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Dawg, many MD and all DO schools reward reinvention.Hi all!
I'm applying this cycle and have posted about this before, but haven't received great advice and feel like I'm just taking shots in the dark with my school list. I vacillate between thinking everything will be fine and I'll definitely get in, and thinking I have absolutely 0% chance of getting into any MD or DO schools. My sGPA is well below the 10th %ile of pretty much all med schools, but my MCAT is above the 90%th percentile of a lot of the schools I'd really like to end up at, so I have no idea what to expect from this cycle. I would love any and all opinions on how competitive I am and how my school list looks.
I'm a nontrad, graduated in 2016 from a T20, and have a master's already from my current career. I know the masters won't count for anything at MD schools but it's a 3.9+ so that's cool for DO schools!
cGPA: ~3.5
sGPA: ~3.2
DIY post-bacc GPA (25 credits of science): ~3.9
MCAT: 522
I had a roughhhh start in undergrad with a sub 2.5 gpa my first semester of freshman year. I'ts been a steady and steep upward trend since then, I maintained a 4.0 my whole senior year and kept up that performance in the masters and post-bacc. One caveat to my postbacc performance was that some of it was dedicated to retaking the science classes I really screwed up 6-7 years ago, which I know doesn't look as good as taking upper level sciences. The other half of my postbacc was dedicated to finishing prereqs, so physics I and II, ochem II, biochem.
I have loads of research thanks to the masters, a publication, several oral presentations at national conferences, a handful of posters, some awards. Almost 600 hours of nonclinical volunteering. Adequate shadowing. Have been employed as a clinical researcher full time since finishing the masters, so almost 2000 hours of clinical experience. TA'ed a graduate level course.
I'm a PA resident, and unfortunately I have a terminally ill parent in PA. I'm struggling to both maximize my odds of getting into medical school and maximize my odds of staying close to home to be there for my family, so you'll notice my school list right now orbits around Philadelphia. I am, in particular, worried that because the Philly schools are so low yield, they'll take a look at my MCAT and think I'll end up elsewhere. I was considering trying to apply ED to Temple for that reason, but it just seems too risky since my GPA is so low. So, all that being said, my school list right now is as follows:
MD:
Boston U
Netter
Hofstra
Tufts
Dartmouth
Brown
Albany
Rochester
U of Cincinnati
Case Western
CCLC
Ohio State
Johns Hopkins
University of Maryland
Georgetown
GW
University of Virginia
Rutgers RWJ
Rowan Cooper MD
Pitt
Penn State
Geisinger
Temple
Drexel
Sidney Kimmel
UPenn
DO:
PCOM
Rowan SOM
Does this seem reasonable? Am I waaaaay way too optimistic? Should I add more DO schools? The only reason I'm hesitant about adding more DO is that the next closest ones to home are in NYC (for me, I think NYC would be a reallllly bad fit, and I also don't feel great about Touro given how they handled the overbooking fiasco) or Liberty, whose politics I really can't get behind. Thanks in advance! I really appreciate all the info I've gotten on this forum.
Given your geographic constraints, I suggest:
Boston U
Netter
Hofstra
Tufts
Dartmouth
Albany
Case Western
Georgetown
GW
Pitt
Drexel
Wayne State
NYMC
EVMS
PCOM
Rowan SOM
NYITCOM
UNECOM
LECOM
MUCOM
VCOM
