Top stats but no ECs

[UrshumMurshum]

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I'm not angry. I just know that most clinical volunteering is synonymous with useless volunteering.


That would be a misapplication of my logic.

THANK YOU! When I read SDN and the NECESSITY of clinical volunteering I started volunteering at a hospital and quickly found that it was as about as clinically involved as the drive there.

So I switched to Hospice volunteering. At least there I get to actively take care of the person, involve myself with their life, talk with their families, and even see the dying process. Which obviously is not fun but an integral part of medicine.

Ditched the hospital.

 

[Omppu27]

hahahahaha i could read The Prowler's posts all day....

 

[Knocked Up]

Your seat is waiting for you at one of the following schools. AKA: these schools care only about numbers and could care less about ECs, so apply to these schools and you are golden:

UMich
WashU
Yale
UPenn
UPitt
Case
Vanderbilt
UChicago

 

[tn4596]

I dont think clinical volunteering is "completely useless". I do think anymore than 100 hr is moot. which is why i am gonna drop it after graduating and get a job.

 

[yellowfish]

This past summer, I decided to go pre-med; previously, I was thinking about going to work in nuclear energy, or maybe go to grad school. Academically, I'll be fine (see below), but I don't have the usual ECs--and I certainly don't have the exceptional ECs I have seen on several posts on this website. I took the MCAT in September then retook in January. What I need to know is if I should take a year to acquire the usual ECs (research, shadowing, clinical experience, etc., from what I've seen) and then apply, or if i should apply this cycle. Thanks.

School: HYP

Major: ChemE

GPA: 4.0

MCAT: 34R (12/10/12), 40S (14/12/14)

Shadowing/research/clinical/volunteering: none

Other: men's volleyball club

Honestly, if you apply this cycle, you're probably going to get into medical school. I do have some concerns about why you didn't start any ECs if you already took the MCAT for the first time in September and thus presumably already started considering medicine and studying for the MCAT months before then. Perhaps this is a question that would come up in interviews, so you should be prepared to address that. Nonetheless, if you can, and get some clinical exposure between now and application season, I'm confident you'll have a seat somewhere.

 

[TheMightySmiter]

Well, if I were an adcom I'd think right off the bat, "Why did this guy decide that retaking a 34 MCAT was a better use of his time than doing something related to health care?" The point of clinical exposure isn't to learn how to stock cups, obviously. It's so that you know what it's like to be around a lot of sick people. Why DO you want to be a physician? I don't expect you to try to convince us, because I personally don't care. But you need to be able to convince an admissions committee who reads thousands of other applications. If you just decided to apply now because "the pre-med bug hit you", how are they supposed to know that you won't drop out halfway through third year and decide to go to law school instead because you suddenly realized your patients are kind of annoying, after all? Are you prepared for the headaches of billing codes, Medicare reimbursement, overnight call when you have kids? Again, I don't care what your answers are, but you do need to have convincing ones, and it's going to be a lot easier to answer if you have a year of clinical exposure and shadowing under your belt.

Now, I just went through an application cycle, and thank god it was successful because it was AWFUL. If I knew that waiting a year could significantly improve my chance of admission, I'd absolutely wait.