Suggestion for Reapplicant

[soccerguy974]

I am a current applicant and likely going to have to reapply. I applied to over 50 schools and received 1 interview which I was ultimately rejected. As I prepare to reapply I am looking for any suggestions as I am not quite sure where to focus most of my energy until the new application opens up. Here are my activities and GPA/MCAT:

undergradGPA: 3.04 sGPA: 3.10
250+ units of diy postbacc (sciences classes only) through UCSD and UCLA extension: postGPA: 4.0
I'm assuming my cumulative GPA is around a 3.6-3.7 after averaging all my units and the grades
MCAT: 514 (129,125,130,130)
ORM (28, white, male)
Hobbies – 200+
Paid Employment - Not Medical/Clinical - 1100+
Research/Lab - 150+
Community Service/Volunteer - Medical/Clinical - 680
Shadowing – 150+
Community Service/Volunteer - Not Medical/Clinical - 130
Intercollegiate Athletics - 5000

At this point I do not know if I should to get more hours in a specific activity or experience or if my time would be better spend raising my MCAT.

Thank you all so much, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

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[Faha]

Where is your state of residence? Where was your interview ? What is the nature of your 130 hours of non clinical volunteering and 680 hours of clinical volunteering? Did you apply to any DO schools? You do not need to retake a MCAT of 514.

 

[soccerguy974]

Where is your state of residence? Where was your interview ? What is the nature of your 130 hours of non clinical volunteering and 680 hours of clinical volunteering? Did you apply to any DO schools? You do not need to retake a MCAT of 514.

Where is your state of residence?

• California

Where was your interview?

• UCI

What is the nature of your 130 hours of non clinical volunteering and 680 hours of clinical volunteering?

• Non-clinical volunteering was volunteering at a soup kitchen during college (50 hours) and helping mental and physically disabled kids play baseball on the weekends (80 hours).
• Clinical volunteering was volunteering as an intern on the floor of a hospital for 4-8 hours a week, the internship was like being a CNA's helper.

Did you apply to any DO schools?

• I did not apply to DO schools this cycle.

 

[Goro]

Beggars can't be choosy. As a reinventor, you needed to have do schools on your list. Your lethal Gap in your application was the low number of non clinical volunteering hours. Medicine is a service profession, so you need to show off your altruism.

Also there's no need to apply to 50 schools. I will wager that a fair number of the ones you applied to were donations only.

 

[Faha]

Your low non clinical volunteering hours limited your chances for interviews since some schools screen at 150 hours. Accumulate another 100 hours at the soup kitchen or homeless shelter before you reapply. I suggest these MD schools:
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Tufts
UMass
Albany
New York Medical College
Hackensack
Penn State
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
Wake Forest
NOVA MD
USF Morsani
Miami
Belmont
TCU
Creighton
St. Louis
Ponce (St. Louis)
Rosalind Franklin
Illinois
Medical College Wisconsin
Western Michigan
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Alice Walton
Roseman (when it opens)
Methodist (when it opens)
Arizona (Phoenix)
California University
Kaiser
UC Irvine
UC Davis
Also apply to DO schools and I suggest these:
WESTERN
TUCOM-CA
TUNCOM
AZCOM
KCU-COM
ATSU-KCOM
DMU-COM
CUSOM
PCOM
NYITCOM
Touro-NY
MU-COM

 

[soccerguy974]

Beggars can't be choosy. As a reinventor, you needed to have do schools on your list. Your lethal Gap in your application was the low number of non clinical volunteering hours. Medicine is a service profession, so you need to show off your altruism.

Also there's no need to apply to 50 schools. I will wager that a fair number of the ones you applied to were donations only.

I do not understand, I applied to 50+ schools because I was not trying to be choosy. I would have gone to any of them if I had been accepted. Is the only thing that I can do at this point to become more competitive to get more non clinical volunteering hours? Would a full time clinical job show commitment to the medical profession while I obtain more non-clinical hours?

 

[soccerguy974]

Your low non clinical volunteering hours limited your chances for interviews since some schools screen at 150 hours. Accumulate another 100 hours at the soup kitchen or homeless shelter before you reapply. I suggest these MD schools:
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Tufts
UMass
Albany
New York Medical College
Hackensack
Penn State
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
Wake Forest
NOVA MD
USF Morsani
Miami
Belmont
TCU
Creighton
St. Louis
Ponce (St. Louis)
Rosalind Franklin
Illinois
Medical College Wisconsin
Western Michigan
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Alice Walton
Roseman (when it opens)
Methodist (when it opens)
Arizona (Phoenix)
California University
Kaiser
UC Irvine
UC Davis
Also apply to DO schools and I suggest these:
WESTERN
TUCOM-CA
TUNCOM
AZCOM
KCU-COM
ATSU-KCOM
DMU-COM
CUSOM
PCOM
NYITCOM
Touro-NY
MU-COM

Thank you for the list, I will get as many hours as a possible can, trying to use ever hour in the day. Would improving my mcat then not help at all?

 

[Faha]

Thank you for the list, I will get as many hours as a possible can, trying to use ever hour in the day. Would improving my mcat then not help at all?

There is no guarantee that you will improve your MCAT score significantly to make a difference. Schools often average scores. Also data on retakes has shown that ~40% of those who retake a 514 score the same or lower and another 1/3 only improve 1 to 3 points.

 

[soccerguy974]

There is no guarantee that you will improve your MCAT score significantly to make a difference. Schools often average scores. Also data on retakes has shown that ~40% of those who retake a 514 score the same or lower and another 1/3 only improve 1 to 3 points.

Ok makes sense, I'm only saying that because I feel like CARS could be improved since I never even scored that low on a practice test, but it is a blessing in disguise my bad section is CARS.

 

[Goro]

I do not understand, I applied to 50+ schools because I was not trying to be choosy. I would have gone to any of them if I had been accepted. Is the only thing that I can do at this point to become more competitive to get more non clinical volunteering hours? Would a full time clinical job show commitment to the medical profession while I obtain more non-clinical hours?

You already have plenty of clinical hours.

Many medical schools are service loving.

Many medical schools also have in-state preferences. And after writing so many secondaries, I'll wager the quality of your writing began to suffer.

What you need is a strategic list, that will include a mix of do and MD schools that reward reinventors. Many MD schools could afford to Simply ignore you, because they have tons of applicants who didn't need reinvention.

 

[soccerguy974]

You already have plenty of clinical hours.

Many medical schools are service loving.

Many medical schools also have in-state preferences. And after writing so many secondaries, I'll wager the quality of your writing began to suffer.

What you need is a strategic list, that will include a mix of do and MD schools that reward reinventors. Many MD schools could afford to Simply ignore you, because they have tons of applicants who didn't need reinvention.

Yes, I am definitely going to rewrite my secondaries from the ground up. What number of service hours should I be aiming to get to as to not be wasting any hours in the day not bettering my application. Would it be to much to think that I have a chance attending an in-state MD in my home state of California?

 

[Goro]

Go for 200+.

UCSF might be doable, and UCR IF you're from the Inland Empire.

 

[soccerguy974]

Go for 200+.

UCSF might be doable, and UCR IF you're from the Inland Empire.

Ok, thank you for the help

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I do not understand, I applied to 50+ schools because I was not trying to be choosy. I would have gone to any of them if I had been accepted. Is the only thing that I can do at this point to become more competitive to get more non clinical volunteering hours? Would a full time clinical job show commitment to the medical profession while I obtain more non-clinical hours?

50 is too many. You need to be choosy because they are selective. You didn't get into any of these programs because you didn't show you belong to their programs or (with subpar service orientation) medical school in general. Stop thinking like you were applying to undergrad programs.

What is your purpose as a physician? What do you expect with your medical school education? How have you shown this in your application?

 

[LindaAccepted]

I am a current applicant and likely going to have to reapply. I applied to over 50 schools and received 1 interview which I was ultimately rejected. As I prepare to reapply I am looking for any suggestions as I am not quite sure where to focus most of my energy until the new application opens up. Here are my activities and GPA/MCAT:

undergradGPA: 3.04 sGPA: 3.10
250+ units of diy postbacc (sciences classes only) through UCSD and UCLA extension: postGPA: 4.0
I'm assuming my cumulative GPA is around a 3.6-3.7 after averaging all my units and the grades
MCAT: 514 (129,125,130,130)
ORM (28, white, male)
Hobbies – 200+
Paid Employment - Not Medical/Clinical - 1100+
Research/Lab - 150+
Community Service/Volunteer - Medical/Clinical - 680
Shadowing – 150+
Community Service/Volunteer - Not Medical/Clinical - 130
Intercollegiate Athletics - 5000

At this point I do not know if I should to get more hours in a specific activity or experience or if my time would be better spend raising my MCAT.

Thank you all so much, any advice would be greatly appreciated!

I agree with those who said you applied to too many programs, which probably diluted your focus specifically when applying to secondaries. You need to show fit/alignment when you respond.

I also agree that you need to increase the non-clinical hours.

Finally, there is having competitive qualifications and there is presenting yourself effectively. If you received only 1 interview from 50 schools, while I already guessed at one cause of that stat, another could be that you didn't present yourself well. As @Mr.Smile12 pointed out you need to show direction and purpose as well as reflection on the experiences you choose to highlight in your apps.

 

[soccerguy974]

For those of you who have already responded, based on my stats and my activity hours, in your opinion what do you believe would be the number one reason I only received one interview invite after applying to 50+ schools? Would it be most likely poorly written primary, poorly written secondaries, not enough service hours, etc.???

 

[LindaAccepted]

Without reviewing your essays, it's impossible to say what was the #1 cause. As previous posters pointed out, the low service hours could have caused you to be screened out at some programs. That's an obvious item to fix and fix fast. You also could have applied to programs where you chances were very poor based on your stats so while you paid and completed applications for 50 programs, it's possible that you really had a reasonable chance at 25 of them or perhaps fewer. We're also assuming that you applied early in the cycle and somehow managed to return your secondaries promptly. If you didn't, timing was probably a factor also.

My guess is that a combination of factors contributed to the results. All of them are correctable, but your job as a reapplicant is to fix them before you reapply. In terms of your school list, include DO programs this time around too.

 

[soccerguy974]

Without reviewing your essays, it's impossible to say what was the #1 cause. As previous posters pointed out, the low service hours could have caused you to be screened out at some programs. That's an obvious item to fix and fix fast. You also could have applied to programs where you chances were very poor based on your stats so while you paid and completed applications for 50 programs, it's possible that you really had a reasonable chance at 25 of them or perhaps fewer. We're also assuming that you applied early in the cycle and somehow managed to return your secondaries promptly. If you didn't, timing was probably a factor also.

My guess is that a combination of factors contributed to the results. All of them are correctable, but your job as a reapplicant is to fix them before you reapply. In terms of your school list, include DO programs this time around too.

Ok thank you so much for the response. I did apply early and I did submit my secondaries with in the 2 week time frame, but I agree that I think I just applied to some schools that were flat out above my stats, screened me out for clinical hours or just don't accept many out of state applicants. I do not think my personal statement was bad by any means but I rewrote it and I think that it is definitely better than what I wrote the first time. Also, I think that my secondaries were good but probably just too broad and reaching, with no real alignment with any of the schools I applied to, which I am definitely going to fix this time around. Lastly, since I applied last June I have collected 2000 paid clinical hours (medical scribe) and 800 non-clinical volunteer hours (food bank and special needs baseball coach), so hopefully I've fixed my early screen out problems.

 

[LindaAccepted]

You're welcome. Those additional hours should really help you and prevent you from getting screened out.

Showing fit with each school should also improve the results.