A sneaking suspicion my list of schools is too short

[HatWobble]

---

Members do not see this ad.

...

 

[leggo]

I think you are aiming way to high on your school list. Chicago, Stanford, and Cornell are huge reaches. San Fransisco is elite and your stats are not near what they look for. Your GPA is really low for those schools, and even though the Post bacc and the MCAT are redeeming, your chances are still low. You need to add alot more reasonable schools, and not care as much about prestige. You should also add at least a few DO schools to maximize your chances.

 

[TheMightySmiter]

I think you are aiming way to high on your school list. Chicago, Stanford, and Cornell are huge reaches. San Fransisco is elite and your stats are not near what they look for. Your GPA is really low for those schools, and even though the Post bacc and the MCAT are redeeming, your chances are still low. You need to add alot more reasonable schools, and not care as much about prestige. You should also add at least a few DO schools to maximize your chances.

Your MCAT will help you overcome your GPA at many schools, so I think you are a competitive MD applicant. If location is the most important thing to you, by all means apply to a few DO schools. But your list is way too top-heavy. It looks like nine or ten out of the 14 schools you're applying to are Top 20 schools! Having a publication will help you out, but otherwise your ECs are not stellar and your GPA will hurt you. Why don't you think you'll be happy at a non-top-20 school? You'll be an MD/DO either way and going to a top school will only help you out significantly if you plan on going into academic medicine. It's fine to have some reaches, but you need to scale it back. Your GPA is low and your post-bacc GPA of 3.66 is only slightly redeeming. You can't afford to be picky about both location and school ranking.

I would add in Rosalind Franklin, Albert Einstein, NYMC, Hofstra (in Long Island), and maybe a couple SUNY schools. With Pitt on your list, you are clearly willing to compromise location for something. As far as number of schools, people on SDN tend to apply to way more than the average applicant. I'm applying to 14 and I think that's a pretty standard number--on the high side, even. Now, personally, I would take a few of those reaches off my list. I wouldn't waste money applying to UCSF and UCLA. If you don't want to take off any of your reaches, you will need to increase the number of schools you're applying to by quite a bit.

 

[waterpolo480586]

I would say your only schools which are not reaches are loyola, rush and UIC. I think you need to drop 5 reach schools and add 5 more match schools.

 

[waterpolo480586]

I would drop Stanford, UCSF, Chicago, Cornell, and Columbia from your list.

 

[Andnosoupforyou]

I would drop Stanford, UCSF, Chicago, Cornell, and Columbia from your list.

I don't think you should throw them off your list, but I had the same MCAT as you with a higher GPA, and I had a hard time with the top-top med schools. That's not to say you won't get in! But I think you should add a few more schools with matriculant GPA's of ~3.6, or schools with average MCATs of 33-34. Better to be safe.

Best of luck!