...

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Status
Not open for further replies.
Welome to the forums.

Your non-clinical volunteering is subpar. You need 150 hours minimum at submission (250 for brand-name schools like Duke, Harvard, Hopkins, Pritzker, Einstein, etc.), or your file is at risk of getting screened out at most medical schools. Furthermore, I would need more information about what your "community grief support" responsibilities were. Arguably, it feels like you want to do palliative care/geriatrics, but I don't see enough involvement with a wide variety of cultures where you can show your flexibility in understanding others. You will be competing against others with 1000+ hours, so what do you bring to fit in?

Also, you aren't going to stay in geriatrics while in medical school. Do you have enough broad exposure to "health care"? You don't have hospital experience, which is the backbone of your academic medical education.

Are you intentionally leaving out all of your DEI-related activities? The list of activities seems short to convince any school you have a passion for health equity, which includes most of the brand-name schools on your list.
 
You should have 250+ hours of non clinical volunteering such as food bank, homeless shelter, etc. before you submit your application. UCI admits very few non residents with no connection to the state. You could add these schools:
Washington University (in St. Louis-almost a guaranteed interview with your stats)
Northwestern
U Michigan
Hofstra
Pittsburgh
Rochester
 
I'll probably get flak for this, but I implore you to apply more broadly and consider taking a gap year after graduating to improve your activities. You have great numbers, but the statistical reality of this process means even technically perfect applicants lose out to those who are technically perfect and overextended themselves significantly beyond the bare minimum.

Yeah, in 2025, club involvement/leadership + research with productivity is just the norm... I'm not saying the effort is anything to sneeze at... I am saying that in this particular admissions landscape, it is not a discerning experience between applicants within the competitive pool you're targeting.

You don't have to take my word for it, just take a look at medical student profiles on LinkedIn for the schools you're planning on applying to. My guess is you will be surprised at what people have been able to do with their lives before ever stepping foot in a medical school. While trad and non-trad students are evaluated against each other for the most part, just 1-2 gap years is still considered firmly within the traditional camp, and so even though you will not be competing with folks with tens of thousands of hours, you will still be competing against people with a couple thousand hours in every category.

Many will have national scholarships and major accolades because most of the interviewees at the top tier are coming from the top tier of undergraduate schools, and so they have teams of people dedicated to helping their students compete for that kind of thing. The worst part of any interview experience is when the icebreaker comes around and we have to say where we went to undergrad (and of course, you're one of two people who didn't go to an Ivy+).

You could, of course, shoot your shot... but from my POV, it is better to over-prepare with better-than-normal chances of going somewhere you would feel is commensurate with the effort you've already put forth, vs the "we ball" approach where you just kind of put it all out there prematurely and maybe Harvard will interview you but won't accept you—would you be jumping-up-and-down excited to go to your state school?

If the answer is no, it's a hard bargain and you'll probably be inclined to do some crazy stuff if you do not get in at the caliber of school you expect. Like reapplying with acceptances. The application process becomes a very emotional thing the harder you work at it...and the outcomes feel like a referendum on your worth not only as a student, but as a person. It is very challenging not to take it personally.

Come back and let us know where you end up matriculating! I get excited to see my peers succeed.
 
Mr.Smile12 said:
Welome to the forums.

Your non-clinical volunteering is subpar. You need 150 hours minimum at submission (250 for brand-name schools like Duke, Harvard, Hopkins, Pritzker, Einstein, etc.), or your file is at risk of getting screened out at most medical schools. Furthermore, I would need more information about what your "community grief support" responsibilities were. Arguably, it feels like you want to do palliative care/geriatrics, but I don't see enough involvement with a wide variety of cultures where you can show your flexibility in understanding others. You will be competing against others with 1000+ hours, so what do you bring to fit in?

Also, you aren't going to stay in geriatrics while in medical school. Do you have enough broad exposure to "health care"? You don't have hospital experience, which is the backbone of your academic medical education.

Are you intentionally leaving out all of your DEI-related activities? The list of activities seems short to convince any school you have a passion for health equity, which includes most of the brand-name schools on your list.
Click to expand...
...
 
Last edited:
Faha said:
You should have 250+ hours of non clinical volunteering such as food bank, homeless shelter, etc. before you submit your application. UCI admits very few non residents with no connection to the state. You could add these schools:
Washington University (in St. Louis-almost a guaranteed interview with your stats)
Northwestern
U Michigan
Hofstra
Pittsburgh
Rochester
Click to expand...
...
 
Last edited:
polymerization said:
I'll probably get flak for this, but I implore you to apply more broadly and consider taking a gap year after graduating to improve your activities. You have great numbers, but the statistical reality of this process means even technically perfect applicants lose out to those who are technically perfect and overextended themselves significantly beyond the bare minimum.

Yeah, in 2025, club involvement/leadership + research with productivity is just the norm... I'm not saying the effort is anything to sneeze at... I am saying that in this particular admissions landscape, it is not a discerning experience between applicants within the competitive pool you're targeting.

You don't have to take my word for it, just take a look at medical student profiles on LinkedIn for the schools you're planning on applying to. My guess is you will be surprised at what people have been able to do with their lives before ever stepping foot in a medical school. While trad and non-trad students are evaluated against each other for the most part, just 1-2 gap years is still considered firmly within the traditional camp, and so even though you will not be competing with folks with tens of thousands of hours, you will still be competing against people with a couple thousand hours in every category.

Many will have national scholarships and major accolades because most of the interviewees at the top tier are coming from the top tier of undergraduate schools, and so they have teams of people dedicated to helping their students compete for that kind of thing. The worst part of any interview experience is when the icebreaker comes around and we have to say where we went to undergrad (and of course, you're one of two people who didn't go to an Ivy+).

You could, of course, shoot your shot... but from my POV, it is better to over-prepare with better-than-normal chances of going somewhere you would feel is commensurate with the effort you've already put forth, vs the "we ball" approach where you just kind of put it all out there prematurely and maybe Harvard will interview you but won't accept you—would you be jumping-up-and-down excited to go to your state school?

If the answer is no, it's a hard bargain and you'll probably be inclined to do some crazy stuff if you do not get in at the caliber of school you expect. Like reapplying with acceptances. The application process becomes a very emotional thing the harder you work at it...and the outcomes feel like a referendum on your worth not only as a student, but as a person. It is very challenging not to take it personally.

Come back and let us know where you end up matriculating! I get excited to see my peers succeed.
Click to expand...
...
 
Last edited:
baconatoravocado1000 said:
Thank you so much for these suggestions. My volunteering hours seem to be a great weakness, so I will definitely focus on strengthening this.

I will admit, I am not too familiar with building a school list for applications. I was going off the recommendations from admit.org. Are there any other schools I should consider with my current stats and application? Thank you!!
Click to expand...
With your original list (minus UCI ) and the schools I suggested that should be more than enough schools with your stats.
 
baconatoravocado1000 said:
You also pointed out another weakness I have noticed in my own application - the lack of hospital experience. It has been super difficult to find a volunteering position or employment at our local hospitals, but I have sent in multiple applications, so I am hoping to get started with this. My internship was with a primary care private practice clinic, which might be the strongest connection to direct physician/patient "health care" I have currently.

I do have a strong interest in working with geriatrics/palliative care, and also in neurology with neurodegenerative diseases. Is it a drawback that my application seems very tailored to these interests? I was working off the same premise as in college applications, where it was better to have an interest "spike" rather than be well-rounded, but it seems like this might not be the case for medical school applications.
Click to expand...
I commiserate that it's hard to find those positions, but your file will be compared against those who have that exposure. I'm sure getting those positions were difficult without a boost/help from prehealth clubs, networks, or champions.

It's not bad that you have a specific interest, but acknowledge that you will be exposed to other facets of the healthcare industry. Everyone gets exposure to general/primary care medicine and are trained up in foundational skills under those circumstances. I'm sure you can get into a music conservatory focused on just one instrument, but music theory holds for everyone. And you have to LOVE music theory... maybe. 🙂
 
baconatoravocado1000 said:
I actually am really familiar and really love my state school programs (UofA), and if I got into just UofA, I would be really happy to attend either. My top preferences are basically my state school programs or top-caliber schools, as if I do get into my state school program, I feel like it's not worth it for me personally to move far from family and the increase in cost of living/out-of-state tuition unless it's for a top-tier school. This might be a naive take, so please correct me if there is a better way of thinking about this. I am still in the beginning stages of creating my school list, so my schools are definitely not finalized yet. I am only planning on applying to programs that I can actually see myself attending, so I don't anticipate being a reapplicant with acceptances. At the end of the day, becoming a doctor is more important to me than becoming a medical student at Harvard (or insert other prestigious medical school name).
Click to expand...

You can try and hide your ambition, but real ones recognize. The facts are that you have a ~100th percentile GPA and MCAT. This did not just happen accidentally. The question for you, for all intents and purposes, is not going to be "will I get in?" ...although, it was a nice touch to present humility by asking if you need to apply DO. Obviously not.

Just with your scores, you hold a key that opens literally any door you want to walk through, and I know you know that. There is no shame in saying you really want to go to Harvard, or Yale (or Dartmouth, but I'm biased 🤭). Your bashfulness about it doesn't help because what will get you across the finish line at those schools is inherently more intense by orders of magnitude relative to what would get you across the finish line at your state school.

By hiding what you really want, you self-select out of the real competition, and guarantees you will not receive the reward you're expecting at least partially due to willful ignorance. It's a defense mechanism so you're not disappointed later: you recognize the odds are slim, even with good grades, so why make grand efforts when you could ostensibly just not and still end up at Arizona, where your life can look the way it always has? I understand the sometimes unbearable weight of that ambition... you just want to shake yourself by the shoulders and scream "why can't you be normal and want what everyone else wants?!"

And... the simplest answer to that is... but what if it works? What if you get what you really want?

I'm speaking from experience here: I have a full-ride scholarship to any medical school in my state. Unfortunately, I got into an Ivy and was rejected or waitlisted at my state schools.

Did that make my life a lot easier? Yes.

Would it have worked out if I had prepared an application tailored to my state school? I don't know: targeting top-tier schools obviously made me work much harder and present a much more well-rounded application than I would've otherwise and I still didn't get in at my alma mater where I was most optimistic about my chances.

I'm grateful not to have to think about it too deeply. But the truth is, I applied to 52 schools and got into just a single one. I will never know why or how decisions were made in my own case, but I do feel unbelievable survivor's guilt. This contest is more brutal and emotionally taxing than you realize right now. At some point you're going to narrate the story of your life to a faceless system and they will return a canned message that reads "yeah we read about all of your trauma and, actually, we'll pass." It's a gut punch.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, present your absolute best face. Give it your best try. Yes, it'll be more challenging, and nothing is guaranteed, but... you can only apply for the first time once in life, and that represents your best chances.

It's clear you know what you want. Pursue it earnestly.
 
Mr.Smile12 said:
I commiserate that it's hard to find those positions, but your file will be compared against those who have that exposure. I'm sure getting those positions were difficult without a boost/help from prehealth clubs, networks, or champions.

It's not bad that you have a specific interest, but acknowledge that you will be exposed to other facets of the healthcare industry. Everyone gets exposure to general/primary care medicine and are trained up in foundational skills under those circumstances. I'm sure you can get into a music conservatory focused on just one instrument, but music theory holds for everyone. And you have to LOVE music theory... maybe. 🙂
Click to expand...
....
 
Last edited:
polymerization said:
You can try and hide your ambition, but real ones recognize. The facts are that you have a ~100th percentile GPA and MCAT. This did not just happen accidentally. The question for you, for all intents and purposes, is not going to be "will I get in?" ...although, it was a nice touch to present humility by asking if you need to apply DO. Obviously not.

Just with your scores, you hold a key that opens literally any door you want to walk through, and I know you know that. There is no shame in saying you really want to go to Harvard, or Yale (or Dartmouth, but I'm biased 🤭). Your bashfulness about it doesn't help because what will get you across the finish line at those schools is inherently more intense by orders of magnitude relative to what would get you across the finish line at your state school.

By hiding what you really want, you self-select out of the real competition, and guarantees you will not receive the reward you're expecting at least partially due to willful ignorance. It's a defense mechanism so you're not disappointed later: you recognize the odds are slim, even with good grades, so why make grand efforts when you could ostensibly just not and still end up at Arizona, where your life can look the way it always has? I understand the sometimes unbearable weight of that ambition... you just want to shake yourself by the shoulders and scream "why can't you be normal and want what everyone else wants?!"

And... the simplest answer to that is... but what if it works? What if you get what you really want?

I'm speaking from experience here: I have a full-ride scholarship to any medical school in my state. Unfortunately, I got into an Ivy and was rejected or waitlisted at my state schools.

Did that make my life a lot easier? Yes.

Would it have worked out if I had prepared an application tailored to my state school? I don't know: targeting top-tier schools obviously made me work much harder and present a much more well-rounded application than I would've otherwise and I still didn't get in at my alma mater where I was most optimistic about my chances.

I'm grateful not to have to think about it too deeply. But the truth is, I applied to 52 schools and got into just a single one. I will never know why or how decisions were made in my own case, but I do feel unbelievable survivor's guilt. This contest is more brutal and emotionally taxing than you realize right now. At some point you're going to narrate the story of your life to a faceless system and they will return a canned message that reads "yeah we read about all of your trauma and, actually, we'll pass." It's a gut punch.

Please, for the love of all that is holy, present your absolute best face. Give it your best try. Yes, it'll be more challenging, and nothing is guaranteed, but... you can only apply for the first time once in life, and that represents your best chances.

It's clear you know what you want. Pursue it earnestly.
Click to expand...
...
 
Last edited:
baconatoravocado1000 said:
My question now is, what should I do to take a meaningful gap year to make me a better applicant for these programs? I am afraid that I will take a gap year but not use it fully and hurt my application. I am worried that by only taking 1 gap year, I won't have enough time to rack up enough experiences and hours before I submit my application, as I would have to submit right after my senior year, before I would have enough time off from school to work full-time. On the other hand, I am worried about taking 2+ gap years because I took my MCAT early, and I am scared about it expiring and having to retake.
Click to expand...

And that's a very valid concern... you do have your work cut out for you! I would redirect you to your stated interests. This advice leans on the strategic (so, it's just my opinion and others may disagree).

The challenge is not just getting the hours in the activities you choose to engage in, it's also having the right activities and using them in the right way. For you, that means finding opportunities to yes, diversify your experiences, like @Mr.Smile12 said, but not just haphazardly and in any direction. (On that note, check out Becoming A Student Doctor in his signature.)

You have done a lot of work with the elderly. This can be viewed through the lens of an underserved population, especially in the setting of altered mental states, like dementia. Wouldn't it be great if you could do some work at a hospice or psychiatric clinical setting to further explore the injustices this community faces daily? Isn't it cool that places like Denmark have entire villages for these folks to be able to live a dignified life in spite of their profound disability? Maybe it would be interesting to see if there are ways to advocate for more decency in our later, more fragile stages.

Wouldn't it make an admissions officer feel really good about themselves if they admitted just one person this cycle who spoke up for those people? With any luck, we will all reach old age, and if we're very lucky, senility—far past the point of anyone truly caring about how we feel or what we have to say. Far beyond the point of even being registered in the public consciousness as still living (as opposed to pending expiration). People generally don't speak out for those folks because change takes time, and the people who might benefit from those advancements today may not still be around to enjoy them when they emerge. Fortunately, the unrelenting passage of time makes "new" old people basically by definition. It's a worthy, justifiable cause.

Do you see how aligning your experiences along some converging axis will make for some very specific, very nuanced, and very unique perspectives? If not the elderly and demented, per se, fine... but you could put yourself in the shoes of limitless permutations of vulnerable populations and come out of it with a refined profile.

I think the worst way you could spend a gap year would be to just arbitrarily try to desperately claw at whatever you can. It hit me like a ton of bricks when it came time to start writing my essays that I had not thought this through to the degree I probably should have.

While I know it is probably more challenging, I feel strongly that my profile would not have resonated where it did if I just approached this like any other student. I knew I was not trying to aim for just any other outcome. If I got into an Ivy, it would be a miracle, one-in-a-million.

And it was.
 
Last edited:
polymerization said:
And that's a very valid concern... you do have your work cut out for you! I would redirect you to your stated interests. This advice leans on the strategic (so, it's just my opinion and others may disagree).

The challenge is not just getting the hours in the activities you choose to engage in, it's also having the right activities and using them in the right way. For you, that means finding opportunities to yes, diversify your experiences, like @Mr.Smile12 said, but not just haphazardly and in any direction. (On that note, check out Becoming A Student Doctor in his signature.)

You have done a lot of work with the elderly. This can be viewed through the lens of an underserved population, especially in the setting of altered mental states, like dementia. Wouldn't it be great if you could do some work at a hospice or psychiatric clinical setting to further explore the injustices this community faces daily? Isn't it cool that places like Denmark have entire villages for these folks to be able to live a dignified life in spite of their profound disability? Maybe it would be interesting to see if there are ways to advocate for more decency in our later, more fragile stages.

Wouldn't it make an admissions officer feel really good about themselves if they admitted just one person this cycle who spoke up for those people? With any luck, we will all reach old age, and if we're very lucky, senility—far past the point of anyone truly caring about how we feel or what we have to say. Far beyond the point of even being registered in the public consciousness as still living (as opposed to pending expiration). People generally don't speak out for those folks because change takes time, and the people who might benefit from those advancements today may not still be around to enjoy them when they emerge. Fortunately, the unrelenting passage of time makes "new" old people basically by definition. It's a worthy, justifiable cause.

Do you see how aligning your experiences along some converging axis will make for some very specific, very nuanced, and very unique perspectives? If not the elderly and demented, per se, fine... but you could put yourself in the shoes of limitless permutations of vulnerable populations and come out of it with a refined profile.

I think the worst way you could spend a gap year would be to just arbitrarily try to desperately claw at whatever you can. It hit me like a ton of bricks when it came time to start writing my essays that I had not thought this through to the degree I probably should have.

While I know it is probably more challenging, I feel strongly that my profile would not have resonated where it did if I just approached this like any other student. I knew I was not trying to aim for just any other outcome. If I got into an Ivy, it would be a miracle, one-in-a-million.

And it was.
Click to expand...
...
 
Last edited:
baconatoravocado1000 said:
I see! This was really helpful, thank you so so much for explaining and helping me make sense of this. I will definitely consider how to use my gap year experiences to gain and shape my perspectives. The Denmark link is super interesting. I still have some funds in my scholarship to fully cover a study abroad experience, so if I do take the gap year, I might look into how I might be able to do a study abroad that ties in with the rest of my application during my senior year.
Click to expand...

If you can make something like that work, I think it would be so formative, interesting, and true to you—which is so important for creating your own personal brand as an applicant. These ideas don't all have to pan out, either: it could just mean volunteering in geriatrics at the teaching hospital at UofA, taking a set of biology/psychology of aging-related courses, or shadowing a palliative care physician. The point is that whatever it is you are reaching for converges on theme or cadence somehow. That way, even if you stray somewhat, your experiences are still cohesive on theme and you won't have to try and form a singular, simple narrative from really disparate disciplines.

So like, for example, even if you work at a hospice because you're interested in geriatrics and palliative care and you become interested in how the pain medications create altered states of consciousness (and so, posteriorly you choose to explore anesthesia), you would be deviating in discipline but not necessarily in theme. You're still very much in the altered states space, which rhymes with your experiences in geriatrics and dementia.

It's a little abstract, but I hope I'm explaining myself OK. Really what I am trying to say here is that your life is made easier at the level of your application and beyond (secondaries, interview) by being intentional on your selected foci for your application, which begins with the activities that compose it. Once you start writing, you can only write about what you've done, so if you've done a lot of things that don't have a coherent thread to link them, you're going to come off confused. And then once you interview, you're overwhelmed for sure: you could be interviewed by someone who is an expert in any of the topics you discuss on your application. Do you really want to talk about 7 different unrelated specialties (like I did) and face the possibility of being interviewed by an eminent expert in any of them? It's just a lot, mentally.

It's too early to get pimped, of course, but, like, I had a recurring nightmare where I would have a situation in which an interviewer asks an innocuous and obvious question that I just blank on because I'm nervous and he says "Oh, you fraud! How did you not know this very commonplace procedure we do every day in this specialty?! Reject!"

Obviously I didn't have interviews like that, everyone was very kind. But I'm talking about building your psychology here, too. Being (1) not anxious; and (2) confident enough to come across well-spoken on interview day is as much about how proud you are of what you did than just those experiences themselves. I'm trying to help you find that cohesion ahead of time so you're not frustrated trying to think of retroactive justifications for what you did because that is what this process demands.

It is also maybe not a coincidence that becoming a better applicant follows becoming a better person. I think that is what the administration thinks it is going for, albeit indirectly and with deceit and manipulation involved.
 
What about nonclinical volunteering in something that is palliative care or grief or geriatrics adjacent? You need more of it, ideally 300 hours before applications go out. Stats-wise, you're a rock star and solidly pack fodder at top 20s. You really do have a very strong geriatrics narrative, which can help or hurt you; if you're geriatrics or bust, how would you feel about doing a FM or IM residency?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom