MD WAMC 3.36/516 TX reapplicant

[carson16666]

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Pretty sure my cycle went poorly because of late submissions (late aug/sep) and a super generic personal statement. Only received one II at Texas Tech Lubbock, which is now an R.

1. cGPA - 3.36 (very strong upward trend, 2.7 at community college, 3.9 at four-year school)
sGPA - 3.4 AMCAS

2. 516 (131/126/129/130)

3. Residency - Texas

4. URM/ORM - half Hispanic, half white

5. Undergraduate - Biology major in Arkansas, May '24 grad

6. Clinical hours - 200 hours working as a scribe in ER
-400 hours working as heart clinic medical assistant
-1200 hours working as neurosurgery medical assistant during gap year
-50 hours volunteering with hospice patients

7. Research - ~900 hours: about 500 for a psychology lab, 400 doing DNA replication stuff
-1 first author publication, accepted during gap year
-1 poster presentation

8. Shadowing - 30 hours in ER
-20 hours podiatry
-20 hours neurosurgery during gap year
-10 hours primary care during gap year

9. Nonclinical volunteering - 100 hours in a food pantry during COVID, ~200 more at the same place during gap year
-60 hours for an organization for my school teaching kids about space
-80 doing flagging for sports car races, ~60 more during gap year

10. Extracurriculars - I have about 300 hours tutoring student-athletes (good leadership experience)
-I became an Eagle Scout in high school, but was active in my troop until sophomore year of college

11. Rec letters - 2 letters from biology professors
-1 letter from emergency physician I worked with
-1 letter from PI
-1 letter from psychology professor
-Perhaps one more from neurosurgeon I work for now

Hobbies/interests I wrote about
-running & importance of maintaining my health
-building random contraptions in my free time like a hang glider and go-kart
-I play piano, violin, and guitar and I'm in a band with some of my friends. I've been learning how to produce music during my gap year.
-baseball and how it improved my ability to work as a team

For reapplication, I plan on focusing more on a "pursuit of knowledge" kind of narrative. Specifically I want to be a physician because I genuinely love interacting with patients and physicians are the "experts" in their field. Obviously I'm paraphrasing, but is this a strong enough narrative? Thank you all!

School list :
1. TCU
2. Boston University
3. Rosalind Franklin
4. Eastern Virginia
5. Emory
6. Geisel
7. Hackensack
8. Temple
9. Medical College of Wisconsin
10. Oakland
11. Vermont
12. Tufts
13. Cincinnati
14. Colorado
15. UMass
16. Wake Forest
17. USC
18. UChicago
19. Drexel
20. Thomas Jefferson

& TMDSAS schools

 

[LunaOri]

Flagging for auto races should be under “hobbies”, not “volunteering”.

 

[Faha]

OOS MD schools admit few Texas applicants since they know from years of experience that Texas applicants will attend a Texas school. You could try the newer MD schools including Belmont, Alice Walton, Roseman and Methodist. Also apply to DO schools and include all your Texas DO schools. For OOS DO schools consider these:
OSU-COM
AZCOM
TUNCOM
KCU-COM
ATSU-KCOM
DMU-COM
MU-COM
ACOM
CUSOM
PCOM
NYITCOM
Touro-NY

 

[carson16666]

Flagging for auto races should be under “hobbies”, not “volunteering”.

Why? It's volunteering by definition

 

[AsclepiusAdvisingLLC]

Why? It's volunteering by definition

It depends on what you mean by flagging.

If you'd be considered a volunteer by staff and can point to an established safety or first-aid role, then you could make the case for non-clinical volunteering.

Usually though, non-clinical volunteering is meant for established and listed positions engaging in an act of service, usually oriented towards an underserved population and on-the-surface 'humanitarian.' It's a limiting perspective but that's how ADCOMs view it. Flagging at a sports car race doesn't immediately read as "established position," "underserved," or "humanitarian."

My partner and I used to do medical standby at drag and drift races. A small child or a grown adult could flag equally well— there was no unique position or status to it. Cool for Instagram, not persuasive to ADCOMs. If you want it to be a persuasive activity, you'll need to seriously consider whether you can make a case for it.

If it's not something to speaks to a unique growth role, experience, or service mission for you, then put it as a hobby. Certainly, a unique one!

 

[carson16666]

It depends on what you mean by flagging.

If you'd be considered a volunteer by staff and can point to an established safety or first-aid role, then you could make the case for non-clinical volunteering.

Usually though, non-clinical volunteering is meant for established and listed positions engaging in an act of service, usually oriented towards an underserved population and on-the-surface 'humanitarian.' It's a limiting perspective but that's how ADCOMs view it. Flagging at a sports car race doesn't immediately read as "established position," "underserved," or "humanitarian."

My partner and I used to do medical standby at drag and drift races. A small child or a grown adult could flag equally well— there was no unique position or status to it. Cool for Instagram, not persuasive to ADCOMs. If you want it to be a persuasive activity, you'll need to seriously consider whether you can make a case for it.

If it's not something to speaks to a unique growth role, experience, or service mission for you, then put it as a hobby. Certainly, a unique one!

Makes sense to me, I suppose it doesn't really persuade anyone that I want to serve. Thanks for the advice!

 

[carson16666]

OOS MD schools admit few Texas applicants since they know from years of experience that Texas applicants will attend a Texas school. You could try the newer MD schools including Belmont, Alice Walton, Roseman and Methodist. Also apply to DO schools and include all your Texas DO schools. For OOS DO schools consider these:
OSU-COM
AZCOM
TUNCOM
KCU-COM
ATSU-KCOM
DMU-COM
MU-COM
ACOM
CUSOM
PCOM
NYITCOM
Touro-NY

Are my chances with an MD school that slim? I realllllly don't want to go to a DO school, five out of five DO students I've talked to said to avoid those schools. Also, I'm looking to do a competitive specialty.

 

[AsclepiusAdvisingLLC]

Pretty sure my cycle went poorly because of late submissions (late aug/sep) and a super generic personal statement. Only received one II at Texas Tech Lubbock, which is now an R.

1. cGPA - 3.36 (very strong upward trend, 2.7 at community college, 3.9 at four-year school)
sGPA - 3.4 AMCAS

2. 516 (131/126/129/130)

3. Residency - Texas

4. URM/ORM - half Hispanic, half white

5. Undergraduate - Biology major in Arkansas, May '24 grad

6. Clinical hours - 200 hours working as a scribe in ER
-400 hours working as heart clinic medical assistant
-1200 hours working as neurosurgery medical assistant during gap year
-50 hours volunteering with hospice patients

7. Research - ~900 hours: about 500 for a psychology lab, 400 doing DNA replication stuff
-1 first author publication, accepted during gap year
-1 poster presentation

8. Shadowing - 30 hours in ER
-20 hours podiatry
-20 hours neurosurgery during gap year
-10 hours primary care during gap year

9. Nonclinical volunteering - 100 hours in a food pantry during COVID, ~200 more at the same place during gap year
-60 hours for an organization for my school teaching kids about space
-80 doing flagging for sports car races, ~60 more during gap year

10. Extracurriculars - I have about 300 hours tutoring student-athletes (good leadership experience)
-I became an Eagle Scout in high school, but was active in my troop until sophomore year of college

11. Rec letters - 2 letters from biology professors
-1 letter from emergency physician I worked with
-1 letter from PI
-1 letter from psychology professor
-Perhaps one more from neurosurgeon I work for now

Hobbies/interests I wrote about
-running & importance of maintaining my health
-building random contraptions in my free time like a hang glider and go-kart
-I play piano, violin, and guitar and I'm in a band with some of my friends. I've been learning how to produce music during my gap year.
-baseball and how it improved my ability to work as a team

For reapplication, I plan on focusing more on a "pursuit of knowledge" kind of narrative. Specifically I want to be a physician because I genuinely love interacting with patients and physicians are the "experts" in their field. Obviously I'm paraphrasing, but is this a strong enough narrative? Thank you all!

School list :
1. TCU
2. Boston University
3. Rosalind Franklin
4. Eastern Virginia
5. Emory
6. Geisel
7. Hackensack
8. Temple
9. Medical College of Wisconsin
10. Oakland
11. Vermont
12. Tufts
13. Cincinnati
14. Colorado
15. UMass
16. Wake Forest
17. USC
18. UChicago
19. Drexel
20. Thomas Jefferson

& TMDSAS schools

There's some strong application material here. Your upward trend, clinicals, research, and shadowing all look good.

Your non-clinicals look good, check out the other comment re: flagging at races.

To be honest, your narrative is not striking or standout. In fact, it might even be a "red flag" for non-specificity:

"Pursuit of knowledge" is a noble personal narrative but usually a generic application narrative that rarely gets interviews or acceptances.

Yes, physicians are experts in their field and they engage their entire careers in continuing education; however, they are practitioners and healers, first and foremost. You could do "pursuit of knowledge" in a PhD program in English literature.

A physician does not keep up with CME because they like the knowledge(though it doesn't hurt), they do it because it's necessary to keep taking steps forward in service of healing.

You need to make a clear case for "seek knowledge ---[in order to]---> heal." Show, don't tell, ADCOMs that you'll push beyond the classroom and into the clinic.

 

[carson16666]

There's some strong application material here. Your upward trend, clinicals, research, and shadowing all look good.

Your non-clinicals look good, check out the other comment re: flagging at races.

To be honest, your narrative is not striking or standout. In fact, it might even be a "red flag" for non-specificity:

"Pursuit of knowledge" is a noble personal narrative but usually a generic application narrative that rarely gets interviews or acceptances.

Yes, physicians are experts in their field and they engage their entire careers in continuing education; however, they are practitioners and healers, first and foremost. You could do "pursuit of knowledge" in a PhD program in English literature.

A physician does not keep up with CME because they like the knowledge(though it doesn't hurt), they do it because it's necessary to keep taking steps forward in service of healing.

You need to make a clear case for "seek knowledge ---[in order to]---> heal." Show, don't tell, ADCOMs that you'll push beyond the classroom and into the clinic.

I appreciate the honesty, that's exactly what I need. Do I need to relate my entire primary to my "narrative"? I didn't do this at all last time. Cheers my friend

 

[AsclepiusAdvisingLLC]

I appreciate the honesty, that's exactly what I need. Do I need to relate my entire primary to my "narrative"? I didn't do this at all last time. Cheers my friend

Not at all. Your narrative, which is primarily communicated in your personal statement, could be a personal story about a family member and thereby not at all connected to your work and activities. It could be all about a specific work experience.

Regardless, the experiences and situation is not important, what's important(and being read for by ADCOMs) is you and your takeaways from it.

Remember, ADCOMs are not looking for anything, they are looking at something — you!

Why do you want to do medicine? Meditate on that for a day or two, think back to memories with patients.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

If we're looking at what you submitted, when was your food pantry done? 100 hours isn't enough to address service orientation, especially if it was done 4 years ago during COVID. Timing is important, and I don't see anything except the resumption of working in the food pantry during your application year.

Volunteering is doing something without expectation of compensation or benefits (employment), in the quickest of definitions. The desired competency is "service orientation," which is best embodied with activities such as food distribution, shelter volunteering, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation. 150 hours is the minimum threshold to avoid getting screened out at most schools.

Shadowing also seems light when you submitted, especially with 20 hours of podiatry. That works for podiatry but not for medicine, so it's great you could have sent your app to the pod schools if you didn't get into medical school this year. Clearly, that wasn't your plan (oh well).

80 hours of flagging during motorsports... that's 40 races. That's a lot of races, That was also more hours than you had shadowing (50).

Maybe your reapp will have a better balance that clearly shows you are committed to becoming a physician.

 

[carson16666]

If we're looking at what you submitted, when was your food pantry done? 100 hours isn't enough to address service orientation, especially if it was done 4 years ago during COVID. Timing is important, and I don't see anything except the resumption of working in the food pantry during your application year.

Volunteering is doing something without expectation of compensation or benefits (employment), in the quickest of definitions. The desired competency is "service orientation," which is best embodied with activities such as food distribution, shelter volunteering, job/tax preparation, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation. 150 hours is the minimum threshold to avoid getting screened out at most schools.

Shadowing also seems light when you submitted, especially with 20 hours of podiatry. That works for podiatry but not for medicine, so it's great you could have sent your app to the pod schools if you didn't get into medical school this year. Clearly, that wasn't your plan (oh well).

80 hours of flagging during motorsports... that's 40 races. That's a lot of races, That was also more hours than you had shadowing (50).

Maybe your reapp will have a better balance that clearly shows you are committed to becoming a physician.

I'll admit I didn't do much volunteering, the initial 100 hours was in 2020 and I will have done 200 more from oct 2024-may 2025. Based on what others said about flagging not officially being volunteering, I would imagine volunteering was a red flag. I agree shadowing was light as well.

Also the flagging I did was a full 8-5 for Saturday and Sunday, I did 4 weekends in total.

I'm really hoping for more success this time. Thanks 👍

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I'll admit I didn't do much volunteering, the initial 100 hours was in 2020 and I will have done 200 more from oct 2024-may 2025. Based on what others said about flagging not officially being volunteering, I would imagine volunteering was a red flag. I agree shadowing was light as well.

Also the flagging I did was a full 8-5 for Saturday and Sunday, I did 4 weekends in total.

I'm really hoping for more success this time. Thanks 👍

I am hopeful that submitting early with the additional hours (and proper revision of your application) will give you a better response. Pay attention to advice already given here.

 

[gyngyn]

Shadowing EM, podiatry and neurosurg, although interesting, does not let you see the day to day life for most physicians.
Find another 30 hours in a longitudinal care office (or offices) and you will have a better idea what medicine is like (and you will have more to talk about at interviews!).

 

[Faha]

Are my chances with an MD school that slim? I realllllly don't want to go to a DO school, five out of five DO students I've talked to said to avoid those schools. Also, I'm looking to do a competitive specialty.

Your best chances are your Texas schools. You could try the OOS MD schools I listed.