WAMC/Help with School List, 3.80 sGPA/524 MCAT, ORM

[shatri]

Hello! I posted here in the fall (without a school list) and received some very helpful advice, so I thought I'd post here again now that I have a tentative school list. Planning on applying this June.

1. Major: Chemical Engineering, graduating this spring
2. cGPA and sGPA as calculated by AMCAS or AACOMAS
   1. cGPA: 3.87, sGPA: 3.80
3. MCAT: 524 (131/130/131/132)
4. State of residence: CA
5. ORM
6. Undergraduate institution: Top 20 public school
7. Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer)
   1. 600+ hrs paid EMT
   2. 100+ hrs hospital volunteering, various departments
8. Research experience and productivity
   1. 400+ hrs undergraduate research in engineering, no pubs or posters but am confident I can speak well about this experience/my experiments/research goals if asked about in an interview
   2. Would love to find a clinical research position during my gap year (originally was planning on continuing my EMT job or finding an ER tech job, but I think I would enjoy research more)
9. Shadowing experience and specialties represented
   1. 40+ combined hours with several specialties
   2. Would love to get more shadowing, but it's not my first priority at the moment and I don't have too much time outside of school and work
10. Non-clinical volunteering
    1. 40 hrs registration at blood drives
    2. 50 hrs sorting/preparing food at a soup kitchen
11. Other extracurricular activities
    1. Leadership position of a student-run orchestra for 2+ years, run orchestra rehearsal and plan concerts
    2. Leadership position of a cultural club, help organize social activities and maintain club website
    3. Tutoring elementary school kids who are struggling in school (remote position)
12. Relevant honors or awards
    1. Dean's Honors
13. Anything else not listed you think might be important
    1. Didn't decide on medicine until last year, so my clinical experience and volunteering are probably not up to par. Because I didn't decide on medicine until after it was too late to switch out of my major, my course load every term was very heavy, which did not leave much time for extracurriculars.
    2. My recommendation letters are not looking too hot right now:
       1. Supervisor at my EMT job, should be generally positive but since they don't accompany me to calls, they probably won't be able to write anything too specific
       2. PI of research lab (they've been out of town this month so I actually haven't asked yet)
       3. Molecular biotech professor (engineering department) - took their class for two terms and was very active during class discussions, came to office hours, etc but I don't think they can speak to anything besides my passion for the subject/personality.
       4. Chemical engineering professor - it's a letter ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
       5. I will probably have to ask another of my previous professors, but unfortunately I have not formed a meaningful relationship with any other instructor. If I need a third instructor letter, I'm thinking of asking one of my foreign language professors (I've taken this language at UCLA for three years), but none of them are native English speakers so that's an additional concern. Additionally, I'm worried that some medical schools won't accept letters from the engineering department as "science". I haven't taken a BCPM class since my sophomore year, and all of those classes had more than 200 students and were online.
14. Current school list (aiming for around 25 schools in the end)
    1. UC Irvine
       UCLA
       UCSD
       UC Riverside (no regional connection)
       UC Davis (no regional connection)
       Loma Linda
       Kaiser
       USC Keck
       Emory
       Einstein
       Hofstra
       UVA
       Dartmouth
       Case Western
       Georgetown
       Loyola
       Albany
       Around 5ish hard reaches - actual schools flexible (right now I'm thinking Hopkins, Stanford, UCSF, Columbia, WashU)

Would greatly appreciate comments/edits to my school list. I'd love to stay in California if possible, but would really be happy if any school accepts me. Right now I've only been looking at MD, but I am open to adding some DO schools as well.

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[Mr.Smile12]

So we advised you about non-clinical volunteering because 90 hours in your original post was not enough. How's that going?

Did you look up the Medical schools with strong engineering programs? Carle or Texas A&M?

 

[Faha]

Remove Albany since they will "yield protect" with your stats. Also remove Georgetown and Loyola since they expect many more hours of non clinical volunteering than you have. You could add these schools:
Carle Illinois
Washington University (in St. Louis-almost a guaranteed interview with your stats)
Vanderbilt
Duke
Northwestern
U Michigan
Mount Sinai
Columbia
Cornell
UCSF

 

[shatri]

So we advised you about non-clinical volunteering because 90 hours in your original post was not enough. How's that going?

It's been tough, to be honest. I've done some volunteering here and there at food pantries and homeless shelters, but while school is in session I've basically only had one day a week open. I've found it wasn't super sustainable to drive to the closest homeless shelter (40+ mins away) every week, so right now non-clinical volunteering is on the back-burner until I graduate. Definitely planning on fixing that during my gap year, hopefully that isn't too late for the schools I'm looking at.

However, if remote volunteering would also count in this category, it's something I could consider (not sure what kind of volunteering would even have such a position though). Also, my main non-clinical activity right now is unpaid remote tutoring of elementary school students through a nonprofit organization... could I put this under volunteering if I wanted to? Also, considering the rest of my application, how many hours should I shoot for? It was my impression that the quality of the experience (or how well I can talk about it) would somewhat outweigh the number of hours.

Did you look up the Medical schools with strong engineering programs? Carle or Texas A&M?

Not yet! I'll check them out, thanks

Remove Albany since they will "yield protect" with your stats. Also remove Georgetown and Loyola since they expect many more hours of non clinical volunteering than you have. You could add these schools:

Thank you! Are there other schools known to yield protect that I should avoid?

 

[chilly_md]

It's been tough, to be honest. I've done some volunteering here and there at food pantries and homeless shelters, but while school is in session I've basically only had one day a week open. I've found it wasn't super sustainable to drive to the closest homeless shelter (40+ mins away) every week, so right now non-clinical volunteering is on the back-burner until I graduate. Definitely planning on fixing that during my gap year, hopefully that isn't too late for the schools I'm looking at.

However, if remote volunteering would also count in this category, it's something I could consider (not sure what kind of volunteering would even have such a position though). Also, my main non-clinical activity right now is unpaid remote tutoring of elementary school students through a nonprofit organization... could I put this under volunteering if I wanted to? Also, considering the rest of my application, how many hours should I shoot for? It was my impression that the quality of the experience (or how well I can talk about it) would somewhat outweigh the number of hours.

If you don't have it on your application, schools will not know about it. Update letters won't help if you have few hours in an area to start with. If the soup kitchen you were at earlier is near you, you can do that during the weekends. Consider dropping your other obligations on campus, especially if you are going to graduate this semester (the leadership roles) and someone else needs time to transition in.

Remote tutoring is not really what schools are looking for. It more fits the tutoring/teaching category and most schools want to see you get out of your comfort zone. I suggest all applicants should aim for 150+ hours of non-clinical volunteering to the undeserved. You usually need around that much to have a quality experience and not just something you went to now and then. WUSTL and Vandy focus heavily on stats though as Faha said, so you have high chances of an II there.

You should not apply to UCR without regional connections. They are very mission-focused about serving the IE.

 

[Faha]

None of the other schools on your list would yield protect.

 

[MyOdyssey]

It's been tough, to be honest. I've done some volunteering here and there at food pantries and homeless shelters, but while school is in session I've basically only had one day a week open. I've found it wasn't super sustainable to drive to the closest homeless shelter (40+ mins away) every week, so right now non-clinical volunteering is on the back-burner until I graduate. Definitely planning on fixing that during my gap year, hopefully that isn't too late for the schools I'm looking at.

However, if remote volunteering would also count in this category, it's something I could consider (not sure what kind of volunteering would even have such a position though). Also, my main non-clinical activity right now is unpaid remote tutoring of elementary school students through a nonprofit organization... could I put this under volunteering if I wanted to? Also, considering the rest of my application, how many hours should I shoot for? It was my impression that the quality of the experience (or how well I can talk about it) would somewhat outweigh the number of hours.


Not yet! I'll check them out, thanks


Thank you! Are there other schools known to yield protect that I should avoid?

Have you considered doing Americorp in your gap year?