Where to App? 3.99 cGPA/sGPA 35 MCAT

[bravemurderday]

.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[MadMedic704]

https://www.aamc.org/students/applying/requirements/msar/

 

[bravemurderday]

.

 

[bravemurderday]

.

 

[Catalystik]

Biochem major with a Math minor

For starters, I haven't done any clinical/non-clinical volunteering yet, and I've decided to take a gap year and get up to speed on that as well as taking my senior year to do all that.

ECs:

Research primarily, 3-4 non first author book chapters, 10 poster presentations and what not, in total 1.5 years in neuroscience. In chemical engineering I have 1 first author pub, 3 poster presentations, and 1 oral presentation.

Possibly going to say writing, cooking, and health/nutrition as my hobbies.

Besides all this, I'm thinking of volunteering at a hospice/palliative care centers, shadowing doctors (MD/PhD or non-MD, still need to make up my mind) and doing non-clinical volunteering as well (maybe some stuff for autism research).

Is the non-clinical volunteering necessary if I'm bogged down with research most of my days? It's going to be my main source of income during my gap year, and I dont feel like leeching off my folks.

So, in all, this is a big dump of a topic, so ill sum it up:

tl;dr

I need to apply somewhere for med school, where do you think Ill be competitive at, and further, what should I do to make myself more competitive?

With your strong research background, if you beef up your ECs over the next year, you can pretty much apply wherever you wish and have a decent shot. Top twenty schools have expectations for extraordinary achievements in many fields of endeavor. Since you have given yourself a year to catch up to the competition, and you have strict time limitations, you might stick to getting in 4 hours per week of clinical volunteering, 50 hours total of shadowing split among a few types of doc, including primary care, and some nonmedical community service (2-4 hours per week), maybe teaching ESL to immigrants or tutoring poor kids after school so as to cover two categories desirable on the application). Read these forums widely for ideas about expressing your leadership.

If you were to apply MD/PhD, BTW, you wouldn't be held to quite so strict a standard, EC-wise.

Consider for fit, for MD-only:

Wash U, UChicago
Harvard, Hopkins ,Yale, Northwestern,
Stanford, UMichigan, Columbia, Mt Sinai, Cornell, Duke, Pitt, Vanderbilt, Baylor,
Mayo, Case, UVirginia, UTSW, Upennsylvania,
Emory, Dartmouth, NYU, Ohio State, UCSF,
UCF, USCal, Boston, Tufts, SLU, Einstein, Rochester,

 

[bravemurderday]

.