MD 3.72 GPA, 520 MCAT, MI Resident School List

[moleculargolfer]

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[Faha]

What are your EC's? Any research?

 

[moleculargolfer]

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[Faha]

You could potentially receive an interview at any of those schools with your stats though it is not possible to predict which ones will offer you an interview. Wayne State and Michigan State are your "safeties" so definitely attend those interviews.

 

[ed*26]

Your list is pretty top-heavy. Your MCAT is on target and your ECs are good but not outstanding for top schools. Your GPA is at, near, or below 10th percentile at Harvard, Hopkins, Baylor, and Vanderbilt. In fact the only school on your list where you're above the median GPA is Michigan State. It's possible get interviews at most of those top schools, but you should have more than 2 schools at which you have a fair or good chance of it.

How do you feel about Oakland and other Michigan schools, Ohio State, Cincinnati, Case Western, Rush (they love people with a lot of clinical experience), Rochester, etc? Tufts, Boston, or the Philly schools? You should probably add 2-3 more target schools.

I would also consider replacing some of the schools where you're at the 10th percentile with NYU, Mount Sinai, WashU, Mayo and the like. All highly ranked schools with slightly more forgiving GPA ranges.

 

[moleculargolfer]

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[Faha]

Thanks for your help @Faha and @ed*26, I really appreciate it. I only chose this very top-heavy list because of the SDN Application Assistant, where I have a LizzyM of 74 (top 5%) and it suggested these schools. Yes, I know statistics aren't everything, and that GPA matters more than MCAT, just explaining how I got to this list. Does GPA matter a lot more than the calculator counts for?

My biggest factor right now is tuition vs highly rankedness ratio, ie. I would not pay double tuition OOS to get a slightly better school than in-state, which is why I'm not applying to Oakland (high tuition because private, while being a mediocre school) and why I only applied to top-heavy schools OOS. Does my reasoning still hold in this case?

Yes, apply only to OOS schools where you would be willing to pay twice the tuition of your in-state schools. You could add Central Michigan as another "safety".

 

[Gurby]

It's a nice list, but too short IMO. Your app is strong, but not insta-Harvard status. Personally, I think if you want to be this ambitious you should add 10 schools in the rank ~20-50 range. This might be overly conservative but the top schools are a crap shoot, and being forced to reapply would be a total disaster. If you end up drowning in interviews you can always turn some down.