In response to DentalDream, I do not regret applying to 25 schools. I am very luck to have added that 25th school because it is the one that I ultimately will attend. I received five interview requests and of the 25 schools. One from a state school; IUSD.
I feel that when deciding which schools to apply to, one can not decide solely based on GPA and DAT. My GPA suck thus, I will apply to Howard, Meharry and Boston. There are so many factors involved that I did not limit my self to lower GPA schools and private schools. I did do a lot of research. I apply to many schools for specific reasons such as: disadvantaged student admission policy, how many Ca resident admitted, GPA, DAT, DAT sections most emphasized, private school or not, stated emphasis on resent academic performance and others. I definitely did not apply to schools that did not accept a large proportion of out of state students. I basically applied to private and state schools who accept at least 30% out of state.
UDM, the school I was questionable about added had 3.54 avg GPA and mine was 2.7 and seemly low emphasis on the DAT which I did well on, so I wonder if it would be a waste of money; I was wrong.