Hey all. This cycle hasn't gone as well as I'd hoped and as each day goes by it's becoming more and more obvious that I'm going to need to re-apply. I was wondering if you all had some suggestions on how I can become as competitive as possible for next/future cycles.
Background/Academics:
Graduated in 2016 with a Biochemistry major and an English minor
cGPA/sGPA 3.5/3.45 from a California UC school
MCAT: 521 with a 130/130/132/129 breakdown, taken in May 2017
CA resident, male and ORM.
Bit of a non-traditional in the sense that I wasn't interested in medicine until my senior year of college; I thought I was going to go into journalism. However, a seminar on underserved medicine and some reporting on medicine through journalism got me really interested in the field. After getting some clinical experience, I fell in love with the field and can't see myself doing anything else for a career.
Clinical ECs:
~1500 Hours scribing in an ED
~200 hours volunteering in a different ED.
~300 hours on a Suicide Prevention Hotline (Some people consider this clinical, others don't) and also trained other volunteers to work on the line/am part of support staff.
Non-clinical ECs:
~150-200 hours organizing and serving as a camp counselor for a summer camp for children who's parents have cancer.
~250 hours of general volunteering with two campus community service orgs.
Leadership position in a campus cultural org.
~1200-1500 hours at my campus radio station where a friend and I created a weekly journalistic style podcast on stories we thought were interesting/worth telling (in the same mold as Radiolab or Invisibilia).
Research:
Did some Modernsit English lit research for ~1 year which included graduate level coursework and presenting my research to the English Department (both professors and grad students) through a lecture/presentation.
In Summer 2017 (after I had submitted AMCAS, wasn't indicated on there because it wasn't set up yet) I spent ~30 hours per week for 2 months doing clinical research while abroad in the UK under the supervision of an ENT at a large teaching hospital. Main project was helping create an anatomical model of the orbital cavity to be used in pediatric cellulitis surgical cases. Also assisted on multiple other projects where I mostly did data analysis. No pubs out of it.
Random Employment:
Started my own car detailing business over the summer before college that I continued into school years after I had my own place. Main purpose was to just to help with misc. expenses (made decent revenue, $8-10k/year). Not sure if this is relevant but I included it on AMCAS.
LORs:
1 from a science professor (Probably an average letter; due to my journalism involvement I didn't get particularly close to any of my science professors)
1 from an English professor/ my research supervisor and advisor. (Pretty sure this was a very strong letter)
2 from MDs that can speak to how I am in a clinical environment (They told me these were very strong letters)
School List/This Cycle:
My state schools: UCSF, UCLA, UCSD, UCD, UCI, USC.
OOS: U of A- Phoenix, U of A- Tucson, Albany, Rosalind Franklin, Drexel, George Washington, Sidney Kimmel, Tulane, U of Vermont, Penn State, Boston U, Emory, Georgetown, Hofstra, Loyola, Brown, Dartmouth, Tufts, Pittsburgh, Rochester, MC of Wisconsin, Oakland Beaumont, Rush, Wayne State, NYU, Mt. Sinai
Submitted my primary mid-late June, verified mid- July, and secondaries were completed.
Ended up receiving 2 II at both the Arizona schools in November. Was rejected from Phoenix last week and was just recently "deferred" from Tucson (The e-mail said I haven't been accepted, but I haven't been rejected yet either, they will update me as the cycle goes on).
My thoughts:
I think my two weakest areas are my GPA and lack of scientific research.
My GPA is relatively weak because I just wasn't always focused on my classes; as I thought I was going into Journalism I put more of my time/effort into radio and my podcast. I often took heavy unit loads to learn about things that I would report on in my podcast (my co-host was a Philosophy major so we would often try to tie together science with philosophy/ethics and class was a great source of ideas). After setting my mind to medicine I reformed my study habits/focus and I think this is reflected in my MCAT score. I have 217 undergrad quarter units so brining up the GPA from a post-bacc would take a very long time/doesn't seem worth it.
I really enjoyed the clinical research experience I had abroad, but found it was very difficult to find a position given that I was mid-cycle and most placed wanted me to commit for 1-2 years. Now that I don't think I'm getting in this cycle I'll start re-applying to positions and hopefully I can secure something for the next 1.5 years.
Would a SMP be worth it for me? I'm confident I could do well in one, but would rather not because so many of them are so expensive and I've heard horror stories of people not getting/having useless degrees afterwards.
So, does anybody have any advice how I can best improve for a re-app. Would getting research employment and maybe picking up another EC (my local library has a program teaching adults how to read English that I'm very interested in) help my application enough to gain an acceptance?
Thanks in advance for any help! It's greatly appreciated!
Background/Academics:
Graduated in 2016 with a Biochemistry major and an English minor
cGPA/sGPA 3.5/3.45 from a California UC school
MCAT: 521 with a 130/130/132/129 breakdown, taken in May 2017
CA resident, male and ORM.
Bit of a non-traditional in the sense that I wasn't interested in medicine until my senior year of college; I thought I was going to go into journalism. However, a seminar on underserved medicine and some reporting on medicine through journalism got me really interested in the field. After getting some clinical experience, I fell in love with the field and can't see myself doing anything else for a career.
Clinical ECs:
~1500 Hours scribing in an ED
~200 hours volunteering in a different ED.
~300 hours on a Suicide Prevention Hotline (Some people consider this clinical, others don't) and also trained other volunteers to work on the line/am part of support staff.
Non-clinical ECs:
~150-200 hours organizing and serving as a camp counselor for a summer camp for children who's parents have cancer.
~250 hours of general volunteering with two campus community service orgs.
Leadership position in a campus cultural org.
~1200-1500 hours at my campus radio station where a friend and I created a weekly journalistic style podcast on stories we thought were interesting/worth telling (in the same mold as Radiolab or Invisibilia).
Research:
Did some Modernsit English lit research for ~1 year which included graduate level coursework and presenting my research to the English Department (both professors and grad students) through a lecture/presentation.
In Summer 2017 (after I had submitted AMCAS, wasn't indicated on there because it wasn't set up yet) I spent ~30 hours per week for 2 months doing clinical research while abroad in the UK under the supervision of an ENT at a large teaching hospital. Main project was helping create an anatomical model of the orbital cavity to be used in pediatric cellulitis surgical cases. Also assisted on multiple other projects where I mostly did data analysis. No pubs out of it.
Random Employment:
Started my own car detailing business over the summer before college that I continued into school years after I had my own place. Main purpose was to just to help with misc. expenses (made decent revenue, $8-10k/year). Not sure if this is relevant but I included it on AMCAS.
LORs:
1 from a science professor (Probably an average letter; due to my journalism involvement I didn't get particularly close to any of my science professors)
1 from an English professor/ my research supervisor and advisor. (Pretty sure this was a very strong letter)
2 from MDs that can speak to how I am in a clinical environment (They told me these were very strong letters)
School List/This Cycle:
My state schools: UCSF, UCLA, UCSD, UCD, UCI, USC.
OOS: U of A- Phoenix, U of A- Tucson, Albany, Rosalind Franklin, Drexel, George Washington, Sidney Kimmel, Tulane, U of Vermont, Penn State, Boston U, Emory, Georgetown, Hofstra, Loyola, Brown, Dartmouth, Tufts, Pittsburgh, Rochester, MC of Wisconsin, Oakland Beaumont, Rush, Wayne State, NYU, Mt. Sinai
Submitted my primary mid-late June, verified mid- July, and secondaries were completed.
Ended up receiving 2 II at both the Arizona schools in November. Was rejected from Phoenix last week and was just recently "deferred" from Tucson (The e-mail said I haven't been accepted, but I haven't been rejected yet either, they will update me as the cycle goes on).
My thoughts:
I think my two weakest areas are my GPA and lack of scientific research.
My GPA is relatively weak because I just wasn't always focused on my classes; as I thought I was going into Journalism I put more of my time/effort into radio and my podcast. I often took heavy unit loads to learn about things that I would report on in my podcast (my co-host was a Philosophy major so we would often try to tie together science with philosophy/ethics and class was a great source of ideas). After setting my mind to medicine I reformed my study habits/focus and I think this is reflected in my MCAT score. I have 217 undergrad quarter units so brining up the GPA from a post-bacc would take a very long time/doesn't seem worth it.
I really enjoyed the clinical research experience I had abroad, but found it was very difficult to find a position given that I was mid-cycle and most placed wanted me to commit for 1-2 years. Now that I don't think I'm getting in this cycle I'll start re-applying to positions and hopefully I can secure something for the next 1.5 years.
Would a SMP be worth it for me? I'm confident I could do well in one, but would rather not because so many of them are so expensive and I've heard horror stories of people not getting/having useless degrees afterwards.
So, does anybody have any advice how I can best improve for a re-app. Would getting research employment and maybe picking up another EC (my local library has a program teaching adults how to read English that I'm very interested in) help my application enough to gain an acceptance?
Thanks in advance for any help! It's greatly appreciated!
