Need help with setting goals/direction

[Sooster]

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Wanted to start off with a thanks. This website has been incredibly helpful and all of you make that possible 🙂

I applied this cycle with no success as of yet. I submitted secondaries to 16 schools, hold 15 rejections, and am waiting for the results of a very very late interview at SUNY downstate (end of March). I'm still hopeful, but I want to make sure I have some goals set for the next few years so that I can best prepare myself for reapplying as needed. Here is my app as it would stand today:

• 3.72 cGPA/sGPA, BS Mechanical Engineering from a top 10 engineering school, graduated in 5/17
• 515 (129/126/130/130) MCAT (from 6/17)
• 2 summers working at a medical billing company (~650 hours) - a lot of this time was spent calling patients, does this count as clinical experience?
• 110 hours volunteering at a hospital during undergrad
• Undergraduate research with a biomechanics group, working with bone regeneration (~350 hours),
  • 1 poster
• 40 hours shadowing internist
• Leader on a student electric race car team (~1000 hours)
• Have spent the last year working at a well-known EMR company for technical/customer service (~1600 hours)
  • I volunteered for several trips to help customers install and provide support to providers (~50 hours over weekends),
  • I am actually leaving this job at the end of May because I want to be working in a more clinical setting regardless of whether that is through medical school or not.

Weaknesses I see in my application are:

• No non-clinical volunteering
• Could use more clinical volunteering hours
• Limited clinical exposure in general

The schools I applied to this cycle are:

• University of Rochester
• University of Illinois at Chicago
• Tufts
• The Ohio State University
• SUNY Upstate
• SUNY Downstate (II in March)
• Saint Louis University
• Keck
• Indiana University
• Icahn
• Hofstra
• Geisel
• Care Illinois College of Medicine
• Boston University
• Hackensack Meridian - Seton Hall (II in end of May)
• Albert Einstein

With this, I wanted to reach out and see if I could get some advice on how I can not only best explore medicine as a career, but prove to myself and admissions committees that I can become a successful provider. When I applied earlier this cycle, my app was essentially the same, minus the experience I've gained at the EMR company - and so I don't believe this difference would be enough to significantly impact my future chances. I would like to spend the next year really building the content of my application, and reapply summer '19.

The two options I've been considering are:

• EMT
• Some sort of clinical research assistant position

but I would like to get some feedback and some of the other things I could do to get to most out of the following year. Any other criticism/feedback would be greatly accepted. Thanks again, y'all!

-Sooster

 

[aymar]

Where is your state of residence?

 

[Sooster]

Illinois, but I have bases in Wisconsin and Minnesota so have the option to choose where I can be the next year.