School List and WAMC 3.7/509

[BoneBroCO]

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Members do not see this ad.

• 3.73 cGPA and 3.73 sGPA with decent upward trend. My last ~90 credits of school I had a 4.0 gpa.
  • Freshman: 3.2
  • Sophomore: 3.8
  • Junior: 3.8
  • Senior 4.0
• 509 MCAT 127/125/129/128
• Colorado Resident
• ORM White Male 23 Y/O
• Small satellite state school
• Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer)
  • ~100 hours as a hospital volunteer
  • ~5,000 Paid hours as an ED tech over the past 3 years
• Research experience and productivity
  • ~300 hours in clinical research currently hoping to get a paper or poster done in the next few months but I have nothing yet
• Shadowing experience and specialties represented
  • ~100 hours split between EM and Otho. Ortho is where my research is in. Planning to get some pediatrics in before applications.
• Non-clinical volunteering
  • ~100 hours over 2 years for the American Red Cross
  • 5 weeks doing volunteer work in Kenya at a Masai primary school. (not sure how I would count the hours for this if it even matters?)
• Other extracurricular activities
  • 4 years of club soccer at my university. It was a huge part of my life growing up so I thought I would throw it in here.
  • 2 years of tutoring sciences at my university.
  • Piano player when I have time in my busy life.
• Anything else not listed you think might be important
  • Should have some pretty solid letters of REC
  • Im sure i'm missing small things here and there, but this is the basic gist of things. I was pretty disappointed in my MCAT score, and I know that I can score higher. debated in my head retaking it but my mind was pretty much made up for me due to COVID-19 and the fact that pretty much all the testing dates are being canceled. I have the recourses and would like to apply broadly to mostly MD programs, but I am by no means going to leave DO schools out. Other than the University of Colorado (my absolute dream school) and RVUCOM, what would you intelligent folks recomment? Both for school list and weak spots to improve in my app!

Thanks!

 

[Faha]

You could add any of these OOS MD schools
Creighton
TCU-UNT
St. Louis
Medical College Wisconsin
Loyola
Rosalind Franklin
Rush
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
NOVA MD
Wake Forest
George Washington
Georgetown
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Seton Hall
New York Medical College
Albany
Vermont
Quinnipiac

 

[Mr.Smile12]

The above list with your preferred schools of UColorado and RVU are on target. I would also consider DO schools just in case if you wanted to stay within your side of the Mississippi.

Could you describe your Kenyan volunteering opportunity with the primary school more?

 

[BoneBroCO]

You could add any of these OOS MD schools
Creighton
TCU-UNT
St. Louis
Medical College Wisconsin
Loyola
Rosalind Franklin
Rush
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
NOVA MD
Wake Forest
George Washington
Georgetown
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Seton Hall
New York Medical College
Albany
Vermont
Quinnipiac

Thanks for the list @Faha

The above list with your preferred schools of UColorado and RVU are on target. I would also consider DO schools just in case if you wanted to stay within your side of the Mississippi.

Could you describe your Kenyan volunteering opportunity with the primary school more?

Thanks for your input @Mr.Smile12. Sure! So I decided to go do some volunteer work in Kenya and specifically with the Maasai tribe because I have some major connections and roots there. My Grandparents did long term school/missionary work with the Maasai tribe, and my Mother actually spent a significant portion of her childhood there with them. My Grandfather actually passed away at a young age in Kenya, and he is buried there.

As far as what I did on a day to day basis, the school was quite far out into Maasai land which meant living with a host family in the local village with no running water and very limited electricity. The Kenyan government recently introduced free primary schools for all Kenyan citizens, but unfortunately the schools that are located at large distances from government facilities often get very neglected as far as governmental support goes. This meant that the school I was in had 200+ students spread across about 10 grades with only 4-6 teachers per day. Depending on the needs week to week I was involved in helping teachers in specific classes, to looking over entire classes on my own, to even buying tools to help fix desks/outhouses and even digging them a new trash hole.

I was very consciences to make sure this opportunity was not the typical "voluntourism" type ordeal. I was certainly not taking a job away from a local, as there was no money to be paid for the work. I was careful not to overstep my teaching abilities/boundaries, and stuck to things I knew very well and have a history of tutoring/teaching.

At the end of it all I was able to raise funds from back home and I purchased $200 worth of new school supplies for the kids as they had been reusing books and other supplies that were close to being a decade old. Another large portion of funding from back home went to making sure the kids had lunch food provided by the school for the next 3 months.

There is a lot more to talk about and I could go on and on, but that is the basic gist of things!

 

[BoneBroCO]

Any additional advice @Goro @gonnif @LizzyM

 

[LizzyM]

The volunteer work you did and the connection to your mother and grandparents is a nice hook. I think that it will resonate with some adcom members and be something out of the ordinary and thus something that you are likely to be asked about at every interview, not because it was important, but because it was novel and interviewing applicants can get rather dull unless there are interesting and unusal things to talk about.

 

[BoneBroCO]

The volunteer work you did and the connection to your mother and grandparents is a nice hook. I think that it will resonate with some adcom members and be something out of the ordinary and thus something that you are likely to be asked about at every interview, not because it was important, but because it was novel and interviewing applicants can get rather dull unless there are interesting and unusal things to talk about.

Well i'm certainly ready to talk about that experience! Thanks for the insight.