Canadian, upward trend GPA, 513 MCAT

[brainwanderings]

I'm a Canadian graduate student in the final year of my Master's degree and also did my undergrad in Canada. I had a rough start to my undergrad with 2 deaths in my immediate family within 2 years of each other right before I started university. Combined with simply being ill-prepared, I ended up doing very poorly the 1st year, a fair bit better my 2nd year but not great, and earned mostly A's my final 2 years.

Undergrad GPA:
First year: ~2.35
Second year: ~3.3
Third year: ~3.88
Fourth year: ~3.88

Master's GPA:
4.0

Overall, my undergrad GPA is a little above a 3.3 according to AMCAS. I took the MCAT last summer and got a 513 MCAT (128/125/130/130).

Clinical Exposure:
I am in a translational research lab and work directly with Parkinson's disease patients on a weekly basis for my Master's research. I perform motor and cognitive clinical assessments on the patients before running my experiments. I do not have shadowing but intend to with my PI. I also volunteer at a hospital visiting patients (500 hours) and at an adapted aquatics for people with physical disabilities (300 hours).

Research:
I started research out of high school in the summer doing simple things like determining DNA concentrations. I entered my first paid research lab after summer of 2nd year, and then won a summer scholarship to do research in another lab summer of 3rd year where I published 2 papers, 1 first author and 1 second author. From my Master's I have 1 national conference presentation and 3 local conference presentations.

EC's:
-Executive member of 2 graduate student groups
-Reviewer for graduate student run journal
-Led science activities with elementary and high school students
-Involved in programs supporting fellow students
-Water/snow sports

Would adcoms be receptive to my upward trend and the fact that I'm in graduate school? Are there any universities anyone would recommend for my particular stats? I know that being Canadian doesn't help my situation.

So far, I'm thinking:
Georgetown
George Washington
New York Medical College
Rutgers New Jersey
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson
Chicago - Rosalind Franklin

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[gyngyn]

Previous MCAT scores?

 

[brainwanderings]

Previous MCAT scores?

The MCAT score I had the first time was 503 I believe. So I want to target schools that take the last MCAT taken.

 

[gyngyn]

The MCAT score I had the first time was 503 I believe. So I want to target schools that take the last MCAT taken.

Do you have a list?

 

[brainwanderings]

Do you have a list?

Do you mean list of schools?

These seem to be my best options so far:
Georgetown
George Washington
New York Medical College
Rutgers New Jersey
Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson
Chicago - Rosalind Franklin

Thanks!

 

[gyngyn]

Buy the MSAR.
Filter for the 88 schools that consider Canadians.
Eliminate the ones that matriculated less than 4 (they tend to be inside candidates).
Apply to the ones with a median MCAT around 510.

On first glance, two of the schools on your list only matriculated a single international!

There are about a dozen DO schools that consider internationals.

 

[summergirl]

Apply to DO. Don't bother with MD. I'm a Canadian with a much much stronger and longer-term upward trend with a much higher MCAT and just got accepted on my third cycle. I consider myself extremely lucky though because I have not heard of a single non-URM Canadian with stats as low as mine getting accepted to an US MD school. Plenty of people with higher stats got rejected though. Seriously, in your case, apply to DO and save yourself years of headache.