School list for a high stat applicant (4.0/525)

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Paul202

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Med School List Request

Stats:

GPA Cum/Science: 4.0 (entering my senior year next year)
MCAT: 525 (131/131/131/132)
State/Demographic: Michigan, white male
School: Michigan State University, double majors in Neuroscience and Physiology, minor in Global Public Health and Epidemiology
Parents: Middle class, dad is a dentist while mom became homemaker when they had triplets (me)
Clinical Volunteering:
- Volunteer at ER/Neuro Units: 230 Hours
Shadowing:
- 38 hours shadowing 2 ER docs
- 18 hours shadowing Orthopedic Surgeon
- 60 hours shadowing dentistry (my father)
- (40 more hours were planned in various specialties, postponed due to COVID)
Nonclinical Volunteering:
- 200 hours in club supporting students with disabilities, also VP
- 60 hours at my local library
- 50 hours at Students for Orphan relief club I helped found, also VP
- 20 hours on 7Cups (emotional support website) so far, but plan to have many more as I only discovered it in wake of COVID and so far love it
Research:
- 700 hours in cognitive psych lab over past 3 years, over last year took a step back to become social media manager due to influx of people
- Won Grand Prize for poster presentation at Undergraduate Research Fair last year
- Unfortunately my PI is not proactive about publications, so I am not featured in any :(
Other:
- 640 hours so far as a TA for Biology, another 320 planned next year
- 60 hours spent privately tutoring students
- 1100 hours in construction, renovating a house with my father
- Piano is one of my hobbies I am listing in my application, had to teach myself for the most part and very important to me (1200 hours)
- Honors college at MSU with scholarship, Deans list every semester, Natural Science scholarship, Professorial Assistantship (exclusive program that let me start my research as a freshman)
- Great LOR’s
- COVID told me to get rekt regarding shadowing

I am very close with my letter of rec professors and I know their writing is of a high caliber, so I am confident they will be good. I had hoped to get more hours in volunteering and shadowing, but COVID disrupted my plans. I've been heavily focusing on my PS and activities descriptions, as I know that my strong suit is academics but I don't want to rely on it.

Please let me know what you guys think, when it comes to my school list I don’t know what is best. I have heard that if your GPA/MCAT is >90 or <10 then you shouldn’t apply to that school, but with that logic it would be hard to apply to a lot of schools that aren’t top tier. I think I can really show my personability and social skills in an interview, so I want to maximize my chances of receiving one so adcoms don’t think I’m just another nerd with no life outside of school. The school list below was made a couple weeks before I got my score back (just got it back today). I know I want to apply to all MI schools, other than that I was hoping y’all could help narrow it down to around ~25 schools. Feel free to tell me what schools I should take off and any schools I should add


Johns Hopkins
Chicago-Pritzker
Pennsylvania-Perelman
Columbia-Vagelos
Yale
Stanford
Duke
University of Michigan
Harvard
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Western
Ohio State
Boston
Rochester
Cincinnati
Albert Einstein
New York University
Baylor
Vanderbilt
Mayo
Northwestern-Feinberg
Virginia
Cornell-Weill
Mount Sinai-Icahn
Case Western (Ohio)
Pittsburgh
Emory
Michigan State

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Last edited:
Shadowing your dentist father doesn't mean much. Leave it off. Not saying you were, but you could have been a total loafer or just not shown up and your dad could vouch for it. The kinds of dishonest clowns that pull this stuff ruin it for honest people like you. That being said, you've got solid ECs and rockstar-level stats. The only thing missing is primary-care shadowing, and that's pretty minor. You're a rock star. Apply to 15 or so top 20s, five midtiers, and your state schools. Good luck - and your stats are at or near the 90th percentile at every school in the country! Most of your list should be top 20s; Harvard, Yale, and Stanford want guys like you.
 
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Shadowing your dentist father doesn't mean much. Leave it off. Not saying you were, but you could have been a total loafer or just not shown up and your dad could vouch for it. The kinds of dishonest clowns that pull this stuff ruin it for honest people like you. That being said, you've got solid ECs and rockstar-level stats. The only thing missing is primary-care shadowing, and that's pretty minor. You're a rock star. Apply to 15 or so top 20s, five midtiers, and your state schools. Good luck - and your stats are at or near the 90th percentile at every school in the country! Most of your list should be top 20s; Harvard, Yale, and Stanford want guys like you.
Thank you for the recommendations. I already submitted by primary app to get it processed and actually put it at as one of my activities, do you think that should be a problem? My dad was one of the people that always stressed the importance of bedside manner and doing the best possible job, (he only works out of one chair and is an absolute anal perfectionist) and shadowing him helped show me aspects of how to make the patient feel comfortable and at home, which is why it's important to me. I'm also extremely honest and one of the things that have irked me about this process is how normal it is to embellish and lie about activities, so I was hoping I could get that across in my interview.
 
You have a good list and should receive several interviews.
Are there any school you think I can take off? I want to narrow it down by about 15 schools, I would normally just exclude all the bottom tier schools however I don't want to be too bold and get rejected from the top tier ones.
 
Are there any school you think I can take off? I want to narrow it down by about 15 schools, I would normally just exclude all the bottom tier schools however I don't want to be too bold and get rejected from the top tier ones.
You could remove Wake Forest, George Washington, Vermont since they will "yield protect". Since you are already applying to your Michigan schools you could remove OOS state public schools such as Maryland, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, UMass.
 
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Johns Hopkins
Chicago-Pritzker
Pennsylvania-Perelman
Columbia-Vagelos
Yale
Stanford
Duke
University of Michigan
Harvard
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Western
Ohio State
Boston
Rochester
Cincinnati
Albert Einstein
New York University
Baylor
Vanderbilt
Mayo
Northwestern-Feinberg
Virginia
Cornell-Weill
Mount Sinai-Icahn
Case Western (Ohio)
Pittsburgh
Emory
Michigan State
My suggestions above
 
Thank you for the recommendations. I already submitted by primary app to get it processed and actually put it at as one of my activities, do you think that should be a problem? My dad was one of the people that always stressed the importance of bedside manner and doing the best possible job, (he only works out of one chair and is an absolute anal perfectionist) and shadowing him helped show me aspects of how to make the patient feel comfortable and at home, which is why it's important to me. I'm also extremely honest and one of the things that have irked me about this process is how normal it is to embellish and lie about activities, so I was hoping I could get that across in my interview.

For a rock star like you, it's a minor ding at worst; talk about it like you just did at your interview and you're going to be fine. As you are, you're Harvard material!
 
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