Possible reapplicant wondering what to improve? (3.66, 520)

[miklsun]

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So far I've received an II from Drexel and Geisinger, but I got deferred from both so far 🙁

I am wondering what you all think I can do to improve my chances in case i need to reapply. All the stats I've listed would be for an application next cycle. For context, I am a bioengineering major at Pitt and a ORM PA resident. Any feedback would be deeply appreciated 🙂

cGPA: 3.66

sGPA: 3.54

MCAT: 520 (130 128 131 131)

Clinical experience :

~800hr EMT doing 911 and nonemergent transports in Pittsburgh

Clinical Volunteering:

~100hr hospital volunteer mostly stocking shelves

Research:

~1100hr neuroimaging lab, 1 poster, 1 presentation, 1 publication in school's undergrad research journal

~200hrs musculoskeletal research lab, designed a mold to make artificial tendons

Nonclinical volunteering:

~100hrs Bioengineering/Pre-med mentoring: I helped other students w/MCAT prep and figuring out ECs and pre-reqs.

~120hrs helping run an ultimate frisbee outreach clinic

Shadowing:

~80hrs of shadowing PMR, ortho, CT surgery, ED, IM

Other ECs:

~2500hrs playing ultimate frisbee for my college, high school, and club teams

~250hrs tutoring STEM for a the TRIO program at my school

~400hrs BJJ, just started this year

Letters of Rec:

1 from PI

1 from ethics professor

3 engineering professors, one is director of BioE program

1 from frisbee coach

- I'm planning to get one from an ER doc who I know well from frisbee

School List:

Geisinger Commonwealth

Drexel

Hackensack

Albany Medical College

Wake Forest

New York Medical College

Penn

Jefferson

Tulane

Virginia Commonwealth

UAB

Eastern Virginia

Medical College of Wisconsin

Stony Brook

Temple

Emory

Ohio State

Penn State

George Washington

Einstein

St. Louis University

Umich

TCU

Dartmouth

Chicago Medical School at Rosalind Franklin

Pitt

University of Cincinnati

Case Western

Michigan State

 

[Goro]

Your volunteering experiences are woefully inadequate.

Get outside your comfort zone and be of service to people who are less fortunate than you.

Get in more clinical experiences. Volunteering at a clinic, planned parenthood, I can't for sick or disabled children, with the mentally ill or developmentally disabled.

Given what your GPS are, you should have some do schools on your list. Beggars can't be choosy.

Do you have any Rising GPA trends?

 

[LizzyM]

Were you an engineering major? Some schools might cut you some slack in terms of GPA, particularly in light of an excellent MCAT but others will not.

Your volunteerism is not outside of your comfort zone. You appear to be working with people like yourself, doing something that is squarely in your wheelhouse. Get out of your bubble and help the people in your community that are in dire circumstances.

Skip the letter from the frisbee coach. One or two professors is enough. Unless you are applying DO, you don't really need a letter from a physician, particularly one who will start by saying that he knows you from frisbee.

Hospital volunteering "mostly stocking shelves" is not the best way to spin your only clinical volunteering. Put the focus on more patient facing activities, even if they were only a small percentage of the service.

What is your story? Are you interested in high tech specialties? emergency medicine melded with tech? something else? How do you pull your activities and major together to say, "I want to be a doctor and this is how I've tested the waters?"

 

[AJ25]

The letter from the frisbee coach sunk you. Why did you think that was a good letter to ask for?

 

[PickaGodnPray]

~100hr hospital volunteer mostly stocking shelves

If how your mindset on how you talk about this permeated into your essays or interview responses, I fear that may have played a role. Similar stance with patient transport for EMS. I get it isn't the flashiest of roles, but there are ways to talk about it without it sounding like the worst job in the world.

 

[olofmeister]

If how your mindset on how you talk about this permeated into your essays or interview responses, I fear that may have played a role. Similar stance with patient transport for EMS. I get it isn't the flashiest of roles, but there are ways to talk about it without it sounding like the worst job in the world.

Man they just said what they did, you want to them to talk about how meaningful and beautiful it was on a gd sdn post?

 

[Faha]

You have zero non clinical volunteering hours in activities that medical schools are looking for. That is why you have had a poor cycle. Accumulate 150+ hours of non clinical volunteering such as food bank, homeless shelter before you reapply. Some schools screen at 150 hours.

 

[PickaGodnPray]

Man they just said what they did, you want to them to talk about how meaningful and beautiful it was on a gd sdn post?

Nah not at all, if they went all waxing poetic on me I’d think it’s weird. Point being, I don’t know how they talked about it and just wanted to make sure they didn’t do what my friend did by verbatim saying in their interview when asked about a clinical experience that they “mostly just stocked patient rooms”.

 

[miklsun]

Your volunteering experiences are woefully inadequate.

Get outside your comfort zone and be of service to people who are less fortunate than you.

Get in more clinical experiences. Volunteering at a clinic, planned parenthood, I can't for sick or disabled children, with the mentally ill or developmentally disabled.

Given what your GPS are, you should have some do schools on your list. Beggars can't be choosy.

Do you have any Rising GPA trends?

I do have an upward trend in GPA from 3.4 freshman year to 4.0 junior year

 

[miklsun]

Nah not at all, if they went all waxing poetic on me I’d think it’s weird. Point being, I don’t know how they talked about it and just wanted to make sure they didn’t do what my friend did by verbatim saying in their interview when asked about a clinical experience that they “mostly just stocked patient rooms”.

Yeah I didnt actually say that on my application.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Where's your school list?

I'll "ditto" the other comments. Your patient-facing experience in a clinical setting is your EMT work, so I recommend gaining more patient-facing experience to strengthen your application. Yes, you have shadowing, but more patient-facing work rather than strictly back-office work helps if you can get it.

I am a little surprised by Drexel and Geisinger if they interviewed you with the low number of service orientation hours you say you had.

 

[miklsun]

Where's your school list?

I'll "ditto" the other comments. Your patient-facing experience in a clinical setting is your EMT work, so I recommend gaining more patient-facing experience to strengthen your application. Yes, you have shadowing, but more patient-facing work rather than strictly back-office work helps if you can get it.

I am a little surprised by Drexel and Geisinger if they interviewed you with the low number of service orientation hours you say you had.

Thanks for the feedback. I just updated the thread with my school list. What is a good number of hours to aim for before May for clinical experience and volunteering?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thanks for the feedback. I just updated the thread with my school list. What is a good number of hours to aim for before May for clinical experience and volunteering?

I always suggest having 150 hours of combined clinical exposure (paid/unpaid experiences) and 150 hours of service orientation (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, legal support, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation) when you submit your application to avoid getting screened out at most schools. If you are going for brand-name schools, you should have at least 250 in each bucket.

As an engineering major, have you looked into Carle Illinois, Texas A&M EnMed, or Arizona State as their curricula target engineers and quantitative majors?

How to Engineer a Health Professional Career | Student Doctor Network | SDN

NOTE: In this article, “engineering” can refer to quantitative analytical subjects like physics, mathematics, computer science, or finance/economics, but

www.studentdoctor.net

Q&A with Carle Illinois College of Medicine: Developing Innovation and Entrepreneurship as Health Professionals | Student Doctor Network | SDN

In a previous article, I discussed the advantages engineering-trained applicants bring to the health professions. For this article, we asked the

www.studentdoctor.net

 

[Goro]

I do have an upward trend in GPA from 3.4 freshman year to 4.0 junior year

What are your year by year gpas?

 

[TheRealBibFortuna]

The letter from the frisbee coach sunk you. Why did you think that was a good letter to ask for?

I had a my debate coach write my non-STEM letter and it got me into many good schools, why would this sink him? I agree with the above experts that it was primarily his lack of non-clinical volunteering to communities in need.

 

[AJ25]

I had a my debate coach write my non-STEM letter and it got me into many good schools, why would this sink him? I agree with the above experts that it was primarily his lack of non-clinical volunteering to communities in need.

At my school, if you present a frisbee LOR, the powers that be will question your judgment.

You, however, are free to agree with the views of whomever you choose.

 

[LizzyM]

I had a my debate coach write my non-STEM letter and it got me into many good schools, why would this sink him? I agree with the above experts that it was primarily his lack of non-clinical volunteering to communities in need.

Debate is not equal to frisbee. Not even close.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I had a my debate coach write my non-STEM letter and it got me into many good schools, why would this sink him? I agree with the above experts that it was primarily his lack of non-clinical volunteering to communities in need.

No offense intended, but debate and frisbee LORs are so "college admissions"... 🙂 I have yet to see a Quiddich LOR, and it's been almost 20 years since...

 

[LizzyM]

That said, one of the most beautiful med school LORs I've ever read came from late Tim Taylor, Yale's hockey coach from the 1970s through 2013.

 

[AJ25]

That said, one of the most beautiful med school LORs I've ever read came from late Tim Taylor, Yale's hockey coach from the 1970s through 2013.

What did it say?

 

[LizzyM]

What did it say?

Among other things, it remarked about the applicant's behavior in hotels on road trips and his courtesy to young fans who came around after the games.

 

[LizzyM]

Getting back to the OP, do you want to be "the frisbee kid"? Because that will be your tag when people want to remember which applicant you are. At least it is not cookie cutter. 🙂

 

[AJ25]

Getting back to the OP, do you want to be "the frisbee kid"? Because that will be your tag when people want to remember which applicant you are. At least it is not cookie cutter. 🙂

I'm honestly still trying to figure out how you connect ultimate frisbee to medicine.

 

[TheRealBibFortuna]

I'm honestly still trying to figure out how you connect ultimate frisbee to medicine.

I kinda feel the same way about any sport, despite how sought after athletes seem to be in medical school admissions. I can see the teamwork angle for some sports, but cross country? Fencing? Tennis? Why? What does a D1 tennis player bring to their patients?

Honestly tying my debate experience to medicine was tenuous at best. I think is I just like to argue, and I obviously couldn't put that on my application.

 

[AJ25]

I kinda feel the same way about any sport, despite how sought after athletes seem to be in medical school admissions. I can see the teamwork angle for some sports, but cross country? Fencing? Tennis? Why? What does a D1 tennis player bring to their patients?

Honestly tying my debate experience to medicine was tenuous at best. I think is I just like to argue, and I obviously couldn't put that on my application.

Well a D1 athlete is not the same as someone playing ultimate frisbee. When I see a D1 athlete, I see discipline, teamwork, commitment, and tenacity as important skills that are well understood.

So I think we are really trying to sort out who understands what about medicine based on their experiences and extracurricular activities.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Read and watch the interview

Supporting Prehealth Athlete Applicants: A Conversation with 2024 Advisor of the Year James Wasco, MD | Student Doctor Network | SDN

College athletics have been in the spotlight over the last decade. Athletes can now financially benefit from name-image-likeness (NIL) agreements, and

www.studentdoctor.net

 

[karaya]

Well a D1 athlete is not the same as someone playing ultimate frisbee. When I see a D1 athlete, I see discipline, teamwork, commitment, and tenacity as important skills that are well understood.

So I think we are really trying to sort out who understands what about medicine based on their experiences and extracurricular activities.

Not to disagree with your point, but the class below mine was having a lecture on what to do if ICE comes into our clinic. And the D1 athlete in the room goes, "How can we assist ICE officers in their investigation?" They really come from all walks of life.

 

[AJ25]

Not to disagree with your point, but the class below mine was having a lecture on what to do if ICE comes into our clinic. And the D1 athlete in the room goes, "How can we assist ICE officers in their investigation?" They really come from all walks of life.

I was just referring to skills. One's views are a totally different topic of discussion.