- Joined
- Jun 25, 2015
- Messages
- 55
- Reaction score
- 32
(Sorry in advance for how long this ended up being -- I tried to bold out my main questions)
Hi all -- I am currently 23 & graduated in 2016 from a top 10 university. I was pre-med for the first 3 years of college, and ended up dropping the track at that point for various reasons and ended up working in consulting for two years at a mid-tier firm (EY/PWC/Deloitte/Accenture/etc.)
I knew that there was a strong chance that I would go back to medicine after having a few gap years, and I am at that point now where I am pretty certain I'm ready to take the plunge.
I am currently thinking I will most likely leave my job in late June and apply in the 2019 cycle. Looking for any and all advice on how to best use my next year to my advantage. This is my situation as of now:
Hi all -- I am currently 23 & graduated in 2016 from a top 10 university. I was pre-med for the first 3 years of college, and ended up dropping the track at that point for various reasons and ended up working in consulting for two years at a mid-tier firm (EY/PWC/Deloitte/Accenture/etc.)
I knew that there was a strong chance that I would go back to medicine after having a few gap years, and I am at that point now where I am pretty certain I'm ready to take the plunge.
I am currently thinking I will most likely leave my job in late June and apply in the 2019 cycle. Looking for any and all advice on how to best use my next year to my advantage. This is my situation as of now:
- I have 3 additional courses to take in order to complete my pre-reqs: O-Chem II, GenChem II, and Physics II
- Most likely taking these at a local state university over the course of July - December 2018
- My GPA after these courses will likely land around 3.75 / sGPA around 3.6 :/
- I have not yet taken the MCAT -- planning on doing this in April of 2019 (using Jan - March to study essentially full time)
- I have 3 years of college research experience, but nothing phenomenal (no papers, etc.) -- I did very basic stuff for the two labs I worked at
- My volunteer/shadowing experience is very, very lacking -- I do have 3 internships from undergrad:
- International internship at an ophthalmology NGO clinic
- Summer as an healthcare administration intern at a medical clinic (learned a lot about the business side of healthcare)
- One summer as a teaching fellow in a competitive sister program of TFA (Breakthrough Collaborative)
- I was a part of healthcare related organizations at my company -- writing for a monthly newsletter/blog on international healthcare/hot topics/etc. and an organization looking into AI in health/weekly meetings with healthcare startups
- Not sure if this is relevant?
- I was not doing healthcare related work on my projects at my company, but I do think I learned a lot of transferable skills that I can speak to with the experiences I did have
- MCAT: not sure if this is out of reach, but I am thinking about a range of schools like Ohio State, UVA, Baylor, Emory, Duke, etc. -- with my GPA, what sort of MCAT range should I be aiming for for these schools?
- Recs: I'm struggling here, being 2 years out of college.
- I am hoping I can get a rec from one (maybe two) managers from my company, 1 or 2 profs from the science pre-reqs I will be taking in the fall, and hopefully one non-science teacher from undergrad. I don't think any of these other than potentially the one from my recent manager will be phenomenal in any way, but would that be sufficient (~3 recs minimum)?
- I also believe I can get a committee letter from my undergrad university.
- Shadowing/Volunteering:
- This is 100% my biggest weakness -- I have been trying to find a way to shadow while I take the rest of my classes, but finding opportunities as a post-grad has been super difficult. Any advice?
- I'm also unsure of the types of hours I should be aiming to get for shadowing/volunteering -- what is the benchmark here?
- Is there anything I'm missing other than what is listed above that I should focus on during my one year off before the application cycle? Is there anything else that I could be doing to further amp up my application?
Last edited: