School List? 3.62 cGPA, up trend, ~515 MCAT, weak clinical?

[intellectualedema]

Thanks in advance for your help!

cGPA: 3.623. sGPA: 3.73.
MCAT: Took 5/20, best guess around 515 (511 Kaplan and 517 AAMC Scored)

Low clinical experience. Only shadowed once, an orthopaedic surgeon for 4 hours, although it was an awesome experience. Hospital policy limited shadowing experiences to 4h, non-repeatable.Volunteering since January, 30-35 hours, currently trying to find somewhere to volunteer for the summer.My father is a physician involved in administration, and as such growing up I've seen healthcare inside and out. Just not much patient contact.

Non-clinical ECs are strong and varied, lots of non-clinical volunteering experience, leadership positions, etc. Not too worried about that.
1 year of research in neuroscience lab, being published soon, made major contributions. Poster presentation scheduled for fall.

For upward trend, I'd say it was more of a light switch. I had a 3.38 before I decided to change majors and try this whole med school thing. During the past two years including mostly pre-med coursework, I have had a pretty consistent 3.9. I'm in Biomedical Engineering at a reasonably strong state school.

I've got my application mostly done, submitting June 7th. Any advice on schools? Should I keep trying to get shadowing? Anyways, here's my list so far:

University of Connecticut (my state school)
Quinnipiac
UMass
Ohio State
NYU (huge stretch, but one of my LOR writers went there, and a few other reasons)
VCU
Edit: My sister lives in Texas and is in a PhD program there. Is that enough to have "ties to Texas" and consider applying to Texas schools?

I know I need more, which is where you guys hopefully come in. Thanks again in advance! I've learned so much on SDN.

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[Faha]

Your lack of shadowing and clinical volunteering will definitely hurt your chances. That is one aspect of your application you need to work on immediately. As for your schools forget about Texas schools since they accept few OOS applicants with your stats and few OOS applicants in general. Same for UMass. Connecticut, Quinnipiac and VCU are the only realistic schools on your list. Other schools you can add assuming your MCAT is over 508 include:
Vermont
Albany
New York Medical College
Penn State
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
GW
Georgetown
Oakland Beaumont
Western Michigan
Loyola
Rosalind Franklin
Medical College Wisconsin
St. Louis
Creighton
Tulane
Roseman (new school for 2017)
A good MCAT cannot completely compensate for the lack of patient contact.

 

[kopftonmd]

I really wouldn't apply to UMass - even though they're accepting OOS now, it's only 25 seats, and with your weaker clinical ECs, I think it's hard to see it working out.