Thomas Young
New Member
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2025
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 0
PLEASE DO NOT QUOTE THIS MESSAGE
tldr: I'm a reinventor with a weak undergrad (3.2) in another field but I did as well as I could in my prereqs and on the MCAT (4.0, 524). I have 8 semesters of rough grades (until 2021) and 9 semesters of As (2021-now). I want to be a practicing clinician first and foremost, but it's important to me to have research be some part of my career, and I have a lot of it (and a lot less service than many) on my application. Which schools that have a good mission fit will tolerate my imperfect start/stats? I submitted a token application in June to two schools since I took the MCAT in mid June and my application was fully processed today.
I soon converged on the goal of becoming a clinician who incorporates some amount of research into each week (even if not a physician-scientist in the narrowest MSTP sense). Ideal for me would be somewhere between 80% patient care/20% research to 50% patient care/50% research. That seems to put me in the interesting position that a research-heavy MD(-“only”) program would potentially sufficiently prepare me, a primary care-oriented MD/DO(-“only”) program would probably underprepare me (I assume? at least without further training later?), and a MD PhD program might even be overkill. My passion is definitely neurology, and I want to work with stroke patients, but I'm keeping an open mind. The more I've learned, the broader my interests have become. I've really enjoyed the other specialties and patient populations I've gotten to learn about/from with shadowing or as a patient transporter.
To be totally clear, I really am not interested in a purely academic career. I was in graduate school when I discovered that there was such as a thing as a physician-scientist, and that prospect was much more interesting to me than being any kind of non-clinically-involved researcher. I just mention that to say that going on to do, say, a PhD in neuroscience, would've probably been the path of least resistance, and it is not what I want. I am excited about all the research that that could entail, but if someone really forced me to choose, I would definitely rather be only a clinician than only a researcher. Although I really, really hope I can do both.
The elephant in the room is that I am a reinventor. Before 2021, my GPA was a 3.20. I was always planning to be a computer programmer, and the advice (not just word on the street, but from professors, academic advisors, and people employed in industry) was that, at least c. 2017, your grades didn't matter—you just need “the piece of paper”, meaning a diploma with the words “computer science” somewhere on it. So I was focused on hobby technical projects (which I published freely online), student government, volunteer technical services, collaborative programming competitions, etc., where at least I was contributing to something bigger than myself, not studying. The tricky part is that a reinventor presumably appeals more to service-oriented schools (from everything I've seen so far, these are the schools that tend to like nontrads?) but I'm also a student who in terms of overall application and especially in terms of professional goals is a better fit for T50 etc. schools that, at least prototypically, are more likely to cater to students who will go on to pursue careers in academic medicine. The only “exceptions” I'm aware of that have a research emphasis but have a reputation for taking unusual applicants are Virginia Tech, MCW, and Miami, all of which I'm applying to. The only super prestigious places I was thinking of applying to were Stanford and some OOS-tolerant UCs, for personal reasons (below), as well as one school in a state I have ties to.
As I discuss in my PS, my patient experience motivated my academic turnaround before I ever saw myself as a physician someday; it made me feel like I had been blind to all the ways I had been lucky in life and the fear of my health slipping away (a few doctors began to suggest I might have a lifelong condition before it was figured out) made me feel like I couldn't afford to make any less than the most of every opportunity I still had. So I had already started getting As in my last two semesters of undergrad and first two semesters of grad school, all before I started seriously considering becoming a neurologist. That first semester I couldn't walk or drive, so my dad had to drive an hour out of his way to bring me to class. It sounds corny, I know, but I couldn't give anything less than my best to an opportunity that he was making such sacrifices of his own to provide me with. He didn't know what my grades were before or after that, it was more the principle, not any social pressure.
524 MCAT (131/132/129/132)
3.57 both uGPA and BCPM GPA (but 4.0 BCP for DO)
4.0 GPA from 2021-present (9 semesters, 3 grad, 6 undergrad)
I chose to do my prereqs in one year rather than two in part to demonstrate that I could handle the rigors of medical school.
26, M, ORM
3000+ research hours in neuroscience; preprint out for a behavioral study and served as study lead for its grant-funded neurophysiological follow-up (data collection just finished but will likely be a while before the publication). One poster in 2024, preprint will be submitted to a journal within the next ~2 weeks.
150 hrs hospital volunteering as a patient transporter
~80 hours shadowing: med/peds A&I, oculoplastics (clinic), neurosurgery (OR), PM&R (the one who fixed my injury!)
ECs: president of two clubs for my senior year (500+ hours each), and had a VP position at one of them my junior year (~200 hours). I got awards on a team of 4 at two programming competitions in 2019/2020, but I'm not sure anyone will care. I also had 700 hours at a volunteer IT services club to help faculty of science students, but I'm not sure anyone will care about that either.
I worked a few summer jobs over the years, approx. 500 hours each of 3 times. I was also a TA for an intro class in my department for a semester in my masters.
3 years at a therapy summer camp for kids 5-7 with developmental delays doing structured play to help them develop their fine motor skills. It was in affiliation with a lab, but I wasn't involved in the research. 25 hours each summer.
I did a one-year study abroad in high school and have taken intro classes in a few different languages, so one minor theme in my app is wanting to eventually become certified to practice independently in the native language(s) of the communities wherever I end up.
Non-academic IA (I was carded when a classmate gave me a cup of beer at a campus patio bar my freshman year. I was embarrassed about being younger since the others were graduate students so I did not try to correct her and "reveal" I was under 21. Dumb, I know.)
My partner and I want to start a family and all her relatives live within 30min of a particular city out west, so my school list is heavily skewed to places she would be willing to relocate to for 4+ years, namely (South)west. I really would like to apply to TMDSAS because she would be happy to move to Texas but I'm curious to know whether the experts think there is any nonzero chance of that. I've heard you have a shot as OOS if you have really high stats, so optimistically maybe my MCAT could get my foot in the door, but maybe they'd throw me out for my GPA. I was considering MD PhD for UNM and OHSU since it sounds like I might have a shot that way (and I know I'd have no shot another way) but would appreciate any insight on that front as well. She also wants me to apply to DO schools, which I'm worried will close doors for me, and I would rather reapply once before applying DO, but I know beggars can't be choosers and I will do it since I know it is important to her.
Thank you so much for your insights, it means a lot to me!
tldr: I'm a reinventor with a weak undergrad (3.2) in another field but I did as well as I could in my prereqs and on the MCAT (4.0, 524). I have 8 semesters of rough grades (until 2021) and 9 semesters of As (2021-now). I want to be a practicing clinician first and foremost, but it's important to me to have research be some part of my career, and I have a lot of it (and a lot less service than many) on my application. Which schools that have a good mission fit will tolerate my imperfect start/stats? I submitted a token application in June to two schools since I took the MCAT in mid June and my application was fully processed today.
Origin story & goals (feel free to not read if not interested)
In 2022, I found my way in a translational neuroscience lab and got a first exposure to working with patients. Combined with a patient experience of my own where I had become a 'zebra' and was referred to 10+ doctors in under a year, this got my gears turning. My injury really humanized the profession for me and it was ultimately through the intersection of clinical medicine and research (one of my doctors went looking on PubMed and eventually came upon case reports of cases like mine) that they were able to get to the bottom of it and get me better. I knew I loved research before all this, but it was always sort of esoteric theoretical cognitive/social science stuff that I was involved in, and I'd never put it together that there would ever be a patient-facing role that involved the things that were of interest to me.I soon converged on the goal of becoming a clinician who incorporates some amount of research into each week (even if not a physician-scientist in the narrowest MSTP sense). Ideal for me would be somewhere between 80% patient care/20% research to 50% patient care/50% research. That seems to put me in the interesting position that a research-heavy MD(-“only”) program would potentially sufficiently prepare me, a primary care-oriented MD/DO(-“only”) program would probably underprepare me (I assume? at least without further training later?), and a MD PhD program might even be overkill. My passion is definitely neurology, and I want to work with stroke patients, but I'm keeping an open mind. The more I've learned, the broader my interests have become. I've really enjoyed the other specialties and patient populations I've gotten to learn about/from with shadowing or as a patient transporter.
To be totally clear, I really am not interested in a purely academic career. I was in graduate school when I discovered that there was such as a thing as a physician-scientist, and that prospect was much more interesting to me than being any kind of non-clinically-involved researcher. I just mention that to say that going on to do, say, a PhD in neuroscience, would've probably been the path of least resistance, and it is not what I want. I am excited about all the research that that could entail, but if someone really forced me to choose, I would definitely rather be only a clinician than only a researcher. Although I really, really hope I can do both.
The elephant in the room is that I am a reinventor. Before 2021, my GPA was a 3.20. I was always planning to be a computer programmer, and the advice (not just word on the street, but from professors, academic advisors, and people employed in industry) was that, at least c. 2017, your grades didn't matter—you just need “the piece of paper”, meaning a diploma with the words “computer science” somewhere on it. So I was focused on hobby technical projects (which I published freely online), student government, volunteer technical services, collaborative programming competitions, etc., where at least I was contributing to something bigger than myself, not studying. The tricky part is that a reinventor presumably appeals more to service-oriented schools (from everything I've seen so far, these are the schools that tend to like nontrads?) but I'm also a student who in terms of overall application and especially in terms of professional goals is a better fit for T50 etc. schools that, at least prototypically, are more likely to cater to students who will go on to pursue careers in academic medicine. The only “exceptions” I'm aware of that have a research emphasis but have a reputation for taking unusual applicants are Virginia Tech, MCW, and Miami, all of which I'm applying to. The only super prestigious places I was thinking of applying to were Stanford and some OOS-tolerant UCs, for personal reasons (below), as well as one school in a state I have ties to.
As I discuss in my PS, my patient experience motivated my academic turnaround before I ever saw myself as a physician someday; it made me feel like I had been blind to all the ways I had been lucky in life and the fear of my health slipping away (a few doctors began to suggest I might have a lifelong condition before it was figured out) made me feel like I couldn't afford to make any less than the most of every opportunity I still had. So I had already started getting As in my last two semesters of undergrad and first two semesters of grad school, all before I started seriously considering becoming a neurologist. That first semester I couldn't walk or drive, so my dad had to drive an hour out of his way to bring me to class. It sounds corny, I know, but I couldn't give anything less than my best to an opportunity that he was making such sacrifices of his own to provide me with. He didn't know what my grades were before or after that, it was more the principle, not any social pressure.
Stats
FL resident, ties to 3 other states (without many schools, but applying to each)524 MCAT (131/132/129/132)
3.57 both uGPA and BCPM GPA (but 4.0 BCP for DO)
4.0 GPA from 2021-present (9 semesters, 3 grad, 6 undergrad)
I chose to do my prereqs in one year rather than two in part to demonstrate that I could handle the rigors of medical school.
26, M, ORM
3000+ research hours in neuroscience; preprint out for a behavioral study and served as study lead for its grant-funded neurophysiological follow-up (data collection just finished but will likely be a while before the publication). One poster in 2024, preprint will be submitted to a journal within the next ~2 weeks.
150 hrs hospital volunteering as a patient transporter
~80 hours shadowing: med/peds A&I, oculoplastics (clinic), neurosurgery (OR), PM&R (the one who fixed my injury!)
ECs: president of two clubs for my senior year (500+ hours each), and had a VP position at one of them my junior year (~200 hours). I got awards on a team of 4 at two programming competitions in 2019/2020, but I'm not sure anyone will care. I also had 700 hours at a volunteer IT services club to help faculty of science students, but I'm not sure anyone will care about that either.
I worked a few summer jobs over the years, approx. 500 hours each of 3 times. I was also a TA for an intro class in my department for a semester in my masters.
3 years at a therapy summer camp for kids 5-7 with developmental delays doing structured play to help them develop their fine motor skills. It was in affiliation with a lab, but I wasn't involved in the research. 25 hours each summer.
I did a one-year study abroad in high school and have taken intro classes in a few different languages, so one minor theme in my app is wanting to eventually become certified to practice independently in the native language(s) of the communities wherever I end up.
Non-academic IA (I was carded when a classmate gave me a cup of beer at a campus patio bar my freshman year. I was embarrassed about being younger since the others were graduate students so I did not try to correct her and "reveal" I was under 21. Dumb, I know.)
My partner and I want to start a family and all her relatives live within 30min of a particular city out west, so my school list is heavily skewed to places she would be willing to relocate to for 4+ years, namely (South)west. I really would like to apply to TMDSAS because she would be happy to move to Texas but I'm curious to know whether the experts think there is any nonzero chance of that. I've heard you have a shot as OOS if you have really high stats, so optimistically maybe my MCAT could get my foot in the door, but maybe they'd throw me out for my GPA. I was considering MD PhD for UNM and OHSU since it sounds like I might have a shot that way (and I know I'd have no shot another way) but would appreciate any insight on that front as well. She also wants me to apply to DO schools, which I'm worried will close doors for me, and I would rather reapply once before applying DO, but I know beggars can't be choosers and I will do it since I know it is important to her.
Thank you so much for your insights, it means a lot to me!
