School List help - 3.97 GPA, 517 MCAT

[smoothquail]

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Hey everyone, I just wanted some help with my school list. I know it is super top heavy, this is a tentative list and I’m trying to bring it down to around 25 if possible. I’d love any thoughts on which schools to cut/add based on yield protection, regional biases, or poor mission fit for someone like me.

ORM, first-gen college student
OR resident
Piano Performance Major, Chem Minor

cGPA: 4.0
sGPA: 3.97
MCAT: 517

Research Experience

• ~1100 hrs, organic chemistry research, co-author on paper in review, no posters

Clinical Experience

• ~1200 hrs, ophthalmic technician

Clinical Volunteering

• ~100 hrs, volunteer scribe at free clinics
• ~36 hrs, mobile dental clinic volunteer

Non-Clinical Volunteering

• ~100 hrs, food bank
• ~36 hrs, judging local piano competition over span of three years

Shadowing

• ~30 hrs Internal Medicine

Other

• 17 years of classical piano experience (national and international competition wins)

School List (30 Schools):​

• NYU Grossman
• Columbia
• Yale
• UPenn
• Vanderbilt
• Mayo Clinic (Alix)
• Northwestern
• Harvard
• Icahn (Mount Sinai)
• UChicago Pritzker
• Duke
• Stanford
• Cornell (Weill)
• Baylor
• Case Western
• Albert Einstein
• UC Irvine
• UCSF
• USC Keck
• Kaiser Permanente
• Brown
• Pitt
• UC San Diego
• UCLA
• Temple
• Drexel
• California University of Science and Medicine
• University of Washington (UW)
• OHSU
• Charles R. Drew

Thanks so much for your help guys.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Welcome to the forums.

Off the bat, you need more community service experience. I suspect much of your time has been focused on your music competitions, so your app seems light on community service (both clinical and non-clinical). Get your food bank hours up to at least 150 hours or else your file could get screened out at most schools. If you are going for brand name schools, you should have 250 hours.

Again, your clinical exposure is heavy as a MA/opt tech, but you need much more exposure to primary care. Your work in the free clinic should really be higher (200+ hours I suggest).

You also have no campus involvement, so it's not clear you have leadership experience.

Why do you want to be a physician? What do you expect to learn in medical school to realize your vision as a physician?

 

[chilly_md]

You have limited non-clinical volunteering so that would particularly impact your chances at UCSF, Charles Drew (which is a HBCU, so off the table already), and essentially all schools to a degree. It would be best to broaden your list. UW does not take many if any at all from Oregon as they serve states without an MD school. CUSM is nearly all instate, the UC's in general are already difficult for CA residents.

This is a more reasonable list:

Mayo Clinic (Alix)
Case Western
Albert Einstein
USC Keck
Kaiser Permanente
Brown
Pitt
Temple
Jefferson
Tufts
OHSU
Hofstra
NYMC
Rochester
Dartmouth
Hackensack
UVA
USF
Miami
Saint Louis
Vermont
Iowa
Ohio State
Cincinnati
Western Michigan
Colorado

 

[smoothquail]

Welcome to the forums.

Off the bat, you need more community service experience. I suspect much of your time has been focused on your music competitions, so your app seems light on community service (both clinical and non-clinical). Get your food bank hours up to at least 150 hours or else your file could get screened out at most schools. If you are going for brand name schools, you should have 250 hours.

Again, your clinical exposure is heavy as a MA/opt tech, but you need much more exposure to primary care. Your work in the free clinic should really be higher (200+ hours I suggest).

You also have no campus involvement, so it's not clear you have leadership experience.

Why do you want to be a physician? What do you expect to learn in medical school to realize your vision as a physician?

Thank you for the warm welcome and detailed response! I really appreciate the feedback.

You’re 100% right, I was definitely all-in on competing and performing during undergrad. In hindsight, it would've been much more efficient to sprinkle in some volunteering throughout college! That's what I've mainly been trying to bump up over the past year. In terms of my free clinic scribing, I definitely see how my hours would considered be too low. I am planning on continuing my involvement with those activities throughout this year, and I have them listed in my anticipated hours. Do you think that would influence any adcom decisions?

My decision to pursue medicine came later in college/post graduation. I was a pre-health student and kept an open mind about which field I wanted to go into. I worked in ophthalmology throughout college, which gave me meaningful clinical exposure. However, I still wanted to explore other healthcare fields before committing to medicine, which I understood was a massive commitment. Since I hadn’t experienced much outside of specialty care, I spent time after graduation shadowing and volunteering in dentistry. One big factor that made me realize I wanted to pursue medicine was scribing at the free clinic. I really enjoyed working with underserved patients and experienced how meaningful it is to simply help someone feel seen and cared for. That sense of human connection was something I’d felt in music for years, but I found an even deeper, more tangible version of it in medicine. I was also drawn to the range of possibilities in medicine and the holistic, whole-body approach to healthcare. Ophthalmology and primary care were both intellectually stimulating to me, yet so different, which I found exciting because it showed me how wide-ranging and dynamic medicine can be. I spent a long time trying to figure out what I wanted to do in the future. Nothing ever felt like the right choice, and I was never fully sure about any path. But once I fully committed to medicine, it was the first time I’ve felt completely confident in a decision.

Given where my hours currently stand, especially on the lower end for non-clinical volunteering and primary care exposure, do you think there are any schools on my list I should cut due to low yield or poor mission fit? Are there any schools you'd recommend adding that are more OOS-friendly and place value on strong clinical experience or upward volunteering trends? I’d really appreciate any thoughts on how my list aligns with where I’m at right now.

 

[Faha]

Your list is top heavy. Not because of your cGPA of 4.0 and MCAT of 517, but because you have only 100 hours of non clinical volunteering. Some schools screen at 150 hours and at top tier schools you will be competing with applicants who have many hundreds or thousands of hours of non clinical volunteering. Accumulate another 50+ hours at the food bank before you submit your application. I suggest these schools if you have 150 hours of non clinical volunteering:
Oregon
Arizona (Phoenix)
Colorado
Mayo
Rosalind Franklin
Medical College Wisconsin
Western Michigan
U Michigan
Iowa
Ohio State
Cincinnati
USF Morsani
Miami
Washington University (in St. Louis)
Wake Forest
George Washington
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Pittsburgh
Hofstra
Einstein (free tuition)
Mount Sinai
Rochester
New York Medical College
Hackensack
Vermont
Tufts
UMass
Boston University
Kaiser
Loma Linda (if you fit their mission)

 

[smoothquail]

Your list is top heavy. Not because of your cGPA of 4.0 and MCAT of 517, but because you have only 100 hours of non clinical volunteering. Some schools screen at 150 hours and at top tier schools you will be competing with applicants who have many hundreds or thousands of hours of non clinical volunteering. Accumulate another 50+ hours at the food bank before you submit your application. I suggest these schools if you have 150 hours of non clinical volunteering:
Oregon
Arizona (Phoenix)
Colorado
Mayo
Rosalind Franklin
Medical College Wisconsin
Western Michigan
U Michigan
Iowa
Ohio State
Cincinnati
USF Morsani
Miami
Washington University (in St. Louis)
Wake Forest
George Washington
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Pittsburgh
Hofstra
Einstein (free tuition)
Mount Sinai
Rochester
New York Medical College
Hackensack
Vermont
Tufts
UMass
Boston University
Kaiser
Loma Linda (if you fit their mission)

Thank you very much. I submitted my primary to OHSU, since I knew that the verification process would take a while. I am not sure if am able to change the number of hours in my primary application, do you have any advice for me in that case? Also, would my 36 hrs of adjudicating be included in adcoms eyes? Thanks for your help.

 

[Faha]

Thank you very much. I submitted my primary to OHSU, since I knew that the verification process would take a while. I am not sure if am able to change the number of hours in my primary application, do you have any advice for me in that case? Also, would my 36 hrs of adjudicating be included in adcoms eyes? Thanks for your help.

Judging piano competitions is not what medical schools are looking for. Accumulate those hours in the coming year in case you need to reapply next year.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thank you very much. I submitted my primary to OHSU, since I knew that the verification process would take a while. I am not sure if am able to change the number of hours in my primary application, do you have any advice for me in that case? Also, would my 36 hrs of adjudicating be included in adcoms eyes? Thanks for your help.

1) I generally ignore activities with fewer than 50 hours (unless it's shadowing).
2) Judging piano competitions (or baking competitions) isn't service orientation.