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- Dec 27, 2021
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- Pre-Medical
Greetings!
Looking for some honest feedback on the possibility of becoming a competitive non-traditional medical school applicant in the next 2(ish) years. At a minimum, I will complete a post-BA nursing program, but I am seriously considering trying for medical school for at least one cycle. I have three immediate family members who are MDs, so I am intimately aware of what I'm signing up for if I choose to go down this route! I have had strong motivations for going into medicine, either as a nurse or a doctor since childhood, and have always told myself that if I'm not going to be a professor then I'll go into healthcare. I've just taken the long road there! I'm hoping some of the more interesting things I've done until now would stand out in a medical school application.
I know it's hard to receive some concrete 'What Are My Chances?' feedback without a complete picture of my stats, but I'll take what I can get.
Some background:
Grad Education: I am a third-year, fully-funded MA/PhD student at one of the top programs in the country for my discipline. 4.0 grad GPA, but this is meaningless at the grad school level. I am squarely in the humanistic social sciences, so none of my coursework and methodological training (asides from maybe statistics) would overlap with traditional MD applicants. I love research, teaching, and the community instilled in graduate school but deeply loathe the structures, inequities, and nonesense of academia, and with the near-collapse of the academic job market in the US, the incentives to stay and complete a PhD earning poverty wages are no longer there for me.
BA Education: Respectable R2 Public School. I was ambitious as **** as an undergrad and triple-majored with a minor and finished with a 3.69 GPA (again my coursework was heavily in non-STEM fields, but challenged myself with upper-level coursework and advanced seminars). I worked on multiple research projects with the same PI, studied abroad for an entire academic year in the developing world, and spent my summers in meaningful ways with paid internships or RAships.
Awards: I received a highly-competitive NSF GRFP before starting grad school (~10% selection rate nationally), and multiple nationally competitive awards for research, language training, and study abroad like Boren, CLS, and a Fulbright research grant I received after college. I also have multiple leadership, academic achievement, and advocacy awards from undergrad, including an 'overall achievement' award that is given to 1-2 graduating seniors (out of a graduate class of ~2800). I've continued to receive research and conference grants every year of graduate school.
Research experience and publications: Completed research all 4 years as an undergrad, completed an honors undergrad thesis, and a MA thesis. I've received two awards based on my research from the relevant scholarly organizations as a graduate student. All of my research is internationally-based, so have completed long stints of ethnographic fieldwork abroad. I have one co-authored book chapter, another single-authored paper under review, and another 2 peer-reviewed journal articles in the works. Again, all of the above is in the social sciences so not sure if adcoms will care.
Volunteer: Years and years of volunteer work domestically and abroad with human rights and refugee organizations since 2012, as well as volunteer translation and interpreting for asylum applicants and immigrants. Since COVID, I've also co-managed a mutual aid group that has distributed money, food, and other physical items to graduate students in need at my university. I hope to use some of my language skills and experience to volunteer with underserved populations in medical settings and/or navigating healthcare systems.
Professional work: Prior to graduate school, I worked overseas for 2 years in humanitarian aid and international development in the Middle East. I also served as a TA in undergrad and have served as a mentor in formal mentoring programs for underrepresented students in academia if adcoms care about teaching and mentoring experiences.
Other/Personal relevance: First-gen American who grew up in the rural south. Significant exposure to the realities of healthcare given a parent's chronic kidney disease and eventual death, my own interactions with the healthcare system from childhood through high school with a chronic (now resolved) heart issue, and parents' occupations. I am highly motivated to work with underserved populations and create better access to healthcare in urban and/or humanitarian settings.
Postbacc Plan: I plan to immediately start completing all the pre-reqs for MD applications this summer or next fall depending on life circumstances. I refuse to accumulate student debt so I will be completing coursework while working full-time, instead of doing a full-time postbacc program. Obviously how I perform in Gen Chem and Org Chem will be telling of whether I can feasibly move forward or not with a competitive application. I received AP credit for Biology and Calculus with a 5 and 4 respectively, but it's been a decade since I took those classes and would likely take their college equivalents. I'm already doing a lot of reviewing through Khan Academy and self-study and it's been genuinely fun easing back into using this part of my brain again. I always loved my science courses in high school, and had a strong interest and aptitude for them, but lacked the discipline and insight on how to succeed in these courses at the university level, so avoided that route entirely out of fear of failure. Now that I have 10+ years of insight into my study habits and what works well for me, I'm confident I can do relatively well in these post-bacc science classes. As for the MCAT, I know this is an entirely different beast in terms of standardized tests, but I tend to do quite well on these types of high-stakes exams, and I believe with adequate preparation and a solid study plan, I can receive a respectable score. I also plan on becoming a part-time CNA for clinical experience, which will obviously give me insight into the realities of patient care and the health professions.
If I do decide to apply, I'm concerned with my lowish non-STEM undergrad GPA and my ability to get solid LORs from science professors. If I take my science coursework at community colleges, would a LOR from professors at this institution hold any weight?
Anyway, this was a lot--thanks for reading!
Looking for some honest feedback on the possibility of becoming a competitive non-traditional medical school applicant in the next 2(ish) years. At a minimum, I will complete a post-BA nursing program, but I am seriously considering trying for medical school for at least one cycle. I have three immediate family members who are MDs, so I am intimately aware of what I'm signing up for if I choose to go down this route! I have had strong motivations for going into medicine, either as a nurse or a doctor since childhood, and have always told myself that if I'm not going to be a professor then I'll go into healthcare. I've just taken the long road there! I'm hoping some of the more interesting things I've done until now would stand out in a medical school application.
I know it's hard to receive some concrete 'What Are My Chances?' feedback without a complete picture of my stats, but I'll take what I can get.
Some background:
Grad Education: I am a third-year, fully-funded MA/PhD student at one of the top programs in the country for my discipline. 4.0 grad GPA, but this is meaningless at the grad school level. I am squarely in the humanistic social sciences, so none of my coursework and methodological training (asides from maybe statistics) would overlap with traditional MD applicants. I love research, teaching, and the community instilled in graduate school but deeply loathe the structures, inequities, and nonesense of academia, and with the near-collapse of the academic job market in the US, the incentives to stay and complete a PhD earning poverty wages are no longer there for me.
BA Education: Respectable R2 Public School. I was ambitious as **** as an undergrad and triple-majored with a minor and finished with a 3.69 GPA (again my coursework was heavily in non-STEM fields, but challenged myself with upper-level coursework and advanced seminars). I worked on multiple research projects with the same PI, studied abroad for an entire academic year in the developing world, and spent my summers in meaningful ways with paid internships or RAships.
Awards: I received a highly-competitive NSF GRFP before starting grad school (~10% selection rate nationally), and multiple nationally competitive awards for research, language training, and study abroad like Boren, CLS, and a Fulbright research grant I received after college. I also have multiple leadership, academic achievement, and advocacy awards from undergrad, including an 'overall achievement' award that is given to 1-2 graduating seniors (out of a graduate class of ~2800). I've continued to receive research and conference grants every year of graduate school.
Research experience and publications: Completed research all 4 years as an undergrad, completed an honors undergrad thesis, and a MA thesis. I've received two awards based on my research from the relevant scholarly organizations as a graduate student. All of my research is internationally-based, so have completed long stints of ethnographic fieldwork abroad. I have one co-authored book chapter, another single-authored paper under review, and another 2 peer-reviewed journal articles in the works. Again, all of the above is in the social sciences so not sure if adcoms will care.
Volunteer: Years and years of volunteer work domestically and abroad with human rights and refugee organizations since 2012, as well as volunteer translation and interpreting for asylum applicants and immigrants. Since COVID, I've also co-managed a mutual aid group that has distributed money, food, and other physical items to graduate students in need at my university. I hope to use some of my language skills and experience to volunteer with underserved populations in medical settings and/or navigating healthcare systems.
Professional work: Prior to graduate school, I worked overseas for 2 years in humanitarian aid and international development in the Middle East. I also served as a TA in undergrad and have served as a mentor in formal mentoring programs for underrepresented students in academia if adcoms care about teaching and mentoring experiences.
Other/Personal relevance: First-gen American who grew up in the rural south. Significant exposure to the realities of healthcare given a parent's chronic kidney disease and eventual death, my own interactions with the healthcare system from childhood through high school with a chronic (now resolved) heart issue, and parents' occupations. I am highly motivated to work with underserved populations and create better access to healthcare in urban and/or humanitarian settings.
Postbacc Plan: I plan to immediately start completing all the pre-reqs for MD applications this summer or next fall depending on life circumstances. I refuse to accumulate student debt so I will be completing coursework while working full-time, instead of doing a full-time postbacc program. Obviously how I perform in Gen Chem and Org Chem will be telling of whether I can feasibly move forward or not with a competitive application. I received AP credit for Biology and Calculus with a 5 and 4 respectively, but it's been a decade since I took those classes and would likely take their college equivalents. I'm already doing a lot of reviewing through Khan Academy and self-study and it's been genuinely fun easing back into using this part of my brain again. I always loved my science courses in high school, and had a strong interest and aptitude for them, but lacked the discipline and insight on how to succeed in these courses at the university level, so avoided that route entirely out of fear of failure. Now that I have 10+ years of insight into my study habits and what works well for me, I'm confident I can do relatively well in these post-bacc science classes. As for the MCAT, I know this is an entirely different beast in terms of standardized tests, but I tend to do quite well on these types of high-stakes exams, and I believe with adequate preparation and a solid study plan, I can receive a respectable score. I also plan on becoming a part-time CNA for clinical experience, which will obviously give me insight into the realities of patient care and the health professions.
If I do decide to apply, I'm concerned with my lowish non-STEM undergrad GPA and my ability to get solid LORs from science professors. If I take my science coursework at community colleges, would a LOR from professors at this institution hold any weight?
Anyway, this was a lot--thanks for reading!
