Hey guys! I've been lurking on these forums for a while now and recently decided to whip up and account. I'm currently at the halfway mark in my undergrad career but am feeling a bit iffy about where I am currently at. All of a sudden it seems med school is right around the corner and so I'm kinda freaking out a little. I will post my stats below as they stand at the moment and would really appreciate any advice or help as to what areas I should beef up.
Also, I would love if somebody could point out some med schools that I would have a decent shot at according to my current track record since I want to aim as high as I can possibly achieve.
Hi there! Welcome to SDN and congrats on being halfway through college. Unfortunately, people's stats are still in flux at this point and so us giving you schools to look into won't really be of any help, particularly since you don't have an MCAT
Oh, and one more thing - I really have the urge to pursue a masters abroad if at all possible as a sort of "productive gap year" before med school. Likely I'll get it in something like public health since I'm really interested in international health development - especially in impoverished countries and stuff. I don't know if that's useful for med school applications. But I'm interested in it and want to tie it in with my career path in the long term so any advice on how to factor that into my plans would be nice too! Thanks!
One thing I might warn you is that being abroad during the application season is a nightmare due to returning for interviews. Something I might recommend instead is doing an MD/MPH (which you can do at essentially any institution you get accepted to for regular MD provided they also grant MPH degrees. Many programs allow you to go abroad to do work for your MPH during medical school!
School: Medium-sized liberal arts school, Honors College
Major: Biology (but I take a lot of random coursework too in entrepreneurship, intl studies, etc)
cGPA: 3.817 (slight upward trend too, I goofed around freshman year and didn't show up to a lot of class but I guess still got a 3.6 then)
sGPA: 3.839 (noteables: 4.0 in all Biology courses, A in 2nd Semester Orgo+Lab, didn't factor in a compsci class I got an A in too)
Your GPAs are impeccable. Keep doing what you've been doing because it's clearly working.
Research: Worked in the lab on four different occasions, started way back in high school. Probably have over 400-500+ hours. Couple presentations plus an award back in high school research. Will be sticking with the lab I'm in now for my Bachelor's Essay for the next couple years and hoping to get a paper or two out of it.
If research is your thing, I would recommend getting even more involved in the lab. 400-500 hours is the amount someone will get doing a single full-time summer research internship. Do your best to be productive too - doesn't have to be a publication; it can also be a poster, a thesis, an abstract, or a presentation!
Extracurriculars:
-Student Government Association (and a couple other things loosely related to SGA) for 1.5 years
-Club Soccer for 1 year (but not really very involved)
-Student leader in the Honors College to help freshman land valuable volunteer opportunities in the community for 1 year
-Was part of a college tech start-up accelerator program, unfortunately our business didn't pan out, participated for 1 semester
-A entrepreneurial style shark tank pitch competition (not affiliated with the above), didn't place sadly ):
-A founding father of my fraternity for 1 year, trying to figure out how to get leadership in that
Some interesting stuff here - perhaps you might be interested in looking into an MD/MBA, if business is also your thing?
Volunteer:
- I've volunteered in various places for maybe 50-100 hours while affiliated with organizations like SGA, fraternity, and as an Honors College volunteer organization officer. Will try and up this moving forward
- Volunteering at a major hospital next to my college transporting patients and whatnot, will probably get 100+ hours through this at the very least
Getting a good deal of hospital volunteering in is definitely a good idea.
Shadowing:
None. Would like to get like 20-30 hours but I feel like any more than that is really kind useless.
You should shadow until you can prove to the people who will be looking at your application that you understand what it is you're getting into. Anything beyond that won't benefit your application (but can still be cool and fun).
LORS:
I think I could have a pretty decent LOR with my Hindi professor, but I don't believe her English would be very fantastic. I wanted to aim for an LOR with my current research mentor but his English is also shaky and we got off to a rough start at the moment. Not particularly close with anybody that could write an awesome LOR sadly. There is a teacher I'm aiming to get close to next year since we'll have a bunch of classes together so we'll see. This is one thing that I thought that a masters program in MPH would help me a lot with as far as apps goes anyway.
You still have plenty of time to reconnect with old professors, but you should do so soon if you're angling for a letter from them.
Anyway, I know its a bunch! I just wanted to get some opinions, feedback, or support on my progress so far.
Keep up the good work and get some solid clinical experience in (along with doing well on the MCAT) and you'll be fine!
