North Carolina Paramedic/HYPS ‘21 grad, School List Help

[platonicparamedic]

I’ve been out of college for a while and not sure of my competitiveness as an applicant given a nontraditional major, a middling GPA due to one summer class in particular (see below), and a large amount of hands-on clinical experience. Since I’m not sure where I stand in terms of competitiveness, I’m not sure about the distribution of schools I should be applying to in terms of prestige/selectivity.

My list right now is all MD in-state schools plus a few in optimal locations for myself/my partner (from California): Duke, UNC, Wake Forest, East Carolina, Icahn, Stanford, and UCSF. I am looking for more schools that would value my background heavy in clinical experience and schools with a happy undergraduate population (likely, schools that are not ranked and/or true P/F), and am looking to make a big list, from which my partner (a nurse) will cull locations that do not have good nursing jobs nearby.

I don’t think there are too many applicants with this profile so I’m almost certainly doxxing myself, but I guess I’ve got nothing to hide 🙂

1. GPA cGPA: 3.57; sGPA: 3.62
2. MCAT 519 (130/131/129/129)
3. State of Residence North Carolina (family ties to New York, Florida, California)
4. Race/Ethnicity 50/50 White/Latino
5. Undergraduate Institutions
   1. HYPS grad (Classics major, graduated 2021, magna cum laude, all core pre-med classes completed here)
   2. Individual biology post bacc classes at home state university (because of my chosen major, I did not have many science electives)
6. Clinical Experience
   1. Volunteer
      1. 911 EMT during college. 1800hrs. Substantial portion worked during the pandemic. Member of managing Operations Committee.
      2. Hands only CPR/stop the bleed instructor. 7hrs.
   2. Paid
      1. 911 EMT for my hometown. 4300hrs. Top marks on employee evaluations, commendations, lots of high acuity patients.
      2. 911 Paramedic at the same agency (current job). 1500hrs. Crew chief/lead provider for my ambulance, management of controlled substances, record of successful intubations, pacing/cardioversion, etc.
7. Research
   1. EMS research on obesity and pain control. 200hrs.
      1. First author on published abstract (Prehospital Emergency Care)
      2. Second author on expanded published abstract (Prehospital Emergency Care), second author on working manuscript.
      3. Oral and poster presenter for research group at EMS World Expo (largest EMS conference); unable to attend NAEMSP where research again was selected for oral and poster presentation.
   2. Internal EMS agency presentation on getting involved with EMS research (4 sessions, 10hrs total including prep).
   3. Internal EMS agency quality assurance project. 50hrs.
8. Shadowing
   1. Emergency Department (36hrs)
   2. Cardiac Cath Lab (12hrs)
      For the rest, I observed both doctors and nurses in these units during paramedic school for the listed number of hours - not sure if this counts as shadowing?
   3. Oncology outpatient (14hrs)
   4. Labor and delivery (12hrs)
9. Non-clinical volunteering
   1. Hometown soup kitchen/thrift store/church rent assistance: 25hrs
10. Extracurricular activities
    1. Paramedic school (2022-23). 950hrs classroom, 800hrs clinical (including the above), taken concurrently with full-time job.
    2. CUNY Graduate Ancient Greek program
       1. 12-credit class the summer after freshman year (2018). One grade. One big fat C+.
       2. I had no idea at the time that I would get a college transcript from this program, that it had so many credits, or that it would apply to my GPA 6 years down the line when applying for medical school. I loved learning Greek though. Without this, my cGPA is 3.70.
    3. Wilderness First Aid Instructor (2020). 40hrs teaching first aid for lay responders in austere environments.
    4. College theater (lead roles, 360hrs), pottery (70hrs), rock climbing (500hrs)
11. Honors/Awards
    1. Extra Mile Award at volunteer EMS agency (2020). When the pandemic began and school went online, I all but lived on the ambulance and began working significant hours, especially at night, to keep the trucks staffed.
12. Other
    1. The basic trajectory of my 3 years so far since graduation:
       1. 2021 - begin job as EMT summer of 2021
       2. 2022 - winter/spring, take MCAT; summer, begin paramedic school
       3. 2023 - summer, finish paramedic school; fall, promotion to paramedic, two research conferences, 1 biology class at local university.
       4. 2024 - winter/spring - continue with research work, 1 biology class at local university
    2. A group of students, including myself in a leadership role, successfully lobbied for significant changes to the Classics major at my university to make the major more equitable to students of diverse backgrounds.
    3. I’ve likely got some strong letters of rec from my Classics thesis advisor and EMS medical directors, and fine letters of rec from a research advisor, science professor, and volunteer EMS chief.

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[Mr.Smile12]

What feedback have you received from your prehealth advisors? Do you still have access to their services?

 

[platonicparamedic]

What feedback have you received from your prehealth advisors? Do you still have access to their services?

Thanks for the reply! I do still have access to my school's services and have been going through their committee process.

I have not received specific feedback on the tiers of schools I should be looking at/my competitiveness as an applicant from my advisors, but am looking to use information from here in conjunction with my own research and a meeting with them to grow my list. Also, the idea of anonymous/depersonalized advice seems valuable to me at this stage.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I have not received specific feedback on the tiers of schools I should be looking at/my competitiveness as an applicant from my advisors, but am looking to use information from here in conjunction with my own research and a meeting with them to grow my list. Also, the idea of anonymous/depersonalized advice seems valuable to me at this stage.

That's why we're here and what we do best. 🙂

I presume you have much to comment on with your EMT experiences, especially in the height of the pandemic. Look at all of your secondary essay prompts among schools on your wishlist, and work backwards towards your personal statement to make sure you cover all of the bases requested of you. If you have been living in NC recently, or had a lot of your EMT experience in NC communities (especially underserved areas), you should have your in-state publics on your list.

Applicants avoid getting screened out if they have more than 150 hours of service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation predominantly). Being a first-responder (police, fire, military) for a significant time helps too, so I give you props for diving into being an EMT and improving services to the community and with quality research. Do a little more with your soup kitchen/thrift store/church rent assistance (if you want to list it in Work/Activities, get it up to 50 hours if you can so I can pay attention to it), but check with the schools you are considering about how they will value it (so you won't get screened out).

 

[platonicparamedic]

I presume you have much to comment on with your EMT experiences, especially in the height of the pandemic. Look at all of your secondary essay prompts among schools on your wishlist, and work backwards towards your personal statement to make sure you cover all of the bases requested of you. If you have been living in NC recently, or had a lot of your EMT experience in NC communities (especially underserved areas), you should have your in-state publics on your list.

Unfortunately yes, the pandemic was a formative time. And all my time outside of my four years of college has been in NC. Great tip on working backwards from the secondaries.

Applicants avoid getting screened out if they have more than 150 hours of service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation predominantly). Being a first-responder (police, fire, military) for a significant time helps too, so I give you props for diving into being an EMT and improving services to the community and with quality research. Do a little more with your soup kitchen/thrift store/church rent assistance (if you want to list it in Work/Activities, get it up to 50 hours if you can so I can pay attention to it), but check with the schools you are considering about how they will value it (so you won't get screened out).

This is very helpful, thank you. I've never chosen activities to min/max my med school application and kind of assumed that my EMT volunteering would cover all volunteering wants; I've done non-clinical volunteering sporadically when other activities lull but I have a couple organizations that I'll enjoy putting more hours into prior to applying.

Do you/others have advice on schools outside of NC that I should apply for? Many tools for building a list of appropriate schools rely heavily on GPA/MCAT and I've heard that these matter less the longer I've been away from school, so I'm not sure where to place myself.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I've never chosen activities to min/max my med school application and kind of assumed that my EMT volunteering would cover all volunteering wants; I've done non-clinical volunteering sporadically when other activities lull but I have a couple organizations that I'll enjoy putting more hours into prior to applying.

Do you/others have advice on schools outside of NC that I should apply for? Many tools for building a list of appropriate schools rely heavily on GPA/MCAT and I've heard that these matter less the longer I've been away from school, so I'm not sure where to place myself.

Every hospital has an emergency department so if this is a direction you want to go, I think you have an idea where you want to be or not.

So it can boil down to community where you want to study medicine. You can ask nontrad medical students where they are or what they consider.

I'll let others suggest lists from your stats, but find which ones match based on the communities the students work with.

 

[platonicparamedic]

Late reply (and bumping this for list help, if anyone is so inclined) - I think I have an idea for my criteria for schools (namely, happy students/pass-fail, affiliation with a level 1 trauma center, total cost) but simply don't know if I should be looking for schools that have GPA/MCAT score brackets matching my stats, or if 3+ years away from college + a more prestigious undergrad institution means that I should plan to punch above the pure numbers.

I'm not sure if this is a hubristic but I'm having trouble getting a feel for how I might be viewed in terms of numbers and, like you said, depersonalized advise is what ya'll do best.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Late reply (and bumping this for list help, if anyone is so inclined) - I think I have an idea for my criteria for schools (namely, happy students/pass-fail, affiliation with a level 1 trauma center, total cost) but simply don't know if I should be looking for schools that have GPA/MCAT score brackets matching my stats, or if 3+ years away from college + a more prestigious undergrad institution means that I should plan to punch above the pure numbers.

I'm not sure if this is a hubristic but I'm having trouble getting a feel for how I might be viewed in terms of numbers and, like you said, depersonalized advise is what ya'll do best.

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Many schools redact education institution name on screening.

A good list includes a few schools that might be a reach. I don't know how you identify as White/Latino so check with the LMSA or SNMA.