Reapplicant WAMC

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LiteralLungs

LiteralLungs

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I applied once before and had one interview that resulted in a waitlist. My major weaknesses from my first application were a lack of recent clinical experience and an IA. Since my application 2 years ago, I started working full time on an inpatient psych unit (now a supervisor), part time as a scribe, and started volunteering at a free clinic.

I was planning on reapplying to most of the same schools (applied very broadly the first time) and also adding DO schools.

  1. cGPA = 3.79, sGPA = 3.75
  2. 511 MCAT (127/127/127/130)
  3. Maryland Resident
  4. ORM
  5. Public state undergrad
  6. Clinical experience
    • Currently a supervisor on an inpatient psychiatric unit. Previously worked as an orderly on the unit. Full time for 1.5 years (approximately 3120 hours)
    • Scribe (part time, 480 hours by application)
    • Hospice volunteer since Feb 2020 (on and off due to COVID restrictions, when not in person I was a phone buddy for patients and families) (~90 hours)
    • Free clinic volunteer since June 2021 (~180 hours)
    • ER volunteering 2013-2016 (490 hours)
  7. Research experience and productivity
  • 3 years of full time research 2017-2020 (7300 hours)
  • Several publications
  1. Shadowing experience and specialties represented
Family medicine, psychiatry, ENT, emergency medicine, general surgery, internal medicine (163 hours)

  1. Non-clinical volunteering
  • Mental health support groups and teaching mental health class since 2018 (~200 hours)
  • Mental health hotline since 2018 (~300 hours)
  • Phone buddy program for older adults since Jan 2020 (~65 hours)
  • Undergrad volunteering with social justice organization from 2013-2017 (445 hours)
  1. Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc)
  • Leadership within undergrad volunteering social justice organization
  • Undergrad teaching assistant for one class
  • Advisor for pre health student organization (120 hours)
  • Veterinary hospital work (316 hours)
  1. Relevant honors or awards
Volunteer award for mental health organization

  1. Anything else not listed you think might be important
IA from 2014

Tentative School list (51 schools total, not sure if this is realistic)

MD (applied first time, reapplying this year)

  • Albany
  • Florida Atlantic University
  • Rosalind Franklin
  • Drexel
  • EVMS
  • GW
  • Medical College of Wisconsin
  • NYMC
  • Oakland
  • Penn State
  • Vermont (interviewed and waitlisted first application)
  • Rush
  • Tufts
  • Tulane
  • University of Maryland
  • University of Wisconsin
  • VCU
  • Wake Forest
  • Wayne State
  • WVU
  • Quinnipiac
  • Nova MD
  • Geisinger Commonwealth
MD (new application, never applied before, planning to add these)

  • Seton Hall
  • Loyola
  • Florida International University
  • Indiana University SOM
  • TCU School of Medicine
  • Virginia Tech
  • Central Michigan University College of Medicine
  • Marshal University Joan Edwards
  • Michigan State University College of Human medicine
  • Northeast Ohio Medical University
  • University of Missouri-Kansas City SOM
  • University of Illinois SOM
  • Carle Illinois COM
Applied first time, not reapplying

  • UCF (MCAT averages jumped up this year, 513-518 25%-75%/515 median)
  • Jefferson (MCAT averages jumped this year, 512-518, 25%-75%/514 median)
  • Georgetown (wants recent coursework if not taken within 5 years)
  • Creighton (wants recent coursework if not taken within 3 years)
  • Temple (wants recent coursework if not taken within 3 years)
  • Colorado (MCAT averages jumped this year, 512-519, 25% - 75%/ 515 median)
  • Miami (MCAT averages jumped this year, 512-516, 25% - 75%/ 514 median)
  • SLU (MCAT averages jumped this year, 512-518, 25% - 75%/ 515 median, also no expiry on courses but prefers courses within 2 years)
  • Commonwealth (30% OOS acceptance, apparently takes low OOS?)
  • Cooper (28% OOS acceptance, apparently takes low OOS?)
First time applying to DO schools

  • UNECOM
  • LECOM
  • PCOM
  • NYIT
  • Chicago COM at midwestern University
  • William Carey COM
  • Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences
  • Campbell University COM
  • Rowan University SOM
  • Burrell COM
  • Edward Via COM
  • West Virginia SOM
  • Des Moines University COM
  • Kirksville COM
  • AZCOM
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What type of IA is on your record. Not all IAs are equal so it would be helpful to at least know briefly what yours involves.
For your nonclinical volunteering you mention volunteering with a social justice agency. What did you do? Who did you help? The mental health groups and hotlines are seemingly very close to your inpatient psych work-similar populations. Maybe try finding time to volunteer at a homeless shelter, soup kitchen etc. Get out of your comfort zone.
FYI UofIll is hellishly expensive. Might be the most expensive school in the US.
Carle has a specific curriculum focus. Did you know this? Are you comfortable with the focus.
Good luck.
 
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I agree with candbgirl that you should have a bit more diverse nonclinical volunteering to different populations. The mental health activities are great, but do limit your exposure and is not really out of your comfort zone.

Of your list, do not apply to FAU, Wisconsin, FIU, IU, CMU, Marshall, Michigan State, Neomed, UMKC, Illinois, Carle, or Burrell. Probably take off Geisinger too. Most of these take few OOS students who do not have siginificant ties. Illinoios is very expensive, Carle has an engineering focus as mentioned above and Burrell has concerns regarding its board scores and for-profit status.

Add Marian for DO, watch the high tuition at CCOM and AZCOM as well.
 
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Thank you for your feedback. The social justice volunteering was in sustainability. The hotline is focused on sexual health. Do you think my non-clinical volunteering would be a deal-breaker?

Also, I am sorry but I do not want to reveal any details about my IA. It certainly hurt me last cycle when I applied broadly. Schools that gave feedback said that they would like to see one of my LOR writers talk about it, so I will probably do that for this cycle. I am also going to include additional acknowledgement of the IA in the "any additional comments?" essays.

Thank you for the heads up about Carle.

@chilly_md
Can you clarify where you get that these schools do not take many OOS without significant ties? I read online that a cutoff for "safe OOS" is about 15% when you divide the accepted OOS/total accepted. These were the percentages I calculated based on the most recent MSAR numbers. The only one that falls below 15% is IU. Please let me know if there is something inaccurate with this method of determining safe OOS.

FAU: accepted OOS/total accepted = 29%
Wisconsin = 29%
FIU = 20%
IU = 14%
CMU = 24%
Marshal = 21%
Michigan State = 15%
Neomed = 28%
UMKC = 36%
Illinois = 25%
candbgirl said:
What type of IA is on your record. Not all IAs are equal so it would be helpful to at least know briefly what yours involves.
For your nonclinical volunteering you mention volunteering with a social justice agency. What did you do? Who did you help? The mental health groups and hotlines are seemingly very close to your inpatient psych work-similar populations. Maybe try finding time to volunteer at a homeless shelter, soup kitchen etc. Get out of your comfort zone.
FYI UofIll is hellishly expensive. Might be the most expensive school in the US.
Carle has a specific curriculum focus. Did you know this? Are you comfortable with the focus.
Good luck.
Click to expand...
chilly_md said:
I agree with candbgirl that you should have a bit more diverse nonclinical volunteering to different populations. The mental health activities are great, but do limit your exposure and is not really out of your comfort zone.

Of your list, do not apply to FAU, Wisconsin, FIU, IU, CMU, Marshall, Michigan State, Neomed, UMKC, Illinois, Carle, or Burrell. Probably take off Geisinger too. Most of these take few OOS students who do not have siginificant ties. Illinoios is very expensive, Carle has an engineering focus as mentioned above and Burrell has concerns regarding its board scores and for-profit status.

Add Marian for DO, watch the high tuition at CCOM and AZCOM as well.
Click to expand...
 
LiteralLungs said:
Thank you for your feedback. The social justice volunteering was in sustainability. The hotline is focused on sexual health. Do you think my non-clinical volunteering would be a deal-breaker?

Also, I am sorry but I do not want to reveal any details about my IA. It certainly hurt me last cycle when I applied broadly. Schools that gave feedback said that they would like to see one of my LOR writers talk about it, so I will probably do that for this cycle. I am also going to include additional acknowledgement of the IA in the "any additional comments?" essays.

Thank you for the heads up about Carle.

@chilly_md
Can you clarify where you get that these schools do not take many OOS without significant ties? I read online that a cutoff for "safe OOS" is about 15% when you divide the accepted OOS/total accepted. These were the percentages I calculated based on the most recent MSAR numbers. The only one that falls below 15% is IU. Please let me know if there is something inaccurate with this method of determining safe OOS.

FAU: accepted OOS/total accepted = 29%
Wisconsin = 29%
FIU = 20%
IU = 14%
CMU = 24%
Marshal = 21%
Michigan State = 15%
Neomed = 28%
UMKC = 36%
Illinois = 25%
Click to expand...
If your IA was regarding alcohol or other policy violation in on-campus housing, then that can be shortly addressed as a failure of judgement that you have learned from. If it was a plagiarism one on an lab assignment from freshmen year, the general advice is to make sure you did not have issues again and put a good amount of time to get past that. If you had a more major one near your senior year that resulted in more strict action by your school, then that is not ideal. If assault or drug related (which doesn’t seem to be the case for you), then you should have a different career plan.

I would not use a 15% cutoff. That is far too few spots and you do not know how many of those accepted students had lived in that state growing up before moving out or were an undergrad there while maintaining their home state of residency. Public schools favor their own residents. Wisconsin may take more OOS students, but not at your stat level. FAU’s class size is 64 or so. You will be competing for less than 20 spots and it is likely those are going to a former Florida resident or somebody from a neighboring state like GA.

CMU like the others is meant to train physicians to practice in underserved areas in its state. Your application does not address this. Illinois’s issue is the high OOS tuition. UMKC’s website says the following:

“Although out-of-state students are welcome to apply to the M.D. Program, preference and priority consideration is given to in-state students from the state of Missouri as well as to regional students from the states of Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.”
 
chilly_md said:
If your IA was regarding alcohol or other policy violation in on-campus housing, then that can be shortly addressed as a failure of judgement that you have learned from. If it was a plagiarism one on an lab assignment from freshmen year, the general advice is to make sure you did not have issues again and put a good amount of time to get past that. If you had a more major one near your senior year that resulted in more strict action by your school, then that is not ideal. If assault or drug related (which doesn’t seem to be the case for you), then you should have a different career plan.

I would not use a 15% cutoff. That is far too few spots and you do not know how many of those accepted students had lived in that state growing up before moving out or were an undergrad there while maintaining their home state of residency. Public schools favor their own residents. Wisconsin may take more OOS students, but not at your stat level. FAU’s class size is 64 or so. You will be competing for less than 20 spots and it is likely those are going to a former Florida resident or somebody from a neighboring state like GA.

CMU like the others is meant to train physicians to practice in underserved areas in its state. Your application does not address this. Illinois’s issue is the high OOS tuition. UMKC’s website says the following:

“Although out-of-state students are welcome to apply to the M.D. Program, preference and priority consideration is given to in-state students from the state of Missouri as well as to regional students from the states of Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Nebraska, and Oklahoma.”
Click to expand...
What % cutoff do you think is safe?
Do you think if a school's campus is rural it might be more likely their goal is to train specifically for underserved areas in their state? CMU is rural.
VA tech
Marshall
Michigan state university college of human medicine
NEOMED
Illinois
All of these schools are public, but I saw that their OOS %s were above the cutoff I had chosen.
 
LiteralLungs said:
What % cutoff do you think is safe?
Do you think if a school's campus is rural it might be more likely their goal is to train specifically for underserved areas in their state? CMU is rural.
VA tech
Marshall
Michigan state university college of human medicine
NEOMED
Illinois
All of these schools are public, but I saw that their OOS %s were above the cutoff I had chosen.
Click to expand...
Do not use a cutoff % like that. There are schools know for being more accepting of OOS, in general you should not apply to OOS public schools. Most public schools whether they are rural or not seek to train physicians who will stay in their state to practice. Your other schools are fine. Colorado, UCLA and USF are notable examples of public schools that take many OOS students. You do not have the stats to be a fit there, however.

Also, someone else may add more insight, but I would not use the additional comments section on secondaries to address your IA. AMCAS already prompts you regarding this on your primary and it seems you will have a LOR writer address it as well. That is enough, the admissions teams will already have enough knowledge about it.

I am not sure what you mean about sustainability for your social justice organization. It seems to consist of hours from many years ago and a lot of the hours are from high school. So that does not help, particularly if you weren’t hands-on
 
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chilly_md said:
Do not use a cutoff % like that. There are schools know for being more accepting of OOS, in general you should not apply to OOS public schools. Most public schools whether they are rural or not seek to train physicians who will stay in their state to practice. Your other schools are fine. Colorado, UCLA and USF are notable examples of public schools that take many OOS students. You do not have the stats to be a fit there, however.

Also, someone else may add more insight, but I would not use the additional comments section on secondaries to address your IA. AMCAS already prompts you regarding this on your primary and it seems you will have a LOR writer address it as well. That is enough, the admissions teams will already have enough knowledge about it.

I am not sure what you mean about sustainability for your social justice organization. It seems to consist of hours from many years ago and a lot of the hours are from high school. So that does not help, particularly if you weren’t hands-on
Click to expand...
Hi, thanks for the response.
In my initial application, I put an explanation in the IA box on the primary. The reason I am wanting to use the "additional comments" section this year is based on some feedback a school gave me after rejecting me.

To be clear, none of my hours reported from above are from high school. They are all from college and post-college. By sustainability, I mean that I was part of an organization that did environmental conservation work.
 
LiteralLungs said:
Hi, thanks for the response.
In my initial application, I put an explanation in the IA box on the primary. The reason I am wanting to use the "additional comments" section this year is based on some feedback a school gave me after rejecting me.

To be clear, none of my hours reported from above are from high school. They are all from college and post-college. By sustainability, I mean that I was part of an organization that did environmental conservation work.
Click to expand...
That is interesting. I missed the year you mentioned by the IA in your original post, so I do understand now that those hours were indeed from college and you’ve been out of school for a little while. That should have been enough time then that you’ve shown you are a different person now if it was academic related.

Environmental conservation work isn’t really something to help the underserved. You should have experience at a soup kitchen, homeless shelter, Habitat for Humanity, working with foster youth etc. Your other non clinical activities that were recent were also through the phone so you did not really get out of your comfort zone.
 
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This is an interesting point you guys make, that my non-clinical isn't diversified enough, I have not heard this before and didn't think about that.

I thought my work with sexual assault victims/mentally ill in support groups is considered working with the underserved. Yes the sexual assault phone line was over the phone. Also, the free clinic I work at provides healthcare to marginalized populations. Thus, I work with underserved populations even if it isn't clear from the title of the organization.

Always thankful for your feedback.
 
The free clinic work is in the clinical experience category on AMCAS. Regarding your phone work, it would be advisable to have in-person volunteering if possible. I would also suggest reviewing your essays and descriptions on your application. It might have been because you did not want to provide too much info online, but you had described them as Mental health support groups and teaching mental health class and Mental health hotline. It seems very similar, with one being perhaps an informative class with presentations and the other being maybe crisis/suicide prevention hotline. However, then you said the hotline was for sexual health and it comes across as a Q&A type service for people concerned about whether they should get STD testing or types of birth control. Afterwards, it seems it was ultimately a sexual assault phone line service in your latest post.

So, I would recommend having clear cut titles and descriptions on your AMCAS to ensure there's no confusion.
 
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chilly_md said:
The free clinic work is in the clinical experience category on AMCAS. Regarding your phone work, it would be advisable to have in-person volunteering if possible. I would also suggest reviewing your essays and descriptions on your application. It might have been because you did not want to provide too much info online, but you had described them as Mental health support groups and teaching mental health class and Mental health hotline. It seems very similar, with one being perhaps an informative class with presentations and the other being maybe crisis/suicide prevention hotline. However, then you said the hotline was for sexual health and it comes across as a Q&A type service for people concerned about whether they should get STD testing or types of birth control. Afterwards, it seems it was ultimately a sexual assault phone line service in your latest post.

So, I would recommend having clear cut titles and descriptions on your AMCAS to ensure there's no confusion.
Click to expand...
Alright, thank you
 
Catching up... I'll differ in that sustainability is a good cause, but I'd need more information about what you did specifically. "Sustainability" is a big grab-bag for a number of different causes related to the environment, so I'd like a little more information. I say this because there are climate change issues that do have relevance for health and societal disparities. The point does still stand about working with communities that are underresourced or underserved, especially in a community service activity that is not directly clinical.

If you want your IA discussed in confidence, we have the Confidential Advice forum where you can go into detail about it. I'm not a fan of the advice you got in that the schools want to see an evaluator discuss the issue; this suggests this is definitely a serious charge (i.e., it's not just a simple plagiarism conviction) because my general advice is to have your references NOT write about it unless they are involved in enforcing policies overseeing student conduct as part of their official duties. If the schools can find out who your student conduct officer is on the campus, they should do their own homework and talk to someone specifically trained not to put the school in any trouble, or they could call the reference if they have specific questions. There is definitely something more significant if the admissions staff insist that the reference document it, and I think any further discussion will require confidentiality.
 
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LiteralLungs said:
NOTE: You had a lot of donations on the list. You can't look simply at OOS %'s It's the IS/OOS ratio that counts.

  • Albany
  • Rosalind Franklin
  • Drexel
  • EVMS
  • GW
  • Medical College of Wisconsin
  • NYMC
  • Oakland
  • Vermont (interviewed and waitlisted first application)
  • Rush
  • Tufts
  • Tulane
  • University of Maryland
  • VCU
  • Wake Forest
  • Wayne State
  • WVU
  • Quinnipiac
  • Nova MD
  • Seton Hall
  • Loyola
  • TCU School of Medicine
First time applying to DO schools

  • UNECOM
  • LECOM
  • PCOM
  • NYIT
  • Chicago COM at midwestern University
  • William Carey COM
  • Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences
  • Campbell University COM
  • Rowan University SOM
  • Edward Via COM
  • West Virginia SOM
  • Des Moines University COM
  • Kirksville COM
  • AZCOM
Click to expand...
ADD: ACOM, KCOM, NYITCOM.AR, UIW
 
From Marshall’s website:

“An invitation to complete the Supplemental Application will be extended via the WebAdMIT gateway to applicants with a verified AMCAS application who are residents of West Virginia or an adjoining state. Nonresident applicants from non-bordering will be emailed an inquiry for ties to West Virginia or to the School of Medicine. An invitation to complete the Supplemental Application will only be extended to those applicants who can demonstrate a strong tie to the state of West Virginia, such as previous residency, family currently residing in the state, attending a West Virginia college/university, etc.”


Despite showing someplace a 21% acceptance rate for OOS applicants, it really doesn’t seem that is valid. This is one of those schools that is very unfriendly to OOS applicants and actually it’s pretty well known not to even bother. There are lots of private schools that you don’t have to even think about residency. @chilly_md is right- don’t even apply to OOS public schools.
Try to rewrite your essays and be more clear in your activities. Remember to get to an interview you have to get through screeners/reviewers. Make yourself standout so there is no question you deserve an interview.
Good luck.
 
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did you get any interviews?

if MD didnt even interview you then your IA makes you DOA or your letters/essay suck
 
chilly_md said:
Seems there was an interview and WL from Vermont. Nothing from OP’s state school or others.
Click to expand...

In addition, I know I passed some screening at various schools where I was put on "hold" while other people reported getting rejected. I'm sure it widely varies from school to school if a screening would include an IA, but one school did specifically tell me that I passed the screening well and that it would have included the IA.
 
LiteralLungs said:
In addition, I know I passed some screening at various schools where I was put on "hold" while other people reported getting rejected. I'm sure it widely varies from school to school if a screening would include an IA, but one school did specifically tell me that I passed the screening well and that it would have included the IA.
Click to expand...
It seems fine then based on that. But if it is a rather concerning IA, I would post about it to the Confidential section. You can try expanding to Goro’s advised list and maybe review your essays again. Have different people read them over and see how they interpret your writing. Maybe your description of the IA on AMCAS came across wrong to admissions members.

Your IA occurred nearly a decade ago, so I am unsure why a letter writer would need to address it unless it is a major red flag. If you’ve been out of school for a while now, it would make sense that you’d have fewer options for professors who still remember you, let alone the IA. And I don’t see why an employer or research PI letter (since those seem like good options for you) should discuss it when they are completely removed from that.
 
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