Non-Trad 4.0 GPA, 525 MCAT. Help with schools list please?

[3DVanGogh]

Hi all. Thank you for reading. I'm a little concerned because I feel like some components of my application may be a bit uneven/lopsided. I would appreciate any insight anybody wants to offer on what schools are appropriate or a reach for me.

Major: Physics (minors in Mathematics and Art History)

School: B.S. at my State University, majority of post-bacc done at community college with the exception of one upper division biochemistry class last summer (which was also done at a state university, different from my alma mater if that matters).

State: Texas

Ethnicity: White

Clinical Experience
~175 hours (1 year) of hospital volunteering with substantial patient contact. I know this is a little light, but I genuinely enjoy my time with patients and I hope/think that comes across in my application.

Non-Clinical Experience
- Three years teaching high school science (~6000hrs or more)
- Two years mentoring a high school robotics team (~1000hrs)
- One summer in an intensive program teaching disadvantaged inner city kids; similar to Teach For America summer institute, but a different organization (~500hrs)

Research
- One semester (~80-100hrs) analyzing differential equations to model cancer progression and response to treatment. I presented this work at a symposium.
-I am also thinking about including a semester long research project + symposium poster presentation I did as part of a class last fall.
-I know my research is weak, but the main reason I didn't continue is because I had to leave for the aforementioned summer institute/teaching opportunity. I am actually pretty interested in exploring research opportunities in medical school.

Shadowing
-10 hours shadowing a family practice doctor.
-I will be shadowing another doctor some at the end of this month... would it be worth delaying my application to get a few more hours here?

tl;dr: Strong academic stats and non-clinical ECs, mediocre clinical ECs, weak research and shadowing.

My current list:

• All Texas Med Schools (right now Baylor and UTSW are my primary target schools)
  
• Johns Hopkins
• U Penn
• Northwestern
• Duke
• Stanford
  
• UNC Chapel Hill
  
• UCSF
• UCLA
• UCSD
• Washington University St. Louis (maybe?)
• Harvard MS (maybe?)

I honestly don't know if this list is too big or too small, or if it is woefully inaccurate in terms of expectations, etc. Since Texas has about 11 med schools, I figure if I am going to apply out of state at any school it might as well be a big enough name to make the extra cost worth it.

If you have read this entire encyclopedia of a post you are a saint, and I thank you in advance for any input/advice you might have.

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[NeuroSoph75]

From an outside perspective I am wondering why you want to switch to a career in medicine with such little exposure to the doctor-patient relationship/daily activities of a physician. Your non-clinical ECs are great and I think ~175 hours is sufficient to know what it is like to work with patients, especially if this is an on-going experience. Many non-trads don't have research experience so I think yours is good enough to show that you understand the process and that you are interested in this aspect of medicine.

These schools accept very few OOS students:

• UNC Chapel Hill - interviews less than 2% of OOS applicants
• UCLA
• UCSD
• UCSF

So I would replace these with schools that favor students with high MCATs: NYU, Vandy, Northwestern, Wash U. If you're interested in California add USC-Keck (it's private). I have also heard that Mayo and Dartmouth like non-trads. Otherwise, you have a lot of great schools to chose from in Texas.

Good luck!

 

[3DVanGogh]

Thanks for the post. I was aware about the CA schools, but I did not know UNC was that bad about out of state admissions (must've overlooked their MSAR admission stats). I think you probably saved me a fee or two with that one, so thanks.

I also appreciate the feedback on shadowing. It has been something of a thorn in my side: the truth is it has been very hard to find opportunities while working. That being said, I do get some exposure to the patient doctor relationship in the hospital. Shadowing the family practice doctor I was struck by how similar some of the "behind the scenes" challenges she discussed were to ones I encounter in education. I feel like one full work day was pretty much all I needed for that sort of information. A chance to shadow other specialties would be nice though. Hopefully I get a little more experience at the end of the month.

 

[mydogmolly]

The CA schools accept very few OOS applicants because they get very few OOS applications. I think with those stats you could still stand a good chance at UCLA and UCSD. I'm not sure about UCSF though. I think they tend to really care about clinical ECs and are clearly willing to take lower stats for it, hence their relatively lower MCAT averages.

I also think NYU, Vandy, and WashU should be on there, maybe Northwestern too if you like Chicago. But your list looks good to me for what it's worth. Good luck.