extracurricular activities

[syperidot]

Hi,
Does anyone know how strict top tier med schools are about having good extracurriculars..such as research, doctor shadowing, or being involved in any clubs, even if you have a excellent gpa and excellent mcat scores. Because I feel you could have good extracurriculars, but if you have mediocre grades and mcat scores, it won't cut it for the top schools. It seems you can still get into a top tier school with excellent grades and mcat scores without having a good amount of research or clinical experience or any other activities....What do you guys think

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[Pinkertinkle]

A good mcat and a good gpa are not enough in of themselves to get you into a top tier school. There are plenty of people with top notch mcats, gpa, as well as EC's for them to accept.

 

[bella_dottoressa]

I do think ec's are important no matter where you're applying and no matter how high your numbers are. You always hear those random stories of people with 35+ mcats and 3.8+ GPAs who didn't do anything and realized that it was the ec factor when they were reapplying. I don't know, I'm not an admissions person so I have no idea but I would say that it's about 100 times easier to get good numbers if you aren't doing ****...plus, I do think med schools want to see people who are somewhat well rounded, active, engaging individuals.

 

[syperidot]

Well my problem is that I've volunteered at the hospital and worked at two different research labs, but my gpa wasn't good enough(3.3) and my MCAT score was mediocre(29), so I got waitlisted and then rejected. Now I'm doing a masters program, and my advisor told me to just focus my schoolwork because I asked him if I should volunteer at the hospital or do some extracurricular. I don't know if I should take his advice and focus on schoolwork only or also get involved with some ec. He also told me there is no need to retake my mcats, but I am gonna. What should I do because I have research and some clinical experience, but do you think it would look bad if all I did was focus on schoolwork and doing well on the MCATs during the school year with no ec to show for????