Reapplicant- what can I fix?

[sciencemark]

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[aymar]

State of residence?

 

[Toutie]

You could probably stand to do some more clinical volunteering...maybe another 100 hours or so. And you definitely need some non-clinical volunteering with those less fortunate than yourself...in the range of a couple hundred hours. Was any of your shadowing in primary care fields? If not, get some...20 hours or so. You need to apply to more mid-range schools. And lastly, depending on your state of residence, a few of the schools you applied to would likely be very low yield.

 

[sciencemark]

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[sciencemark]

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[Faha]

For your next application cycle concentrate on more mid and low tier schools. I suggest applying to all of these:
Minnesota
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Albany
New York Medical College
Hofstra
Penn State
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
GW
Georgetown
Medical College Wisconsin
Rosalind Franklin
St. Louis
Creighton
Tulane
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
any new private schools that open for 2018 (Seton Hall, Roseman)

 

[sciencemark]

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[Faha]

Your GPA is a little low for many of the schools you applied to. Otherwise your application seems fine. You can apply to any additional schools in addition to the ones I suggested but you already know that you have low chance for an interview from those schools you previously applied to.

 

[sciencemark]

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[efle]

There is nothing in what you posted that explains zero interviews. A 35/3.65 with multiple pubs and a couple hundred hours of volunteering should not have been completely shut out of interviews by that list. My money is on something big that is not apparent here - essays/activity descriptions, IA, extremely late complete dates, etc.

Especially for stuff like Minnesota that interviews 60% of instate apps, when only 50% of their apps have a 503+ (27+), the fact that they'd skip a 35/3.65 with solid ECs is beyond bizarre. Something is wrong here.

 

[sciencemark]

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[efle]

Thanks for the reply, @efle. Yeah I pretty surprised I didn't even get an interview at my state school. No IA's here, I applied about 2 weeks after application opened, submitted secondaries within 2 weeks of receiving them (most of them within 2-3 days), etc. I talked to someone in the MN admissions office and they said about my essays and PS, " You had really interesting stories, but the essays focused to much on yourself and what you got out of the experiences." (I don't really know what that means or how to fix it). It didn't sound like anything was too terrible though, so IDK. At this point I'm just looking for ways to prevent getting shut out again, because it was a pretty rough application cycle in that way.

My money is on your personal statement or descriptions being the culprit here then, if you have no IAs, applied early, and were told your letters were all good/very good. Especially if they mentioned it being focused on the wrong things. There is just no way that your stats or school list should have resulted in 0 interviews unless your essays were very problematic

 

[sciencemark]

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[efle]

Well if that's the case then I'm in big trouble, because I literally took a class at my college on writing medical school personal statements to help me.

Did you have pre-health advisors/committee members read your personal statement and say it was good to go? You might be able to get one of the admissions people on SDN to take a glance at it to tell you if this is the culprit too. It's possible that whoever read your essays and said they were good just aren't familiar with the content normally expected for a medical app

 

[efle]

The fact that the MN admissions contact commented on the essays is pretty good evidence that's the issue, though. Together with process of elim for the other usual suspects that's what I'd be trying to change for round 2.

 

[sciencemark]

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