applying again w/o really improving(?)

[LodiDodi]

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I'm from Cali and after being done being butt hurt about being universally rejected w/ no interviews, I decided to call schools and ask them whats up.

The prob is here are my stats:
MCAT is 37M 12V 12P 13B balanced
GPA:3.54
few months shadowing
few months volunteering
extras include a sorority (but I got kicked out last year after missing rush to do med apps)and politically subversive clubs dedicated to freeing palestine, also israeli dancing
I omitted the political clubs from the app(should I put the in?), should I omitt the sorority for southern schools which may call the chapter

I don't think my stats are that bad and my fear is that one of my recs might be bad. They are confidential so schools wont tell me if it was that and I have a letter service, so I cant just look at them. All the UCs would tell me is no research = no accepty. The really scarey part is that I got secondaries from both Wakeforest and Chapel Hill, so they must have liked something cus im outta state and they both screen. Im scared that the rec might have been bad and given them cold feet. Or else they just wanted my secondary fee...

I'm in kinda a tough situation because my MCAT is fall 05 and will expire. However my app hasnt changed much.

What brightened the situation is one of the schools I called basically said, we didnt interview you b/c we didnt think youd come here. You should apply again and if you can prove you want us, youll prolly get in. So im thinking maybe ill try med school once more before getting pissed off and becoming a clinical pharmacist. I got my pharm tech license after rejection was for sure, so i will prolly be working in a hospital after my license gets confirmed by the state (early august).

Basically I just have a few ?'s about this

1) Does any one else think it might be my recs?

(I'm from UCB and teachers have lost tenure and been sued for lying to students and writing a bad LOR when they said they would write a good one, so this is serious)

2) Are my EC's too ****ty to get in period?


3) If I should apply, how should I make my minimal experience sound good w/o bull****ting

4) sorry for this long ass post

 

[relentless11]

1) Does any one else think it might be my recs?

(I'm from UCB and teachers have lost tenure and been sued for lying to students and writing a bad LOR when they said they would write a good one, so this is serious)

Your GPA is average to below average for UC's, while your MCAT is great. I cannot speculate if it can be a bad letter of rec since its always up to the student to gauge if the professor can write good LOR. Although most students that get into a UC med school have done research (like 80-86%), it doesn't mean that not having research equals being denied admission. Additionally, MSAR only reports them as having "done research", however it doesn't mean they have done "meaningful research" either.

Research may come up during interviews along with any other interesting EC's. Therefore it is not depending on JUST research. Of course if you applied as MD/PhD then research his required.

2) Are my EC's too ****ty to get in period?

However based on your stats, I would speculate that your EC's seem quite "vanilla" (no offense!), especially for a UC student. There are extraordinary amounts of resources available to UC students. I'm sure numerous UCB students have done some kind of work in nearby SF..or even collaboration with UCSF. Therefore the options were there for you and are potentially still there regardless of where you go. It behooves you to be a unique applicant given that there are so many people that actually manage their time to take advantage of these resources. Here are a few examples of some of my own students who have applied in recent cycles (we're at UC Davis):

Student A: 3.5+ GPA, MCAT 33, ~3 publications (2 years of research), numerous trips to 3rd world countries for medical aid missions, played at the NCAA Div I/II level for 3 years, uncountable hours of clinical volunteering/shadowing.

Student B: 3.94 GPA (science GPA = 4.0), MCAT 31, 2 publications (2 years research), several clubs and honors societies, taught middle school part time, also uncountable hours of clinical volunteering/shadowing.

Student B received several interviews from UC's, but didn't get into any UC. Ended up on the east coast. Student A is still pending. From another perspective, one of my close friends had a 3.64 GPA, MCAT 28, competed at the NCAA Division I level for 2 years, lots of volunteering, and served as an officer/leader for several clubs got into Stanford however did not get any interviews at any UC. She didn't have ANY RESEARCH. Another key feature among these people is that they all had a social life too. They all interviewed well, and are quire sociable people in addition to their stats.

Remember, you are competing against the next best applicant. You have to ask yourself, how do you look compared to Student A, B, C, etc. Remember, in addition to EC's, there are students who have all these, and more..such as extra degrees, families, children, etc. Over at UCSF, there have been people who served in the military, played professional sports, and god knows what else😉. On top of all that, they've also done well in school and the MCAT.

3) If I should apply, how should I make my minimal experience sound good w/o bull****ting

Thats a strange question. Lets put it this way, you can't shoot at targets without any ammunition. If you don't have the EC's to "sound good" then how can you sound good regardless of BS or no BS. You can say whatever you want on the AMCAS application, however ADCOMS will take it as a grain of salt. They can never confirm what you put down. Medicine is all about being "EVIDENCE-BASED". It may be better to put more effort into getting more unique experiences.

 

[postbacker]

Your EC problem is your biggest problem, and it begs the question: why weren't you adding to these experiences during the past year?

 

[LodiDodi]

Good question. I was pretty sure I'd at least get an interview at a less competitive school, so I didn't work very hard to fit in extra EC's my senior year. Im pretty good with talking to people and usually dont have a hard time convincing some one face to face that I should be a doctor, prob is I never got that chance because I dont look good enough on paper. Also, basically from what I've heard (from addcoms) many less competitive schools (they dont call themselves that) are weary of California applicants. There's a whole lot of us and we all have fairly competitive scores, which scares them b/c they dont like going through interviewing and offering spaces just to get shafted by s. o. who gets into a school back in California.

I digress, back to the question at hand. EC's. I didn't do many ECs in college because despite a lot of the resources at Berkeley, there was a lot of competition too. I applied to various medical internships and learning programs, but never seemed to snag one. I could have volunteered at the school medical center ( and dont deny I should have), but by the time I got my stuff moved in and went down there, it aways seemed to be past the deadline. All other places required a fairly long bus ride to get to and I didn't have a car. So, I got a part time campus job (clerical) and did that instead. I would have preferred a lab job, but they didn't call me back after I applied.

The best option for me was volunteering at home, however it severely limited the hours I could do. To make matters worse, the doctor I volunteered for had his own health problems and though he was a very good teacher, he didn't have the time or energy to have me in his office as much as I would have liked.

The root of all the above mentioned problems is that I am a little shy and not as pushy as other students. I know this would turn off most schools, but I know I could still be a very successful doctor. When volunteering with at the hospital, the directors there quickly learned that I was fearless and hard working. They offered my a job working there with the severely disabled, semi permanent patients because most of the other volunteers were scared of these patients and transferred to another unit quickly. Unfortunately, I had to return to school that fall and with no vehicle, I could not continue at the hospital which was over an hour away from school.

The winter after my first application, I started getting really depressed about not getting any interviews. I didnt do much because I didnt see much of a point in it. The people who I did know that got into medical school were all people I considered to be obnoxious, lying jerks -the kinda people who would blatantly lie time after time to get grades changed and to get into any school. I wasnt really sure if I wanted to spend another 4 years of my life with these kind of people and got a very bad attitude.

Just now, I'm managing to get back on the horse and possibly consider applying again. However, I dont think depression is an acceptable reason for adcoms. I'm a hard working, highly functional depressive doesnt come off so well...

 

[LodiDodi]

Also, when replying to my post remember that I am not trying to get into California, I know I have no chance in hell of getting in...😳

 

[relentless11]

Also, when replying to my post remember that I am not trying to get into California, I know I have no chance in hell of getting in...😳

Getting into CA is besides the point though. There is NEVER a sure school that you will get into let alone be interviewed at. The mentality that you have no chance at school A vs. school B is moot given that each school looks at your whole application. Your experience clearly shows this concept. Despite your GPA/MCAT being relatively superior to the national medians, due to your lack of EC's and uniqueness--it likely caused the schools you applied to to not grant an interview.

IMO, if you really want to go to med school, lacking a car or whatever should not stand in your way. Go over to the Non-Trad forums and review the state of affairs which some applicants have to face. You have BART, you have the Muni, etc to get around in the East Bay and so forth. As a PhD candidate at UC Davis, I have never experienced a shortage of undergrads wanting to do research, nor are there any shortages on PI's who need free labor. UCB resides in one of the diverse communities in CA, therefore there are many clinical and non-clinical things you could have done.

Although I understand you are trying to justify why you lack the EC's (e.g., due to shyness, not pushy enough, etc), at the end of the day, you still lack EC's. If anyone of us does not meet the admission criteria, we can sit there all day saying how we "could make a great doctor", but at the end of the day, you don't become a doctor by sitting around. Not all internships require an application, nor are all EC's officially sanctioned by UCB. Last year I interned at UCB/UCSF in bioengineering (as a UC Davis Student)....so being a non-native UCB student, I can still intern at UCB for just experience. I took the UCD/UCB shuttle to get there. There were plenty of other labs which I could've volunteered in, and so forth...so I'm somewhat baffled at the magnitude of competition that you claim to experience at UCB. Ultimately its your call. If you really want to be a physician, than you should meet and exceed the standards set forth by the schools and your peers.

As stated I'm a PhD candidate. Despite my "extra degree", I'm still volunteering, doing community service, and planning to go abroad to do more work while working on my PhD thesis, taking undergrad/grad/med school classes, and preparing to apply to med school. Sure its competative here, especially in the biomedical engineering world. However, I am more limited by time than anything else, rather than experiences. In the end, if something is important enough...you make the time and/or find the effort.

 

[LodiDodi]

Yeah, I know I should have done more in undergrad. It was kinda a bad combo of not liking the school and area so much, not having a car to make transportation more straight forward (I know this is weird but I hate the bus so much I used to walk from Northside to Rockridge on foot -me and public transit dont mix well), and being very depressed for frosh/soph and mildly this year -which I cant say on the app.

So I guess you think I shouldn't bother.

I'll prolly rework my app a lot and try to reapply this year anyways, guess its only money. If I get lucky, I'll save myself another MCAT.
I'll try to concentrate more on stuff that makes me unique like my political involvement on campus and the various languages I'm learning for fun.

Thanks for the input. way to go with the time management, fitting all that in with a phd.

 

[axp107]

Wow, I'm really shocked that you didn't get in. I'm guessing you didn't apply to enough "safety" schools (if they even exist) since you thought you'd do well in the app process with your amazing MCAT score. Research isn't compulsory at all...

just apply broadly.. you'll get in!