3.9/(88-98 Percentile) School List Help?

[gooz]

Hey! It’d be great if I could get some help with my school list? This is really just based on some light browsing off the MSAR…so if you have any tips are what I should be looking for please let me know!


Year in school: Rising College Senior

Country/state of residence: Indiana

Cumulative GPA: 3.95

Science GPA: 3.94

MCAT Scores: Haven’t gotten them back…but preliminary scores are 88-98 percentile

Research: 2 years in a neuroscience lab probably around 1000+ hours – no pubs
2 summers in a bone marrow transplant lab – 800+ hours – 1 pub (5th author)
2 abstracts (1st and 6th author)
Oral presentation at a conference, only 1 out of 2 undergrads in the past decade to do so at this conference

Volunteering (clinical): ~105 hours at a low income clinic as a front desk volunteer

Physician shadowing: ~40 hours (weakest part of the app for sure L )

Non-clinical volunteering: Ran chemistry demonstrations for kids to get them excited about science

Extracurricular activities:
Exec board of a student community outreach program to teach kids internet literacy
Undergraduate teaching assisant
Fraternity Brother

Specialty of interest: No idea, but I plan on going into translational medicine/research so programs that have a required thesis or a lot of opportunities for research are a thumbs up for me

Schools:
John Hopkins
Harvard
Stanford
Duke
Yale
University of Chicago
Columbia
Cornell
UPenn
Ohio State University
University of Pittsburgh
Case Western
Tufts
Indiana University (instate)
Loyola
Drexel


I feel like I have a lot of top tier schools…but any advice on which schools to drop or which to add would be great!

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[Banco]

If your MCAT comes back at 516-517+, then you can apply top heavy. Otherwise aim for mid-tiers.

Your current list is a bit too top heavy for any applicant though. Add some from this list: Einstein, Rochester, Miami, Vermont, SLU, Cincinnati, Ohio State, Penn State, Temple, Jefferson.

 

[Faha]

Your MCAT could be anywhere from 32 to 36 on the old MCAT. Even if it is on the higher end you need a few more "safety" schools. You could add Temple, Jefferson, Hofstra, Rosalind Franklin, BU, St. Louis, NYMC.

 

[GrapesofRath]

This is all MCAT dependent. But regardless of what your score ends up being, your list which is about 3/4 top 20 caliber schools needs to be re thought out.

For the sake of assumption lets say you get somewhere in the middle so around 34. Not sure I would really bother with JHU, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Chicago and Penn in that case.

Here is how I might go about this:
Duke, Chicago Columbia, Cornell, Michigan: Pick 3(tread carefully here)
Pitt, Case Western, Northwestern, NYU, MT Sinai: Pick 3(again tread carefully)
As a very rough and general rule above I'd be careful about applying to schools where your MCAT is more than 2 points below a school's average.

Others to consider:
Your state schools, Emory, USC, Mayo, Rochester, Boston U, Ohio State(maybe), Cincinnati(maybe), Einstein

Miami Tufts(watch for the giant tuition) Wake Forest, Medical College Wisconsin, Jefferson, Loyola, Rush, Oakland, Quinnipac, VCU, Eastern Virginia, Hofstra

If your goal is to keep your list under 20 you'll want to pick at least 6-8 schools in the bottom group(can adjust the number slightly based off MCAT). So for a list of 20 you could look at it like 6 top 20 schools, 5-6 schools from the Others to Consider list(Emory, USC etc) and then about 6-8 from the last group. Note this list is on the slightly optimistic side of things and if your MCAT ends up on the lower end of your range I would definitely adjust.