School Selection - Help Wanted

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xygplat

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I'm applying MD/PhD (to every school I apply to) but wanted to get the viewpoint from the pre-allo side of it too.

I've narrowed my school list down to 34 schools. they all have comp bio programs within the md/phd program.

Is this a balanced list of schools? Any sugestions on schools to remove from the list (I'm having a tough time with that obviously)? I'll probably end up applying to about 20-30 schools.

Info:
Decent state school
GPA: 3.9
MCAT: 34Q
Major: Computer Science and Molec. Bio
PhD Interest: Computational Biology

Research: 5 summers (full time) + 4 semesters (10-15 hrs per week) + 2 more semesters next school year. Worked in 4 seperate labs in this time. Few abstracts & posters. One 6th-author pub (just was helping out) and hopefully a 1st author in the fall or so. 2 summers were basic science research; rest was computational

EC: volunteering, just a little clinical (about a month of shadowing during school year, volunteering 4hrs a week in an ER this summer), music, leadership


Univ. of Alabama
Univ. of Arizona
UCSF
Stanford
UCLA
UCSD
USC
Univ. of Colorado
Yale
Emory
Univ. of Illinois at Chicago
Johns Hopkins
Harvard
Univ. of Michigan
Mayo
Washington Univ. - STL
Dartmouth
Columbia
Cornell
NYU
Univ. of Rochester
Stony Brook
Duke
UNC - Chapel Hill
Univ. of Cincinnati
Penn State
Univ. of Pennsylvania
Univ. of Pittsburgh
Drexel
Vanderbilt
Baylor
UT Southwestern
Univ. of Virginia
Univ. of Washington
Univ. of Wisconsin

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looks like this fell to the second page...

bump
 
Are you a Cali resident?

The list is good, but it's pretty top heavy.
 
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Are you a Cali resident?

The list is good, but it's pretty top heavy.

thanks for the response

not a cali resident

yea - its kinda top heavy

thats mainly because most of the programs that have their own grad level comp bio dept are the "top" programs
 
Which state are you a resident of?

Anyway, I really don't know much about MD/PhD applications/standards. If you were applying MD alone, I'd really worry about your minimal clinical experience. But perhaps they cut MD/PhD students some slack there.

Also, I could be wrong, but I'm guessing some state schools that otherwise don't really accept OOS applicants might consider MD/PhD applicants? I'd definitely check into that if I were you. Because otherwise, I'd say getting into Arizona, Colorado and Univ. of Washington would be really really rough (if not impossible) OOS. On the other hand, I have read that Washington does take some OOS applicants that show a real dedication to serving the underserved. Perhaps they have an MD/PhD OOS exception as well.

Good luck - I'm sure you'll do quite well this year.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about the minimal clinical experience. The volunteering will help, so will the research. With your scores, clinical experience won't matter much. My sense is that it's not a big factor; have some shadowing, some volunteering (the basic stuff that every other Joe Schmo has) and you're fine (so long s your numbers are there).

Besides your home state, can you provide the breakdown of your MCAT scores and your BCMP GPA?

If you're somewhat limited to schools with Graduate programs Computational Biology (and that's your interests), then you're somewhat limited to schools with Graduate programs in Computational Biology. There's not much anyone can do about that. You have a very good application and I agree that you'll be quite successful in your applications. Good luck!
 
Which state are you a resident of?

Anyway, I really don't know much about MD/PhD applications/standards. If you were applying MD alone, I'd really worry about your minimal clinical experience. But perhaps they cut MD/PhD students some slack there.

Also, I could be wrong, but I'm guessing some state schools that otherwise don't really accept OOS applicants might consider MD/PhD applicants? I'd definitely check into that if I were you. Because otherwise, I'd say getting into Arizona, Colorado and Univ. of Washington would be really really rough (if not impossible) OOS. On the other hand, I have read that Washington does take some OOS applicants that show a real dedication to serving the underserved. Perhaps they have an MD/PhD OOS exception as well.

Good luck - I'm sure you'll do quite well this year.

Arizona resident, but MD/PhD programs dont show much preference for in-state compared to MD programs

I wouldn't worry too much about the minimal clinical experience. The volunteering will help, so will the research. With your scores, clinical experience won't matter much. My sense is that it's not a big factor; have some shadowing, some volunteering (the basic stuff that every other Joe Schmo has) and you're fine (so long s your numbers are there).

Besides your home state, can you provide the breakdown of your MCAT scores and your BCMP GPA?

If you're somewhat limited to schools with Graduate programs Computational Biology (and that's your interests), then you're somewhat limited to schools with Graduate programs in Computational Biology. There's not much anyone can do about that. You have a very good application and I agree that you'll be quite successful in your applications. Good luck!

Home state: AZ
MCAT = 34Q (13B, 11P, 10V)
GPA and BCPM GPA are ~3.92 I think
 
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