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- May 13, 2017
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Hello,
I'm a 23 year old Asian female from California so I know I'm already at a disadvantage.
I had a pretty abysmal Junior/Senior year after transferring from a community college to UC Berkeley so I graduated from Berkeley with a 3.2 cGPA and 3.0 sGPA. I had a lot of research hours but very, very little clinical volunteering hours (think 10). Even knowing that, I made a really bad decision to apply last year and, unsurprisingly, didn't get much response. I probably should have waited a year but I didn't because I thought my MCAT (517), 2 phenomenal, and 2 good LORs would make up for it but I was just being naive.
My first two years at community college resulted in a 3.9 mostly because I took all GE courses except two science classes so when I got to Berkeley, I was left having to finish all lower and upper division science courses in time to graduate in two years so my GPA was brought down pretty low also giving me a declining grade trend.
Anyway, this year, though, I took a few more science/non-science courses at the community college I was at pre-transfer and was able to bring up my cGPA to 3.41 and my sGPA to 3.19 so my grade trend is more like a cosine graph now. In addition to that, I clocked around 700 clinical volunteering hours with an additional 80 hours of shadowing radiologists at the hospital's Radiology department this year. I was also informed that humor comes across somewhat unprofessional in a personal statement for medical school so I will be removing those few sentences and re-writing my personal statement with the assistance of one of the physicians at the hospital, who recently finished his residency and has been mentoring me for the past year or so.
Would this be enough for a successful cycle this year? I will have schools of all tiers (skipping the top 10, though, probably even top 20) where I will be a first-time applicant and schools where I will be a second-time applicant.
I'm a 23 year old Asian female from California so I know I'm already at a disadvantage.
I had a pretty abysmal Junior/Senior year after transferring from a community college to UC Berkeley so I graduated from Berkeley with a 3.2 cGPA and 3.0 sGPA. I had a lot of research hours but very, very little clinical volunteering hours (think 10). Even knowing that, I made a really bad decision to apply last year and, unsurprisingly, didn't get much response. I probably should have waited a year but I didn't because I thought my MCAT (517), 2 phenomenal, and 2 good LORs would make up for it but I was just being naive.
My first two years at community college resulted in a 3.9 mostly because I took all GE courses except two science classes so when I got to Berkeley, I was left having to finish all lower and upper division science courses in time to graduate in two years so my GPA was brought down pretty low also giving me a declining grade trend.
Anyway, this year, though, I took a few more science/non-science courses at the community college I was at pre-transfer and was able to bring up my cGPA to 3.41 and my sGPA to 3.19 so my grade trend is more like a cosine graph now. In addition to that, I clocked around 700 clinical volunteering hours with an additional 80 hours of shadowing radiologists at the hospital's Radiology department this year. I was also informed that humor comes across somewhat unprofessional in a personal statement for medical school so I will be removing those few sentences and re-writing my personal statement with the assistance of one of the physicians at the hospital, who recently finished his residency and has been mentoring me for the past year or so.
Would this be enough for a successful cycle this year? I will have schools of all tiers (skipping the top 10, though, probably even top 20) where I will be a first-time applicant and schools where I will be a second-time applicant.
