Help with an MD/PhD school list

Started by Snaketail
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Snaketail

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7+ Year Member
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Hey everyone! I hope you all are doing well and staying healthy during the pandemic. I am a current senior planning to apply MD/PhD this upcoming cycle and am using my time at home to focus on writing my essays and finalizing a school list. I am having a heck of a time narrowing my list down so I would appreciate some advice on schools I should consider cutting and/or obvious choices that I am leaving out. I know that, like everyone on my here, my list is top-heavy, so if anyone has some good target schools for me to add that would be appreciated! I have made sure to go through (most of) the schools on my list to ensure there are at least a handful of PIs with whom I would be interested in working. Thanks in advance!

Stats:
Engineering major at T20 undergrad
~3.85 cGPA, ~3.85 sGPA
520+ MCAT

Research:
~2500 hours across two labs and continuing for my gap year: some posters, a senior thesis, a middle-author pub under review and a possible first-author pub that would not be submitted by the time I submit a primary, awarded two small grants

Other ECs:
~1000 hours in a fine arts group
~150 hours volunteering with a disadvantaged population
~200 hours clinical volunteering
~75 hours shadowing (including PC / FM)
~500 hours of paid teaching
A few other things that I'll leave off for the sake of anonymity

School list:

Harvard
Hopkins
Penn
WashU
UCSF
Stanford
Columbia
Duke
Vanderbilt
Cornell
Northwestern
UChicago
Sinai
Case Western
Yale
UTSW
Michigan
Pitt
Ohio State
Emory
Iowa
Illinois Chicago
Rochester
Wisconsin
Colorado
 
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You are competitive ... Your LORs should mention manuscripts along peer review and your potential as scientist. If LORs are ok, despite top heavy list, you should receive at least 6-8 invitations to interview. I don't think that you should cut schools from your list. You might consider a few (3-5) less competitive MSTPs strong in Neuroscience, if you want to sail the process with multiple ACs to have choices. PM me if interested in discussing that further.