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What does your prehealth team say?

Swallow your pride and include DO schools. There are some MD schools you can still try for, but I need a better insight of your activities with your mission fit. Unfortunately, medical ethnobotany may be a little challenging to find a fit...
 
Mr.Smile12 said:
What does your prehealth team say?

Swallow your pride and include DO schools. There are some MD schools you can still try for, but I need a better insight of your activities with your mission fit. Unfortunately, medical ethnobotany may be a little challenging to find a fit...
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The medical ethnobotany work was with the Quave Group at Emory (Home - The Quave Research Group). It is focused on skin infections and antibiotic drug discovery, so I think those topics would be rather transferable considering the antibiotic resistance crisis. DO arguably fits better with my perspectives on medicine, so it isn't a pride thing, but it has a lot to do with residency competitiveness (I have my eye on MedDerm, following suit with my experience in skin infections and integrative medicine).
 
OOS MD schools interview few Texas applicants with a MCAT of 506 since they know from years of experience that Texas applicants will attend a Texas school. The only AMCAS schools worth applying to with your stats are TCU, Tulane and Emory. You should apply to non TMDSAS DO schools also and I suggest these:
OSU-COM
UIWSOM
VCOM (all schools except Monroe)
ACOM
AZCOM
CCOM
TUNCOM
ATSU-KCOM
KCU-COM
DMU-COM
MU-COM
CUSOM
PCOM
NYITCOM
Touro-NY
 
I wish you had asked before sending out your application, but I suspect you already made up your mind with AMCAS and your current MCAT scores with no opportunity to retake. Your clearer mission fit woul be to your Texas schools if you grew up in a medically underserved rural area. I could get behind a few of your AMCAS schools for affinity purposes (Jewish identity and support), but with two 506 MCAT's posted...

Furthermore, your non-clinical community service is interesting but does not show service orientation according to the AAMC competency definition, which involved alleviating others' distress. Reading programs are awesome, but they extend the University's mission and government's interest in making sure we have a literate citizenry. (In other words, I would want our high education institutions to do this.) I can buy into the community gardening activity, but I'm not sure all screeners are going to favorably ascribe "service orientation" in the same way.

You need DO schools if you are serious about becoming a doctor and starting medical school in 2024.

Casper results?
 
Mr.Smile12 said:
I wish you had asked before sending out your application, but I suspect you already made up your mind with AMCAS and your current MCAT scores with no opportunity to retake. Your clearer mission fit woul be to your Texas schools if you grew up in a medically underserved rural area. I could get behind a few of your AMCAS schools for affinity purposes (Jewish identity and support), but with two 506 MCAT's posted...

Furthermore, your non-clinical community service is interesting but does not show service orientation according to the AAMC competency definition, which involved alleviating others' distress. Reading programs are awesome, but they extend the University's mission and government's interest in making sure we have a literate citizenry. (In other words, I would want our high education institutions to do this.) I can buy into the community gardening activity, but I'm not sure all screeners are going to favorably ascribe "service orientation" in the same way.

You need DO schools if you are serious about becoming a doctor and starting medical school in 2024.

Casper results?
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Yeah, I was definitely disappointed by my retake. I am not even sure what happened because I had been studying for months, and my FLs were much improved. But alas. Since I have already taken one 'gap year' to get my MSc, I wanted to apply with what I have and see what happens, and reevaluate if I don't have any As (hopefully, that will not be the case). While I am arguably more aligned with DO pedagogy, I worry about residency competitiveness. I really want to go into derm, as most of my ethnobotany research is centered around infectious diseases of the skin (I worked in the Quave Group, and it will continue to be so if I can get into Emory. That said, I think for my first cycle (for money reasons, too), I am staying MD-focused save for the UNT DO school in TMDSAS.

I have not yet taken Casper, but that is next on the list. As far as AMCAS, I imagine you would have advised I remove some, but would you have added any that I hadn't included?
 
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phytomed17 said:
Yeah, I was definitely disappointed by my retake. ... Since I have already taken one 'gap year' to get my MSc, I wanted to apply with what I have and see what happens, and reevaluate if I don't have any As (hopefully, that will not be the case). While I am arguably more aligned with DO pedagogy, I worry about residency competitiveness. I really want to go into derm, as most of my ethnobotany research is centered around infectious diseases of the skin (I worked in the Quave Group, and it will continue to be so if I can get into Emory. That said, I think for my first cycle (for money reasons, too), I am staying MD-focused save for the UNT DO school in TMDSAS.

I have not yet taken Casper, but that is next on the list. As far as AMCAS, I imagine you would have advised I remove some, but would you have added any that I hadn't included?
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I would have advised you to save your money and hold off to just your state schools. Your thinking makes more sense if your were trying for a job (and this is still a stretch).

I would put those resources to the MCAT and try for a third time knowing it's your last chance to show improvement.

I would look carefully at DO schools and re-assess your assumptions about what your goals are.

I would know that many schools average MCAT attempts for screening, so you are more locked at 506.

If you are making your choices because of money, I worry you will actually waste more and perhaps lower your chances even more.
 
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I merged your threads.

A bill recently was passed that would lower SHSU in-state tuition to a similar rate as other TX schools.

Do not submit secondaries for any of the AMCAS schools except TCU, Tulane and Drexel. It seems you chose to not listen to the feedback provided to you earlier in the week about where to submit your app.
 
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Last year, only 341 TX residents matriculated to OOS MD schools (compare that to CA that exported 1,571!). For this reason we tend not to interview TX applicants unless there is a compelling reason to believe that they will leave.
These tend to be highly sought after candidates, often attending an OOS undergrad or having personal qualities that are uncommon in the applicant pool. Because of the cost differential, we know that we will have to provide a significant financial inducement to get them.

For these reasons, I can only recommend your IS TX schools and any OOS DO schools you may fancy.
 
gyngyn said:
Last year, only 341 TX residents matriculated to OOS MD schools (compare that to CA that exported 1,571!). For this reason we tend not to interview TX applicants unless there is a compelling reason to believe that they will leave.
These tend to be highly sought after candidates, often attending an OOS undergrad or having personal qualities that are uncommon in the applicant pool. Because of the cost differential, we know that we will have to provide a significant financial inducement to get them.

For these reasons, I can only recommend your IS TX schools and any OOS DO schools you may fancy.
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Well, I went to Emory, which is OOS, and I went to an out of country grad school, so does that change anything?
 
phytomed17 said:
Well, I went to Emory, which is OOS, and I went to an out of country grad school, so does that change anything?
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Sadly, not with your EC's, MCATs and gpa's.
DO schools will see things differently, though!
 
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Your two MCAT scores being the exact same, along with your CARS section being below a 125 both times will impede you from most, if not all, MD schools except maybe the Texas ones. Even then, there are many more competitive Texas applicants, even those who have taken the MCAT twice and received a higher score on their retake.

I am also unsure why you also applied to T20 schools such as Yale, Vanderbilt, etc. since they receive hundreds or even thousands of applicants with competitive stats that have a research-oriented application. Unless you have an absurdly unique backstory with a significantly strong tie to medicine and service (war veteran, Nobel laureate, etc.), there’s basically a 0% chance you will get an acceptance there, nonetheless an II. You also don’t have specific community service focused on specific populations (underserved or rural) that I can clearly see which will screen you out at many places, including these T20-T30 schools on your list.

Given this, if you don’t want to lose a year, you should follow the above posters’ advice and apply to DO schools since your chances of MD, especially OOS, are extremely slim.
 
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