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Your MCAT is fine for 90%+ of schools, so what's important now is your mission-fit. The idea of mission-fit revolves around your purpose in medicine; your application most likely is tailored towards medical school with shadowing, volunteering, etc., but when you have community service and service-based volunteering in your application, you need to choose a specific population you want to serve. For example, underserved, rural populations is one group of people that you can choose to do community service for and this will make you more mission-fit towards schools that emphasize service and contributions to your community.Thanks for the feedback, I truly appreciate it! It seems like you’re very against the idea of retaking, which I can understand. If I am determined to improve my application as much as possible over the next year, do you have other suggestions for ways to make more a more meaningful different, if not through the MCAT? Should I stick to continuing my research/clinical work, and forget about extra steps in addition to this?
Top brand-name US schools are not generally Canadian-friendly, though check the MSAR to be sure. If you are Canadian, your strategy for getting into a US school is to focus on the schools that take Canadians. You also have to figure out how you will finance this education, which is much more expensive than if you went to a Canadian medical school.I have my heart set on going to T10 school in the north east - not because of prestige, but because of personal factors like location, my desire to be in a big city, and the opportunity to train at the best institutions with the greatest resources. These priorities are somewhat complicated by the fact that I am not from the US, and many lower tier schools are less Canadian friendly.
To begin with. Your 514 will stay with you forever. Even if you do retake and get even a 520+ next time, you will still be held in lower regard than people who were able to get 520+ on their first attempt. So your initial score is a part of the limiting issue no matter what you do.my score the limiting issue
Flawless stats, with even more flawless EC's added on and of course, being from the US is important. No matter how compelling your story is, T10 schools are just a big gamble despite the fact whether you're mission-fit for them or not, even as a US applicant.Got it, I guess I needed a bit of a reality check with this one. If you don’t mind me asking, what factors make the prospect seem out of reach? Is my GPA in combination with my score the limiting issue? I did attend a top undergrad school (although I don’t know if this changes anything). Even if T10 schools are out of my league, I’ve still got a year that I want to make the most of, no matter what type of school these actions land me at. The other commenter mentioned that community service would be more impactful than a rewrite - apart from volunteering, what other moves are going to put me in the best position for next year?