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[username1000]

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[Mr.Smile12]

Hey everybody! I was scheduled to take my MCAT March 27th and that was cancelled and then I rescheduled for April 25th and that was cancelled, so now I am taking it on June 20th. This means I will be applying without an MCAT score so I need help figuring out a school list. I realize that many people say it is best to apply to a throwaway school and wait for your score, but I won't get my score until July. Many schools have said that they will look at your application and give you a secondary prior to receiving an MCAT score due to the situation. So, I think it would be best to apply to schools when I submit so I will be early. I appreciate any advice on my school list or about my application!

1. cGPA and sGPA: 4.0
2. MCAT score(s) and breakdown (see above): On my AAMC full lengths I have ranged between 518-522 (I have 2 more months to study)
3. State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US): CA Resident
4. Ethnicity and/or race: White
5. Undergraduate institution or category: UC Berkeley
6. Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer): ~500 hours of volunteering in a hospital in many different departments and ~200 hours in a leadership position in that volunteer program
7. Research experience and productivity: 700 hours of wet lab research from second semester freshman year to second semester junior year; 450 hours of clinical research for Cystic fibrosis (which is a disease that my family has been impacted by and connects to why I decided to go into medicine) and a 2nd author publication from my CF research
8. Shadowing experience and specialties represented: 60 hours from wide range of specialties including plastic surgery, pulm, OBGYN, general pediatrics, pediatric surgery (and more from my clinical experience in the hospital - I was allowed to observe deliveries and procedures while in Labor and Delivery, trauma resuscitations while in the ER, etc.)
9. Non-clinical volunteering: 200 hours of the Cystic fibrosis foundation volunteering and 50 hours in soup kitchen
10. Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc): 240 hours of TAing for anatomy and physiology class for 2 semesters; 300 hours of freelance tutoring for high school students
11. Relevant honors or awards: 4 scholarships from my work in the CF community/grades; summa cum laude; dean's list; a few service awards
12. Additional stuff: I have done competitive dance and acrobatics since I was very young and continued training in college, invited to and attended prestigious intensives during the summers.

Thanks everybody for the help!

Your MCAT score is going to determine how high you can target. Practice scores are meaningless, and too many times have people said they should have scored higher based on their practice scores.

That said, without an MCAT score, you've got the necessary hours for shadowing and satisfactory number of hours of clinical volunteering. Your descriptions of these activities is going to make the difference as well as your ability to gain insight into health care. More importantly is to determine how much you have extended yourself to help vulnerable populations and really stretched yourself beyond your own comfort zone. Your extracurriculars comprise a lot of teaching, but you have your light exposure to soup kitchen work.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thank you for the insight! Yes, I have been volunteering in the soup kitchen for over a year now (since last February), but it has been cancelled due to the virus so I will probably not be able to get anymore hours prior to applying. My CF foundation work actually focuses on CFers in underserved areas and ensuring they have access to the resources they need.

Since I am going to have to apply before I receive my MCAT score, what do you recommend for the schools that I apply to?

They'll take a holistic approach to your application to see how it seems to match their mission and curricula. Therefore you need to do your best to research them to see if their curricula, offerings, and mission match what you want from a medical school. Network with current students through SDN or the AMSA network. Your GPA is not going to be the reason why a school will not consider you for interview; it will be your presentation in your essays, letters, and experiences so make sure those are reviewed heavily. As I stated earlier, your own insights into healthcare will be a big factor.

Outside of that, the usual things: how far from your family do you want to be? How much cost of attendance are you willing to stomach considering most financial aid packages will be loan-based?

 

[Goro]

Thank you so much! I will make sure to look into all of their websites.

@Faha @Goro @gonnif What do you think I should do in this situation? What schools should I apply to without an mcat score?

Even in the current environment, I cannot recommend a list of schools until I see an MCAT score.

Your list with 500 score will be very different from one with a 518. And by the way, many people get high scores on practice but do worse on the real thing oh, so I never take practice scores into account

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Remember the endgame will require you to have a strong MCAT score regardless. We don't know for sure how schools will process your application without an MCAT score if there is still not an official score by the time you are finished with your interviews. Any offer you get could be subject to getting a score above a certain threshold (if that's allowed to be so stated), so you could be waitlisted until an MCAT is taken and reported. That's why I gave you my advice on what you can do now.