Chances in Michigan? 3.7 and 517 MCAT but bland ECs

[milkshaikh]

Hi folks,

I am a Michigan resident looking at applying to MD programs in next year's cycle (currently taking a gap year). I am happy with my stats (3.73 cGPA with strong upward trend; 517 MCAT) but I feel the rest of my application is not very competitive. My academic reference letters are quite mediocre as I didn't have a personal relationship with my professors, though I have good letters from a superior at my research positions and from a physician I scribe for. My ECs are pretty bland, with no long-term activity and nothing particularly standout. My ECs are:

Clinical volunteering: 150 hours over a summer in a pediatric clinic; not really a meaningful experience if I'm honest
Clinical work: Currently working as a scribe, hope to have at least 300 hours over a total of a year by application time
Research: About 300 hours over a year for a hospital with focus on mental health; no paper or presentation unfortunately
Non-clinical volunteering: Hope to have about 150 hours over one year by the time I apply, mostly at a local food bank/ help center for the homeless.
Shadowing: About 50 hours of shadowing
No explicit leadership experiences

Other than that, I don't really have anything. Are these ECs sufficient? If no, how significantly do they affect my chances? I'm hoping to apply to all schools in Michigan so those are my main concern. I also have strong ties to Ohio (attended school there from 4th grade till high school), so that could be an option.

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[Faha]

Your shadowing and clinical volunteering/employment hours are adequate. I suggest these schools with your stats:
U Michigan
Wayne State
Michigan State
Western Michigan
Oakland Beaumont
Central Michigan
Toledo
Ohio State
Medical College Wisconsin
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Hofstra
Einstein
Mount Sinai
New York Medical College
Hackensack
Vermont
Tufts
Boston University
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Wake Forest
USF Morsani
Miami

 

[Mr.Smile12]

If you graduate from an Ohio high school, that can help you with other Ohio public schools. You still should pay attention to mission fit. NEOMED is very focused on rural health and underserved communities.

 

[milkshaikh]

Your shadowing and clinical volunteering/employment hours are adequate. I suggest these schools with your stats:
U Michigan
Wayne State
Michigan State
Western Michigan
Oakland Beaumont
Central Michigan
Toledo
Ohio State
Medical College Wisconsin
Cincinnati
Pittsburgh
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Hofstra
Einstein
Mount Sinai
New York Medical College
Hackensack
Vermont
Tufts
Boston University
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Wake Forest
USF Morsani
Miami

Thank you for this! Would you say the rest of my ECs are also fine for these schools? Any glaring flaw I should try to correct before next cycle or should I just try to increase the hours? Thanks again!

 

[Faha]

Thank you for this! Would you say the rest of my ECs are also fine for these schools? Any glaring flaw I should try to correct before next cycle or should I just try to increase the hours? Thanks again!

Your ECs are fine with the hours you will have when you apply.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Quantity is fine, but quality is the difference maker. In this thread you haven't described your activities for us to make that call. If you believe it's bland, chances are so will others who will evaluate your application.

 

[milkshaikh]

Quantity is fine, but quality is the difference maker. In this thread you haven't described your activities for us to make that call. If you believe it's bland, chances are so will others who will evaluate your application.

That's a great point. Maybe I should describe my activities in a bit more detail:

150 hours over a summer, at a pediatric clinic: This is the most questionable of my activities as I didn't really get to do anything other than grunt work. Most of my work there was things like preparing exam rooms and escorting patients there, scanning patient documents for clinicians etc.

300 hours as a scribe over one year (by the time I apply): I'm currently working as a scribe for a team of colorectal surgeons. This is a more unique experience given the specialty I'm scribing for, and I've definitely learned a lot on the job about how clinicians actually think. I don't feel this EC is bland necessarily, but I do know that scribing is not as unique these days.

300 hours researching over a year: This is a bit different to the standard research biology students might find themselves doing, and I'm unsure if that will help me or hurt me. I volunteered as a research assistant at a geriatric hospital in my city, mostly working on data collection and analysis for a survery research project looking at clinician (mostly clinical psychologists) approaches to diagnosing dementia and other cognitive impairments. It was a great experience and I actually learned very basic python in order to better display and work with data, but I didn't get any kind of poster or paper out of it. I'm a bit worried that the fact that I mostly worked with psychologists will mean this will be coded by ADCOMS as more of a psych EC than a medical one but I do feel this was a meaningful experience nonetheless.

150 hours over one year at a local homeless shelter/resource center: This is your run-of-the-mill community volunteering. I package produce donated by local grocery stories into care packages for anyone needing them, and often work to hand them out. This is a good experience in my local community but again pretty cookie cutter.

15 hours over a summer doing a bit of volunteering for a community health initiative tracking public opinion about COVID19 safety measures. I would be sent an excel file full of tweets and i'd basically have to categorize them depending on what opinion they expressed. This was a cool experience given that it involved the pandemic but quite short.

50 hours shadowing: This involves some time I spent shadowing one of the colorectal surgeons I scribed for (i.e., not time I've included under scribing), a local family doctor, and a local ophthalmologist. Again, nothing more to really say about this.

Additionally, I worked a retail job for two summers of my undergrad.

What do you think? I know its hard to look at a text block like this of activities, but do these seem bland? I'm struggling to honestly assess my activities because on the one hand I tried to choose activities that were thought to be favorable for admissions but on the other hand this means I have a lot of the same ECs as other applicants. I feel my stats make me competitive for most schools in my state of Michigan and some schools in Ohio so right now I'm trying to focus on ECs.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thousands of applicants have shadowing, scribing, and a variety of activities similar to yours. What makes them stand out is how the applicant reflects on the meaningfulness and impact of each experience. (I lecture about this a lot to prehealth applicants.) So again, the reason why you think the activity is bland is because you are unable to describe the impact of the experience on your motivation to pursue a healthcare career. This makes it sound like you're just doing this to fulfill admissions expectations, so it doesn't sound unique (i.e., it sounds "bland").

 

[Obnoxious Dad]

Hi folks,

I am a Michigan resident looking at applying to MD programs in next year's cycle (currently taking a gap year). I am happy with my stats (3.73 cGPA with strong upward trend; 517 MCAT) but I feel the rest of my application is not very competitive. My academic reference letters are quite mediocre as I didn't have a personal relationship with my professors, though I have good letters from a superior at my research positions and from a physician I scribe for. My ECs are pretty bland, with no long-term activity and nothing particularly standout. My ECs are:

Clinical volunteering: 150 hours over a summer in a pediatric clinic; not really a meaningful experience if I'm honest
Clinical work: Currently working as a scribe, hope to have at least 300 hours over a total of a year by application time
Research: About 300 hours over a year for a hospital with focus on mental health; no paper or presentation unfortunately
Non-clinical volunteering: Hope to have about 150 hours over one year by the time I apply, mostly at a local food bank/ help center for the homeless.
Shadowing: About 50 hours of shadowing
No explicit leadership experiences

Other than that, I don't really have anything. Are these ECs sufficient? If no, how significantly do they affect my chances? I'm hoping to apply to all schools in Michigan so those are my main concern. I also have strong ties to Ohio (attended school there from 4th grade till high school), so that could be an option.

I would be shocked if you weren't admitted to one of the MD Schools in Michigan. The average MCAT score among Michigan residents matriculating to an MD school last fall was a 511.3 and the average GPA was a 3.75. See this table:

https://www.aamc.org/media/6076/download?attachment

The State of Michigan accounts for approximately 3% of the US population but approximately 4% of the country's combined osteopathic and allopathic medical school seats. Furthermore, with the exception of the private school on the Western Michigan University campus, all of the med school seats in Michigan are state owned.

 

[voxveritatisetlucis]

Unlikely at Umich.

Look good for the others

 

[milkshaikh]

Thousands of applicants have shadowing, scribing, and a variety of activities similar to yours. What makes them stand out is how the applicant reflects on the meaningfulness and impact of each experience. (I lecture about this a lot to prehealth applicants.) So again, the reason why you think the activity is bland is because you are unable to describe the impact of the experience on your motivation to pursue a healthcare career. This makes it sound like you're just doing this to fulfill admissions expectations, so it doesn't sound unique (i.e., it sounds "bland").

Thanks everyone for your responses. I'm learning a lot. What I'm understanding (please correct me if I'm wrong!) is that there's nothing wrong with my activities themselves but I need to make sure I can speak passionately about them. I've tried to be as self-critical as possible (I know many applicants overrate their ECs, so was trying to avoid that in a WAMC post) when describing them above and I would obviously describe them differently on applications, but I do see what you mean. I think rather than just trying to add more activities or hours I need to spend the time between now and applications thinking about what I really got out of each EC.