Hello,
I'm getting ready to apply and I need to finalize my school list. To make a long story short I spent 1.5 years as a premed student when I started college and did well (3.92 gpa), but I ended up losing interest and switching my focus to music. I spent the next 3.5 years practicing as much as possible, learning four additional instruments, etc. I didn't care about my GPA so it wasn't as high as when I was a premed student. I finished music school with a (3.73) A few years after graduating I reevaluated and came back to medicine.
Even though my stats are pretty good I still want to apply to a lot of schools. I do not want to be a reapplicant. I'm also willing to make some "donations" even if my chances aren't great for the upper tier schools. Obviously if there's a 0% chance I don't want to waste the money, but I figure I'd apply to a couple top tier.
Here's some info:
cGPA and sGPA as calculated by AMCAS: 3.8 cGPA, 3.74 sGPA
MCAT score(s) and breakdown: 516 (128/127/130/131)
State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US): I'm originally from Vermont, but I've lived in Colorado for the past two years.
Ethnicity and/or race: Half black/half white (but I'm light skinned/racially ambiguous)
Undergraduate institution or category: University of Vermont (music theory and composition major)
Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer):
1250 Hours of scribing for a surgical sub-specialty
900 Hours of ski patrolling for a major western resort. Led the entire patrol in most medical calls responded to for the 2019-2020 season (75). Atypical premed experience, but it was fantastic.
Volunteer: no clinical volunteering. Was never scheduled for the hospital volunteering I signed up for.
Non clinical volunteering:
250 hours + 100 future hours volunteering for a sexual assault hotline (talking to survivors in distress, going to SANE exams etc.)
30 hours + 200 future hours as a crisis text hotline volunteer (just started this in May. Have completed 30 hours of training and have committed to 200 additional hours over this upcoming year)
5 hours tutoring an inner city high school kid who lived in government housing (hours are low due to frequent cancellations/conflicts).
Shadowing: 20 hours split between family medicine and emergency medicine. Was going to shadow an orthopedic surgeon, but COVID. I will shadow him when it's safe to do so.
Research experience and productivity: zip/nada. I was a music major and at this point I won't be able to get any.
Anything else not listed you think might be important:
Not sure if this all matters but I'll be the first person in my family to go into medicine. Both of my parents only graduated high school and I'm an only child.
Also my parents had significant health issues while I was growing up. Both of them have been disabled since I was 13. My mom had two big strokes during a surgery to fix an aneurysm. These led to a massive personality change along with her loss of ability to care for herself. My dad is a combat veteran and he had a whole host of issues including ptsd, depression, borderline personality disorder, chronic pain, neurological issues etc while I was growing up. He was in a wheelchair for most of my teenage years.
Both of these things obviously had a profound effect on me and are part of the reason I'm interested in medicine. I spent a lot of time in hospitals growing up, but I think it gave me a semi-unique viewpoint to what patients and their families go through.
Here's my rough list:
Some Chance:
UVM
Colorado
Utah
Dartmouth
Tufts
USC
Einstein
Georgetown
Hofstra
Emory
Kaiser
Pitt
OSU
Tulane
Rochester
Einstein
Rosalind Franklin
Hofstra
Drexel
Quinnipiac
Indiana
NYMC
Stonybrook
Rush (I'm not sure if I make the cut with their service requirement)
Jefferson
SUNY Downstate
UCSD
UNC Chapel Hill
Wake Forest
Loyola
Oregon
Lets Burn Some Cash:
(My GPA/MCAT is in the 20-25% percentile for a ton of these schools so I guess there's a small chance??)
UCSF
Harvard (sent me a "Dear POC please consider applying" letter)
Mt. Sinai
University of Washington (Is this really a 0% chance with being OOS?)
Baylor
NYU
Chicago
UCLA
Northwestern
Columbia
Vanderbilt
Cornell
Virginia
Boston University
I'm getting ready to apply and I need to finalize my school list. To make a long story short I spent 1.5 years as a premed student when I started college and did well (3.92 gpa), but I ended up losing interest and switching my focus to music. I spent the next 3.5 years practicing as much as possible, learning four additional instruments, etc. I didn't care about my GPA so it wasn't as high as when I was a premed student. I finished music school with a (3.73) A few years after graduating I reevaluated and came back to medicine.
Even though my stats are pretty good I still want to apply to a lot of schools. I do not want to be a reapplicant. I'm also willing to make some "donations" even if my chances aren't great for the upper tier schools. Obviously if there's a 0% chance I don't want to waste the money, but I figure I'd apply to a couple top tier.
Here's some info:
cGPA and sGPA as calculated by AMCAS: 3.8 cGPA, 3.74 sGPA
MCAT score(s) and breakdown: 516 (128/127/130/131)
State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US): I'm originally from Vermont, but I've lived in Colorado for the past two years.
Ethnicity and/or race: Half black/half white (but I'm light skinned/racially ambiguous)
Undergraduate institution or category: University of Vermont (music theory and composition major)
Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer):
1250 Hours of scribing for a surgical sub-specialty
900 Hours of ski patrolling for a major western resort. Led the entire patrol in most medical calls responded to for the 2019-2020 season (75). Atypical premed experience, but it was fantastic.
Volunteer: no clinical volunteering. Was never scheduled for the hospital volunteering I signed up for.
Non clinical volunteering:
250 hours + 100 future hours volunteering for a sexual assault hotline (talking to survivors in distress, going to SANE exams etc.)
30 hours + 200 future hours as a crisis text hotline volunteer (just started this in May. Have completed 30 hours of training and have committed to 200 additional hours over this upcoming year)
5 hours tutoring an inner city high school kid who lived in government housing (hours are low due to frequent cancellations/conflicts).
Shadowing: 20 hours split between family medicine and emergency medicine. Was going to shadow an orthopedic surgeon, but COVID. I will shadow him when it's safe to do so.
Research experience and productivity: zip/nada. I was a music major and at this point I won't be able to get any.
Anything else not listed you think might be important:
Not sure if this all matters but I'll be the first person in my family to go into medicine. Both of my parents only graduated high school and I'm an only child.
Also my parents had significant health issues while I was growing up. Both of them have been disabled since I was 13. My mom had two big strokes during a surgery to fix an aneurysm. These led to a massive personality change along with her loss of ability to care for herself. My dad is a combat veteran and he had a whole host of issues including ptsd, depression, borderline personality disorder, chronic pain, neurological issues etc while I was growing up. He was in a wheelchair for most of my teenage years.
Both of these things obviously had a profound effect on me and are part of the reason I'm interested in medicine. I spent a lot of time in hospitals growing up, but I think it gave me a semi-unique viewpoint to what patients and their families go through.
Here's my rough list:
Some Chance:
UVM
Colorado
Utah
Dartmouth
Tufts
USC
Einstein
Georgetown
Hofstra
Emory
Kaiser
Pitt
OSU
Tulane
Rochester
Einstein
Rosalind Franklin
Hofstra
Drexel
Quinnipiac
Indiana
NYMC
Stonybrook
Rush (I'm not sure if I make the cut with their service requirement)
Jefferson
SUNY Downstate
UCSD
UNC Chapel Hill
Wake Forest
Loyola
Oregon
Lets Burn Some Cash:
(My GPA/MCAT is in the 20-25% percentile for a ton of these schools so I guess there's a small chance??)
UCSF
Harvard (sent me a "Dear POC please consider applying" letter)
Mt. Sinai
University of Washington (Is this really a 0% chance with being OOS?)
Baylor
NYU
Chicago
UCLA
Northwestern
Columbia
Vanderbilt
Cornell
Virginia
Boston University
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