With a 3.8/30, assuming ALL the usual and customary ECs, unless you have poor interview skills, or an unmentioned legal issue, it is reasonable to predict great improvement in your chances if you apply early. You are, however, by no means a shoo-in. I agree with waterpolo that including some DO schools would markedly decrease the chances of a 4th application season.
You didn't mention physician shadowing, teaching, or leadership. Did you have an activty to list for those?
Thank you for your insight. No legal issues. I have physician shadowing and a letter of rec from the MD. This was only for a short period of time (couple months), so this year I have been shadowing and will continue to shadow another. She said she would provide me with another strong rec in the coming weeks.
Was a TA, so have teaching experience... As for leadership... formally, not too much. I was never the president/leader of any club/organization... but I was involved in a lot of things that carried responsibility and felt like leadership roles.
Also of note is that I applied to MD/PhD programs. Two out of three of my interviews were for combined programs. They each had many interviews... and I think I did well, but it's difficult to gauge because there were so many. Felt that some definitely went better than others... Also, my gut feeling is that I might have sold myself short in some interviews...it's kind of a part of my personality... a little goofy...overly modest... I need to throw that out the window... Having gone through them, I know I will be able to carry myself better... and I have people that have offered to mock interview me. But really, I didn't think I did THAT poorly.
Anyways, with regard to MedAdcomMD, I wrote to each of the programs asking how I could improve my application this year and mentioned what took me out of consideration. No response yet. Hopefully I will get a response before I submit my AMCAS.
My PS was unique... I'm guessing it was either the reader loved it or hated it...it was a little risky, but I wanted the reader to feel SOMETHING about me... ha.... and I felt it truly showed my personality. Regardless -- I was feeling inspired a couple nights ago and completely reworked it into something much less risky and I feel it captures everything I wanted to say in the first.
Thinking of my application choices, as I said earlier it is necessary for me to apply to schools only in larger cities (Seattle, NYC, California cities, Boston...etc) so even though I have a range of tiers...and although there are schools in each tier, they are in desirable areas... ?
And lastly...
Ideally, I want to do an MD/PhD program. There's no doubt in my mind. The question I have though, since I'm not a stellar applicant and these are perhaps more competitive (not completely sure, I understand it's complicated)... by applying to them, am I hurting my chances at MD? Although you are considered for MD alone for most of these programs... I have two concerns.
1. A delay in being reviewed by MD committee due to having to be reviewed by MD/PhD first
2. Is being rejected from the combined program hurtful to your MD chances?
Because really, I would be more than happy, since I want to do the combined, to apply MD and transfer into a program internally, or perhaps take a scholarly year off to go a more physician-scientist route, if applying MD/PhD would hurt me.
Yikes, been thinking about this a lot. Thanks again everyone who is trying to help... If I get in maybe I'll have some advice to offer to others someday. Ha.
