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[cl75]

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[Faha]

You have several state public schools on your list that admit very few non residents with your GPA and no connection to the state. Rush is looking for applicants with many more non clinical hours than you have. I suggest these MD schools from your list:

1. University of Missouri - Columbia
2. University of Missouri - Kansas City
3. Saint Louis University
4. Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
5. Creighton
6. TCU-UNT
7. Medical College of Wisconsin
8. Western Michigan
9. Oakland Beaumont
10. NOVA MD
11. George Washington
12. Drexel
13. Temple
14. Jefferson
15. Penn State
16. Hackensack
17. New York Medical College
18. Albany
19. Vermont
20. Quinnipiac

For DO schools I suggest these:
KCU-COM
ATSU-KCOM
OSU-COM
DMU-COM
MU-COM
AZCOM
CCOM
TUNCOM
CUSOM
PCOM
NYITCOM
Touro-NY

 

[Mr.Smile12]

3600 hours as caregiver to a parent... I'm definitely sorry to hear and I'm guessing that it affected your early college grades. That said, I presume this is your parent, and, while your can include the experience in essays, it's not going to help you in the work and activities section as clinical experience.

 

[cl75]

3600 hours as caregiver to a parent... I'm definitely sorry to hear and I'm guessing that it affected your early college grades. That said, I presume this is your parent, and, while your can include the experience in essays, it's not going to help you in the work and activities section as clinical experience.

I was initially not sure if it would necessarily apply, but I found this info from the AAMC that listed being a caretaker as a way to gain clinical experience, so I figured that I would present it as such. But I appreciate you letting me know that schools may not see it as such.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I was initially not sure if it would necessarily apply, but I found this info from the AAMC that listed being a caretaker as a way to gain clinical experience, so I figured that I would present it as such. But I appreciate you letting me know that schools may not see it as such.

While I do refer a lot of people to read many articles from the AMCAS team, there are times the information they present is a bit misleading or is not aligned with the opinions/actions of admissions committee members (surprising since most people accuse SDN of misinformation, right?). Most of the committees I have worked with would be interested in the information as context to your application, but without exception, most committees will not count caretaking as clinical experience (it would be direct patient care experience for physician assistant applications). Hopefully there are programs that will, but they won't necessarily state that they do. Otherwise, we wouldn't have this uncertainty on this topic.

I have had a caretaker role for many years, and each person I've cared for had totally different relationships with physicians (private practice vs. hospital-based vs. "quacks"). But from my own clinical experiences and working in hospitals, I can agree that caretaking is a different experience than doing rounds and often is devoid of any problem solving or critical thinking that doctoring involves. I have met more with physician assistants, nurse practitioners, and clinical lab technicians because doctors are seldom available when your patient really needs the appointments unless you are rushing to the Emergency Room and waiting a number of hours to be seen (which I would count into my experience as a caregiver if I were an applicant, which may look like padding your hours). I would argue caretaking reveals more about the health care system than doctoring, and thus does not belong in the "clinical experience" bin that admissions committees want, which is to say, knowing what doctors do. Caretaking is about maintaining a treatment plan, not about critically evaluating it in the way doctors need to.