MD or DO?

[bigfishjoe]

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Hello.
I'm an upcoming re-applicant for the 2018~2019 cycle and I wanted some advice and thoughts on my chances at MD and/or DO.
The biggest concern for me right now is that my stats from last year's cycle is exactly the same as this year's. I have retaken the MCAT just yesterday but most likely it will be around the same score (if not worse) than my previous one.
I graduated from USC located in CA with cGPA: 3.859, sGPA: 3.880 and have a MCAT score of 511. Although I do have volunteering/research/shadowing experiences, it is on par, if not a bit worse than the average MD applicant. Furthermore, I have no publications or anything necessarily unique about me. To make things a little bit worse, I am an Asian male.
I have two fairly decent letters and an additional one which I don't have much confidence in. And speaking of letters, I would appreciate advice on how to approach my mentors for regaining those letters as I have not been in contact with them for over half a year now.
Although I have applied a bit late in last year's cycle, so far I have gotten 0 responses for interviews (barring 1 wait-list) and this worries me.
What kind of schools should I aim for with my profile? How negatively will my unchanged application from the previous year affect my chances this year? Is DO a better alternative for me? Or worse comes to worse, is it wiser to switch to pre-dental rather than pre-med?
I'm genuinely lost and do not know where or how to go from here. Please give me some advice.

 

[Goro]

Hello.
I'm an upcoming re-applicant for the 2018~2019 cycle and I wanted some advice and thoughts on my chances at MD and/or DO.
The biggest concern for me right now is that my stats from last year's cycle is exactly the same as this year's. I have retaken the MCAT just yesterday but most likely it will be around the same score (if not worse) than my previous one.
I graduated from USC located in CA with cGPA: 3.859, sGPA: 3.880 and have a MCAT score of 511. Although I do have volunteering/research/shadowing experiences, it is on par, if not a bit worse than the average MD applicant. Furthermore, I have no publications or anything necessarily unique about me. To make things a little bit worse, I am an Asian male.
I have two fairly decent letters and an additional one which I don't have much confidence in. And speaking of letters, I would appreciate advice on how to approach my mentors for regaining those letters as I have not been in contact with them for over half a year now.
Although I have applied a bit late in last year's cycle, so far I have gotten 0 responses for interviews (barring 1 wait-list) and this worries me.
What kind of schools should I aim for with my profile? How negatively will my unchanged application from the previous year affect my chances this year? Is DO a better alternative for me? Or worse comes to worse, is it wiser to switch to pre-dental rather than pre-med?
I'm genuinely lost and do not know where or how to go from here. Please give me some advice.

You have made several mistakes:
apply late
applying with a suspect LOR
ECs that are at best avg for MD
not having DO schools on the list the first time around. Your numbers would be a lock for an interview at any DO school

You didn't mention what schools you applied to, but if you're typical CA resident, I'll wager that you aimed for schools you had no business applying to, like UCSF and Stanford, right?

Read up on gonnif's posts on the mistakes of reapplying right away. Why do you think the next cycle will be any different for mD schools if nothing has changed?

For starters, get in more patient contact experience, and more service to others less fortunate than yourself.

Shadow a DO and get LOR from same.

Here are schools which you should have some luck at:
Hofstra
Albert Einstein
Rochester
USC/Keck
Mayo
Dartmouth
U VM
Miami
George Washington
Georgetown
SLU
Albany
Rochester
Rush
Rosy Franklin
NYMC
MCW
VCU
EVMS
Wake Forest
Netter
Jefferson
Temple
Drexel
Creighton
Tulane
Loyola
Uniformed Services University/Hebert (just be aware of the military service commitment)
Oakland-B

Any DO program. I can't recommend Nova, Touro-NY, or LUCOM, for different reasons.
UCI
UCD
UCR IF you're from the Inland Empire.

 

[bigfishjoe]

You have made several mistakes:
apply late
applying with a suspect LOR
ECs that are at best avg for MD
not having DO schools on the list the first time around. Your numbers would be a lock for an interview at any DO school

You didn't mention what schools you applied to, but if you're typical CA resident, I'll wager that you aimed for schools you had no business applying to, like UCSF and Stanford, right?

Read up on gonnif's posts on the mistakes of reapplying right away. Why do you think the next cycle will be any different for mD schools if nothing has changed?

For starters, get in more patient contact experience, and more service to others less fortunate than yourself.

Shadow a DO and get LOR from same.

Here are schools which you should have some luck at:
Hofstra
Albert Einstein
Rochester
USC/Keck
Mayo
Dartmouth
U VM
Miami
George Washington
Georgetown
SLU
Albany
Rochester
Rush
Rosy Franklin
NYMC
MCW
VCU
EVMS
Wake Forest
Netter
Jefferson
Temple
Drexel
Creighton
Tulane
Loyola
Uniformed Services University/Hebert (just be aware of the military service commitment)
Oakland-B

Any DO program. I can't recommend Nova, Touro-NY, or LUCOM, for different reasons.
UCI
UCD
UCR IF you're from the Inland Empire.

First of all, thank you for the advice and list of schools. As to address some of the points you have made for me...
When I was applying for last year's cycle, I thought that it was pretty much required to get all 3 letters from my university professors and so I had to awkwardly fit a third letter last minute to fulfill that nonexistent requirement.
As for the schools I applied to last year, this is the list:
Brown
USC
UCI
UCLA
UCSD
Tufts
Cornell
UCD
I didn't apply to many, because these were schools that if I were to get in, I would go for sure. I thought that I could get a higher MCAT score that would open up more possibilities and grant me high probabilities of getting into certain schools, but obviously that didn't work out at all. So far, I've gotten rejections from all but UCSD (waitlist) and UCI (no response).

As for your advice on getting more patient contact experience, I have done some (~200 hours) hospital volunteering and care - should I continue to do so? Or were you referring to a specific alternative?

 

[Goro]

The Brown, Cornell and UCLA apps were all donations, alas. You also applied to too few schools.

Suggest getting in more non-clinical volunteering. Have you shadowed?

 

[bigfishjoe]

I do have shadowing experience, albeit it was just me following my mentor around for rounds as well as helping her out on research and other tasks. For the non-clinical volunteering, should I continue doing my regular volunteering activities and get more hours or find other new volunteering opportunities?

I guess going back to my main point of this thread is do I have a decent chance at MD programs even when reapplying with the same applications (with maybe one better LOR) and if not, how should I go about making my application better (asides from a higher MCAT score) from here? Do I need a publication, more volunteering/shadowing/research, or something unique about me?

 

[Magus5454]

As for the 3 letters, some schools require 3 letters in place of a committee letter. I have kept in contact with all my letter writers over the past three years so they understand where I am at and where I am going.

Also I seriously question retaking a 511 MCAT so soon

 

[Magus5454]

Follow Goro' s advice, get a DO letter, and he's suggested volunteering/etc for you. Get started on that now so you can get it in your app for next year

 

[sss1219]

I guess going back to my main point of this thread is do I have a decent chance at MD programs even when reapplying with the same applications (with maybe one better LOR) and if not, how should I go about making my application better (asides from a higher MCAT score) from here? Do I need a publication, more volunteering/shadowing/research, or something unique about me?

You have the stats for it, but will need a better school list for one. The UC's are really difficult even for IS, Brown/Cornell are reaches, and Tufts is low yield, so your list was not great as goro said above. You would need to add more of the Oakland/NYMC/Netter level schools for a successful reapp. And because beggars (read: reapplicants) can't be choosy, some DOs as well.

If you want some advice on your ECs, you'll need to post about the specific roles/hours you've had.

You probably won't need an MCAT retake. What was the specific breakdown of the 511?

 

[feeling-dizzy]

California MD school are insanely hard to get into. I don't care how smart you are or how high your MCAT are, there are no guarantee for California MD school. You are shoe in for any DO school though. Try to apply MD school for a year or two first, if that does not work out, then apply for DO school after. Whatever you do, do not let that great MCAT score expire and have to do a retake.

 

[Deecee2DO]

There is no reason why you shouldn't net some MD interview invites with your stats alone (it is not your stats holding you back, it is mostly just applying late and applying to the wrong schools and too few schools ). Do some non-clinical volunteering like Goro said and continue with more clinical experiences/exposure and APPLY EARLY (applying early is the single easiest most advantageous thing you can do that is completely in your control). There is also no reason why you should be limited to DO schools with a 511 MCAT and almost a 3.9 GPA from USC for gosh sakes lol. Your stats alone should get you some MD IIs IF you apply smart like Goro said yet again. I would apply to a few DO schools JUST in case, but you are pretty much a shoe-in at most DO schools. Just watch for the ones with a heavy in-state bias like MSU-COM (Michigan) and RowanSOM (NJ). KCU-COM, CCOM, PCOM, Western, and DMU are all solid well-established DO schools. Good luck!