MD PREMED- HELP

[Heisenberg of BreakingBad]

19 year old, Pakistani immigrant (moved to US in 2006)
Languages: Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, can read Arabic

GPA: 3.71 overall, sGPA: 3.56
Sophomore (spring semester)
School pop.= 10,000 in the south
Involvement-

• Founded a club, Vice President- Fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity (2 years)
• Senate- Freshman Year
• Tribunal Justice- Junior Year
• Vice President of Biological honors society- Jr. year
• Trip Leader- Fall Break Trip for volunteering to some non-profit organization- Jr. year
• close to 1000 hours volunteer service in past 4 years
• Presidential program at school
• Volunteered at clinic
• Shadowed 100 hours
• Work Study student
• Director of Pre-Medical Programs- Health Society (1 year)
• Peer mentored pre med students
• member of 2 honors societies
• LOTS of roles in religious community which involve leadership camps and community service
• Shadowed business mogul in community through president's program
• Trip to Washington D.C., worked at D.C. Central Kitchen
• Trinidad and Tobago, Habitat for Humanity (December 2016)

The things I have "jr. year" by are set in stone.

I would like some feedback on what I need to improve on and where I should start.
By Fall 2016, I will have taken all pre-med courses besides Physics 1 and 2. My goal is to maintain leadership positions and graduate by 2018. I am a Biology major.

Please do not hesitate to critique me. I want to know what kind of leadership roles I should take on, what EC activities I should take, what kind of REALISTIC GPA I should have in time for interviews, what kinds of awards should I be pushing for..etc.

My Goal- to get into a good med school (Top 20 in the U.S., Georgetown, Vanderbilt, UCLA, WashU, Northwestern, Stanford, Harvard)

What are my chances?

P.s. I am hoping to start a charity summer of my Junior year. Please give me some advice on this as well.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

My Goal- to get into a good med school (Top 20 in the U.S., Georgetown, Vanderbilt, UCLA, WashU, Northwestern, Stanford, Harvard)

You and every pre-med ever. And Georgetown isn't top 20. If you really want to get into a top 20 then get a 525 on the MCAT. Starting a charity is a good EC but make sure you follow it through. Medical schools won't care of you started one and then ditched it

 

[Heisenberg of BreakingBad]

You and every pre-med ever. And Georgetown isn't top 20. If you really want to get into a top 20 then get a 525 on the MCAT. Starting a charity is a good EC but make sure you follow it through. Medical schools won't care of you started one and then ditched it

What are some things I can do to stand out from the crowd? And yest, of course I would follow through with the charity. My moral upbringing would not let me otherwise

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

What are some things I can do to stand out from the crowd?

Win the Nobel prize. Honestly top schools are a crap shoot and standing out in that applicant pool is extremely difficult because everyone in it is exceptional.

 

[Heisenberg of BreakingBad]

Win the Nobel prize. Honestly top schools are a crap shoot and standing out in that applicant pool is extremely difficult because everyone in it is exceptional.

What are some other schools that you know that might be great seconds?

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

I'm out of my element on that one. @GrapesofRath ?

 

[AlphaBeta<3]

Become a rhodes scholar and youre a shoe in

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

A GPA/sGPA of 3.8+ will be sufficient for basically any school. The rest will be decided by MCAT. If your GPA and MCAT are up to par then you're in the final running. Id say a competitive MCAT for most of the places you listed would be around 37 or 519+ aka 98-99th percentile.

From there if your ECs are good (yours are pretty good), you will go to interview. From the interview pool, the people who are socially competent, professional, and can string their ideas together well will stand a good chance at acceptance.

Oh yea, and most of the top 20 are research intensive. You currently lack research, which will be detrimental to an application to such schools.


Now, why the schools you listed? Why "top 20"? Why not top 30? or top 10? The schools you listed have basically nothing in common with each other, aside from being prestigious research universities. If your goal is to get into a "good medical school" as you say, then you want to step back and realize they're all good. There are a few exceptions (Northstate, for example), but by and large they will all offer very similar levels of opportunity and clinical training.

Now if you were an uber-researcher, aiming for academics, then I kinda get the whole prestige thing. But your profile suggests an interest more in community service and helping others, not research. So if you end up with the stats and numbers to go to Stanford, by all means go. But don't fall into the trap of thinking you need to go to one of these schools to achieve your goals and be happy. You can be a damn good doctor, one of the best in the country, coming from pretty much any accredited US School.

 

[Skydive Fox]

The most glaringly obvious thing to improve is GPA. Your sGPA is barely on par with low and mid-tier MD's currently, let alone Top 20's. Unless you're rolling near 4.0 and 520+ MCAT with spanking EC's, shooting for only top programs can be a disaster, especially if prestige is your only motivator. Pretty much any med school will equip you with the tools to do charity work, which seems to be your intention.

Paray peh tavaja do, yar. Bekar GPA keh saht kahein dakhla nay hoy guh

 

[Goro]

Volunteer in a hospice or nursing home

Do service to others less fortunate than yourself.

What are some things I can do to stand out from the crowd? And yest, of course I would follow through with the charity. My moral upbringing would not let me otherwise