MD 3.7 cGPA 3.65 sGPA 520 MCAT. What is realistic?

[Oddball1221]

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[LoveBeingHuman:)]

1) Good job on the GPA and MCAT

2) I'm not sure if the activity involving your dad's clinic counts but @Goro and @gyngyn would know the most accurate answer to that

3) Personally, I think you are involved in too many things. Having depth in one or couple of activities is magnitudes times better than having no depth in several.

4) Get more clinical exposure with patient contact experience

5) Most importantly: make sure that you actually LIKE and ENJOY your activities 🙂

 

[premed1234567891011]

1) Good job on the GPA and MCAT

2) I'm not sure if the activity involving your dad's clinic counts but @Goro and @gyngyn would know the most accurate answer to that

3) Personally, I think you are involved in too many things. Having depth in one or couple of activities is magnitudes times better than having no depth in several.

4) Get more clinical exposure with patient contact experience

5) Most importantly: make sure that you actually LIKE and ENJOY your activities 🙂

your stats are great. i applied with similar stats this cycle and had success. i had fewer shadowing hours and fewer activities, but the activities i was in i invested a lot of time into and was able to talk about in a meaningful way during interviews ( i think that's key).

 

[ed*26]

Your application is...very similar to mine, especially MCAT/GPA. Check out my MDapps. My biggest takeaway from this cycle is that regional bias is definitely a thing -- I got early interviews from very good programs within ~3 hours from me and silence from similar programs that were further.

If I were you I'd put the majority of my energy into research, your dad's clinic, one leadership opportunity, and maybe one additional volunteer thing. They're not going to care about your 3rd, 4th, 5th minor leadership/club involvement, that stuff probably won't even be brought up at your interview or review sessions. Do a few interesting things really well.

 

[Goro]

I suggest:

Harvard
Wash U
Yale
Stanford
U Chicago
U Penn
U VA (
U MI (
U AZ
U Colorado
U VM
U WI
Ohio State
Jefferson
U IA
UCSF
UCLA,
U Cincy
Miami
Albert Einstein
Tulane
Loyola
Emory
BU
USC/Keck
JHU
Mayo
Pitt
Northwestern
NYU
Vanderbilt
Columbia
Sinai
Cornell
Duke
Case
Hofstra
Your state school

Wondering what my chances are given my stats at a top 20 Med School and where I should focus on improving before applying. Also, where should I be applying?

Year: Junior
GPA: 3.7 cGPA/3.65 sGPA --> working to get it to 3.8 cGPA/3.75 sGPA
MCAT: 520 (131/127/132/130)
Research: One year of research in Chem department lab (500+ hours so far), working on my own project, won a school grant
Shadowing: 50hrs/Internal Medicine, 100hrs/Thoracic Surgery, 50hrs/Intervention Cardiology

Clinical Volunteering:
End of Life/Nursing Specialty Hospital - visit and talk to patients (70hrs so far at 5hr/wk)
Dad's Clinic - primary care clinic in disadvantaged neighborhood, I have been helping there since it's opened up a few years ago (100+ hrs)
Planning on revisiting a hospital from high school - transport/talk to patients (80 planned hours + 150 from HS)

Nonclinical Volunteering:
National Park - I help with gardening projects, it's good for the soul imo (10 hrs so far at 3hr/week)

Employment History:
Data Scientist - worked for a real estate consulting firm maintaining their databases and designing software to make things more efficient (2 yrs)

Leadership:
Chemistry Club, Secretary for 1 year
Premed Fraternity, Secretary for 1 year
Prehealth Board of School for 6 months
School Research Grant Committee
Model UN, Travel Team/Conference Board/Marketing Head/Committee Director for 3 years

Hobbies:
Lifting
Photography/Graphic Design
Programming/Web Stuff
Making Failed Startups