School List Help (TX, 3.96 GPA, 522 MCAT, URM)

[ferocas]

Hi y'all. I'm a 3rd year college student, and I am going to be applying for the 2020-21 cycle this coming May/June. Although I have a rough idea of what schools I want to apply to, any advice is appreciated! This is my first post on SDN, and I haven't gotten to lurk as much as I would like to, so I apologize if I'm missing/overlooking anything. Also any advice regarding crafting an application would be super helpful! I mostly need help coming up with some mid-tier schools to add to the list, as that is what I'm having most trouble with.

Some stuff about me:

State: TX, large public school
GPA: 3.96
Major: Biomedical Engineering
Demographic info: URM, Hispanic

MCAT: 522 (129/130/131/132)

Extracurriculars:

Research: About 450 hours of research over the past 2.5 years. Due to unfortunate circumstances, this was with three different labs, so no publications. One poster presentation.

Clinical Volunteering: 160 hours of clinical volunteering through local hospital program (time roughly evenly split up between a gift shop, Neuro Department nurse aid, cancer accreditation desk-work, and Emergency Department nurse aid). Was expecting closer to 180ish hours, but COVID-19 cut my time short. Planning on continuing to volunteer through my last year in school.

Non-clinical Volunteering: 70 hours as an online crisis counselor, 15 hours doing science clubs at a local elementary school through university org, roughly 20 hours with misc stuff like park cleanups, etc.

Leadership/Work: 250 hours tutoring university students in organic chemistry for the university [paid job], 36 hours helping to TA freshman engineering lab class [paid job], 20 hours of ACT/SAT tutoring for a company [paid job]. Currently the professional development chair for a professional engineering fraternity.

Shadowing: Shadowed a vascular surgeon for 160 hours over a summer.

(Very) Preliminary School List:

(TMDSAS)
1. UTSW
2. UTMB
3. McGovern
4. Long
5. A&M
6. Texas Tech
7. Texas Tech - El Paso
8. Dell
9. UT Rio Grande

(non-TMDSAS)
10. Baylor
11. NYU
12. Cornell
13. UCSF
14. Harvard
15. Michigan
16. Penn
17. Stanford
18. Columbia
19. U Chicago
20. Ohio State
21. USC

Again, this is super preliminary haha. It does not escape me that this is a really ambitious school list. If y'all could help me cross some of these out/add a few mid-tier schools to consider that'd be super helpful. I'm mostly worried about being yield-protected from some of them. Any feed-back is appreciated!

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[Faha]

You should receive multiple interviews from both your Texas schools and OOS schools.

 

[LeaveNoTrace]

Do you speak Spanish? Do you have service to the Hispanic community? As you are now, you're a strong applicant and your low nonclinical hours will get cut a little slack because your stats are excellent and you're going straight through. You're a strong candidate for Texas schools and a middling candidate for OOS top-20s that you'd prefer to your Texas schools. Ideally you'd have 300+ hours of clinical and nonclinical volunteering...if you were willing to take a gap year you would go from a golden applicant to a platinum applicant, maybe one that is closing in on unobtainium.

 

[diasterdream]

Great school list. Apply to those schools. Good job with your application and hard work!

 

[ferocas]

Do you speak Spanish? Do you have service to the Hispanic community? As you are now, you're a strong applicant and your low nonclinical hours will get cut a little slack because your stats are excellent and you're going straight through. You're a strong candidate for Texas schools and a middling candidate for OOS top-20s that you'd prefer to your Texas schools. Ideally you'd have 300+ hours of clinical and nonclinical volunteering...if you were willing to take a gap year you would go from a golden applicant to a platinum applicant, maybe one that is closing in on unobtainium.

Hey! Thanks for your reply. I do speak Spanish fluently; I was born in Colombia. Nothing serving the Hispanic community specifically, though. You're right that my non-clinicals could use some work, but I have found a lot of meaning in the few that I've done. Namely, the crisis counseling. I don't think I will be taking a gap year, but I do plan on potentially expanding on the non-clinical stuff my senior year. The pandemic has made planning difficult, though.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Hey! Thanks for your reply. I do speak Spanish fluently; I was born in Colombia. Nothing serving the Hispanic community specifically, though. You're right that my non-clinicals could use some work, but I have found a lot of meaning in the few that I've done. Namely, the crisis counseling. I don't think I will be taking a gap year, but I do plan on potentially expanding on the non-clinical stuff my senior year. The pandemic has made planning difficult, though.

Employment during school?

Reach out to the SNMA and LMSA chapter officers at the schools in Texas where you want to attend, then the diversity/student affairs administrators. You'll get interviews out-of-state if you are selective about your choices, but chances are you'll stay in Texas given the lower tuition. Understand how the TMDSAS match works, and let them hopefully fight over you.

You know better being on the ground in Texas how critical getting health information to the Latinx population. You should find some way to volunteer at least as a translator or a public health communicator about the pandemic. Again, any insight or advice from LMSA or NHMA will help you.

 

[ferocas]

Employment during school?

Reach out to the SNMA and LMSA chapter officers at the schools in Texas where you want to attend, then the diversity/student affairs administrators. You'll get interviews out-of-state if you are selective about your choices, but chances are you'll stay in Texas given the lower tuition. Understand how the TMDSAS match works, and let them hopefully fight over you.

You know better being on the ground in Texas how critical getting health information to the Latinx population. You should find some way to volunteer at least as a translator or a public health communicator about the pandemic. Again, any insight or advice from LMSA or NHMA will help you.

Thanks for your input! I have been employed by the engineering department for tutoring ochem for the past 3 semesters, if that's what you mean by employment. Also, I will for sure try to reach out to the LMSA chapters that I can. Quick question:

What do you mean by try to be selective in my out-of-state choices? Would it not be better to apply to as many as I feasibly can (with cost/secondary volume being the only limiting factors)?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thanks for your input! I have been employed by the engineering department for tutoring ochem for the past 3 semesters, if that's what you mean by employment.

That helps because then I have to discern that some of your teaching/tutoring is compensated, and that you probably didn't have to work full-time to support your own education. It is what it is.

What do you mean by try to be selective in my out-of-state choices? Would it not be better to apply to as many as I feasibly can (with cost/secondary volume being the only limiting factors)?

Understand that the application process is not one where you are guaranteed an interview based on your metrics. They will evaluate you on best fit, so it is worth your effort to determine that too.

 

[gulli_97]

If you don't really want to attend some of the mission-based schools in Texas - A&m, techs, UTRGV, I would save the money and not even apply.

You'll more than likely receive interviews and acceptances at all the other Texas schools with your rockstar stats and URM status. Shoot for the stars! I'd throw some more OOS mid-tier schools - Tufts, Einstein, etc.

 

[thegrind33]

If you don't really want to attend some of the mission-based schools in Texas - A&m, techs, UTRGV, I would save the money and not even apply.

You'll more than likely receive interviews and acceptances at all the other Texas schools with your rockstar stats and URM status. Shoot for the stars! I'd throw some more OOS mid-tier schools - Tufts, Einstein, etc.

Disagree. TAMU and Tech are both mid tier schools (theyre not really mission schools FYI, their admissions committe makes it seem that way but the schools themselves are not. This is what I gathered from my interview days and talking to students) and replacing them with oos mid tier schools is pointless unless you want to attend that school, not to mention that OP is more likely to get full rides/cheaper COA with their stats from the TX schools

 

[gulli_97]

Disagree. TAMU and Tech are both mid tier schools (theyre not really mission schools FYI, their admissions committe makes it seem that way but the schools themselves are not. This is what I gathered from my interview days and talking to students) and replacing them with oos mid tier schools is pointless unless you want to attend that school, not to mention that OP is more likely to get full rides/cheaper COA with their stats from the TX schools

I do agree with your last point but to say those schools aren't is false. There's definitely a push for primary/rural/border healthcare from those schools and I would say tech-lubbock and A&m are also mid-tier, the two are not mutually exclusive. However, OP will more than likely receive love from - UTMB/UTSA/MMS/etc, considered mid-tiers, which don't necessarily have that focus in their mission and are also larger research institutions.

I'm assuming OP is interested in going into a subspeciality considering he/she has only shadowed a vascular surgeon, thus research is important. For the OOS mid-tiers, it probably would be best to focus on private schools.

 

[LeaveNoTrace]

If possible, get primary care shadowing and throw some OOS top-20 schools on the list, not midtiers. Your nonclinical volunteering is meager but you may be able to scrape by; you might even be golden. 50 more nonclinical hours, maybe on some kind of hotline or something, will help OP a lot.