CA res, 3.87 GPA, 518 mcat - School list HELP!

[lickerwhicker]

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[WedgeDawg]

Remove Northstate. Remove UCR too unless you're from the Inland Empire area (if you don't know what it is, you're not from it).

Remove Drexel, Temple, Loyola, NYMC, Oregon, Tufts, Hawaii, and Albany.

That leaves you with 28 schools. If you want to take out more, take out Mayo and BU, but I think 28 is reasonable for a CA applicant. I would honestly replace Mayo and BU with Case Western and maybe UVA, but it's up to you. I think of those 4 schools, Case is the best bet for you.

Medical schools don't work like undergrad. Fitting a profile is much more important than being above the curve. A 3.85/518 applicant like you should be applying to state schools + mid tiers + top tiers. Applying to schools like Drexel that have much lower stats and a metric ton of applicants is a waste of time and money because you don't fit into their target applicant group. It's understandable that as a CA applicant you would want to apply to a lot of schools, but you did a great job with providing a solid mid-tier base around which to form your school list and then state schools + top tiers.

 

[lickerwhicker]

Remove Northstate. Remove UCR too unless you're from the Inland Empire area (if you don't know what it is, you're not from it).

Remove Drexel, Temple, Loyola, NYMC, Oregon, Tufts, Hawaii, and Albany.

That leaves you with 28 schools. If you want to take out more, take out Mayo and BU, but I think 28 is reasonable for a CA applicant. I would honestly replace Mayo and BU with Case Western and maybe UVA, but it's up to you. I think of those 4 schools, Case is the best bet for you.

Medical schools don't work like undergrad. Fitting a profile is much more important than being above the curve. A 3.85/518 applicant like you should be applying to state schools + mid tiers + top tiers. Applying to schools like Drexel that have much lower stats and a metric ton of applicants is a waste of time and money because you don't fit into their target applicant group. It's understandable that as a CA applicant you would want to apply to a lot of schools, but you did a great job with providing a solid mid-tier base around which to form your school list and then state schools + top tiers.

So it wouldn't be worth it to apply to schools that I don't really match with? I think i'm just really paranoid that I won't get in anywhere, esp. since I'm from CA, so I'm trying to apply very broadly haha. so too broadly is a bad idea?

 

[WedgeDawg]

So it wouldn't be worth it to apply to schools that I don't really match with? I think i'm just really paranoid that I won't get in anywhere, esp. since I'm from CA, so I'm trying to apply very broadly haha. so too broadly is a bad idea?

Applying to schools where your stat profile is wildly discordant isn't going to get you anywhere. Creating a school list is all about maximizing your chances of success (i.e. percent chance of at least 1 acceptance), being accepted to the best school possible (defined by you), and minimizing the amount of money and time you put into applying. An upper mid or top tier applicant with historically a 96% chance of acceptance (even for people who don't have the benefit of good advising) isn't going to substantially increase their chances by applying to a school with far lower stats than theirs. Obviously every school you add increases the chance of acceptance by a certain percentage (though if you get extreme enough, you probably start losing points because of all the effort you have to invest into secondaries), but adding Drexel onto a well-crafted list will probably make your chances go from a 95% to a 95.1% chance of at least 1 acceptance (making up numbers but you get the idea).