Switching from Engineering to Pre-Med (advice needed for success)

[csdoc69]

Hi everyone! I'm a current CS major who is looking into being pre-med. Where I stand right now is not as competitive as I would like to be, and I want to know what I can do/how I can go about being a good applicant for med school. I've gotten pretty much all things on this list started, so I know for a fact I would put it on my application.

Attending T20 undergraduate institution
CGPA: 3.56 (I have 2 years left, so planning on increasing GPA -> best case is 3.8, worst case: 3.6)
Shadowing: 70 hours, 4 different specialties
Clinical: Planning on hospital volunteering (Projected 200 Hours), currently working at hospice (Projected 200 Hours)
Non-Clinical Volunteering: (Projected 400-500 hours total)
- Teaching English to refugees and volunteering with families
- Volunteering with incarcerated people
- Volunteering for state senate political campaign (going to frame this as campaign working to expand access to healthcare, reform mental healthcare, alleviate opioid epidemic, etc. since I joined mainly for these reasons also will not state party affiliation lol)
- Volunteering for CA Innocence Project
Miscellaneous:
Engineering Internship @ Planned Parenthood

I have 3 leadership positions:
CS Club VP, VP for organization that helps the incarcerated people, and VP of culinary club
3 different research experiences, VERY likely 1k+ hours by time of graduation
2 posters (1 is First co-author), expected second author paper by graduation

What can I do to stand out / succeed better? Currently goals are to crush the MCAT and raise GPA. Should I focus on anything else to be better?

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[Mr.Smile12]

Crush your biomedical science courses, which include your prerequisites. Get more clinical experience (not necessarily shadowing unless you have no primary care). Projected hours don't count, and do more service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation).

 

[csdoc69]

Crush your biomedical science courses, which include your prerequisites. Get more clinical experience (not necessarily shadowing unless you have no primary care). Projected hours don't count, and do more service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation).

Thank you so much!! Projected is lowkey just my goal by the time I graduate as I'm taking a gap year. Assuming I clutch 400+ clinical hours, would it be smarter of me to work more hours in non-clinical or clinical volunteering? I know there's not much of a baseline for clinical, and half of my volunteering hours would be service oriented (teaching, handing out supplies, distributing resources) versus more administrative duties.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Assuming I clutch 400+ clinical hours, would it be smarter of me to work more hours in non-clinical or clinical volunteering? I know there's not much of a baseline for clinical, and half of my volunteering hours would be service oriented (teaching, handing out supplies, distributing resources) versus more administrative duties.

My answer is cheekily going to be: yes. If medicine is what you want to do, you must show you can balance both of these categories in your profile.