Please help me decide between this cycle vs next cycle

[threadsign12]

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Hi everyone! Please help me decide if I should grind and take the MCAT in April or hold off and apply next year (i.e. my app needs significant improvements). I would preferably like to apply just once, and I prefer one gap year (but we'll see)!

Demographics:

• ORM (Middle Eastern), Michigan resident, female
• Low SES, first-gen (i.e. lots of paid jobs to scrape by)

Academics:

• cGPA: 3.82 and sGPA: 3.71 with consistent upward trend, 4.0 last 2 semesters
• Ivy League undergrad (HYP), senior year
• Major: history of medicine (BA)

MCAT:

• Taking in April, and aiming for (hopefully) a score in the range of at least 510-515 but will try my hardest!

Clinical employment:

• 1000 hours projected as MA during gap year (couldn't do this during school due to limited opportunities)

Clinical volunteering:

• 100 hours volunteer MA at free clinic
• 75 hours patient navigator for ESL families
• 120 hours as health counselor at free clinic

Research:

• 600 hours bio research lab
• 120 hours clinical research fellowship
• 240 hours public health research on improving med school curriculum
• 500 hours history senior thesis
• 5 national/state conference presentations on public health/medicine, 1 projected clinical research pub
• $1500+ funding awarded via research grants (honors)

Paid employment:

• 2000 hours health director at immigration non-profit
• 300 hours public service fellowship coordinator
• 120 hours medical conference coordinator
• 160 hours math tutor for peers

Extracurriculars:

• 150 hours ASL club board
• some other small things that likely don't fit into my 15 activity slots

Nonclinical volunteering:

• 500 hours advisor to FGLI students applying to college

Shadowing:

• 130 hours across 3 specialties (cardiology-60, peds-30, psychiatry-40)

Letters of recommendation (all pretty strong):

• 1 STEM lab professor
• 1 STEM seminar professor
• 1 public health professor
• Bio lab PI
• Executive director of non-profit
• Cardiologist (+ clinical research mentor)

Concerns: I’m most worried about my GPA and how that would limit my options. I also don't know how great my projected clinical hours look. I haven’t taken the MCAT yet, so should I continue with my plan for 1 gap year or take 2 instead? Any other suggestions for areas of improvement?

Thanks for all the help!

 

[Mr.Smile12]

For your gap year, you will be working as an MA. What is your non-cllinical community service going to be?

Being a college advisor does not reflect service orientation; you are coming in as an expert on the topic as if you were teaching or mentoring them. This make this activity an important reflection of your academic competency (teaching/tutoring/mentoring).

Some of your other activities need details for me to better understand why it is classified your way. As health director of your immigrant non-profit, what is it you do? With 2000 hours, that's a year of full-time employment, so why did you spend that much time in this role as a low SES, first-gen student having to go from job to job? Other than this, your activities are very academic-focused (which isn't your fault if you go to an Ivy school).

My point: you are missing service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation). These are community services that you should be helping connection patients with as a patient navigator or a health counselor.

 

[jvquarterback]

My take: your paid employment, if you’re really serving immigrants and doing public service for people in need (you’ll need to be more specific here) may check the box that usually gets filled by unpaid service. I mean if you Spent 2000 hours getting paid to help people you likely spent 200 hours unpaid doing the same thing.

That’s really the only glaring hole in your cv. If you can tell us what you were doing and you’ve got the hours helping people in need don’t wait.

Go kill the mcat and apply as soon as you can.

 

[threadsign12]

My take: your paid employment, if you’re really serving immigrants and doing public service for people in need (you’ll need to be more specific here) may check the box that usually gets filled by unpaid service. I mean if you Spent 2000 hours getting paid to help people you likely spent 200 hours unpaid doing the same thing.

That’s really the only glaring hole in your cv. If you can tell us what you were doing and you’ve got the hours helping people in need don’t wait.

Go kill the mcat and apply as soon as you can.

Thanks for your response!

That was essentially my federal work-study job for the last 3 years (roughly 10 hours/week during school year and full-time over breaks). I organized health workshops for newcomers to the U.S., involved newcomers in clinical research projects, planned speaker events with local healthcare providers involved in immigrant/refugee/migrant health, and organized hygiene and household supply distributions. Essentially a bunch of different things nested under this one job - it's definitely been formative to my future goals as a physician due to the sheer involvement I had in the physician community and the families more specifically.

 

[threadsign12]

For your gap year, you will be working as an MA. What is your non-cllinical community service going to be?

Being a college advisor does not reflect service orientation; you are coming in as an expert on the topic as if you were teaching or mentoring them. This make this activity an important reflection of your academic competency (teaching/tutoring/mentoring).

Some of your other activities need details for me to better understand why it is classified your way. As health director of your immigrant non-profit, what is it you do? With 2000 hours, that's a year of full-time employment, so why did you spend that much time in this role as a low SES, first-gen student having to go from job to job? Other than this, your activities are very academic-focused (which isn't your fault if you go to an Ivy school).

My point: you are missing service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation). These are community services that you should be helping connection patients with as a patient navigator or a health counselor.

Hi, thanks for your help! I've seen you around SDN during my long-time lurking, and your insight is always appreciated.

I elaborated on my health director role a little bit more in my above response. It was the job I remained in for my work-study program for 3 years. As for the other jobs, I worked them through the summer or concurrently with the non-profit (generally ~15 hours/week total paid employment during the school year).

Also, I had roughly 100 hours in a community chair role (2 academic years) for a service organization, in which I helped prepare and deliver care packages and organize soup kitchens for the unhoused community. This would be significantly fewer hours, but perhaps I can discuss this for the non-clinical community service angle. What do you think?

 

[LunaOri]

Please update us with your MCAT score; it will help a lot with choosing your school list. Don’t take the MCAT until you are hitting your targeted score on the practice exams—you really only want to take it once! It would be good if you could submit your application after having worked a couple of months at your MA job, so we can see the added clinical hours (and you have some experiences to write about).

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Also, I had roughly 100 hours in a community chair role (2 academic years) for a service organization, in which I helped prepare and deliver care packages and organize soup kitchens for the unhoused community. This would be significantly fewer hours, but perhaps I can discuss this for the non-clinical community service angle. What do you think?

@jvquarterback and I are on the same wavelength. Re-think how your describe your activities. Make it easy for screeners to see how many hours/opportunities you have had directly working to help marginalized communities. If you were a community service chair, I presume you had more hours (to account for) in that service org delivering and preparing meals and packages. That's why we asked for a breakdown of hours and tasks (in addition to discerning any growth or change in responsibility).

 

[LindaAccepted]

To answer your initial question and in addition to the advice given above, if you feel you are ready to take the MCAT and ace it in April, then take it then and apply this cycle. Apply appropriately based on your GPA and MCAT score as well as mission fit. There are schools that should accept if you have an MCAT in the range you provided.