- Joined
- Jan 2, 2011
- Messages
- 108
- Reaction score
- 7
My stats and ECs:
GPA: 3.45 sGPA / 3.45 cGPA
Major: Biology; Minor: English Literature
MCAT: 36S - 14/11/11/S
I am a California resident, graduated from UC San Diego.
GPA trend: generally upwards in the last 2 years of UG, lots of solid A's in upper division biology courses including Physio, Mol Bio. B in Biochem though. The low sGPA and cGPA are due to a string of B's from Gen Chem and Ochem as a freshman/sophmore. I'm hoping the 14PS score will help offset some doubt about my abilities in gen chem.
ECs:
Letters of Rec:
I know my writers well enough to know that I have strong letters.
Whew, now for the school list. This is my preliminary, tentative list. It's a little top heavy at the moment, and I need some opinions. With my GPA, I figured I had no business listing anything as a safety.
Tentative School List
Reach:
Target:
My current plans: Keep working at rehab, but search for research to be done this summer and into next year. I'm also very interested in technology in health care and health care information systems (I'm a child of the Silicon Valley). I'm actually considering taking classes in health care IT/software development at UCSD's extension right now and getting a GPA boost while developing my toolset. I actually hope to play a part in developing health care information systems that are more efficient, cost-effective, user friendly, and consistent across various hospital systems. I hope that in itself makes me a more interesting applicant, assuming I survive the GPA screen-outs at the top schools.
Thoughts on how to sell myself? My ECs? Improvements to be made besides research? My overall fitness as an applicant?
GPA: 3.45 sGPA / 3.45 cGPA
Major: Biology; Minor: English Literature
MCAT: 36S - 14/11/11/S
I am a California resident, graduated from UC San Diego.
GPA trend: generally upwards in the last 2 years of UG, lots of solid A's in upper division biology courses including Physio, Mol Bio. B in Biochem though. The low sGPA and cGPA are due to a string of B's from Gen Chem and Ochem as a freshman/sophmore. I'm hoping the 14PS score will help offset some doubt about my abilities in gen chem.
ECs:
- ~240 hours of hospital volunteer with direct patient contact (lots of cleaning and bathing patients)
- ~300 hours as a volunteer coordinator and trainer for the above hospital program
- 160 hours as a peer Health Educator, primarily talking to college students about Sexual Health. Some of those hours were also spent as a TA for the training course that the health educators had to take.
- 20 hours shadowing an internal medicine doctor
- Worked part time as a children's swimming instructor throughout most of college
- Supervisor at a summer day camp for children and teens during 2 summers
- Currently working full time at an alcohol/drug addiction treatment center
- I don't have research experience, I decided to go premed late in the game and chose to allocate my time to the aforementioned activities instead of research. I'm considering looking for research to do this summer though just to have some under my belt.
Letters of Rec:
I know my writers well enough to know that I have strong letters.
- 2 Bio professors whose classes I aced (molecular bio and molecular bio of human disease)
- 1 Literature professor with whom I took 2 classes - he loved me because I loved the subject
- The doctor I shadowed - he was part of the ad com for a top 10 med school
- Director of my hospital internship, where I took a leading role and contributed a lot to the program's development
- Coordinator of my health educator organization.
Whew, now for the school list. This is my preliminary, tentative list. It's a little top heavy at the moment, and I need some opinions. With my GPA, I figured I had no business listing anything as a safety.
Tentative School List
Reach:
- UCSF
- UC Berkeley/UCSF Joint program
- Stanford
- UCLA
- UCSD
- University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
- Dartmouth
- Duke
- University of Pittsburg
- Brown University
- NYU
- University of Virginia
Target:
- UC Davis
- UC Irvine
- Keck (Southern California)
- George Washington
- Georgetown
- Rush
- Tulane
- Oakland
- Albany Medical College
- Albert Einstein
- New York Medical College
- SUNY Downstate
- SUNY Buffalo
- University of Colorado, Denver
- University of Rochester
- Drexel
- Temple
- Jefferson Medical College
- Virginia Commonwealth University
- Oregon Health and Science
My current plans: Keep working at rehab, but search for research to be done this summer and into next year. I'm also very interested in technology in health care and health care information systems (I'm a child of the Silicon Valley). I'm actually considering taking classes in health care IT/software development at UCSD's extension right now and getting a GPA boost while developing my toolset. I actually hope to play a part in developing health care information systems that are more efficient, cost-effective, user friendly, and consistent across various hospital systems. I hope that in itself makes me a more interesting applicant, assuming I survive the GPA screen-outs at the top schools.
Thoughts on how to sell myself? My ECs? Improvements to be made besides research? My overall fitness as an applicant?
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