Advice for improving application

[Love for Music]

Hi everyone! I am a non-traditional applicant who is currently doing Teach for America (2nd year) and finishing up a masters in education. Graduated from undergrad in 2010. I hope to apply this upcoming cycle and would love your advice how to improve my application between now and summer. I want to aim for a top tier medical school (UChicago, UCSF), but I feel that compared to many applicants, my ECs are weak and wouldn't stand out. I have not yet taken the MCAT, but I teach biology, chemistry and physics so hopefully that foundation will help my score out.

I know I'm weak in the volunteering and in medical exposure. Any thoughts on this would be awesome. If I were to apply in 2014 instead, what recommendations do you have for improving my ECs?

Undergrad: state school (not top 50)
Major: biology
Masters: in-progress; education

Undergrad stats
cGPA: 3.8
sGPA: 3.7
Trend: pretty stable, nothing less than a B or a bad term.

MCAT: not yet taken; targeting June 2013 test date

1. Physician shadowing - 20 hours, aiming for 50+
2. Teach for America - finishing the 2nd year of my commitment
3. Research: 2 publications; 3 years paid undergrad researcher, 1 summer research internship at Stanford
4. Study abroad in Australia for 1 term

Thank you for stopping by! I appreciate any advice I can get

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[mcloaf]

Did you have any other ECs in undergrad? As you've listed it here, it looks like you only did research and shadowing. Did you have summer jobs or something? Or were you conducting research? The way you've listed things here makes it look like you were pretty checked out in UG other than research, then again if you were taking very heavy/difficult course loads (and have the transcript to back this up) it may not matter.

2 publications is awesome and will certainly be helpful for top schools.

I think TFA will go a long way towards making up for having relatively few ECs, especially non-clinical volunteering.

That being said, your app is really lacking clinical exposure. I know it's tough to find time for other things in TFA, but would you be able to volunteer a few hours every weekend at a local hospital or nursing home or something? I think anybody looking at your app right now would have serious reasons to question that you know what you're getting yourself into with medicine.

Your GPA is solid, so if you can score well on the MCAT you'd have a good shot as far as stats are concerned. I'd also be wary of trying to study for and take the MCAT while you're working full time with TFA. It can probably be done, but you'll need to feel it out and see if you're able to fit in enough time to study. If not it might be worth waiting rather than taking on too much and killing your score.

All in all I'd say things look great if you can perform well on the MCAT and get in some more clinical exposure by the time you apply. Hope that helps!

 

[Love for Music]

So I get that I could use some more medical exposure. Will shadowing suffice? Or should I think about doing something else in addition. My parents are physicians so I do know a bit about the field from their experiences.

Does anyone recommend that I think hard about doing some volunteer/non-paid work that is not medically related? I work a lot with inner city high school students, especially after school to mentor a few on their college applications and tutoring.