Unconventional applicant help

[doglova]

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[bengirlxD]

First you are an amazing applicant. Relax. You're GPA is fine. I predict a top 10 acceptance. I know people with around the same GPA's and MCAT that have gotten multiple top 10 acceptances.

 

[shopsteward]

Congratulations on successfully coming through your health difficulties. And please note: a GPA of 3.77 is not "messed up" except by standards that not even medschool admissions apply. It should not be of concern to you, especially considering that extraordinary MCAT.

One thing you do need to do, preferably before you leave university (enquiries from current students tend to rank more highly in importance than enquiries from former students) is to reach out to the people who can provide the recommendations you will need. Does your school provide a committee letter? If so, start talking to them. But in any case, reach out to your individual professors. If you are willing to set out to them the circumstances you have expressed here, there should not be a problem with them providing you with good references. Create a script for writing to them, possibly something along the following lines -

"Hello. I am doglova, and I was in your [biology/maths etc] class/conducting [bio?] research in [semester and year]. I then suffered some serious health issues and took a leave of absence, and lost touch with you as a result - at the time I was undergoing treatment for cancer and found it a difficult subject to talk about. Fortunately I am now fully recovered.

I am hoping to make an application to med school, with a GPA of 3.77 and an MCAT of 527. I am hoping that you would be willing to write a good recommendation for me, based on [my performance before becoming ill]/[my performance while dealing with the effects of serious illness]. I look forward to hearing from you."

Good luck.

 

[doglova]

Thanks for the supportful comments guys. I'm just worried because I keep looking at the AAMC website stats and my GPA is at the 10th percentile for most of the top colleges and 25th for others, which is really bad. I'm worried because they are so many people applying to medical school, why would anyone want a pathetic and sickly person like me.

Obviously, I can't get into a good medical school with this, and I will likely take a few years off. Any advice about what I should try to do during my years off to become a more competitive applicant.

Most of the stuff I'm looking into requires 3 strong letters of recommendation which unfortunately I can't get.

 

[fldoctorgirl]

You have a unique story, and you should be incredibly proud of sustaining both that GPA (median for matriculants at U.S. medical schools is a 3.7, so you are in no way low) and achieving such a high MCAT score.

Your MCAT score and unique story will certainly compensate for what you consider a "low" GPA. I think you have a shot for top schools, but you definitely have a shot for your state school(s) or an excellent school even if it isn't "top 10".

You are not "pathetic" or "sickly", you're awesome!!! Again, you should be proud. If you don't have confidence in yourself and your app, you'll be looking at an auto-reject at most places. Be confident!

I definitely think people would be willing to write you LORs, and if you follow a rubric kind of like what shopsteward suggested, I think several of your professors will bite.

 

[Hkhan]

Thanks for the supportful comments guys. I'm just worried because I keep looking at the AAMC website stats and my GPA is at the 10th percentile for most of the top colleges and 25th for others, which is really bad. I'm worried because they are so many people applying to medical school, why would anyone want a pathetic and sickly person like me.

Obviously, I can't get into a good medical school with this, and I will likely take a few years off. Any advice about what I should try to do during my years off to become a more competitive applicant.

Most of the stuff I'm looking into requires 3 strong letters of recommendation which unfortunately I can't get.

You can try to take gap year(s) but you really only need that for the TOP colleges, which are reaches for anyone. Sure, a good GPA helps, but you have a killer MCAT, which you can use to your advantage, along with your health issues.
Really, just apply to top 25 schools (which I am confident you can get into, especially with your essays [and how the incident/your issues affected you]). I'm sure you'll get multiple interviews at these types of schools and have a choice to pick ur school that is a good fit for you (a luxury many do not have).

Had you done any shadowing? You can try to get a LOR from the MD/DO you shadowed.

 

[doglova]

Hi guys, thanks for the supportful comments.

Hkhan: I did an winter break shadowing program at my school for 2 years with a group of 11 other undergrads, probably net ~50 hours a week for 4 weeks, but I lost contact with the MDs I shadowed and I wasn't memorable in any way unfortunately as a shadower...

I'm definitely not prepared to apply to medical school, so I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about what would be the best thing to do during my gap years. Should I work as a medical scribe? Should I try to get another research position at my school? Should I work in healthcare consulting? I used to be an overachiever before college and now I feel like I've pretty much ruined my life since I couldn't cope with balancing school and my illnesses, and I'm not sure how to fix it/ if it can be fixed. I feel like I tried a lot and I really tried my best to prioritize school over health but I have nothing much to show for it.

 

[shopsteward]

Get a job. Two reasons: 1) you need to start earning money to support yourself and get your finances in order before medschool, and 2) it will help you demonstrate (to yourself as well as to adcoms) that your health issues are behind you and that you are physically and mentally up to the demands of medschool. If you get a job doing something relevant (research lab? scribe? admin assistant in medical setting?) then that will give you access to people who can write good and relevant recommendations. Even a job outside the medical field will provide someone who can write a recommendation about the qualities you need for med school.

Once you have settled into a job, start working on putting together your extracurriculars for an application in a year's time. Some clinical experience or volunteering which builds on your life experiences (eg relevant to your health experience) or working with underserved populations would be ideal.

I'm very clear from the facts you have given that you have not ruined your life but have proven yourself to be a survivor who despite serious difficulties has already succeeded at a level most people can only dream of, and that you are capable of going on to do great things. So I'm a bit worried about your repeated statements about ruining your life, and I agree you should get some professional help on coming to terms with your illnesses and how you deal with them and in developing a better perspective on things.

Good luck.

 

[doglova]

During my extended time off, I had a job at a medical IT company. I didn't do anything clinical or research related however. I am unlucky in many ways, but I am fortunate to be in a family which is very sympathetic to my situation, and has the capacity and empathy to financially support me in any way if it would advance me towards my potential goal of getting into a good medical school. In light of this, should I try to do a purely volunteer based position, and any idea where I could start looking/ what field I should try?

 

[shopsteward]

Just about any US med school is a "good" med school. You would be better off researching schools that are a good fit for you rather than going off someone else's perceptions of prestige.

If you want to go to a research-heavy med school (the ones which I suspect you include within your description of "good" are usually research heavy) you should be looking at spending the next two years bolstering your research record. But don't do this unless you are genuinely interested in and committed to research - "going through the motions" research nearly always reveals itself as such.

I am not adcoms (although I have done an analogous professional recruiting job). But it looks to me from your latest post as though you are now proposing spending the next two years, immediately after graduation, living off your family's money while doing a little light volunteering. That would not garner my respect, nor would it demonstrate to me that you are ready for the realities of the hard work of being a medical student or a doctor, nor that you are familiar with the gritty details of working in a hospital. I'd have a lot more respect if you got a real-world, full time job working with patients, such as being a CNA in a hospital, nursing home or hospice.

 

[doglova]

@shopsteward that makes sense, maybe it isn't such a good idea. And to clarify, I had the privledge of going to a university heavy on research for undergrad, and although I threw away the opportunities I was given after I got sick I would love to have the same opportunities in medical school.

In light of this, would it make sense to try for a masters before applying to graduate school? I've heard mixed thoughts about the effectiveness of compensating for a low undergrad gpa with masters, not that I can even get into a good masters program lol. I also don't know very much about what committees for masters admission look for, and I'm not sure if I'd be a competitive applicant. Most of my friends already have publications from undergrad and I do not...

Also, I've heard about some post bac programs where raise their undergrad gpa through retaking classes such as Orgo and putting that gpa into their application. Again, I don't know much about those programs, but would that make sense for me? I got a B+ in orgo 2, and A-s in many of my other premed classes, and a post bac program would potentially allow me to rectify that. I have really messed up undergrad and such a program sounds ostensibly appealing if actually effective in the eyes of adcoms.

Also, @shopsteward thanks for all your help and your dog is adorable.

 

[doglova]

Also, sorry to drag this on, but would it make any sense to work at a top-tier consulting firm before matriculating to medical school? It was something I was considering and I was offered a full time job at a top-tier consulting firm through an internship. However, I was worried that it wouldn't look good to hold such a job for the gap years because it wouldn't show commitment to the medical field. I was bringing this up because many of my friends are doing it to pay for medical school, but since I have bigger concerns than the money, since my academic profile is worse than most of my friends, would it make more sense to do medically related volunteer work to strengthen my application.

 

[768730]

since my academic profile is worse than most of my friends, would it make more sense to do medically related volunteer work to strengthen my application.

Dude pardon my French but who the hell are your friends?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[Terror Billy]

Dude pardon my French but who the hell are your friends?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

i'm sensing some major troll vibes

 

[doglova]

I'm so sorry if I sound like a very odd person not representing my issue accurately, but I really appreciate any advice. Just to give some background to add context again not to sound conceited at all, I was given the privilege of attending an honors program within a top 10 university. Within the honors program, an award is given to juniors within the top 1/3rd of the class, and the worries started when I was not a recipient of the award and therefore not even in the top 1/3rd of my program. Then, I purchased a subscription to the AMCAS website. I did some stalking around. I realized I'm not even at the 10th percentile gpa wise for matriculants to my own undergraduate university's medical school, and then I started getting really worried. In addition, I lost all my research positions and extracurricular involvements when I got sick, and I have been on medical leave from my university for a year because of my health issues, during which I did nothing other than having a short internship at a well known software medical IT company and studying for MCAT.

In addition, everyone within the honors department at my school hates me because stopped attending any advising meetings, literally one semester left campus for 3 weeks after a serious accident and did not tell any of my professors about my wherabouts/ attend any classes, multiple students complained that they were very worried about my wellbeing when I physically changed and stopped talking to anyone, and ignored emails from professors and our dean's office asking about my wellbeing. All other students within the honors program are performing extraordinarily well, to the point they are being nominated for and receiving prestigious fellowships like Goldwater, Fullbright, Amgen scholar, and NIH fellowships and coauthoring articles in Nature through undergraduate research, while I have received no big awards at all. Essentially, we are supposed to be ambassadors for the university, and in addition to being a highly socially awk person I really dropped the ball so to speak so now the entire department hates me, and most of them don't even know I was sick. So I'm extremely worried about getting recommendations.

Furthermore I attend a university with rampant grade inflation - aka not Princeton or the Massachusetts institute - so no sympathy from adcoms for attending a 'hard' university because frankly I don't and I'm pretty sure the average grade awarded to us is an A-.

Most advisors are telling me I would be better off leaving academia and just trying for mckinsey/ bain consulting and use my biomedical/ math degrees to specialize in healthcare related data analytics or something. It's depressing. In addition, our premed adviser seems to think the min bar for competency is 3.8+ and below they encourage people to not apply at all/ take many gap years because they don't want us to bring down the univ stats for med school acceptance rates. However, my experience with illnesses have reaffirmed my strong desire to stop at nothing to attend medical school while having the opportunity to contribute to medical research. In addition, sorry to complicate the story, but I also have had lupus since being a teenager, and since I've always dreamed of being a highly specialized physician helping young women with similar diseases, since the treatment approach is inadequate, not straightforward and therefore not purely mechanical, while having the opportunity to contribute to research within the broader field of autoimmune diseases.

tl;dr everyone seems to think I messed up undergrad really badly, and now I'm really worried. When I was younger, I used to be one of 'those kids' and everyone told me I could do anything and everything and go anywhere and everywhere I want. I have always defined my self worth in terms of academic success and the praise of others. In addition, now that I'm sterile, I will never be able to define my self worth in terms of anything other than my career success. I'm a really messed up person.

After being on health leave from the university for a year I will be returning this fall for my senior year and I'm really worried about what will happen after that especially since all my friends graduated and while I'm in remission for endometrial cancer I'm still weak and feel like I have no control over my physical health and am nothing compared to what I used to be after this long ordeal. I guess my question is I feel like I ruined my life and lost everything I used to have, so what would be the best strategy for fixing it, since obviously need to take multiple gap years and I'm worried about what happens after my senior year end.

 

[psychgirl95]

As someone who has gone through similar health issues (and should be entering her senior year if not for the health issues), honestly, I think medical school should be the last thing on your mind right now.

As mentioned before, you really sound like you need to see someone who can help you work through what sounds like depression. I don't mean that in a mean way, but you've go to be honest with yourself: how can you expect to heal patients when you're not 100% healed yet yourself? You can't give someone what you don't already have, and it's clear that you're not well yet.

In your case, I see absolutely no reason why anyone would look down upon you using your gap years primarily as a way to heal (both emotionally and physically). Your grades are fine, especially considering what you've been through (so no post-bacc is needed), and your MCAT score is amazing. But above all, your health comes first. I think you need to relax/de-stress and have some fun. Maybe do something you've always wanted to do (like traveling to another country or something) or just enjoy having free time before beginning your medical school journey.

Your advisor is an idiot, by the way - you don't need a 3.8 to get into medical school (and even if you did, you're only 0.03 points away from it). I literally emailed my premed advisor last week and the first thing she said was for me to remind her to tell me about how medical schools like to see "distance traveled to overcome adversity." If it applies to me (and I attend a relatively small southern public school with a ton of premeds), then I see no reason why it wouldn't apply to you either. Assuming that you've learned from your experiences of withdrawing from everyone, you could incorporate that into your application - when you're healed and ready to apply.

If you need someone to talk to, PM are.

 

[shopsteward]

My guess is that OP is not a troll but has grown up and gone to college within a very narrow, economically and educationally privileged, sector of society, with expectations of success so high that an A- is seen as a failure.

OP: I didn't realise you still had your senior year to go at university. That gives you time to build new relationships and mend old ones, so that you can get recommendations. I strongly doubt that anyone "hates" you. I do think that you need to be open about the fact that you found it difficult to talk about your medical issues at the time but that you are now in remission and looking to the future. Your university should have access to confidential counselling and welfare services: please explore what is available to you and make use of it, so that you have someone to talk to about these issues.

As to your advisers, and especially your pre-med adviser, I suggest you start next semester by making appointments with them. Tell them your story: your three serious health issues (lupus, cancer and a head injury), your recovery and the vocation you have to be a doctor, and ask what you need to do in the next year in order to get good recommendations from them at the end of the year. The "success rate" thread gives someone with your GPA and MCAT a 90% chance of success in a medschool application: tell them that too.

The "story" in your medschool application at the moment will just be about your own health struggles. While that is OK, what would make it much stronger is being able to relate your personal experiences to your experiences of serving others who have their own medical stories, and of working alongside the wide variety of health services providers who have wildly different backgrounds to yours - hopefully that will help you to gain a better perspective on what success and failure look like beyond your current narrow experience.

 

[precisiongraphic]

Hi guys, thanks for the supportful comments.

Hkhan: I did an winter break shadowing program at my school for 2 years with a group of 11 other undergrads, probably net ~50 hours a week for 4 weeks, but I lost contact with the MDs I shadowed and I wasn't memorable in any way unfortunately as a shadower...

I'm definitely not prepared to apply to medical school, so I was wondering if anyone had any ideas about what would be the best thing to do during my gap years. Should I work as a medical scribe? Should I try to get another research position at my school? Should I work in healthcare consulting? I used to be an overachiever before college and now I feel like I've pretty much ruined my life since I couldn't cope with balancing school and my illnesses, and I'm not sure how to fix it/ if it can be fixed. I feel like I tried a lot and I really tried my best to prioritize school over health but I have nothing much to show for it.

I'll address several points: I think you definitely need a gap year/wait a year to apply. What should you do? Get some stellar references. (Scribe or research don't matter in this case.) Even with your fantastic scores (and they are - if you think they're not you need to get some self-confidence before you apply), with lukewarm or awkward letters of reference (LORs), you may be one of those high-scorers who whiffs when applying because LORs can make or break an application.

Here's a newsflash - you have not ruined your life. You are not mediocre. However, no student should prioritize their studies over their health. In med school, it will be important to take care of your health, your mental health and your personal life. If your personal life/health devolve, it could cause you to flunk out. Get your health back, get strong, see a mental health professional if needed during the year(s) before school starts. Enter med school strong in body, mind and soul.

Gently, I say that yes focusing on women's health issues as a volunteer is great and you can point your secondaries and personal statement that way. But if you infer in any way that you only want to work with, care for and be around women - especially if you're uncomfortable with men as supervisors - you may find that you are denied entrance to medical school and/or do poorly in rotations where you have to take whatever patient presents him/herself to the clinic and/or do poorly when you have to interact with superior physicians who are, as a majority, male. It's still a male-dominated profession. Get comfortable with that now. Sure, look to women leaders, women mentors - that is a proactive thing to do. But don't avoid men. If you can't do that, get that under control before med school. (BTW, I'm female even though my profile says male - I got it entered incorrectly.)

Best of luck to you.

 

[doglova]

Thanks for all the advice guys. So sorry for my tirade against men I guess I was just dealt an unusually bad hand related to health/ socialization. For a gap year, the way I see it, I have a few options:

1. Work at medtech company: pros: make $, somewhat medically related, supervisor will be Georgetown MD so potential rec if I do ok; cons: not service oriented, no publications, kind of already a cog on the wheel, no prestige
2. Fellowship with FDA: already offered: pros: supervisor is Penn MD/PhD so potential recommendation if I do ok, somewhat medically related, potential conferences, prestigious fellowship; cons: harder to get published
3. Consulting: Pros: make $, get to travel the world for free, indulgent; Cons: not medically related at all besides dealing with health related data, I don't do well in business environments
4. Apply for masters: Pros: get to stay in academic environment, I got a perfect score on the GRE; Cons: not a competitive applicant, don't know anything about what masters programs look for, can't get recs to apply
5. Try for research position at university: Pros: potentially highest likelihood of publication, possible recommendation; Cons: hard to convince someone to keep me/ pay me if lots of undergrads are willing to work for free
6. Pure volunteering: Pros: strong dedication to improving the human condition, indulgent, focus on health; Cons: not prestigious, hit or miss, living off parents, could have nothing to show for it at the end which is my big problem
7. Medical scribe: Pros: potential rec, commitment to medical field; Cons: no publication, no research

Obviously a lot of these are unfortunately not guaranteed, so it may just end up picking whatever is offered, or ending up with nothing at all. Any ideas of what I should gun for/ Anything else I should look into.

 

[doglova]

bump and 1 more question:

I keep seeing posts about people working as lab techs during their gap years at other research universities. Does anyone have any experience with this or advice about how to find these positions, and actually get an interview.

It seems that most of the time, when I submit my resume to an online portal for these types of positions, I never hear back. Maybe it's due to the high volume of applicants or I'm going about the process in the wrong way. Maybe it's because I suck too much to get noticed.

 

[DubbiDoctor]

If you're being truthful, which I believe you are, you have a brilliant mind, scoring a 527 on the MCATs and perfect score on the GREs. However, having read all of your posts, you demonstrate serious insecurity, and I believe that's what is holding you back, not grades or LORs. I would advise that you do as well as you can during your senior year, while focusing on your mental health, perhaps seeking professional help. Medical school can be very stressful, and you don't want to go in doubting yourself. Once you are confident in yourself, apply to medical school, and you should get in, given your grades, ECs, and history of overcoming adversity. As for what you should do during your gap year, do what you feel you would most enjoy and do well in.

 

[doglova]

TBH studying MCAT was an absolute nightmare, and pathetically probably the proudest academic achievement of my life thus far, but the GRE is nothing compared to the MCAT, half the ppl on here could probably score similarly after going hard for maybe a month. And it's just hard because in high school and the first part of college I used to be one of 'those kids' who could have absolutely everything and anything with some effort, and not to have any contempt at all whatsoever and I didn't realize what I had at the time, but before I got badly derailed everyone used to think I was the most perfect child they had every met and ask my parents for parenting advice. But after I got sick everything just fell apart and nothing seems to be right anymore, especially since after the cancer treatment and head injury, I'm starting to think that I've mentally lost some of what I used to have and I'm really scared about going back for senior year.

 

[doglova]

Also TBH I'm fairly and painfully mediocre mentally... and socially i'm really awk. The only thing I really have going for me was that my parents did everything they could to provide me with the best learning environment possible despite my general 'sickliness' and gave me every resource and opportunity, as well as unbounded financial support, to succeed. Most of my old prepschool and honors program friends with similar initial opportunities are going far ahead of me and being a relative underperformer is hard to come to terms with.

 

[doglova]

^^^ wowow somebody needs help...

 

[Goro]

Can you clarify something? What are your year by year GPAs? I would like to see if you have a declining GPA trend?

Your MCAT for one, would settle doubts about your academics.

For your gap year...service to others less fortunate than yourself! !!

 

[doglova]

Hi Goro, thanks for your reply.

Here is my trend to the best of my memory but I've been away from school for a while

3.71 [rough start + issues managing lupus independently + unfortunately was not aware that an A- avg is not great until I met with pre prof advisor], 3.83 [pre-prof adviser told me to gun for ~3.85], 3.86, 3.88, 3.59 [cancer, lost all leadership positions, lost research position, lost professor relationships, convinced myself I was dying and nothing mattered anymore], 3.83 [head injury + lupus flare + 7 trips to emergency room, left in middle of semester for treatment, just came back months later and took final exams which became final grade, Bad grade in lab course, everything else A, based on final], [health absence leave during which I wasted my parents money on taking every standardized test]

 

[doglova]

@Goro your cat is very cute.
Also quick question: for service to others, I realize this question is incredibly lazy, but any advice about where to start looking for such positions involving service to others that a medical school committee would look favorably upon.

At my school, teach for america seems to be pretty popular, but I've heard mixed reviews depending on where one gets matched, and I honestly don't think I have the capacity to handle and motivate a 40 person class of adolescents. There are lots of programs at my school involving doing service fellowships abroad, but they're super competitive and again I'm not comfortable going to a third world country with my health issues.

Tl;dr: Any advice about where to start when looking for such a position, or examples of what other applicants did that worked.

 

[Goro]

@Goro your cat is very cute.
Also quick question: for service to others, I realize this question is incredibly lazy, but any advice about where to start looking for such positions involving service to others that a medical school committee would look favorably upon.

At my school, teach for america seems to be pretty popular, but I've heard mixed reviews depending on where one gets matched, and I honestly don't think I have the capacity to handle and motivate a 40 person class of adolescents. There are lots of programs at my school involving doing service fellowships abroad, but they're super competitive and again I'm not comfortable going to a third world country with my health issues.

Tl;dr: Any advice about where to start when looking for such a position, or examples of what other applicants did that worked.

If you can alleviate suffering in your community through service to the poor, homeless, illiterate, fatherless, etc, you are meeting an otherwise unmet need and learning more about the lives of the people (or types of people) who will someday be your patients. Check out your local houses of worship for volunteer opportunities. The key thing is service to others less fortunate than you. And get off campus and out of your comfort zone!

Examples include: Habitat for Humanity, Ronald McDonald House, Humane Society, crisis hotlines, soup kitchen, food pantry, homeless or women’s shelter, after-school tutoring for students or coaching a sport in a poor school district, teaching ESL to adults at a community center, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, or Meals on Wheels.

 

[deleted446889]

Wow, do you mind sharing how you studied for the MCAT? Highest score I've ever seen.

 

[biganthony233]

since when has 3.77 become a low value gpa?

 

[Walter Raleigh]

@doglova, your stats are Harvard material. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. Even at Harvard, most matriculants do not have an insane MCAT like yours. The GPA, while below the median, is nothing to sneeze at. The stellar MCAT more than compensates for it. I'm sensing a LOT of perfectionism, though, and that may be your downfall. Stop being so neurotic, get service to people less fortunate than yourself as Goro suggested, and take it easy. You've got an excellent chance at top-10 medical schools, if that's where you want to go.

 

[878956]

Hi everyone. I'm kind of new here, so I don't know how this works. I'm king of unconventional because my gpa is low and my mcat is high. I keep looking at med school stats and getting increasingly depressed. I feel cheated because I messed up college due to serious health issues. I hate my life. I need some help.

1. Undergrad: Top 10 University. Not for long though lolol
2. State of residence: VA
3. GPA: 3.77. MCAT 527: Biomedical Engineering and Math double major
4. Special circumstance: Had endometrial cancer during college. As a result, I had to take a health leave of absence from college to receive treatment for a year. I also was in a really bad accident my junior year, resulting in a severe traumatic brain injury. Unfortunately my health issues reflected in grades, and I had to quite research after 2 years because of the side effects of my treatment. I feel cheated because I used to be on the right trajectory before my health issues ruined my life and my hopes and dreams.
5. Ethnicity: Mixed: Asian and White lolol the worst of both worlds.
6. Very worried about recommendations: To put it softly, I underwent significant physical changes after I began treatment for my cancer. Many of the professors I had relationships with expressed concern over my sudden physical weakness and sickly appearance. I had never been severely ill before, and their comments were hurtful to me, so I started ignoring everyone and withdrawing from my professors/ classmates. People reached out to me through email expressing concern, and I ignored everyone who used to care about me...
7. Unpaid lab research, which I had to quite after 2 years because I was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. The treatment made me really weak and I physically was unable to continue doing research. Summer internships in medtech and consulting firms.
8. No publications, poster presentations, business plan competition awards
9. Shadowing: 80 totals hours
10. Volunteering: ~300 hours
11. President of 2 pre-medical related clubs at school, eboard positions in other groups

Asian is ORM. White is regular. It is not the worst of both worlds. You have an excellent shot at any school you apply too. I expect a top 10 to come in with the acceptance. A 3.77 GPA is not bad and is above average for all matriculants. I think you are being too hard on yourself.

 

[Walter Raleigh]

She is most definitely being far, far too hard on herself. She is either in a bubble of extremely, intensely competitive and privileged high achievers, has an unhealthy desire to attend a highly-ranked medical school, or is insanely perfectionistic. Relax. Take a break. In no universe, not even Harvard's, is a 3.77 GPA considered "low". And the near-perfect MCAT, top 0.1 percent, offsets the GPA that's slightly below Harvard's median. The health issues you've faced more than explain the GPA, if any explanation is needed, and could be spun into a superb "overcoming adversity" story that adcoms would love.

TL;DR Stop being so hard on yourself, take a break, do some volunteer work in a hospice or something. You're a solid applicant for Harvard, or Yale, or Johns Hopkins. Most matriculants at top 20 schools do not have publications.