Short background
- 28 years old, in my second year of undergrad. Never went to college before this
- ~10 year career previously in service driven / client based sales business
- Attending inexpensive city university, not a lot of great research available
- Started volunteering in Feb, foresee about 200+ hours of that
- Have about 30 hours shadowing, much more expected
- Have about 30 hours + ongoing clinical research (crunching numbers and analyzing patient data for a doctor)
- ~3.9 GPA
- Want to take MCAT in April 2017, apply June-July 2017
Need some help devising a plan for ECs junior year, basically.
As you can see I have almost no research. Should I bother with bench research and try to find something at my school? Realistically it would probably only be for one semester. I feel really deficient in the research area, but at the same time I'm just not passionate about labs. I don't want to do it for a living, I like patients and talking to people. I would basically be doing it to check the box, so would it be worthwhile to just skip it, do something I'm more passionate about, and hope that as a non-trad, that's viewed favorably?
Also planning to volunteer with a prisoner rehabilitation service and possibly do some tutoring. I live in an urban area and really care a lot about my neighborhood / community and being a part of it, so I can speak at length about these activities. Is it better to just double down on this kind of thing?
Anyway, I'm just feeling really behind the curve in terms of ECs, especially research, and I need a bit of feedback in terms of how to beef up my application in a bit over a year's time.
I'm hoping to apply to some top-tier schools like Columbia / NYU, but I just can't shake the feeling that I don't stand a damn chance without some amazing story to tell and years of high-end research.
- 28 years old, in my second year of undergrad. Never went to college before this
- ~10 year career previously in service driven / client based sales business
- Attending inexpensive city university, not a lot of great research available
- Started volunteering in Feb, foresee about 200+ hours of that
- Have about 30 hours shadowing, much more expected
- Have about 30 hours + ongoing clinical research (crunching numbers and analyzing patient data for a doctor)
- ~3.9 GPA
- Want to take MCAT in April 2017, apply June-July 2017
Need some help devising a plan for ECs junior year, basically.
As you can see I have almost no research. Should I bother with bench research and try to find something at my school? Realistically it would probably only be for one semester. I feel really deficient in the research area, but at the same time I'm just not passionate about labs. I don't want to do it for a living, I like patients and talking to people. I would basically be doing it to check the box, so would it be worthwhile to just skip it, do something I'm more passionate about, and hope that as a non-trad, that's viewed favorably?
Also planning to volunteer with a prisoner rehabilitation service and possibly do some tutoring. I live in an urban area and really care a lot about my neighborhood / community and being a part of it, so I can speak at length about these activities. Is it better to just double down on this kind of thing?
Anyway, I'm just feeling really behind the curve in terms of ECs, especially research, and I need a bit of feedback in terms of how to beef up my application in a bit over a year's time.
I'm hoping to apply to some top-tier schools like Columbia / NYU, but I just can't shake the feeling that I don't stand a damn chance without some amazing story to tell and years of high-end research.
