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deleted1183641
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- Thread starter deleted1183641
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Welcome to the forums.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I first think your comparison to this journey to a suicide mission is not helpful. I appreciate mentioning support from others, though the value of their endorsement means little if there's nor LOR. It's not good to be flippant about mental health challenges, though I think you were just being a little hyperbolic.
That said, your non-clinical volunteering is unsatisfactory. Founding a non-profit helping others prepare for science competition is leadership extending from your science/academic competencies. It doesn't address service orientation, defined as being in a position to help others with their needs. For non-clinical volunteering, we would look for food distribution, shelter volunteering, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation; at minimum you should have 150 hours when you submit your application or you will be screened out at most schools. Seeing that you are also trying for brand-name high-metrics applicant pools, you should have 250 hours minimum to stay in play with your peers who will have more hours than you do. Tutoring, teaching, and mentoring are also academic competency activities that most premeds do, so it doesn't help you stand out.
As described, you have zero service orientation/community service activities, which could undermine your application.
Furthermore, your 150 hours of clinical experience is nice and helps you avoid getting screened out at most schools, but playing in the high-metrics applicant pool makes you an outlier (negatively). Again, I prefer 250 hours by submission, or you won't compare to other applicants who will likely get interviews.
Finally, aren't you a sophomore?
Sorry to burst your bubble, but I first think your comparison to this journey to a suicide mission is not helpful. I appreciate mentioning support from others, though the value of their endorsement means little if there's nor LOR. It's not good to be flippant about mental health challenges, though I think you were just being a little hyperbolic.
That said, your non-clinical volunteering is unsatisfactory. Founding a non-profit helping others prepare for science competition is leadership extending from your science/academic competencies. It doesn't address service orientation, defined as being in a position to help others with their needs. For non-clinical volunteering, we would look for food distribution, shelter volunteering, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation; at minimum you should have 150 hours when you submit your application or you will be screened out at most schools. Seeing that you are also trying for brand-name high-metrics applicant pools, you should have 250 hours minimum to stay in play with your peers who will have more hours than you do. Tutoring, teaching, and mentoring are also academic competency activities that most premeds do, so it doesn't help you stand out.
As described, you have zero service orientation/community service activities, which could undermine your application.
Furthermore, your 150 hours of clinical experience is nice and helps you avoid getting screened out at most schools, but playing in the high-metrics applicant pool makes you an outlier (negatively). Again, I prefer 250 hours by submission, or you won't compare to other applicants who will likely get interviews.
Finally, aren't you a sophomore?
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Your refugee work is only 75 hours and many schools screen out at 150 hours of non clinical volunteering (teaching/tutoring not included). Your best chances are at your Texas schools so apply to ALL your Texas MD schools. OOS MD schools know from years of experience that Texas applicants will attend a Texas school so they often do not interview Texas applicants.
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To remedy this you can focus on increasing the community service hours in the next few months so you will have 150 hours by the time you submit your application.
Submitting your TMDSAS app in June or early July is plenty early if you need that time to complete the community work.
As you say, you want to have a successful cycle and we are trying to help you do that by reinforcing our experience that a stellar student can be sunk without the non-academic activities school now expect.
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Here's the thing: most premeds successfully navigated their education journey so they feel they can teach or tutor students as subject matter experts. That's demonstrating academic competency and mastery. It's not the same as service orientation (see articles on the competencies that we published on SDN with rubrics).
While it's great you have founded a non-profit, you won't be able to run it while in medical school. Furthermore, there are likely many other non-profits that have a longer history serving its community and with greater impact. It never feels good for us to shut down a community connection with a non-profit because the founder wants to go to medical school. That actually goes against the tenets of developing a strong community health partnership between health care providers and social services NGO's/non-profits.
