I'll defer to you if it's more favorable to be an applicant from OR/TX rather than CA (although looking the MCAT 25-75th percentiles at the public med schools in CA, TX, and OR, it would suggest to me that it's not more favorable to be from CA). If your weakness is a lack of clinical exposure and life experience, obtaining a clinical job in another state could be what makes you a stronger candidate. And if it does turn out that moving to a new state is too disruptive to handle, this be good to know about oneself before applying broadly across the country for med school. So to me, the issue may be picking the right state. However, I wasn't aware that "commitment to stay post graduation" is considered----is that generally true?
It's not explicitly required, but it's implied. The taxpayer benefit is not designed for people to come in from OOS, establish residency, grab the benefit, and then go back to where they came from. Schools will screen for this, to greater or lesser degrees, depending on how attractive you are as a candidate.
Most state schools, other than the national ones like UCLA, UCSF, Michigan, etc., have training physicians to serve in the state as part of their mission. You make an excellent point about knowing whether or not a big move would be disruptive prior to making it for school. My point was more about making it for no reason other than to enhance one's chances to get into a school, and then still not getting into school.
As far as med school admissions go, it's important to keep in mind that a lot more goes into it than just MCAT and GPA. The IS success rates in OR and TX are far below the national averages, even though they heavily favor their own residents. This is because there is a much larger than average imbalance there between applicants and seats.
Whatever your stats happen to be, I am just doubting that a weak CA applicant becomes a strong OR or TX applicant after living there for a year or two. Any improvements you make would equally apply if you stayed in CA. Overall, CA had a slightly below average 34.5% success rate last cycle. It was 33.7% in OR, and 32.8% in TX.
Hardly worth moving for, notwithstanding the fact that their public schools have lower stats than those in CA. It just means they have lower scoring IS applicants, but there is no reason to believe they care about raising their stats. Harvard, UCSF and Duke have lower MCAT numbers than WashU, Penn and NYU. They could certainly be higher if they cared about it.
There is no guarantee any place you moved to would consider you one of their own after a year or two, and warmly embrace you and your superior stats, if they are focused on training people with roots in the state, which definitely seems to be a thing in places like TX. A move makes sense if you have multiple reasons to do it, and would be happy being in the place if med school doesn't work out. OTOH, planning a move around hopefully enhancing the odds of getting into med school just doesn't make a lot of sense to me. 2742 Californians got into med school last cycle. There is no reason you cannot do it as well, without having to move across the country before applying.
