School List Help and what next?

[midnitetots12]

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Hi everyone, would like to get some revising with school list if you have the time. Would also appreciate any ideas on how to improve my app at this point (e.g. should I get primary care shadowing, is my volunteer experience going to look weak due to bulk of hours being recent? Should I just focus on my primary applicaiton and writing?) Thanks in advance for feedback! also all hours are projected up to June 1st

GPA: 3.935

MCAT: 519 (130/129/130/130)

Residence: CA, grew up in Fl

Ethnicity: ORM, male

Undergraduate: top 20 university

Clinical Experience:

• 800 hours ED scribe
• 600 hours EMT

Research:

• 500 Hours - Molecular biology lab
  • No pubs/presentations
  • left at the end of my sophomore year since I realized science research may not have been for me
• 200 hours - Clinical Research Internship
  • one second author publication
    • same publication was presented at an annual conference for the medical specialty I could not attend myself
  • a summer internship at a well known health institution
• 150 hours - viral genomics research
  • one poster presentation
  • one remote conference presentation

Shadowing:

• 50 hours (spread between plastic, neurological, gynecological surgery, otolaryngology) --- is this weak without primary care?

Non-clinical Volunteering:

• 260 total
  • 60 - tutored students at homeless shelter in hometown (started 1 year ago)
  • 40 - tutor homeless youth remotely in CA due to COVID (started 6 months ago)
  • 160 - local food bank packaging and distributing food (started this in December of 2020) --- is this bad for my app that 2/3 of the hours are relatively recent

Leadership:

• 300 hours (head undergraduate teaching assistant)
  • worked with new undergraduate assistants in seminar to incorporate the curriculum's pedagogy techniques into their interactions with students. mentored both new assistants and returning assistants on pedagogical techniques in the context of the specific course's material
    • attended meetings to help revise the curriculum regarding these techniques in the context of all courses offered by the university
  • help in application selection process for undergraduate assistants and work with the professor to coordinate their schedules for the various quarters I held this position

Other ECs:

• had work-study for half a year; wasn't anything significant. just helped organize records and PHI for my university's neurosurgery department. wasn't that enriching, it was more for money since I had the spare time
• work with university's professors and TAs as undergraduate assistants in various biology, chemistry classes offered by the university (700 hours)
  • led to leadership position described above
  • held review sessions, revising worksheet problems with professors/TAs, work in smaller classroom settings and lecture settings several times a week with students currently taking the relevant chemistry course
• club with one on one mentoring with underclassmen premed students (40 hours)
• worked at tutoring company in high school (high school I know, but it's a part of my narrative) (100 hours)
• MCAT instructor for Kaplan (100 hours by time of application)

LORs: all non-generic/decent quality based on relationship/what they've asked (though this is still speculation)

Anything else:

• first generation college student
• disadvantaged status (self-identified)
• coherent narrative

My School List: this is about 35 schools so please let me know if it'd be a good idea to replace any/remove any that might be better fits for me

UCLA
UCI
UCD
UCSF
UCSD
Kaiser
USC
CUSM
UF
USF
UCF
UMiami
FIU
FAU
NYU
Mayo Clinic
Harvard
Stanford
MNYU
UVA
Upenn
JHU
Yale
Tulane
Michigan
Cleveland
Baylor
Emory
Michigan
Toledo
Arizona
Iowa
Maryland
Illinois
Kentucky
St. Luis University

@Goro @Faha pls help

 

[Faha]

Your ECs are fine. You could remove state public schools that accept few non residents with no connection to the state or region such as Kentucky and Toledo. You could add any of these schools:
Dartmouth
Brown
Hofstra
Einstein
Mount Sinai
Rochester
Pittsburgh
Ohio state
Cincinnati
Washington University

 

[Banco]

You have a great application; your shadowing is fine, as you already have a lot of clinical experience via scribing. If you are going to be applying to all those Florida schools, make sure to demonstrate to them via secondaries that you have a strong tie to the state via upbringing/family.

And yeah as Faha said, I would replace Toledo, Illinois, Kentucky, Maryland with Hofstra, Einstein, Rochester, Cincinnati etc. - would likely be higher yield for you.

 

[midnitetots12]

@Banco . Will these FL schools still send secondaries? I'm wondering if they'll give me a chance before secondaries then if I can't express it well. I know the primary has demographic questions that'll clearly show I was born in FL and went to HS there, and other details, but I'm not sure if it'll be brushed past.

 

[midnitetots12]

Your ECs are fine. You could remove state public schools that accept few non residents with no connection to the state or region such as Kentucky and Toledo. You could add any of these schools:
Dartmouth
Brown
Hofstra
Einstein
Mount Sinai
Rochester
Pittsburgh
Ohio state
Cincinnati
Washington University

Thank you! I saw some relatively recent reddit post (few years ago) about all the schools and the OOS friendly schools and I saw them on here. Do you know if that info is wrong, or perhaps misleading due to people having ties there yet being OOS? Also should I focus less on applying to these "OOS friendly schools" and just go all private schools aside from CA and FL?

 

[Faha]

State public schools that seem OOS friendly are often admitting applicants who attended undergraduate school in the state, former residents, legacies, URM.