Upcoming cycle advice

[buckiii]

I have lower hours for most of my ECs, and since I will be starting my gap year activities after I submit the application, I'm wondering if it'd be better to just hold off and take a second gap year. So far, here's where I stand:

• 1060 research hours + thesis (not worried about my research hours)
• 130 clinical hours
• 415 clinical research hours
• 24 hours shadowing
• 120 hours clinical volunteering
• 30 hours non clinical volunteering
• 515 MCAT, 3.6 GPA

I know my clinical, shadowing, and volunteer hours are low. At my school shadowing through the university hospital has to be done through a class and I was only able to take the class for 2 semesters (1 was shortened by covid). In my gap year, I'll be doing a full time research internship over the summer, and working every other weekend as a PCA. Neither of these will start until early June, so I can't project those hours in the application, which is really worrying. After the summer, I'll switch to full time as a PCA, so I will be able to get my clinical hours to at least 1200+ by the start of summer of 2022. I'm mostly worried that my hours will be too low on the application and I won't get IIs and have the chance to explain that I'm working on them. On top of that, I know med schools take gap year hours with a grain of salt. I know I need to bump my volunteering hours up too, I'll be able to do that after this summer as well. My biggest worry is that I was hoping to use my gap year to get my hours to a better spot, but since I'm not going to be able to count any of the hours I'm don't know if it will be a better idea to wait until next cycle.

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