I'm currently in my sophomore year as a biology major, music minor at a state school. I anticipate graduating with somewhere around a 3.85-3.9 cGPA and a 3.75-3.8 sGPA, possibly a bit higher. I'm planning on taking my MCAT in late May or early June 2015.
My current EC's are as follows:
Undergraduate medical club, various music groups (wind ensemble, clarinet choir, etc), volunteer at a hospital (nurse's assistant currently, will have various other roles throughout the rest of school), rainbow girls (girls' volunteer/community service group). I was also a member of my school's pre-optometry club for a year before I switched to pre-med, and I'd like to join another student club or two if I can find something that works with my schedule next year. I also work roughly 20 hours a week in an eye clinic as an optician.
I started as a music major trying to do prereq's and do med school after getting a BA in music. I decided I didn't have enough time to devote to both music and studying to do my best in my prereq's, so I switched into a biology major. I was behind in taking gen chem, so I took gen chem 1 over the summer last year and gen chem 2 last fall. I couldn't get into orgo this spring, so I'm taking orgo 1 and 2 from a private university at home over this coming summer. I'm planning on doing about 10 hours of clinical volunteering and hopefully about 3-5 hours of nonclinical volunteering each week a well. I'm also planning on doing quite a bit of shadowing, depending on how much time I have and how willing they are to work with my weird schedule due to school. I know that sophomore summer is the optimal summer to do a REU/SURP, but unfortunately that's not possible this year if I want to be on track to take my MCAT next spring. I've tried looking around my campus for research opportunities, but I haven't been successful thus far. I've also been looking for a TA position, but my bio department uses grad students over undergrads. I could possibly land something in our chem department though. Tutoring is also an option I'm considering.
So, here are my questions. What's going to be the best way to improve my application? Would completing a REU/SURP the summer before my junior year be worthwhile even though I couldn't get a LOR from it or list it on my applications? Or is there something else I'm completely missing that I need to do? I'm not opposed to doing DO school, but I'm really interested in ophthalmology (although I know that could very well change when I'm doing rotations) and I know it's quite a bit harder to get into the more competitive specialties as a DO.
Sorry for the long post - I just wanted to give as much pertinent background info as I could to help you decide what's going to be the best course of action. Thanks very much for your time and help!
