Application season has started! Goro's guide to the app process

[moop]

How does a 3.4 come across when my "senior" year GPA is a 3.8+ with over 125 hours?

How do you have one year with >125 hours? That's like an entire undergraduate career amount..

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[juliuspepperwood]

i wasnt being sarcastic LOL i was so confused and your response helped confirm what i expected

Ah, well my apologies then! SDN must have jaded me. Good luck with your cycle!

 

[juliuspepperwood]

How do you have one year with >125 hours? That's like an entire undergraduate career amount..

AMCAS has unit guidelines for Freshman/Sophmore/Junior years and indicates to list everything else in senior. I basically went back after finishing one major and did a post-bacc, but my university allowed me to postpone graduation of my first major and add a second one. Worked great for registering for classes but it doesn't summarize nicely within AMCAS.

 

[moop]

AMCAS has unit guidelines for Freshman/Sophmore/Junior years and indicates to list everything else in senior. I basically went back after finishing one major and did a post-bacc, but my university allowed me to postpone graduation of my first major and add a second one. Worked great for registering for classes but it doesn't summarize nicely within AMCAS.

Those are "guidelines," not law. If you think belongs better as a post-bacc, you don't have to squeeze it all into senior year. Logic over rigidity.

 

[TigerClaws]

I am an out of state applicant to every school except for one. I don't know if that 4 point rule applies for me, especially seeing that I have 3.52 cGPA and 3.58 sGPA and MCAT of 32. This makes me fit into pretty much every school except for maybe the really top tier ones. I mean, according to this way I am a contender at Keck, which I seriously doubt.

Did anyone calculate at what point it is useless to apply to an out of state schools? I mean, even though a lot of schools have "low" medians, I am guessing it is being heavily skewed by instate students.

Another thing to consider, the medians listed take into account people who have been accepted to multiple schools. So, technically the actual matriculation medians are even lower, which means there higher chances that you would be offered a spot.

Goro, thank you so much for posting this stuff. It has cleared up a lot of my concerns and motivated me even more.

 

[Laureatebarrel]

Hi Goro,
Will my parents' income viewed negatively in admission? I am applying as international student and plan to borrow with a co-signer. Few people told me NOT to put your parents' income too low because I will not be able to pay with 20k income and that might hurt my chance...

 

[Genore]

I promise I'm not lying! I don't have the time for that.

I heard it firsthand by her. I didn't actually see her transcript or AMCAS so I don't have proof but I did see her MCAT score. She technically could be lying but she's been a genuine friend.

I find it unbelievable myself. If this was a low tier school or something,it's more believable. But Vanderbilt?! Wow. But truly if things like this actually happen, I just wanted to share.

Edit: she also went to Vanderbilt for undergrad. Minutiae,, but still

Sounds to me like one of her advisors called in a favor with an Adcom friend to get her looked at. I'm not undermining her achievement (she still would have to be otherwise spectacular to get admitted), but I don't think we should diminish the importance of connections in these atypical stories. That really should be the point, imo, rather than offering hope to otherwise below average applications. However, congrats to her and good luck to the rest of us.

 

[Goro]

It depends upon where you live. If, for example, in CA, I doubt if U AZ would look kindly upon you. But, if you're in KS, the U AR, U NE, U OK might go you. Ditto if you live in VA and aim for U WV, or in OH to aim for MI, IL, KY or IN schools.

My very rough rule of thumb is, the above average you are, the wider you can cast your net for OOS public schools. As always, invest in MSAR Online and apply to schools that have median numbers close to yours. It's OK to go for schools where you're in striking distance.

Did anyone calculate at what point it is useless to apply to an out of state schools? I mean, even though a lot of schools have "low" medians, I am guessing it is being heavily skewed by instate students.

Another thing to consider, the medians listed take into account people who have been accepted to multiple schools. So, technically the actual matriculation medians are even lower, which means there higher chances that you would be offered a spot.



My pleasure!
Goro, thank you so much for posting this stuff. It has cleared up a lot of my concerns and motivated me even more.




We don't look at this at all.
Will my parents' income viewed negatively in admission? I am applying as international student and plan to borrow with a co-signer. Few people told me NOT to put your parents' income too low because I will not be able to pay with 20k income and that might hurt my chance...

 

[Mr Roboto]

Goro, how do adcoms feel about applicants that have non-medical volunteer hours and paid medical experience, but no medical volunteer hours?

 

[TigerClaws]

It depends upon where you live. If, for example, in CA, I doubt if U AZ would look kindly upon you. But, if you're in KS, the U AR, U NE, U OK might go you. Ditto if you live in VA and aim for U WV, or in OH to aim for MI, IL, KY or IN schools.

My very rough rule of thumb is, the above average you are, the wider you can cast your net for OOS public schools. As always, invest in MSAR Online and apply to schools that have median numbers close to yours. It's OK to go for schools where you're in striking distance.

Did anyone calculate at what point it is useless to apply to an out of state schools? I mean, even though a lot of schools have "low" medians, I am guessing it is being heavily skewed by instate students.

Another thing to consider, the medians listed take into account people who have been accepted to multiple schools. So, technically the actual matriculation medians are even lower, which means there higher chances that you would be offered a spot.



My pleasure!
Goro, thank you so much for posting this stuff. It has cleared up a lot of my concerns and motivated me even more.

hmm, thank you for clearing them up a bit. I hope some OS schools looks kindly upon me, because my state school definitely isn't. I saved up some money, and I probably will be applying to the "striking distance" schools too, but I don't want to make the same mistake I made last time and and focus on secondaries that I actually have a chance of. A little late, but I did learn the 80-20 (~ only 20% of things give 80% of the results or something similar) rule the hard way.

For you people that are applying for the fist time too, don't focus on schools that you would want to go and ignore the school that you can probably go to. I did that, I focused on a couple of my "hopeful" or "reach" schools and I disregarded the other ones. And now, I am applying again. Learn from my mistakes.

 

[Goro]

Very wise words there, Tiger. I am taking them to heart for future advising!

For you people that are applying for the fist time too, don't focus on schools that you would want to go and ignore the school that you can probably go to. I did that, I focused on a couple of my "hopeful" or "reach" schools and I disregarded the other ones. And now, I am applying again. Learn from my mistakes.[/QUOTE]

For me it fulfills the purpose of clinical volunteering. An RN, PA, Respiratory therapist, etc knows what interacting with patients is like. We value people with such clinical experience. They tend to do very well in our program.
Goro, how do adcoms feel about applicants that have non-medical volunteer hours and paid medical experience, but no medical volunteer hours?

 

[TigerClaws]

BUMP! So, this awesome thread doesn't get buried under useless crap.