since January, ongoing
No Research, Negligible shadowing

This will hurt you badly. The thing that is a requirement by every adcom is that you need to prove your interest in this field that you are about to devote the rest of your life to. Looking at your application, it just seems like you are a pretty smart person who just thought one day, "Hmm, maybe I'll go to medical school." This frankly isn't good enough for adcoms. Your numbers are great and non-clinical activities are ok, but being able to survive medical school is just one thing they're looking for. They're also looking for traits that are favorable in the next generation of doctors. Your hospital volunteering is on the right track but may be too little too late. Luckily, you still have some time to fit some shadowing in before you submit your primary.

Originally Posted by nheit

This will hurt you badly. The thing that is a requirement by every adcom is that you need to prove your interest in this field that you are about to devote the rest of your life to. Looking at your application, it just seems like you are a pretty smart person who just thought one day, "Hmm, maybe I'll go to medical school." This frankly isn't good enough for adcoms. Your numbers are great and non-clinical activities are ok, but being able to survive medical school is just one thing they're looking for. They're also looking for traits that are favorable in the next generation of doctors. Your hospital volunteering is on the right track but may be too little too late. Luckily, you still have some time to fit some shadowing in before you submit your primary.

+1. Do yourself a favor and get on some shadowing ASAP. It would be a shame for someone with a great application like yours to go down the drain because of lack of shadowing. Don't underestimate this possibility because it can happen.

OP just get 30-40 hours of shadowing in the next ten days to two weeks and apply asap in June. You have a 34 on the MCAT, which is a great score (although it's below-average by SDN standards ), and you have a 4.0 in an engineering major. I think your ECs (chess tutor, combat robots) are quite unique. You'll be fine.

Originally Posted by psaric

Consider Ohio State, Cincinnati. They take a decent # of OOS students if I recall correctly.

I agree with my future classmate! I would also consider Vanderbilt and a couple of the New York schools like NYU and Albert Einstein.

I asked around family friends and finally got a pediatrician to agree to let me shadow him. However, I won't be able to start until mid-June, and I wanted to submit my AMCAS on June 5th...

Should I wait to submit AMCAS until later in June? Or just submit now and send in update letters?

Also, I have absolutely no interest in pediatrics (I hate kids). Is that a problem?

Originally Posted by weezynation

+1. Do yourself a favor and get on some shadowing ASAP. It would be a shame for someone with a great application like yours to go down the drain because of lack of shadowing. Don't underestimate this possibility because it can happen.

+2 I think schools like to reject 4.0 people just to say "we are a very selective school". Dont give them a reason...

Originally Posted by BigBlueBear

I asked around family friends and finally got a pediatrician to agree to let me shadow him. However, I won't be able to start until mid-June, and I wanted to submit my AMCAS on June 5th...

Should I wait to submit AMCAS until later in June? Or just submit now and send in update letters?

Also, I have absolutely no interest in pediatrics (I hate kids). Is that a problem?

No, find another shadowing gig right now. Like now. Even if it's just two days, that's 16-20 hours you'll have on your app. You could even wait until the second week of June to submit... gets with the ped and do like three days with him (24-30 hours) so you'll have 40-50 hours. You're a great applicant, don't screw the pooch on this one!

Alright, here is an update for me.

I have about 40 hours of shadowing now, ~30 with pediatrician and ~10 with a general practitioner. I'll be doing more soon but not before June 5th (when I will submit).

In mid-June I start volunteering in the burn center at a hospital to beef up my clinical experiences.

Here is my new list:


UA—Phoenix
UA—Tucson
Albany
Mayo
Medical College of Wisconsin
University of Minnesota
Rosalind-Franklin
Wright State
Oregon Health and Science
Keck @ USC
Rush
Boston University
Dartmouth
New York Medical College
University of Rochester
Jefferson Medical College
Warren Alpert (Brown)


Let me know if you think it's too top-heavy now (I added some that are reaches for me, I know), which ones I'm wasting my time on, which ones I should add, etc. Thanks!

Bump!