Medical Is my application strong enough to apply this cycle?

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I want to apply this cycle.

How can I best spend the next two months before applying in late August?

For instance, should I quit my 50/hour software engineering job for a 15/hour ER Tech job? I could get an additional 200+ clinical hours. Money does matter, but I would rather go to medical school broke than not at all.

My goal is EM or family medicine. Happy to go either MD or DO.

Current stats
  • 120 clinical hours
  • 130 non-clinical hours (of these, 20 hours in a leadership role)
  • 20 hours shadowing (EM physician)
  • 300 hours research and first author conference paper / presenter
  • 3.95 sGPA
  • 508 mcat (retaking soon, let's assume 514+)
  • Certified EMT / weekend volunteer (1 month currently but more projected)
  • 2 LoRs from science professors, 1 from volunteer supervisor
  • Compelling experiences / motivations / essays
  • 3 years work experience as software engineer
  • Nontrad, mid twenties, white guy

There's no reason to quit your job when you get in extra clinical volunteering through volunteerism. As to application improvements prior to applying, I suggest:

- Get in another 30 clinical hours, which would get you up to the average listed. Besides the one month of EMT volunteering, what else have you done to gain those hours? How long ago did you start?
- Do 30 more hours of physician shadowing, ideally adding an office-based primary care doc, and be sure to include a DO from whom you might get a clinical letter. Use your ED doc contact for referrals/suggestions.
- Do your nonclinical volunteer hours include off-campus service to the poor?
- Try to get a non-science faculty LOR from someone who taught you in order to fulfill the usual requirements of med schools across the board, unless you are getting a committee letter, in which case whatever they require is fine.
- Will you be submitting your application before the 2nd MCAT score returns so you can get it verified in a timely manner?

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Perhaps I could list some hours as "projected" if I could schedule, say, shadowing with a primary care doc?

While you can list projected hours (and I wouldn't unless they were definitively scheduled), they will not be considered in decision-making on your file. You would need to assure schools that the hours had been completed through Secondaries (if given an appropriate prompt) and update letters (where allowed).
 
Suppose I do get a 514 MCAT and don't get any additional clinical / shadowing hours. Would you apply this cycle?

I would apply even with the 508. That makes you competitive for a fair number of schools, MD (~30) + DO.

Get in more clinical volunteering and service to others less fortunate than yourself.
 
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