For reference, I’m about to start my third year of undergrad at a large state school, second semester of being premed (engineering before that), and I’ll graduate a semester late, which means I have five semesters left. I plan on graduating in December 2022, dedicating a couple months of study time after that for the MCAT which I’ll take around March or April 2023, and applying that summer to (hopefully) matriculate in fall 2024. Right now, I’m planning out how I’m going to spend the next five semesters and I need help making sure I’m not missing anything.
What I’ve Done
GPA: 3.94. sGPA: 3.96.
Clinical Volunteering: 80 Hours in ED and ICU at local hospital. Maybe one or two good stories, but pretty standard.
Research: Got involved with new organic chemistry lab in January. Everything got shut down in March, so we haven’t done any lab work yet, but lots of literature review. Not sure if I should count these hours or not.
Non-clinical volunteering: 120 hours at Red Cross screening donors for COVID. Also pretty standard, nothing too exciting.
Shadowing: 15 or so hours, two different doctors, both peds.
Other stuff: Got my EMT certification over the summer. Taught music at a high school for a year, probably around 200 hours (paid). Was involved in some pretty intense musical ensembles, traveling out of state every week during the school year, touring across the US all summer. Probably 4000+ hours total. Not sure if I’ll include that in my application or not.
What I plan on doing
GPA/sGPA: Hoping to keep above 3.9. I think this is feasible, as I’m not taking more than 16 credits any semester, and a relatively easy major. We’ll see.
MCAT: Who knows, man. I’ve always been a good test taker, but SAT =/= MCAT. Hopefully having a couple months of solid study time will be good for me.
Clinical experience: Hoping to use my EMT certification to get a job. Probably going to work as an ED tech or something similar in a hospital or urgent care for at least a semester or two, but hoping to have some ambulance experience at some point as well. Reasonably expecting to do 1000+ hours with this. Also planning on doing some sporadic hospital volunteering as I have time, during summers and breaks and stuff. Probably going to hit around 200 hours with this.
Research: Hoping to stay with the Organic Chemistry lab I’m with for the rest of my undergraduate career. It’s too early to tell, but I think I can reasonably expect at least one publication or poster presentation or something. If that does happen, I might be first or second author. Also planning on doing an honors thesis my last year relating to the work I do. Probably going to hit 900+ hours with this, possibly more if I do summers as well.
Non-clinical volunteering: Not really planning on doing much else with this. What I have seems kind of weak, but at least it’s not nothing.
Shadowing: Definitely planning on doing more of this. Probably going to try and hit between 40 and 80 hours across various specialties. I’d love to shadow a surgical subspecialty, as that’s what I think I’m interested in at the moment.
Other stuff: That’s probably about it. Maybe teach myself spanish? I’m going to be doing EMT stuff in an area with lots of Spanish speakers so this might be a good idea anyway.
Questions I have
One of the main questions I have is whether or not my low volunteering hours are going to hurt me. I know I’ll have plenty of clinical experience, but I worry about whether the fact that it’s mostly paid experience will be a bad thing. Another question I have is whether or not I should try and involve myself more with non-clinical volunteering, specifically with underserved populations. Should I try to beef that up more at the expense of some of my other activities, or should I just accept that that’s going to be a weak spot in my application and tailor my school list accordingly? Finally, is there anything else glaring that I’m missing that will keep me from being competitive? It would be nice to be able to apply to some T20’s, but I’m more than happy going anywhere that will take me.
If you’ve read this whole thing, thank you so much. I appreciate any feedback I can get.
