Tutoring as college credit/EC questions/general advice

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ashBKD*

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Hi friends! I'm sorry if this was posted before I'm just beginning to review my experiences I've had throughout college to better direct myself in my last year and a half of undergrad.

So about 3ish years ago I was an anatomy lab TA for college credit. 3 units, each unit is 3 hours of being in the anatomy lab tutoring students on, well, anatomy. They only allow it for one semester (I would have done it continuously because I could live in the anatomy lab lol). So it comes out to 9 hours a week for a 16 week semester, aka 144 hours of tutoring. I also helped the instructor grade midterms for a small compensation through the school.

So my question is this, can my tutoring experience be considered non-clinical experience or is there a totally separate place I put my tutoring under. I am SEVERELY lacking in my non clinical experience because full time work and full time school and what small spare time I do have, I'm working on my clinical experience volunteering at a hospital in 2 different departments. I am working myself up that within the 1.5-2 years until I actually apply I won't have enough hours for everything to seem competitive.

So here is my plan moving forward, let me know if it seems solid or what should be changed. I'll give a background of myself to better paint the picture of who I am.

I am a 26 yr old white female, CA resident. I have gone to a CC for the last 5.5 years (oh trust me, I know) and am FINALLY transferring to a local state school (mid-ish range) this coming fall semester. Why have I been at the CC for so long? Well, i started going to college with the initial goal to be a dental hygienist because I like meticulous details and I'm a neat freak so I figured that'd be a solid career move for me. One of the prereqs to get into the hygiene program is human anatomy (among others). So I enroll in it, I did exceptionally well, completely fell in love with anatomy and physiology and I would spend every possible hour in the anatomy lab working with the cadavers and learning. I was motivated by the lab director and the anatomy department chair to pursue medicine. I had always thought of being a doctor but as a first generation kid in my family, I just didnt think much of it past it being a pipe dream for me. I have no one in my family (both immediate and extended) who are in ANY kind of medical field, they're all teachers and techies. So I'm a bit alone on this premed life raft. Anyways, so there I was at the CC ALREADY like 2ish years into attending and I did a full major switch. I needed to declare an actual degree to obtain (not a certificate) which essentially meant starting from zero.

So here's my current path, I am working on getting my B.S. in Chemistry, I will be transferring to my local state school this coming Fall and the projected graduation timeline is 3 semesters left (maybe 4, depends on a few elective classes I could take). So that leaves me with about 1.5 to 2 years to get my s**t together. My current gpa is a 3.36 because all those damn calculus classes are my kryptonite (C in calc 1, however I failed it the first time because life was kicking me a lot and I had to just drop it with only 3 weeks left of the semester, C in calc 2, and a B in calc 3). I have a C in introductory physics (required to take any type of calc based physics at my CC) and a B in my first semester of calc based physics. Everything else is A's maybe like 4 more B's. Current total units: 129.5. But obviously those C's are what drag me down. So yeah, upward trend is key these next few semesters.

I WAS (up until last year) working full time as a supervisor at a coffee chain (about 7.5 years of my life) and now I'm a part time bank teller because the fiance is in a better financial place to help me out. We live on our own, he is incredibly supportive and is fully prepared to move or whatever we have to to make my dreams come true (I'm lucky I know). However, the majority of my academic career has been full time school and full time work which left no time for volunteering/extracurriculars. Soooo yeah I'm lacking big time in that department and its freaking me out.

Here's what I'm doing currently to improve myself now that I was able to step back from full time to part time work:
I currently volunteer at my local hospital in 2 departments (medsurg and ER) on sundays for about 3 hours. I have 50 hours of clinical experience so far, I'm hoping by the time I graduate that will be around 150+.

When I transfer to my university I am going to join their premed club and hopefully the MESA club as well. I was definitely way too much of a lone wolf at my CC. But it's hard when all their club meetings are at like 2pm on a Tuesday, honey I'm in chem lab at that time!

Research experience will be through my university as part of my degree. I will work with a professor of my choosing based on their current research they're conducting. It's a two semester process of both learning how to research and actually doing research. I'm not sure how this will count, or if it's even meaningful for my application to med school. My guess is that it depends on if any publications or posters/presentations come out of it. Aside from that I have a little bit of research done through my CC from my second semester of Ochem. It was for half of that semester and it was green chemistry research, nothing significant came from it so I don't really think there's a point to me even talking about it.

I have absolutely no shadowing or non-clinical experience yet. Zip, zilch, nada. Unless you consider my anatomy tutoring I did for college credit as non clinical experience (it was VERY impactful for me, I genuinely miss it SO much). So to move forward this is what I want to do:

I want to get my CNA cert next summer through red cross. This way I can have an income while getting clinical experience. It will also allow me to use my free time on sundays to get non clinical experience. Plus side, I just think being a CNA will make me a better physician because too often the people on the "bottom" are s**t on by people at the top. As the saying goes, be careful how you treat others on your way up because they're the same people you'll see on your way down. I want to be the doctor that respects all levels of the medical field. What better way to have that perspective than to experience it first hand!

Shadowing I will be starting that for my winter and maybe even spring breaks. I have already built a list of doctors and local clinics I will contact to get that ball rolling.

Ok so now that I've given an obnoxiously long explanation/backstory of myself, here's some questions.
1.) Am I making the right moves so far with improving myself and my app?
2.) Those extensive years at my CC... will they hurt me? It was the best choice financially for myself. Also, my CC is in top 5 CC's in the country so it's not like it's some joke/easy CC. They take curriculum seriously there. However I have taken all my med school prereqs there because they're also prereqs for my degree. The only prereqs for med school left that I'll be taking at the university is biochem and my second semester of calc based physics. Everything else will be upper division chemistry classes. Will that be ok?
3.) As far as my CNA plan, next summer is a long time away and if I can get my cert sooner than later I would love that. This goes to anyone who has had experience with getting their cna cert through red cross, were you able to do it simultaneously with school and work? I think I would overload myself with trying to also get my cert during fall or spring semester while working part time and upholding my volunteering. So I mean, I personally think the right move is to wait until next summer when I won't be taking classes to get my cert.

TL;DR I am a neurotic premed with a non traditional background looking for general advice and what not. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

I really appreciate any and all who have taken the time to read this whole post, to offer my guidance/words of wisdom. I hope my post will also resonate with others similar to my position and looking for the same kind of help.
 
Hi friends! I'm sorry if this was posted before I'm just beginning to review my experiences I've had throughout college to better direct myself in my last year and a half of undergrad.

So about 3ish years ago I was an anatomy lab TA for college credit. 3 units, each unit is 3 hours of being in the anatomy lab tutoring students on, well, anatomy. They only allow it for one semester (I would have done it continuously because I could live in the anatomy lab lol). So it comes out to 9 hours a week for a 16 week semester, aka 144 hours of tutoring. I also helped the instructor grade midterms for a small compensation through the school.

So my question is this, can my tutoring experience be considered non-clinical experience or is there a totally separate place I put my tutoring under. I am SEVERELY lacking in my non clinical experience because full time work and full time school and what small spare time I do have, I'm working on my clinical experience volunteering at a hospital in 2 different departments. I am working myself up that within the 1.5-2 years until I actually apply I won't have enough hours for everything to seem competitive.

So here is my plan moving forward, let me know if it seems solid or what should be changed. I'll give a background of myself to better paint the picture of who I am.

I am a 26 yr old white female, CA resident. I have gone to a CC for the last 5.5 years (oh trust me, I know) and am FINALLY transferring to a local state school (mid-ish range) this coming fall semester. Why have I been at the CC for so long? Well, i started going to college with the initial goal to be a dental hygienist because I like meticulous details and I'm a neat freak so I figured that'd be a solid career move for me. One of the prereqs to get into the hygiene program is human anatomy (among others). So I enroll in it, I did exceptionally well, completely fell in love with anatomy and physiology and I would spend every possible hour in the anatomy lab working with the cadavers and learning. I was motivated by the lab director and the anatomy department chair to pursue medicine. I had always thought of being a doctor but as a first generation kid in my family, I just didnt think much of it past it being a pipe dream for me. I have no one in my family (both immediate and extended) who are in ANY kind of medical field, they're all teachers and techies. So I'm a bit alone on this premed life raft. Anyways, so there I was at the CC ALREADY like 2ish years into attending and I did a full major switch. I needed to declare an actual degree to obtain (not a certificate) which essentially meant starting from zero.

So here's my current path, I am working on getting my B.S. in Chemistry, I will be transferring to my local state school this coming Fall and the projected graduation timeline is 3 semesters left (maybe 4, depends on a few elective classes I could take). So that leaves me with about 1.5 to 2 years to get my s**t together. My current gpa is a 3.36 because all those damn calculus classes are my kryptonite (C in calc 1, however I failed it the first time because life was kicking me a lot and I had to just drop it with only 3 weeks left of the semester, C in calc 2, and a B in calc 3). I have a C in introductory physics (required to take any type of calc based physics at my CC) and a B in my first semester of calc based physics. Everything else is A's maybe like 4 more B's. Current total units: 129.5. But obviously those C's are what drag me down. So yeah, upward trend is key these next few semesters.

I WAS (up until last year) working full time as a supervisor at a coffee chain (about 7.5 years of my life) and now I'm a part time bank teller because the fiance is in a better financial place to help me out. We live on our own, he is incredibly supportive and is fully prepared to move or whatever we have to to make my dreams come true (I'm lucky I know). However, the majority of my academic career has been full time school and full time work which left no time for volunteering/extracurriculars. Soooo yeah I'm lacking big time in that department and its freaking me out.

Here's what I'm doing currently to improve myself now that I was able to step back from full time to part time work:
I currently volunteer at my local hospital in 2 departments (medsurg and ER) on sundays for about 3 hours. I have 50 hours of clinical experience so far, I'm hoping by the time I graduate that will be around 150+.

When I transfer to my university I am going to join their premed club and hopefully the MESA club as well. I was definitely way too much of a lone wolf at my CC. But it's hard when all their club meetings are at like 2pm on a Tuesday, honey I'm in chem lab at that time!

Research experience will be through my university as part of my degree. I will work with a professor of my choosing based on their current research they're conducting. It's a two semester process of both learning how to research and actually doing research. I'm not sure how this will count, or if it's even meaningful for my application to med school. My guess is that it depends on if any publications or posters/presentations come out of it. Aside from that I have a little bit of research done through my CC from my second semester of Ochem. It was for half of that semester and it was green chemistry research, nothing significant came from it so I don't really think there's a point to me even talking about it.

I have absolutely no shadowing or non-clinical experience yet. Zip, zilch, nada. Unless you consider my anatomy tutoring I did for college credit as non clinical experience (it was VERY impactful for me, I genuinely miss it SO much). So to move forward this is what I want to do:

I want to get my CNA cert next summer through red cross. This way I can have an income while getting clinical experience. It will also allow me to use my free time on sundays to get non clinical experience. Plus side, I just think being a CNA will make me a better physician because too often the people on the "bottom" are s**t on by people at the top. As the saying goes, be careful how you treat others on your way up because they're the same people you'll see on your way down. I want to be the doctor that respects all levels of the medical field. What better way to have that perspective than to experience it first hand!

Shadowing I will be starting that for my winter and maybe even spring breaks. I have already built a list of doctors and local clinics I will contact to get that ball rolling.

Ok so now that I've given an obnoxiously long explanation/backstory of myself, here's some questions.
1.) Am I making the right moves so far with improving myself and my app?
2.) Those extensive years at my CC... will they hurt me? It was the best choice financially for myself. Also, my CC is in top 5 CC's in the country so it's not like it's some joke/easy CC. They take curriculum seriously there. However I have taken all my med school prereqs there because they're also prereqs for my degree. The only prereqs for med school left that I'll be taking at the university is biochem and my second semester of calc based physics. Everything else will be upper division chemistry classes. Will that be ok?
3.) As far as my CNA plan, next summer is a long time away and if I can get my cert sooner than later I would love that. This goes to anyone who has had experience with getting their cna cert through red cross, were you able to do it simultaneously with school and work? I think I would overload myself with trying to also get my cert during fall or spring semester while working part time and upholding my volunteering. So I mean, I personally think the right move is to wait until next summer when I won't be taking classes to get my cert.

TL;DR I am a neurotic premed with a non traditional background looking for general advice and what not. Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.

I really appreciate any and all who have taken the time to read this whole post, to offer my guidance/words of wisdom. I hope my post will also resonate with others similar to my position and looking for the same kind of help.

Hopefully I'll address most of your questions. Let me know if I missed something.

- This is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to apply when you're ready. I am also a non-traditional applicant, and my best advice to you is to make your peace with a potentially long path to medical school. I also had to work full time and had very little extra time for extracurriculars, so I gathered my experiences over the course of several years. It's going to take however long it takes; do not rush your application.

- You cannot consider tutoring/TAing "non-clinical volunteering" if you received credit for this activity. Instead, you will categorize this under the teaching/tutoring category on your AMCAS application.

- For purposes of your medical school application, "non-clinical" means non-clinical volunteering - i.e., community service, preferably working with underserved or disadvantaged people. Food pantries, homeless shelters, youth outreach, etc. are all great places to start. Unless I missed something, my read is that you have zero non-clinical community service hours as of right now. Rule of thumb seems to be a few hundred hours of both non-clinical and clinical volunteering to maximize your competitiveness. Start early. Apply only when you have a competitive number of hours, however long that takes you.

- For shadowing, aim for 40 hours primary care (e.g., family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics), then tack on 10-20 more hours of whatever specialty/specialties you want to see and you should be in good shape.

- I cannot say for sure whether your CC credits will hinder your application. You should subscribe to the Medical School Admissions Requirements (MSAR) database right away and check whether your target schools (e.g., your state schools/other schools within your current GPA range) will accept CC credits. Some schools don't accept CC credits, others don't care at all, some accept them on a case-by-case basis. What's done is done with your current CC prerequisites, so excelling in upper-division science coursework at a 4-year institution will help you.

- Your Cs aren't great, but you know that already. Check the MSAR or school websites to see whether you'll need to retake any prerequisites (e.g., calculus) for which you've received C grades. Ace the coursework you take from here on out and raise your GPA up as much as possible (check MSAR to see what competitive GPAs are for your target schools - typically 3.5+). A stellar performance at a 4-year school may help make up for some of the mediocre grades at the CC level.

- Can't speak to the CNA thing, sorry.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Good luck.
 
I want to reiterate what @StayWandering said. Take your time and do it right. You only want to apply one time with the best possible application. Your GPA is low and you have lots of hours. It will be very hard to move your GPA upward. But get As and ADCOMS will see the upward trend. Allow for a period of adjustment from CC to a 4 year school. You are several years away from applying. You will probably need a gap year or two. You’ve talked about so much you want to accomplish in the next two years, but you haven’t mentioned studying for and taking the MCAT. So there is that too. You have lots to do to develop your application. Slow down, be thoughtful and do it right.

Oh and check on CC credits soon. That will be a big area. Some schools accept them but won’t accept prereqs from a CC. You have to figure that out before you get much further along.
 
Hopefully I'll address most of your questions. Let me know if I missed something.

- This is a marathon, not a sprint. You need to apply when you're ready. I am also a non-traditional applicant, and my best advice to you is to make your peace with a potentially long path to medical school. I also had to work full time and had very little extra time for extracurriculars, so I gathered my experiences over the course of several years. It's going to take however long it takes; do not rush your application.

- You cannot consider tutoring/TAing "non-clinical volunteering" if you received credit for this activity. Instead, you will categorize this under the teaching/tutoring category on your AMCAS application.

- For purposes of your medical school application, "non-clinical" means non-clinical volunteering - i.e., community service, preferably working with underserved or disadvantaged people. Food pantries, homeless shelters, youth outreach, etc. are all great places to start. Unless I missed something, my read is that you have zero non-clinical community service hours as of right now. Rule of thumb seems to be a few hundred hours of both non-clinical and clinical volunteering to maximize your competitiveness. Start early. Apply only when you have a competitive number of hours, however long that takes you.

- For shadowing, aim for 40 hours primary care (e.g., family medicine, internal medicine, pediatrics), then tack on 10-20 more hours of whatever specialty/specialties you want to see and you should be in good shape.

- I cannot say for sure whether your CC credits will hinder your application. You should subscribe to the Medical School Admissions Requirements (MSAR) database right away and check whether your target schools (e.g., your state schools/other schools within your current GPA range) will accept CC credits. Some schools don't accept CC credits, others don't care at all, some accept them on a case-by-case basis. What's done is done with your current CC prerequisites, so excelling in upper-division science coursework at a 4-year institution will help you.

- Your Cs aren't great, but you know that already. Check the MSAR or school websites to see whether you'll need to retake any prerequisites (e.g., calculus) for which you've received C grades. Ace the coursework you take from here on out and raise your GPA up as much as possible (check MSAR to see what competitive GPAs are for your target schools - typically 3.5+). A stellar performance at a 4-year school may help make up for some of the mediocre grades at the CC level.

- Can't speak to the CNA thing, sorry.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Good luck.
Thank you for your wonderful advice and patience reading my paranoid essay lol. I oftentimes need reminders that it's a marathon and not a race. The checking for CC credits is something I had no idea I could do so I'll absolutely so that immediately. Thank you ♡♡♡
 
I want to reiterate what @StayWandering said. Take your time and do it right. You only want to apply one time with the best possible application. Your GPA is low and you have lots of hours. It will be very hard to move your GPA upward. But get As and ADCOMS will see the upward trend. Allow for a period of adjustment from CC to a 4 year school. You are several years away from applying. You will probably need a gap year or two. You’ve talked about so much you want to accomplish in the next two years, but you haven’t mentioned studying for and taking the MCAT. So there is that too. You have lots to do to develop your application. Slow down, be thoughtful and do it right.

Oh and check on CC credits soon. That will be a big area. Some schools accept them but won’t accept prereqs from a CC. You have to figure that out before you get much further along.
Ah yes the MCAT! Sorry in my ridiculous rambling post I forgot to even mention that. Yeah my plan for studying is after I graduate. Take that year and solely focus on my mcat and any other extracurriculars I might be lacking. Thank you for your response I really appreciate it! You and @StayWandering are incredibly helpful!
 
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