- Joined
- Jul 2, 2019
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I just wanted to start off by saying thank you for taking the time to read my WAMC thread, it has become a bit longer than I had originally anticipated. I am a recently graduated (May ‘21) chemical engineering major currently in my gap year working and volunteering (see below) and have recently received my MCAT so I just wanted to get your thoughts on my application. I did not really put my heart into pursuing medical school, and thus make the right decisions with how to spend my time, until the middle-end of my sophomore year, which is reflected in my GPA trend. I’m really hoping that the trend will be beneficial to my application and hopefully alleviate any concerns about my ability to perform in medical school along with my strong performance on the MCAT. I really hope the splitter stats that I have will not cause too many problems for my application as it has been kind of hard to generate a school list given the disparity between my GPAs and MCAT. I have also generated a list of schools that I feel may be appropriate for my application based on MSAR, LizzyM (not sure if this is an outdated metric, I don’t see it mentioned much anymore) and other WAMC threads here. I feel like my school list is VERY top heavy, which admittedly it is, but I’m just worried about moving any further down because I fear I may be yield protected given my higher MCAT. Is this worry justified or should I take some humble pie and add more lower stat schools? If there are any questions or clarifications that I can answer, please ask and I will do so. Thanks for bearing with me!
Freshman (‘16-‘17): F: 3.64/ S: 3.28
Sophomore (‘17-‘18): F: 3.28/ S: 3.39
Junior (‘18-‘19): F: 3.82/ S: 3.91
“Senior” (‘19-‘20): F: N/A due to co-op/ S: 3.85
Final Year (‘20-‘21): F: 3.92/ S: 3.92
sGPA: 3.71
Freshman (‘16-‘17): F: 3.5/ S: 3.12
Sophomore (‘17-‘18): F: 3.33/ S: 3.69
Junior (‘18-‘19): F: 3.77/ S: 3.88
“Senior” (‘19-‘20): F: N/A due to co-op/ S: 4.0
Final Year (‘20-‘21): F: 4.0/ S: 4.0
Overall, my last 92 credits of my undergrad career were at an average of 3.88 for my cGPA and my last 76 credits of science courses were at an average of 3.91 for my sGPA.
School List:
Vandy, NYU, Columbia, Stanford, UVA, Duke, Icahn, SUNY-Stony Brook, Cornell, UMich, UPitt, UChicago, OSU, UMass (ties hopefully), UCinci, Emory, BU Dartmouth, UWisc (undergrad), UMiami, UColorado, UMinn, Tufts, USF Morsani.
I’m absolutely open and willing to add more schools to this list as I do recognize it is rather short and decently top-heavy.
- I broke the semesters down to show the trend a bit more clearly and then at the top of each will show the cumulative cGPA and sGPA, I hope that this makes sense. My final 2-3 years were filled with high level chemical engineering, chemistry, biology, microbiology and biochemistry courses so I hope that that demonstrates my ability to succeed in those types of courses that might be similar to medical school.
Freshman (‘16-‘17): F: 3.64/ S: 3.28
Sophomore (‘17-‘18): F: 3.28/ S: 3.39
Junior (‘18-‘19): F: 3.82/ S: 3.91
“Senior” (‘19-‘20): F: N/A due to co-op/ S: 3.85
Final Year (‘20-‘21): F: 3.92/ S: 3.92
sGPA: 3.71
Freshman (‘16-‘17): F: 3.5/ S: 3.12
Sophomore (‘17-‘18): F: 3.33/ S: 3.69
Junior (‘18-‘19): F: 3.77/ S: 3.88
“Senior” (‘19-‘20): F: N/A due to co-op/ S: 4.0
Final Year (‘20-‘21): F: 4.0/ S: 4.0
Overall, my last 92 credits of my undergrad career were at an average of 3.88 for my cGPA and my last 76 credits of science courses were at an average of 3.91 for my sGPA.
- MCAT: 523 (131/131/131/130)
- State(s) of Residence: NH/MA (grew up and lived there for 18 years and have all my family there), current strong ties to WI (undergrad and current residence)
- ORM
- Top 15 Public University
- 350 hours volunteering at two different ERs, at the VA and at a local hospital; full time employment as in patient covid tester and patient transporter.
- One semester of research experience about renewable/bioavailable fuel production in a chemical engineering lab (~210 hours, undergrad poster presentation)
- 30 hours of shadowing a PCP and 30 hours of shadowing an anesthesiologist
- 250 hours of volunteering at a local food pantry, led one of their mobile weekend food programs for summer ‘19 before Covid started, continued after Covid restrictions eased up.
- 5 years of woking at a moving company working my way up to crew chief (person who runs jobs and makes the bill, interacts with customers etc); worked at a chemical company as a chemical engineering co-op (summer+fall semester employment) in 2019; Freshman and first half of sophomore year was on D1 rowing team (correlates with dip in my grades and the subsequent rise after stopping); TA’d A&P lab during Spring 2021; graded for multiple chemical engineering courses throughout my undergrad career (required strong performance and was chosen by professors personally)
- Dean’s Honors List for school since Fall 2018 (not necessarily sure if important, but I figured I might as well list this, wouldn’t write about it or anything, just put it here for context/completeness)
- Extremely strong LoRs, told so by all my writers. This brings up a question I have, I have a History prof, Bio prof and a Microbio prof. Is this adequate or should I reach out to other professors who have said they would write me strong letters as well? I figure I may as well, but I just wanted to make sure that what I have currently completed will be sufficient if these extra ones don’t end up working out.
School List:
Vandy, NYU, Columbia, Stanford, UVA, Duke, Icahn, SUNY-Stony Brook, Cornell, UMich, UPitt, UChicago, OSU, UMass (ties hopefully), UCinci, Emory, BU Dartmouth, UWisc (undergrad), UMiami, UColorado, UMinn, Tufts, USF Morsani.
I’m absolutely open and willing to add more schools to this list as I do recognize it is rather short and decently top-heavy.
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