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[representwitpixels]

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[Bonne Nuit]

What less-obvious things should I pay attention to in order to improve my prospects for admissions down the road? Of course I'm aiming to do as well as I can on the science pre-reqs, then MCAT's in summer '21, but these remain to be seen. I should have strong recommendations from clinical supervisors and grad school advisors. My GPAs: undergrad (3.3) and the 2 psych MA's (3.6 and 3.6). I also worked in organizational psych/private sector for 5 years between the two MA's. I'm 31.

You’ll need physician shadowing to start - aim for a minimum of 40 hours with a primary care physician and add on specialty shadowing from there for a total of 60-80 hours. You’ll also need lots of clinical experience (meaning you’re working with patients as they receive medical treatment) and nonclinical volunteering/community service hours (150+ hours for both clinical and community service). As a postbac with a low (for medical school) cGPA, you’ll want to maintain as close to a 4.0 in your postbac classes as you can.

Also, invest in a subscription to the Medical School Admissions Requirements database (MSAR) so you can get a good sense of what your state and target MD schools are looking for in their candidates. For DO programs, you’ll have to do this by pulling this information from their individual admissions websites. It’s helpful to do this research early on in the premedical process so you can best target your academic and extracurricular efforts.

 

[Bonne Nuit]

Thank you for your reply! I hadn't thought about primary care shadowing, I appreciate your suggestion here. Regarding speciality shadowing, I wonder if I'll have that covered with the out-patient psyc care/supervision that I provide/receive in my day job? Can you share an example of what you mean by lots of clinical experience agnostic to that? True that about getting straight A's - I'm doing my best. MSAR looks key - good idea.

By the way, I edited my original post to reflect some other experiences I have had that your reply signaled may be relevant.

Congratulations on your acceptance and the next chapter of your physician journey! I'm not sure what the other parts of your post signature mean, but sounds like you crushed it!

Your counseling internship will not count as shadowing unless you are specifically shadowing/observing an MD or DO psychiatrist. It has to be a physician.

Not being an admissions committee member, I’m not really sure if your counseling experience will be considered “clinical”- my hunch is no, though I encourage you to ask this in the main premed forum so the faculty experts can weigh in. My understanding is that clinical experience for medical school application purposes means you’re working with patients undergoing medical treatment, typically in a hospital or medical clinic setting. Depending on the nature of your experiences, they might fit the bill. But typical paid and volunteer clinical experiences are scribing, medical assisting, EMT, children’s hospital volunteering, hospice, etc.

Your nonprofit and business activities are nice ECs and will add interest to your application.

Thanks for the kind words. The LizzyM and WARS scores are SDN-created metrics for combining stats like GPA and MCAT, and the alphabet soup is a tracker of my application cycle. I am also a nontraditional student in my 30s, and I’m very grateful that I had a lot of success on my first and only cycle. It took many years of hard work and a lotof good advice from resources like SDN to get here, though.

 

[chicandtoughness]

Hi! I'm curious - if you have a masters in counseling psych already, why are you doing an internship? You should be eligible to be working full time, since you should have done an internship as part of your graduation requirements.

 

[chicandtoughness]

However, I have always aimed to deepen my expertise in order to better serve my patients. To that end, yes, I'm an intern in an advanced training clinic, along with psychotherapists seeking more specialization hailing from psychology and psychiatry.

I guess I'm just wondering why you wouldn't go straight to paid clinical experience, which certainly looks better on a resume and application to me rather than continued internship experiences. You'll "deepen your expertise" just as much in a full time role vs. internship. Are you at least earning hours towards licensure?

 

[keolu hills]

When applying to medical school, be sure to be open to other specialties too. You won't really know about the many specialties (including psychiatry) until your third year.