Re-App Questions

[witness23]

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sup future colleagues,

I will be re-applying for the next application cycle. This year I applied to around 20-25 schools, got interviews at 6 (MSSM, BU, Temple, 2 UMDNJs, Albany) waitlisted at all pretty much and have not heard back from some/rejected by lots. I did apply broadly!

My stats were 3.57/3.64 with a 35N (14/9/12). In school (at NYC), I enjoyed community based service activities and teaching. While I did manage to earn some leadership in my experiences and enjoyed health related initiatives, I did not have enough clinical experience on paper (one summer hospital volunteering). I started shadowing docs after I applied (from September) and was able to bring them up during interviews. In the end, I believe that I was just not an attractive enough candidate on paper at committee decisions.

I have already started becoming proactive about the next cycle. Since I graduated in May 2008, I have been working full time in research at Penn (signaling in asthma). We are a small lab that does quite a bit of work, so I get a great mentor and get to be responsible. I do expect to have my name on 3-4 papers, hopefully all in the JofImmunology. Most will be 2nd author, but 1 will definitely be a first author (independent project). I guess this will be a good time to bring up previous lab experience – 1 summer full time at hematology that resulted in a co-authored manuscript at the Am J of Physio., 1 summer ft and throughout the year doing an independent civil engineering project that I got to do a presentation for at a conference, and a very minor paid clinical trials project.

Most importantly, I’m working on my clinical experiences. I am shadowing doctors that make rounds at an academic hospital 1-2x a week (anytime I’m free on a weekday). I am also starting to volunteer at a hospice doing a music therapy project to help patient (I think its cool). I’m not sure if these are “enough” by med school standards or if I should be doing something different (free clinics/emt/ER, etc)

Also, I’m not comfortable in being lazy about my “stats”. I’m looking at the MCAT again, doing some questions and whatnot. I was advised to retake but studying for it should not hurt me as long as I keep myself honest and do not let it take away from my clinical activities, my job, or the time at the gym. I do know that I scored well below my AAMC average (I skipped a verbal passage by accident and didn’t realize until 4 min was left) and I just did not do as well as I should have after the Physical Sciences section. Nevertheless, I will keep it real and if I do not see any benefits in re-taking by early May I may withdraw effort. Right now, I am a tutor so anything I learn could potentially benefit my students and I’m totally down for that.

As far as the GPA, I have tuition reimbursement and thought about taking summer and fall evening courses that I might find interesting (journalism, anthro etc). However I had some question regarding how to approach putting summer courses on the AMCAs.

• Do I have to resend my undergrad transcript to AMCAS? Nothing has changed at all, and I was not sure if they would have my grades from before.
• If I do take summer classes and fall classes (I calculated the potential GPA benefits already), how do I enter them on the primary app. There is no way that I would be getting my grades before June. I do not really want to delay my app (that’s a good idea right?). Would an update transcript after the fall semester be more appropriate?
• Is shadowing and hospice volunteering appropriate? Are there better ways to get clinical experience? I really enjoy what I am doing now and hope to continue, but any advice is helpful.

So basically: improve clinical EC, re-do the entire app (presentation was awful last time, I only wrote few words for each of my activities), work on PS, work on interviewing skills, etc, and enjoy life and whatnot.

I really want to thank you guys for any help. I hope that I can help my underclassmen friends avoid the stress of re-application. With that said, the maturing experience was very humbling and I definitely needed it and the other candidates I have met on the way surely seemed deserving (not that it took away from my confidence). GL all.

 

[bellakk]

sup future colleagues,

I will be re-applying for the next application cycle. This year I applied to around 20-25 schools, got interviews at 6 (MSSM, BU, Temple, 2 UMDNJs, Albany) waitlisted at all pretty much and have not heard back from some/rejected by lots. I did apply broadly!

My stats were 3.57/3.64 with a 35N (14/9/12). In school (at NYC), I enjoyed community based service activities and teaching. While I did manage to earn some leadership in my experiences and enjoyed health related initiatives, I did not have enough clinical experience on paper (one summer hospital volunteering). I started shadowing docs after I applied (from September) and was able to bring them up during interviews. In the end, I believe that I was just not an attractive enough candidate on paper at committee decisions.

I have already started becoming proactive about the next cycle. Since I graduated in May 2008, I have been working full time in research at Penn (signaling in asthma). We are a small lab that does quite a bit of work, so I get a great mentor and get to be responsible. I do expect to have my name on 3-4 papers, hopefully all in the JofImmunology. Most will be 2nd author, but 1 will definitely be a first author (independent project). I guess this will be a good time to bring up previous lab experience – 1 summer full time at hematology that resulted in a co-authored manuscript at the Am J of Physio., 1 summer ft and throughout the year doing an independent civil engineering project that I got to do a presentation for at a conference, and a very minor paid clinical trials project.

Most importantly, I'm working on my clinical experiences. I am shadowing doctors that make rounds at an academic hospital 1-2x a week (anytime I'm free on a weekday). I am also starting to volunteer at a hospice doing a music therapy project to help patient (I think its cool). I'm not sure if these are "enough" by med school standards or if I should be doing something different (free clinics/emt/ER, etc)

Also, I'm not comfortable in being lazy about my "stats". I'm looking at the MCAT again, doing some questions and whatnot. I was advised to retake but studying for it should not hurt me as long as I keep myself honest and do not let it take away from my clinical activities, my job, or the time at the gym. I do know that I scored well below my AAMC average (I skipped a verbal passage by accident and didn't realize until 4 min was left) and I just did not do as well as I should have after the Physical Sciences section. Nevertheless, I will keep it real and if I do not see any benefits in re-taking by early May I may withdraw effort. Right now, I am a tutor so anything I learn could potentially benefit my students and I'm totally down for that.

As far as the GPA, I have tuition reimbursement and thought about taking summer and fall evening courses that I might find interesting (journalism, anthro etc). However I had some question regarding how to approach putting summer courses on the AMCAs.

• Do I have to resend my undergrad transcript to AMCAS? Nothing has changed at all, and I was not sure if they would have my grades from before.
• If I do take summer classes and fall classes (I calculated the potential GPA benefits already), how do I enter them on the primary app. There is no way that I would be getting my grades before June. I do not really want to delay my app (that's a good idea right?). Would an update transcript after the fall semester be more appropriate?
• Is shadowing and hospice volunteering appropriate? Are there better ways to get clinical experience? I really enjoy what I am doing now and hope to continue, but any advice is helpful.

So basically: improve clinical EC, re-do the entire app (presentation was awful last time, I only wrote few words for each of my activities), work on PS, work on interviewing skills, etc, and enjoy life and whatnot.

I really want to thank you guys for any help. I hope that I can help my underclassmen friends avoid the stress of re-application. With that said, the maturing experience was very humbling and I definitely needed it and the other candidates I have met on the way surely seemed deserving (not that it took away from my confidence). GL all.

First things first, contact every single school you interviewed to get post-interview feedback about your application. I believe you can do this over the phone or email. You should also try to contact the schools at which you were not offered an interview to see if you can get any sort of feedback from them as well.

I just checked the aamc website, and you are required to submit new transcripts for your AMCAS each year (I guess to make sure you didnt take any classes this past year and you got F's and are trying to hide it? ha)

http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/faq/transcripts.htm

Once you have submitted your AMCAS application, I believe you can then update your application (with grades and MCAT scores) as long as the application window is open, but then the application has to be re-processed (I couldnt find anything official on this, so its my best guess). So if you do take summer classes, I would just send updated transcripts to each college you applied individually and then follow up shortly after to make sure your application has been updated.

I think a psychology or business class might be good for the summer, but whatever you're interested in would be good! Although have a good answer prepared for why you took a random non-science class during the summer fall.

I think shadowing and hospice volunteering is very beneficial, espeically because you enjoy it! Physician shadowing is good because you really do get to see what their day is like (make sure you ask plenty of ?'s to get the best out of your day) and I think hospice volunteering is good because it allows you direct patient contact. Keep doing both! Knowing what a Dr does all day is great but I really think med schools want to see that you have had contact with sick people and know how emotionally taxing it can be to try to have a friendly conversation with people that are dying or at least very sick.

I volunteered in a ER but hated it, mostly I just got drinks and stuff for patients family, there isnt much else to do (although I guess that depends on where the hospital is located and how much they let the volunteers do). I only did for a short while.

I cureently work part time as a CNA and chose that over an EMT because I wanted to really see what its like working in a hospital. When you talk to your wait-listed/rejected schools, ask them if some sort of certification would be more beneficial than hospice volunteering. I think as long as you're passionate about what youre doing whether volunteering or working or whatever, then the experience is more beneficial than if you're doing it just because it looks good on an app.

Best of luck! And keep your fingers crossed because a friend of mine got accepted from the wait list a month before classes started!

 

[witness23]

I just checked the aamc website, and you are required to submit new transcripts for your AMCAS each year (I guess to make sure you didnt take any classes this past year and you got F's and are trying to hide it? ha)

http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/faq/transcripts.htm

oh true, I totally didn't even think of that. As far as summer classes, my parents (hospital) might be losing tuition reimbursement for family (bad economy, I think a lot of institution will follow) so I'm not sure if I'll be taking them I guess (probably can't afford them + reapps)

As for the waitlists, I have not been told of my rank, some says maybe they'll update after May 15th. Temple admissions on interview days said they eventually accept 80% but this year they want to pull it off the waitlist, which leaves me hopeful but I'm still being proactive about next year.

I'll get mail merges going to schools and ask them for feedback. Thanks for all your help!

I actually found some interesting info about admissions from a former adcom member (works with one of the padres) at one of the schools I am waitlisted at, who said shadowing was almost a 100% requirement before application and that they usually reject ppl without it.

Also if anyone is interested, he said that most admissions (I see this at Penn all the time now) have a point based system where they give like 0-5/10 pts per category. They try to be usually objective based on how much time you put in, etc. But he also said that, at his school, they give weights to your undergrad (say X college GPA gets multiplied by 1.2). I'm just repeating what he said b/c Ive seen that there was a debate on this before (altho if I had to do it again I'd def like to go to a place where I didn't have to pay as much). There's also some schools that may give points for ethnicity, as well as the usual clinical, research, motivation, blah blah blah.

anyway thanks for all your help so far, I'll update on what happens and let me know if theres any other advice/suggestions that could help!

 

[dragonfly99]

I think having not enough clinical experience is what was hurting your application this year...it could be that you are a bad interview but I think the lack of much clinical experience by itself could be the problem.

If you got 6 interviews you should push hard to get in this year...all those are solid enough med schools...it really doesn't matter much where you go to med school.

If you really forgot one of the verbal passages you might be able to up your MCAT score by retaking, but I'd just throw yourself at getting in this year. Write the adcoms a letter updating them on your clinical volunteer work and shadowing. If you have any strings to pull, pull them. With a 14 on one section of the MCAT, that section score is likely to go down if you retake...so you have to think, will your verbal and essay scores go up enough to compensate for that? Only you can guess the answer to that.

You have more than enough research experience.

Your grades are OK...wouldn't hurt to take a couple upper level bio courses, or even something like psychology, and ace them.