I am a nontrad, have been out of school for 3 years. I'm getting a committee letter from my undergrad school, but my advisor there is absolutely useless, so any advise would be awesome.
I'm interested in underserved health - especially rural/urban latino and spanish-speaking populations, so probably something primary care related. That said, that could obviously change. But I would love to have access to service opportunities in that vein and those patient populations during school. True pass/fail and progressive curricula are very important to me as well, ideally.
- cGPA: 3.90 and sGPA: 3.89
- Majors: Double major in a hard science and Hispanic Studies
- MCAT: 522 (129/13x/13x/132)
- State of residence: Mass
- Ethnicity and/or race: White
- Undergraduate institution or category: T20 LAC (NESCAC)
- Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer):
- Summer assisting with clinical research at hospital near home - spent half my time shadowing and half my time doing research.
- Spent 1 year on fairly prestigious/competitive post-grad fellowship abroad in “third world” country, working at a small community hospital and health center. Obviously a central experience for me and in my application - major patient contact and community health and development involvement, clinical translating (language of country, which I’m fluent in → english and back). 2000+ hrs
- Volunteering past 6 months at cancer center of hospital affiliated with Medical School where I currently work in a lab. ~80hrs so far, about 200 projected.
- Research experience and productivity:
- Clinical research mentioned above - poster presented at hospital’s academic week (hosp affiliated with T30 med school in northeast).
- Clinical research while abroad during fellowship - assisted with study focused on rural healthcare, presented abstract at major national conference.
- Current research - research assistant in translational research lab at T10 medical school full time for past 1.5 yrs. No pubs yet, but 1-2 second author pubs expected next year and after.
- Shadowing experience and specialties represented:
- 200 hrs shadowing over summer at US hospital (peds, med, og/byn, surg, anesthesia)
- 150+ hours shadowing/clinical translating while abroad on fellowship (same as above)
- ~30 hrs so far at hospital I work at now (oncology, radonc)
- Non-clinical volunteering
- Mentor for local kid in college for 2 yrs (big brothers-big sisters type program) 100+ hrs
- Special Olympics coach during high school and first 3 winters home from college (not too many hours during college, but was a sustained activity) 50+ hrs
- Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc)
- Teaching assistant for bio lab course for 2 yrs/4 semesters in college - pretty solid involvement (10 hrs a week)
- Very sustained and significant musical experience. Throughout high school, college, and present have played in many bands, musical theater pits, ensembles, and groups of all kinds, including while abroad. Easily over 1500 hrs since college - still figuring out exactly how to tell this story for my application, but will definitely be one of my most significant experiences. Lots of leadership in leading groups and musical directing etc.
- Relevant honors or awards: Academic ones in college (PBK, departmental award for major)
- Rural Health: Absolutely
- Anything else not listed you think might be important: I didn't finish all the premed coursework in college, so I've been taking the last few I needed through the post-bac program at the university I work at now. it's not an official post-bac, only 3 classes and a couple labs, just enrolled through it. Have received all A+'s in the classes I've taken here.
Schools I have thought about so far:
UMass
Tufts
BU
Harvard
Case Western
Columbia
Chicago
Duke
Michigan
Mount Sinai
Northwestern
NYU
Penn
Pitt
Stanford
UVA
UCLA
Vanderbilt
Yale
Dartmouth
Emory
Jefferson
Rochester
UVM
Consider Case, Hofstra, Baylor, Miami, Cornell, Einstein, JHU, WashU, UCSF, UCSD
