Medical App review - MD

[TheBoneDoctah]

Hello! I was wondering if you could provide feedback on my app so far. I'm a sophomore right now, , ORM from NJ, my cGPA is 3.907 and my sGPA is 3.86. As for extracurriculars, I have about 60 hours of hospital volunteering, about 50 hours of shadowing a cardiologist. Because of covid, I haven't been able to get much Nonclinical volunteering, but I do have some virtual volunteering hours. I have 40 hours volunteering with a crisis text hotline, and about 30 hours working with a refugee resettlement organization. Once things die down with covid, I plan on volunteering with some food banks and homeless shelters. As for research, I've been in a lab for about a year now, maybe 50 hours, and I was awarded a research fellowship for a project that I designed that is currently in the works, this is about 150 hours. I have also been accepted to an EMT squad and I will start that soon, I'm guessing about 500+ hours by the time I apply. I plan on taking a gap year because of how covid messed up my schedule. I'm really worried about how my app is so far, and that I don't really have a narrative to my app. Looking to go to any MD school in NJ. What do you think? Thanks in advance!

Your plan sounds solid. As you said, you need to boost both your clinical and non-clinical hours (specifically helping the less fortunate...the food banks would work). You have a good amount of time still.

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[Goro]

Your plan sounds solid. As you said, you need to boost both your clinical and non-clinical hours (specifically helping the less fortunate...the food banks would work). You have a good amount of time still.

Agree 10000%

 

[Goro]

Thank you so much for responding. Is it an issue that I don't have a "narrative." My real purpose for going into medicine is that I want to alleviate suffering. I did this at my hospital volunteering, crisis text hotline, refugee resettlement volunteering, anticipated food bank volunteering, and anticipated EMT volunteering. Is that too vague?

Forget this business of narrative. People's interest in Medicine are either evolutionary (meaning they've always wanted to be a doctor) or revolutionary (they suddenly were inspired). And the stories all gel, when you read a few hundred apps anyway.

 

[Goro]

You are demonstrating exactly what we look for: altruism, and knowledge of what you're getting into + evidence that you really want to be around sick people for the next 30-40 years.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Forget this business of narrative. People's interest in Medicine are either evolutionary (meaning they've always wanted to be a doctor) or revolutionary (they suddenly were inspired). And the stories all gel, when you read a few hundred apps anyway.

I'm going to modify this. I don't think you need to worry about an entertaining story or narrative, but I would care about how you reflect on your experiences as insight to your perspective that you bring to health care. How are the experiences you say are meaningful will guide you as a health care provider?

 

[GoSpursGo]

Overall I think you stand in a good position right now. By all means try to get the requisite EC hours. Most importantly don't jeopardize your grades to do so--you can always get your ECs with a gap year, but messing up a shiny GPA is much harder to repair.

In terms of your narrative, I more or less agree with @Goro 's point of view. At the end of the day everyone knows that 80% of applicants' ECs were done to check a box, and that's OK. There are so many people out there that either can't hack it academically or can't be bothered to check the boxes that simply being able to balance doing those two things is notable. If you happen to be able to write well too and come up with some "narrative" in your personal statement, even better, but if you're in the 80% of applicants who have a vanilla personal statement, it's not the end of the world.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

My experiences reinforce the idea that I want to alleviate someone's suffering?

I'm sure every health care provider wants to alleviate suffering. But what if you can't? This point of view is naive and does not really show me you understand the challenges patients really face nor the circumstances that could contribute. We always hear about "wanting to help people" so that's not enough.

 

[GoSpursGo]

Thanks again for responding. But this is where I don't know what to do. My grandfather died of a heart attack and this led me to shadowing a cardiologist. I also wanted to learn more about the heart and this is what my research project is about. But aside from this I don't know what to say.

Luckily you are a sophomore and have time to figure it out before you apply 🙂

seriously, you don’t have to figure everything out right now. What you’re doing now is working. Keep it up. Add ECs if you can make it work.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I understand. Why not go into research into heart disease? (I did.)

Not all specialties are like cardiology and you won't just be rotating in cardiology as a medical student.