update: ACCEPTED!
I read the sticky and have an "excellent" GPA and MCAT, but my research is iffy. Here are my stats so far:
Background: middle class white male
Year: junior (almost senior, applying in June) at a top 50 large public university
Majors: Physics and Biochemistry.
GPA: 4.00 (118 hours taken at this university at end of this semester)
MCAT: 41 with a breakdown for P/V/B of 14/13/14
-200+ hours of medical volunteering with significant patient interaction for 3 years
-100+ hours of non medical community volunteering for 1 year
-100+ hours of shadowing multiple doctors over the years. Consistent during the summer.
-A leader in a church for two years, very time intensive and I have done a lot with this club.
-I have been a TA for 4 classes and have had significant teaching experiences
-Have been involved in many other clubs and activities, and have been on medical mission trips
-Won multiple awards/scholarships from essay writing. Mostly about books I've read.
Now for my research. I had been desperately looking for research since I was a first semester freshman. I was constantly identifying professors in basic science fields, reading their research and then sending emails with my resume etc. Every email listing a research opportunity I responded to and applied for etc. After having emailed around 40 professors and interviewed for multiple things and still not having a research position, I became even more desperate. I started just walking into professors offices if they didn't respond to my emails and then asking them in person. After doing this about 15 times I finally got a research position in protein research in biochemistry at the end of my sophomore year. I have worked very hard at this position and will have a strong letter of rec from my professor in this, but I will only have 1 year of research at the time of applying.
My research has been very independent though. I am not supervised by anyone and have had to design my own protein expression scheme, learn multiple types of spectroscopy to study the protein, learn how to program so that I could write data analysis programs (other people in my group now use these programs) and have generally been pretty productive. Additionally, I have trained a grad student and two post docs on how to purify proteins, do pcr, develop mutagenic primers, do spectroscopy etc. I will hopefully have a first author publication at the end of summer, but I want to apply in June.
Know that I have always been strongly interested in medicine and basic science and that is the reason I want to even pursue an MD/PhD, but I would rather be an MD versus not having an MD/PhD acceptance anywhere. So I am wondering whether it is even worth applying to MD/PhD programs with my current situation and being at a disadvantage for the MD only application.
TLDR: I have really good numbers and pretty decent volunteering etc. But my research, while productive, I have only done for 1 year. Should I even bother applying to MD/PhD programs or just stick to MD programs?
I read the sticky and have an "excellent" GPA and MCAT, but my research is iffy. Here are my stats so far:
Background: middle class white male
Year: junior (almost senior, applying in June) at a top 50 large public university
Majors: Physics and Biochemistry.
GPA: 4.00 (118 hours taken at this university at end of this semester)
MCAT: 41 with a breakdown for P/V/B of 14/13/14
-200+ hours of medical volunteering with significant patient interaction for 3 years
-100+ hours of non medical community volunteering for 1 year
-100+ hours of shadowing multiple doctors over the years. Consistent during the summer.
-A leader in a church for two years, very time intensive and I have done a lot with this club.
-I have been a TA for 4 classes and have had significant teaching experiences
-Have been involved in many other clubs and activities, and have been on medical mission trips
-Won multiple awards/scholarships from essay writing. Mostly about books I've read.
Now for my research. I had been desperately looking for research since I was a first semester freshman. I was constantly identifying professors in basic science fields, reading their research and then sending emails with my resume etc. Every email listing a research opportunity I responded to and applied for etc. After having emailed around 40 professors and interviewed for multiple things and still not having a research position, I became even more desperate. I started just walking into professors offices if they didn't respond to my emails and then asking them in person. After doing this about 15 times I finally got a research position in protein research in biochemistry at the end of my sophomore year. I have worked very hard at this position and will have a strong letter of rec from my professor in this, but I will only have 1 year of research at the time of applying.
My research has been very independent though. I am not supervised by anyone and have had to design my own protein expression scheme, learn multiple types of spectroscopy to study the protein, learn how to program so that I could write data analysis programs (other people in my group now use these programs) and have generally been pretty productive. Additionally, I have trained a grad student and two post docs on how to purify proteins, do pcr, develop mutagenic primers, do spectroscopy etc. I will hopefully have a first author publication at the end of summer, but I want to apply in June.
Know that I have always been strongly interested in medicine and basic science and that is the reason I want to even pursue an MD/PhD, but I would rather be an MD versus not having an MD/PhD acceptance anywhere. So I am wondering whether it is even worth applying to MD/PhD programs with my current situation and being at a disadvantage for the MD only application.
TLDR: I have really good numbers and pretty decent volunteering etc. But my research, while productive, I have only done for 1 year. Should I even bother applying to MD/PhD programs or just stick to MD programs?
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