Honestly, it doesn't sound like a smart move to me...If you don't think an economics degree would help you be a better physician someday, I wouldn't do it. Spending all that time and money just for the sake of proving to an admissions committee that you can do it seems like a waste. Plus, I think it would look like you were less committed to medicine rather than more so if you were going back to school for a non-medicine-related degree. (But that's just my opinion.)
I wouldn't. That is doing too much for very limited benefit. Non-science GPA is not really important in the grand scheme of an application, a 7 on VR is bad though. I would consider retaking your MCAT. Teaching, research, work experience, volunteering, etc. all that is secondary to grades and MCAT. It doesn't matter if those are competitive, you can get away with weaknesses in those areas if your grades and MCAT are strong, but not the other way around. If your overall grades are fine, then don't worry about your nonscience GPA too much. If anything is a deal-breaker on your app, it's the 7 on VR. That can make other seemingly unimportant things suddenly stand out a little more (for example, weak VR score+weak nonscience GPA+weak writing score=red flags, even though the writing score and nonscience GPA are pretty minor things otherwise).
In the past it has always been two days after the adcom meeting... I got waitlisted two days after they met (and hopefully will get in!) I heard it is the last adcom meeting. Maybe it is longer because of that?
Yep, ranked waitlists are a bit of a misnomer anyway. Even if it is ranked, schools still have a goal for their class composition which they continue to try to fulfill when pulling applicants off the waitlist. For example, it's likely that when one student withdraws, they evaluate their waitlisted applicants to find another student similar to the student who withdrew. I can't say for sure that this is how it's done at Wake, but it is the general par for course for waitlists at a lot of med schools.
