Need some honest evaluation

[paulgeorge24]

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Ok so I was originally pretty confident in my chances at reapplying this cycle, but I have become more and more nervous over time. I originally blamed my admission failure on a late application (August), but I am starting to see more issues in my app which I don't know if I can immediately fix. The reason I originally felt confident, was that my stats are pretty good for the schools I am targeting; cGPA 3.89, sGPA 3.94, MCAT 34 (12, 11, 11). I only got one II last cycle (from IU) and I still have not heard back from them. Aside from a late app last year, I also had very poor ECs. I had some teaching, some shadowing, some volunteering, but all together it adds up to barely 100 total hours. Unfortunately I'm not sure how well of a job I have done to fix this issue, here's a quick breakdown of what I have now:

Shadowing ~ 150 hours combined with different doctors and specialties.
Volunteering ~ 100 hours combined. This includes patient discharge, hospice volunteering, and some clerical work for a hospital.
tutoring high school students~ 25 hours so far but I am trying to increase this amount as much as possible before reapplying.
Assistant Basketball coach ~ 20 hours only for one season.
EMT ~ I did about 25 clerical hours during my EMT training, not really sure if I can count this or not.
Pharmacy Technician ~ only 20 hours so far was just recently hired (like two weeks ago) looking to work as much as I can now.

So basically I'm really concerned that my ECs are still too weak for me to gain an acceptance. I live in Illinois so I am targeting school in the Chicago area, the main school being UIC. Does anyone have any advice on what I should do to proceed, or what my chances might be at reapplying? I really do appreciate any help anyone might offer.

 

[lalalaaaaaa]

Solid numbers for sure! Weak ECs for sure. Are those all the activities you put on your AMCAS? you definitely need some long term activities.

A few questions: Are you applying broadly, did you hear from anyone else? What did you do differently after your first cycle? What have you been doing this cycle? Are you looking for jobs/volunteer positions that will give you more clinical/leadership/teaching/research experience?

 

[DrMidlife]

Academic stats are stellar, EC's are not that bad, so assume you did something VERY WRONG and figure out exactly what it is. It looks like you didn't get an interview.

If "August" means you submitted AMCAS in August but you weren't complete for another few months, that's very wrong.
If your personal statement has typos or casual grammar or is inflammatory or immature or arrogant, that's very wrong.
If one of your letter writers threw you under the bus, obviously that's very wrong.
If you only applied to public schools in states where you're not a resident, that's very wrong.
If you have mostly controversial or political or religious EC's (Westboro maybe?), that's very wrong.

My suggestion: find somebody the same age as the people who do med school admissions (40-70 year olds) who isn't all that nice and will give you honest brutal feedback on your app. You may need to pay a consultant.

Bottom line: there's something very wrong here. Best of luck to you.l\

 

[Indianarn]

Ok so I was originally pretty confident in my chances at reapplying this cycle, but I have become more and more nervous over time. I originally blamed my admission failure on a late application (August), but I am starting to see more issues in my app which I don't know if I can immediately fix. The reason I originally felt confident, was that my stats are pretty good for the schools I am targeting; cGPA 3.89, sGPA 3.94, MCAT 34 (12, 11, 11). I only got one II last cycle (from IU) and I still have not heard back from them. Aside from a late app last year, I also had very poor ECs. I had some teaching, some shadowing, some volunteering, but all together it adds up to barely 100 total hours. Unfortunately I'm not sure how well of a job I have done to fix this issue, here's a quick breakdown of what I have now:

Shadowing ~ 150 hours combined with different doctors and specialties.
Volunteering ~ 100 hours combined. This includes patient discharge, hospice volunteering, and some clerical work for a hospital.
tutoring high school students~ 25 hours so far but I am trying to increase this amount as much as possible before reapplying.
Assistant Basketball coach ~ 20 hours only for one season.
EMT ~ I did about 25 clerical hours during my EMT training, not really sure if I can count this or not.
Pharmacy Technician ~ only 20 hours so far was just recently hired (like two weeks ago) looking to work as much as I can now.

So basically I'm really concerned that my ECs are still too weak for me to gain an acceptance. I live in Illinois so I am targeting school in the Chicago area, the main school being UIC. Does anyone have any advice on what I should do to proceed, or what my chances might be at reapplying? I really do appreciate any help anyone might offer.

I like everything you have said. I think you have good MCAT and good ECs to get into Medical school. I agree that you need to apply more broadly. I understand you are applying to Chicago area school, but you may need to apply outside and also consider Osteopathic Schools too.

 

[paulgeorge24]

Solid numbers for sure! Weak ECs for sure. Are those all the activities you put on your AMCAS? you definitely need some long term activities.

A few questions: Are you applying broadly, did you hear from anyone else? What did you do differently after your first cycle? What have you been doing this cycle? Are you looking for jobs/volunteer positions that will give you more clinical/leadership/teaching/research experience?

Thanks for the reply! I am definitely applying pretty broadly this time around, and looking into more schools. A lot of those volunteer and clinical hours have come from the past year, the first time around my hours were even worse than that. As of right now I spend my time doing a few different things. I shadow an ENT surgeon in his office, and in the operating room. I volunteer at a hospital doing patient dismissal, and I sort and match EKGs in the heart hospital. I volunteer at a hospice and spend 2-3 hours a week seeing and talking to patients at nursing homes. Lastly, I work as a pharmacy tech, and I tutor high school students in math and chemistry. I know its kinda late but I've been steadily beefing up my hours per week in all these activities to prepare for reapplying. At the same time I am still definitely concerned that my activities are still not enough.

 

[paulgeorge24]

Academic stats are stellar, EC's are not that bad, so assume you did something VERY WRONG and figure out exactly what it is. It looks like you didn't get an interview.

If "August" means you submitted AMCAS in August but you weren't complete for another few months, that's very wrong.
If your personal statement has typos or casual grammar or is inflammatory or immature or arrogant, that's very wrong.
If one of your letter writers threw you under the bus, obviously that's very wrong.
If you only applied to public schools in states where you're not a resident, that's very wrong.
If you have mostly controversial or political or religious EC's (Westboro maybe?), that's very wrong.

My suggestion: find somebody the same age as the people who do med school admissions (40-70 year olds) who isn't all that nice and will give you honest brutal feedback on your app. You may need to pay a consultant.

Bottom line: there's something very wrong here. Best of luck to you.l\

Thanks for the reply! The ECs I originally posted are not the ones I applied with, its what I have now, so I was significantly weaker than that originally. My application was actually submitted in mid July, however my MCAT score did not come in till about mid-August, so I think that may have delayed my app a little bit. I definitely do think that I could've done a better job on my PS and my secondaries, so I will definitely try harder with those this time around, thanks for the feedback.

 

[solitarius]

I would suggest that you take your reapp cycle more seriously.

Applying late the first time. Reapplying with low hour ECs. I shudder to envision what your ECs were for the first cycle. Seriously, do you want to go med school?

 

[DrMidlife]

This isn't about EC's or a late app. With 3.8/34, there should be interviews. Something else is wrong here.

 

[solitarius]

He mentioned he had one II which, considering his late app and EC's, seems par for the course. Must admit, his writing could be more clear, but this is my interpretation: this current cycle is his first cycle, and the EC hours submitted are lower than what's posted above. And he submitted AMCAS in August.

It may be helpful to see your school list (original + reapp).

 

[paulgeorge24]

This isn't about EC's or a late app. With 3.8/34, there should be interviews. Something else is wrong here.

I did get one interview at Indiana University, and I thought the interview went pretty well. Unfortunately I am still under consideration there so I am preparing to reapply right now. One thing I forgot to mention, I submitted my secondaries very late as well. I was out of the country for about a week after I submitted the primary application, and ended up submitting my secondaries pretty late as a result. Could that have had a significant impact on my application? I really want to make sure I do everything perfectly this time around.

 

[paulgeorge24]

He mentioned he had one II which, considering his late app and EC's, seems par for the course. Must admit, his writing could be more clear, but this is my interpretation: this current cycle is his first cycle, and the EC hours submitted are lower than what's posted above. And he submitted AMCAS in August.

It may be helpful to see your school list (original + reapp).

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I did actually go on one interview, still waiting to hear from them, but preparing for reapplication in the meantime. Sorry my post was kind of confusing, but your interpretation is completely right. Here is a list of the schools I applied to:

Indiana University School of Medicine
Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
Southern Illinois School of Medicine (placed me on an alternate interview list)
University of Arkansas College of Medicine
University of Illinois at Chicago School of Medicine
University of Iowa, Carver College of Medicine
University of Wisconsin
West Virginia University School of Medicine
University of Louisville

I think I targeted too many state schools. The states I have the best chance at getting admission are Indiana (lived there my whole life almost) and Illinois (I live here now). I downloaded a pretty helpful spreadsheet from this site a few months ago, which I am using to consider schools for my next application.

 

[solitarius]

I think Louisville, WVU, Wisconsin, and SIU were bad choices for the reasons you mentioned. I'd focus on midwestern privates like MCW/SLU/Creighton and public schools more receptive to OOS like Ohio State, Penn State, for example.

I can't say your ECs would hold you back this time around, but I can say that it would be a shame if you wasted your second re-app cycle and then got post-rejection feedback on the light number of hours. If it were me, I would bulk up those ECs before re-applying.

 

[Goro]

That's it? These are the ECs you've done? No wonder you got rejected. You need to demonstrate some altruism and not merely go though the checklist. Your ECs are very cookie cutter. 4.0 automatons are a dime a dozen. Show some humanism.



Shadowing ~ 150 hours combined with different doctors and specialties.
Volunteering ~ 100 hours combined. This includes patient discharge, hospice volunteering, and some clerical work for a hospital.
tutoring high school students~ 25 hours so far but I am trying to increase this amount as much as possible before reapplying.
Assistant Basketball coach ~ 20 hours only for one season.
EMT ~ I did about 25 clerical hours during my EMT training, not really sure if I can count this or not.
Pharmacy Technician ~ only 20 hours so far was just recently hired (like two weeks ago) looking to work as much as I can now.

So basically I'm really concerned that my ECs are still too weak for me to gain an acceptance. I live in Illinois so I am targeting school in the Chicago area, the main school being UIC. Does anyone have any advice on what I should do to proceed, or what my chances might be at reapplying? I really do appreciate any help anyone might offer.[/QUOTE]

 

[Corvid]

That's it? These are the ECs you've done? No wonder you got rejected. You need to demonstrate some altruism and not merely go though the checklist. Your ECs are very cookie cutter. 4.0 automatons are a dime a dozen. Show some humanism.

His ECs weren't that bad, though they were definitely weak. That said, even though he has 100 volunteering hours they seem to be split between multiple experiences. The problem is a lack of deep commitment to any particular EC. That said OP, you should really commit to ECs. It's not the quantity of ECs, it's the depth of commitment that counts. For example, even if you have 300 volunteering hours, if it's only 15 hours between 20 different experiences that looks very checklist - as if you were just deliberately trying to rack up ECs. It takes commitment to stick with one thing over 200 hours, ya know?

The best course of action to take while you prepare to re-apply is keep developing your existing ECs. And maybe pick one up you can really commit to. Also apply early, seriously. Your stats are great. If you apply early enough you'll probably get in somewhere. Also really consider your PS. My application cycle sucked (even though I applied the first day) because of my poor school list and I suspect a generic/ weak PS.

 

[lalalaaaaaa]

Definitely broaden your school list. That is likely your main problem outside of lack of ECs. Your list was VERY narrow and almost no private institutions! What is your updated school list for this year?

It sounds like you got on track a little bit this cycle, but look into a serious commitment this coming cycle in terms of employment or a significant role in a volunteer project where you are working in a clinic/hospital.

Contact schools that rejected you and try to get feedback about your app.

Have the PS readers on SDN review your PS.

Also, don't forget to update IU with your current experiences and show a lot of interest. Don't just sit on the waitlist, show them why you will be a good fit and that you are working on your app.