Most Likely Reapp- Pick at my App and Help Me w/ my School List!

[dazedandconfused__]

Hey! I posted in the WAMC but I figured I may have better luck in the reapp section (although I'll also post to DO just in case). I'm currently in the current admissions cycle but I only had one II that I just got a post-II hold from, so things are not looking too good. I'm currently planning on taking one year off and then reapplying in the 2023-2024 cycle. SUPER open to both MD and DO schools; this time around I had only applied to 22 MDs with a top-heavy list and I am definitely not taking any chances in two years lmao. I'd love some help to see if I'm missing anything I should be covering in my gap years off and potential help into a school list! I know

1. cGPA 3.72, sGPA 3.53. There's generally an upwards trend (I'd averaged a cGPA 3.93 and a sGPA 3.85 for the past year), although the last term had been rough on me (averaged around a 3.5) and I have only one term left before graduating although I don't anticipate any of my classes being hard. Dean's list for 2 (maybe three?) out of 4 years.

2. MCAT 516 (128/129/129/130)

3. MA resident

4. ORM, east asian

5. T10 private undergraduate, level 2 on the WARs scale. Humanities major- I'm currently a senior so I applied with no gap year.

Here's where everything starts to fall apart lol. I live with immunocompromised folks so the grand majority of my clinical hours are remote- 500 hours paid clinical in a hospital branch/clinical research initiative that works with high-risk lower-income patients, and then 500 hours volunteering with a cancer nonprofit speaking to newly diagnosed cancer patients/offering mental support. Both of these are unfortunately remote About 50 hours as an EMT in person before I had to move back home from an OOS institution because of COVID. 1050 total hours, 1000 hours remote and 50 in-person.

500 hours as a research assistant in an international cancer research fellowship, and then about 250 hours as a research assistant in a social sciences lab on campus. 1 publication from the former. 750 hours total, all in person.

Here's also where things start to crumble lmao. I only have about 25 hours of shadowing, split up from my international research assistant position at a hospital. It was split up between general internal medicine, oncology, and then their traditional holistic medicine branch that works closely with the oncology branch. The region I worked at is fairly rural so the trust in western medicine is still a work in progress- having that traditional branch in conjunction with western medicine makes a lot of patients feel better about their healthcare. The trainwreck continues- I literally have no non-clinical volunteering. Unless that "clinical" volunteering opportunity actually counts as nonclinical since it wasn't a hospital and was instead a nonprofit working with patients? i TaLkEd aBoUt mY SiDe HuStLe (I take damaged clothing and take them apart and make them into new things!) iN mY WoRk AnD aCtiViTiEs SeCtiOn but I don't have many non-academic/non-clinical hobbies as my side hustle takes up most of my free time.

Now for my gap years, I already have multiple interviews for several **in-person** clinical opportunities and am still spam applying, including specific clinical gap year programs (I guess uncertified medical assistants with additional support in the med school process), clinical care techs, and ophthalmic techs because of my previous EMT cert. I was probably going to focus on getting some actual in-person clinical hours with patients on the weekdays, and then on the weekends focus on broadening my volunteering! At the time I'll be applying, I expect to have at least 1500 more clinical hours that are in-person, and hopefully at least another 100 hours of volunteering. But if you all think I could be using these two years better, please let me know!

My LoRs this year were likely okay, but not outstanding. I can't do much to change my academic LoRs (I'd say most of them were around a 4/5, with maybe one 3/5 LoR) but I definitely can change my extracurricular LoRs! The volunteering I'm doing right now is amazing and I know they'd write a great LoR. I also hope to get another LoR from whatever clinical opportunity I end up doing!

My school list this year was on the small side and also laughably top-heavy. I came into this cycle so incredibly uninformed that I was completely unaware of the concept of low-yield schools and a lot of my schools were low-yield as a result. Here's my list for this year as follows, alongside any decisions made if they've been made yet. Condolences in advance.

UMass (IS)
BU (R)
Tufts
UConn
NYULISOM (my only II, post-II hold)
Brown (R)
Dartmouth (R)
Emory
USC
Kaiser Permanente
UCSF
Case Western
Mayo Clinic (R)
Mt. Sinai (R)
UVM
Quinnipiac
Albany
UW (R)
Georgetown (R)
UMN (R)
Albert Einstein
Wake Forest

For the next admissions cycle I'll be in, I'm definitely going to reapply to NYULISOM as it was (and still is) my top choice as well as my only II. I'm also going to apply to UMass but jesus I wish we had a less competitive state school ( Everything else I am super open and flexible towards. I'd prefer to stay on the east coast, but honestly, I'll literally go anywhere at this point outside of the carribbean. I really appreciate all of you and thanks for reading all of this!

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[Darrow O'Lykos]

I don't think you need to wait another year to reapply. You admittedly applied to a lot of reach schools. Just be realistic on the schools to which you apply. Your lower sGPA may hold you back slightly (especially from the most competitive of places), but you ought to be able to garner some more interviews with a better list. Include some reputable DO schools and you'll have a good chance at matriculating next summer.

Also I wouldn't worry about racking up any additional clinical experiences. Probably wouldn't hurt to get involved volunteering now in something and dedicate some time to it over the next 6 months prior to re-applying (which, I'd still recommend applying this upcoming cycle).

Also FWIW, without significant change to your application, there isn't much reason to re-apply to schools that rejected you Pre-Interview, unless you applied extremely late this cycle. Same logic applies to schools that reject you post-II, however the fact that you are a post-interview hold rather than post-interview rejection outright helps and warrants reapplying there. Additionally, you should probably drops some of the uber-competitive schools from your list (UCSF, Kaiser, USC--also UW is regionally biased so you should not apply there). Add more like TCU, FIU, and the like on the MD side and PCOM and like on the DO side.

 

[whenthelightsgo_OUT]

1) Remove your international shadowing completely from your app. Replace it with primary care shadowing under American physicians.
2) Remove your 1000 hours of remote "clinical experiences". Or, at the very least, decrease the amount of hours (I think 100-200 is sufficient). They are not clinical experiences. They offer minimal value to your app; I suspect readers are also turned off by these activities.
3) Once you have a clinical job (with plenty of physician and patient interaction (both are needed)), you don't need clinical volunteering, as it is redundant. Instead, get plenty of diverse non-clinical volunteering experiences and branch out.
4) Rewrite your essays & simplify your activity descriptions.

I disagree with the previous poster and do not recommend applying this upcoming 2022 cycle, unless you have accumulated solid clinical experience & non-clinical volunteering during your senior year.

 

[Darrow O'Lykos]

I disagree with the previous poster and do not recommend applying this upcoming 2022 cycle, unless you have accumulated solid clinical experience & non-clinical volunteering during your senior year.

Reported average hours for clinical shadowing and non-clinical volunteering for matriculants tend to be pretty low (AKA achievable within one semester even if not ideal). Agreed that OP needs to get something more before re-applying, but there's no reason to not get that over the next 6 months and re-apply. Putting off applying another entire year is highly unnecessary, especially if OP's coursework this semester isn't arduous and they are able to do something substantial this semester.

I will say though, OP needs to strive for a 4.0 regardless this semester. Taking another dip in the grade trends will hurt, even if it is due to dedicating more time to clinical and volunteering hours.

 

[dazedandconfused__]

Reported average hours for clinical shadowing and non-clinical volunteering for matriculants tend to be pretty low (AKA achievable within one semester even if not ideal). Agreed that OP needs to get something more before re-applying, but there's no reason to not get that over the next 6 months and re-apply. Putting off applying another entire year is highly unnecessary, especially if OP's coursework this semester isn't arduous and they are able to do something substantial this semester.

I will say though, OP needs to strive for a 4.0 regardless this semester. Taking another dip in the grade trends will hurt, even if it is due to dedicating more time to clinical and volunteering hours.

Thanks for your reply! Absolutely agree with getting a 4.0 this term, although it definitely won't be too hard with my courseload as I'm just finishing up with my humanities major.

Our school is actually on the quarter system (I guess that partially gives away which school I'm at) and I graduate a quarter early so between April and June I'm basically doing nothing. That being said, since I'm still in college and I've come to terms with taking years off to really improve my application, taking two years off absolutely is something that I'm fine with, especially just in case something goes south and I don't have a 4.0 for this term. Luckily my GPA has largely stabilized (the 3.5 brought my GPA down from a 3.74 to a 3.72, and my sGPA actually increase from the time of application and it turns out I have more like a 3.56 than a 3.52, although 0.04 is trivial), but I definitely agree that I'd preferably want an upwards trend.

The fact that I'm graduating early definitely makes things a little tricky in terms of employment, although I'm sure I can figure something out in terms of volunteering for the time I have left in the city my university is at before I return home. I'll definitely try to spend those 2 months effectively, regardless of whether I apply this cycle or next cycle, the latter honestly being more likely.

What DO schools would you recommend looking into? Again, I was comically unprepared for this cycle, and blindly following my advising board (which did not talk about DO in the slightest and even mildly discouraged applying DO) has not left me with good results LOL. I was looking into NYIT and TouroNY as well as UNE but I am so new to the DO process that I'd love your feedback!

 

[dazedandconfused__]

1) Remove your international shadowing completely from your app. Replace it with primary care shadowing under American physicians.
2) Remove your 1000 hours of remote "clinical experiences". Or, at the very least, decrease the amount of hours (I think 100-200 is sufficient). They are not clinical experiences. They offer minimal value to your app; I suspect readers are also turned off by these activities.
3) Once you have a clinical job (with plenty of physician and patient interaction (both are needed)), you don't need clinical volunteering, as it is redundant. Instead, get plenty of diverse non-clinical volunteering experiences and branch out.
4) Rewrite your essays & simplify your activity descriptions.

I disagree with the previous poster and do not recommend applying this upcoming 2022 cycle, unless you have accumulated solid clinical experience & non-clinical volunteering during your senior year.

Thank you! I really appreciate your blunt honesty on this.

Regarding "removing" the intl shadowing completely, I'm guessing you're recommending to gain some US shadowing and not flat out lying on the application correct? If so, that's something I absolutely plan on doing! My orthopedic surgeon I know would be happy to let me shadow him once I'm back in my homestate and I have every intention on following through on that. Or is there something about primary care that you specifically think would help my application?

As for decreasing the amount of hours, is there any reason why saying the 1000 hours (which is truly the amount of time I put in, whether or not it was actually a good use of my time is another story but with COVID and immunocompromised family members I did the best I could) looks bad instead of 100-200 if I'll have >1000 hours of in-person clinical hours from 2 gap years?

I absolutely agree on the redundancy of clinical volunteering and clinical paid employment- thank you! I have two months of free time in the city my university is in before heading back to my homestate in conjunction to the relatively empty schedule I have right now for the next 3.5 months, where I'll hopefully be able to find some sort of short-term volunteering opportunity. I'll of course supplement that as well once I'm back in my homestate and formally on gap years.

I am definitely leaning towards applying on the 2023 cycle just because I'm not sure if I'm logistically (in terms of hours, experience, and LoRs) or emotionally ready for applying again in a couple months. Although my EC LoRs were likely fine, I do have some concerns as to how effective they actually were just because both of my EC LoRs submitted them late to my committee and they seemed to forget they were due entirely despite my reminding them. Taking two years off at a formal clinical job would also give me some leeway for obtaining better LoRs too!

 

[whenthelightsgo_OUT]

1) International shadowing is worthless, you are applying in the U.S. It offers zero value to the app itself. You need primary care shadowing because the majority of medical students end up in a primary care specialty. Ortho is not necessary.

2) "whether or not it was actually a good use of my time". This is critical, because readers can see through this. And also, this is not clinical experience. If you want to put it in, that's fine, but personally, it doesn't impress me as a reader and only makes me question your priorities in life.

You have 50 hours of EMTing as your only clinical experience, it's no surprise you didn't get any love.

BUT with clinical experience and non-clinical volunteering... you can get T20 offers in 2 years (your MCAT is stellar and your GPA is fine). You should still apply DO regardless... because it's the same **** at the end of the day, and you should always increase your chances of matriculating. Apply NYITCOM, UNECOM, PCOM, LECOM, CCOM, AZCOM, Touro, DMU.... there are plenty of reputable DO schools.

 

[dazedandconfused__]

1) International shadowing is worthless, you are applying in the U.S. It offers zero value to the app itself. You need primary care shadowing because the majority of medical students end up in a primary care specialty. Ortho is not necessary.

2) "whether or not it was actually a good use of my time". This is critical, because readers can see through this. And also, this is not clinical experience. If you want to put it in, that's fine, but personally, it doesn't impress me as a reader and only makes me question your priorities in life.

You have 50 hours of EMTing as your only clinical experience, it's no surprise you didn't get any love.

BUT with clinical experience and non-clinical volunteering... you can get T20 offers in 2 years (your MCAT is stellar and your GPA is fine). You should still apply DO regardless... because it's the same **** at the end of the day, and you should always increase your chances of matriculating. Apply NYITCOM, UNECOM, PCOM, LECOM, CCOM, AZCOM, Touro, DMU.... there are plenty of reputable DO schools.

Thanks for clarifying! I absolutely understand your points made re: 1) and 2). I'll definitely start looking around for primary care shadowing as I agree that my only shadowing should not be abroad. And although I was working in my circumstances during COVID, I'm onboard with the fact that remote experiences mean little in comparison to actual in-person experiences. (I laughed re the "questioning your priorities in life" part lmao) I don't know if I'll fully remove either (the intl shadowing actually came up in my one interview multiple times and seemed to interest multiple interviewers), but I definitely agree with your points that those two definitely should not be the primary experiences tha tI'll be highlighting in any part of my application or in any top 3 W/A section in two years!

I've been burned by my school list as of this year (of course, because of everything you mentioned above- Seriously questioning my advising board for strongly recommending that I apply this year lmao) so I definitely wasn't expecting to hear the part about the T20 offers! At this point I'd be happy going anywhere apart from the Carribbean , but I guess that's encouraging to hear. I was 100% intending on applying to NYITCOM, Touro, and UNECOM so it's good to hear that I wasn't too off the mark regarding all of that. I'll look into the other ones too. I appreciate you! Thanks so much for your feedback.