School list advice for stateless non-trad ORM(?) who needs to cut his list almost in half (526, 3.92)

[eric141]

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Hi all,

I'm going through it trying to finalize my school list. 😭 I think my app is going to be verified soon so I really need to finish and get to pre-writing. I'd really appreciate any help.

• ORM, 526 MCAT, 3.92 sGPA/cGPA at a non-ivy T20 undergrad
• Service: 1002 hours total (448 with the service org Alpha Phi Omega, mostly at a foodbank; 435 as a peer counselor, 119 volunteering with the victim advocates at a domestic violence court, although only a few of these hours were working with DV survivors directly)
• Research: 4174 hours in a cancer lab, first-author publication submitted for review. Unsure if it'll be published before most of my interviews, honestly doubt it, but it's already on Biorxiv
• Leadership: Plenty, but mostly small-ish positions on club exec boards. My big ones: I was a VP of Alpha Phi Omega (the service org I was in), I was a leader for a student-led camping trip for freshmen, which was amazing and one of my MMEs, and I helped revive a men's dialogue group on campus talking about issues like high rates of campus sexual assault (although I wasn't the president of this group).
• Shadowing: 56 hours (all in the ED)
• Clinical: 521 hours as an ED scribe

I'm grateful for my stats, and I feel relatively good about my LORs, PS and ECs too. However, I'll have had 3 gap years by the time I matriculate (does this make me a non-trad?). This means my MCAT is expiring for most schools next year, so I really need my shots to land this cycle. Another wrinkle is that when I moved to MA, I didn't know UMass requires 7 years (!) before you're considered in-state, so I have no state school.

Here is my current list, sorted into "Yes", "Probably" and "Maybe", sub-sorted by admit.org ranking (so it's easy to scan by school "tier"). I want to apply to 25 schools (+ the 3 with basically no secondaries) to avoid secondary overload, and this list has 40.

Yes:

• WashU
• OSU* (insanely cheap b/c IS tuition after 1 year)
• URochester (stat ***** and secondary super easy given likelihood of getting in)
• Cincinnati (insanely cheap b/c IS tuition after 1 year)
• IndianaU (no secondary)
• NYMC* (no secondary)

Probably:

• Harvard
• Hopkins (free; my brother goes here for undergrad)
• UPenn (stat *****)
• NYU (free)
• Vanderbilt (stat *****)
• UMich
• UVA (stat *****)
• BU
• Einstein (free)
• USF (stat *****)
• Hofstra (stat *****)
• UMass* (hoping to get points for living in Mass even though technically OOS)
• UMD (lived in MD my whole life)
• Creighton* (super high OOS A %)
• UVM*
• SLU* (Missouri connection)

Maybe:

• Duke
• Columbia
• Yale
• Mayo
• Northwestern
• Pitt
• Mt Sinai
• UChicago
• Case Western
• Brown
• UMiami
• Tufts
• Jefferson*
• UIllinois* (I know the OOS tuition but I've kept it so far b/c of my interest in living in Chicago)
• Tulane* (I was born in New Orleans but left when I was 4 if that counts for anything)
• Temple*
• Rush*
• Hackensack

There's even more schools I've seriously considered, a tier below the "Maybes": Colorado, Minnesota, VCU*, Wayne State*, Quinnipiac*, EVMS*, Western Mich* (stat *****?), UArizona Pheonix (stat *****?), Walmart, Western Mich* (stat *****)

I have 3 big considerations with this list:

1. Yield protection. * = their 90th percentile of accepted MCATs is 5 or more points below my MCAT. I've done research, but nobody seems to know how big of a thing yield protection is, or which schools do it more vs. less. The exact likelihood makes a huge difference: if I have a 90% chance of getting yield protected from each * school (without strong ties), I shouldn't apply to any of them. But if it's more like a 25% chance of yield protection or if there are exceptions, I'd like to keep some or all of these * schools to apply broadly.
2. Stat-******: Did I get them all? Especially the mid-tier ones, because I need these to land if I get rejected by T20s.
3. Obviously I'm taking into account things I'm looking for, but my core goal is to apply to maximize my chances of getting an admission SOMEWHERE. I'm assuming this means to apply broadly, but then I run into the big yield protection question mark.

I'm also a practicing Buddhist. I made this a non-MME activity, and I plan to emphasize it in secondaries (diversity or "Tell us anything else") since I figure it's a pretty unique perspective. I hate milking everything I've done for app potential, but I'm hoping this'll be a semi-"X factor".

I also got 4th quartile on CASPer, but my understanding is this definitely isn't important enough to alter my school list for.

Thanks in advance for your help :- )

 

[Faha]

Yield protection does occur. I suggest these schools with your stats:
UMass
Boston University
Tufts
Harvard
Yale
Dartmouth
Brown
Hofstra
Einstein (free tuition)
Mount Sinai
Columbia
Cornell
NYU (free tuition)
NYMC
Rochester
U Penn
Pittsburgh
Maryland
Johns Hopkins
U Virginia
Duke
Vanderbilt
Washington University (in St. Louis-almost a guaranteed interview with your stats)
Northwestern
U Chicago
Mayo
UCSF
Case Western
Ohio State
Cincinnati

 

[Mr.Smile12]

So why did you take the MCAT if you weren't going to apply for another 3 years? Were your last years after graduation spent working in the research lab?

 

[eric141]

So why did you take the MCAT if you weren't going to apply for another 3 years? Were your last years after graduation spent working in the research lab?

Thanks for the reply! I think it was unclear in my post, but I'm applying 2 years after taking the MCAT—it'll just be 3 gap years before I matriculate.

These 2 years were for multiple reasons. I only started pursuing medical school my junior year of college. I had wanted to apply at the end of my senior year, but I was admittedly not familiar enough with all the extracurricular requirements. I spent my time working to get all the pre-reqs in while graduating on time (20 credit semesters, classes over the summer, etc.). My senior year (2 years ago), I was advised that my research and clinical hours were lacking, and that I'd have a much stronger application if I delayed another year, so I did. This allowed me to delay my MCAT to Sept 2023.

Then, I probably would have applied last year if not for a health issue. I still was lacking in clinical hours, so it was probably for the best. Yes, I've spent these last 2 years in my research lab, also scribing. I'm happy with my path, but the net result is that my MCAT will expire soon. Actually, I'm very lucky that I took my MCAT in Sept 2023 (the last month I could), because I see some schools where Sept 2023 is literally the earliest month where they'll accept an MCAT.

 

[eric141]

Yield protection does occur. I suggest these schools with your stats:
UMass
Boston University
Tufts
Harvard
Yale
Dartmouth
Brown
Hofstra
Einstein (free tuition)
Mount Sinai
Columbia
Cornell
NYU (free tuition)
NYMC
Rochester
U Penn
Pittsburgh
Maryland
Johns Hopkins
U Virginia
Duke
Vanderbilt
Washington University (in St. Louis-almost a guaranteed interview with your stats)
Northwestern
U Chicago
Mayo
UCSF
Case Western
Ohio State
Cincinnati

Thank you for taking the effort to make this! I noticed your list is more top-heavy than my list. I may not have been accounting for yield protection enough. I'll definitely consider this list, I think it makes sense to go more top-heavy.