WAMC: 3.79, 525

[BlatantPlatitude]

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Focus: Need Help with School List
Any suggestions with schools to remove or add. Have tried to apply broadly but also scared of too many "safety" schools as I have been told with my stats lower tier schools will actually reject me for yield-protection.

cGPA/ sGPA: 3.85, 3.90
MCAT: 525 (131/130/132/132)

State: Washington
Ethnicity: Generic White Boi

Undergrad: T10 / Big Public School - Grad 2021 (COVID gang)

Clinical Experience (3000 hours paid) :
1.5 years of work in an Orthopedic clinic as a scribe, and as an MA with direct patient interaction (casting, suture removal, blood draws, etc). Most significant activities section. Many good stories and reflections of my time here.

Research Experience (3200 hours):
2.5 years of continuous work in a developmental neuroscience lab. Most significant activities section.
3 pubs (2 C/N/S mid-author, 1 high-impact 3rd author)
1 international conference presentation/poster.
1 school-level presentation/poster

Shadowing Experience (50 hours) :
Gen Surg, Clinical rounds at a large level I trauma center, and observation of multiple orthopedic surgeries. As a scribe this is primarily all shadowing too I guess.

Non-Clinical Volunteering (500 hours):
Volunteering through fraternity for local center for special needs kids, doing significant amounts of fundraising work via charity bike rides.

Other Extracurriculars:
Paid Nonclinical Work - 2000 hours working in various tennis-related jobs. Solid consistency here. Various other work in labor/food service, not mentioned.
Leadership: Fraternity executive community as risk-management (people who care about being responsible), and housing manager (coordinating repairs and contractor work)
Spanish Immersion Program: 3 months in Colombia doing a spanish/medical immersion program. Talk about this in the context of my PS with open-mindedness to other people and significance of communication with people from various cultures and walks of life. Also most-meaningful.
Germany Host-Family Stay: One of my most-meaningful. Talk about this in the context of my PS same as above.

Relevant Honors/Awards:
High school HOSA club: Qualified for nationals with pathophysiology and medical terminology contest scores
QuizBowl: 1st place team for local tournament one year
Nationals for National History Day contest in 9th grade (not mentioned yet, seems cringe bc so long ago, idk)

LORs:
May be a weak part of my app. 3 really personal LORs from people who knew me well (German prof, Lab mentor/PI, and Surgeon I scribed for), weak one from a professor that I took an upper-level class from online, they don't really know me that well. Impossible to get any more.

Personal Statement:
I feel like this may be pretty solid. Cohesive narrative about my time with travel, experience in a lab being successful but reinforcing my desire to do clinical work instead, then all my 1.5 years scribing and MA work gives me solid anecdotes. Common theme about communication, language barriers and discussion.

Anything Else:
Bench: 225 for 3
Squat: 300 for 3
Chess.com Blitz: 1750
WPM: 95
Bag-held GME for 2 years
Local Trivia Champ


School List:
Fantasty Tier:
UCSF, Stanford, Duke, Columbia, Harvard, NYU
High Reach
WUSL, Yale, Mayo Alix, UPenn, UChicago, Northwestern
Reach
UW, Emory, Northwestern, UCSD, Sinai, Vanderbilt, UNC
Target
U Michigan, U Colorado, Dartmouth, Boston Medical, U Wisconsin (family ties), U Miami, U Cincinnati, U Buffalo

Any suggestions with schools to remove or add. Have tried to apply broadly but also scared of too many "safety" schools as I have been told with my stats lower tier schools will actually reject me for yield-protection. Thank you so much anyone who reads this! Appreciate it. <3

 

[Faha]

You should apply to U Washington and Washington State.
Remove Buffalo since they will "yield protect" with your stats. UNC and UCSD admit few non residents with no connection to the state.
You should receive interviews from the other school on your list.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

You don't need to include all of your high school activities. You can mention HOSA as appropriate.

 

[BlatantPlatitude]

OVERALL: What are my chances at those "fantasy land" top 10 schools? Is my GPA just going to screen me out or will the MCAT make up for it? Unsure. The GPA is really because I messed around and took Calc I and Calc II for NO REASON in undergrad (idk why I signed up for these) and got dumpstered by pre-eng kids. Still, strong upward trend and I basically did well in all the chem/bio/ochem stuff.

cGPA/ sGPA: 3.79, 3.73
MCAT: 525 (131/130/132/132)

State: Washington
Ethnicity: Generic White Boi

Undergrad: T20 / Big Public School - Grad 2021 (COVID gang)

Clinical Experience (3000 hours paid) :
1.5 years of work in an Orthopedic clinic as a scribe, and as an MA with direct patient interaction (casting, suture removal, blood draws, etc). Most significant activities section. Many good stories and reflections of my time here.

Research Experience (3200 hours):
2.5 years of continuous work in a developmental neuroscience lab. Most significant activities section.
4 pubs (2 C/N/S mid-author, 1 high-impact 3rd author, 1 pending C/N/S co-first author)
1 international conference presentation/poster.
1 school-level presentation/poster

Shadowing Experience (50 hours) :
Gen Surg, Clinical rounds at a large level I trauma center, and observation of multiple orthopedic surgeries. As a scribe this is primarily all shadowing too I guess.

Non-Clinical Volunteering (500 hours):
Volunteering through fraternity for local center for special needs kids, doing significant amounts of fundraising work via charity bike rides.

Other Extracurriculars:
Paid Nonclinical Work - 2000 hours working in various tennis-related jobs. Solid consistency here. Various other work in labor/food service, not mentioned.
Leadership: Fraternity executive community as risk-management (people who care about being responsible), and housing manager (coordinating repairs and contractor work)
Spanish Immersion Program: 3 months in Colombia doing a spanish/medical immersion program. Talk about this in the context of my PS with open-mindedness to other people and significance of communication with people from various cultures and walks of life. Also most-meaningful.
Germany Host-Family Stay: One of my most-meaningful. Talk about this in the context of my PS same as above.

Relevant Honors/Awards:
High school HOSA club: Qualified for nationals with pathophysiology and medical terminology contest scores
QuizBowl: 1st place team for local tournament one year
Nationals for National History Day contest in 9th grade (not mentioned yet, seems cringe bc so long ago, idk)

LORs:
Strong part of app, I have solid relationships with my letter writers and I think they wrote some heartfelt tearjerkers.

Personal Statement:
I feel like this may be pretty solid. Cohesive narrative about my time with travel, experience in a lab being successful but reinforcing my desire to do clinical work instead, then all my 1.5 years scribing and MA work gives me solid anecdotes. Common theme about communication, language barriers and discussion.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Why don't you want to go to UW? It's a very well-respected school, and you should get an interview there. WSU will also favor the home team. So if I weren't from Washington state, my adcoms would want to know why you want to come out to our brand-name school.

Now the critique:

What service orientation non-clinical activities are in your profile? It looks like you have a lot of fundraising, but how much time did you actually spend with the special needs kids? Did you teach them tennis (which seems to be your hobby)?

What in your application do you think appeals to the T10 brand schools? If you think it's not your GPA, what balances this concern out? The 4 CNS publications? If so, are you applying to PhD?

Is your scribing/MA just in orthopedics or is some primary care also mixed in?

Describe your learning style and how it synchs with the curricula at the brand schools.

Seriously though, you have a very strong shot, but I want to see how you try to make the schools want you. Everyone wants good culturally competent (multilingual) communicators in their medical schools, so I don't know how you want to stand out.

 

[chilly_md]

WAMC threads were merged. I do not know why you changed the GPA you listed from 3.85 and 3.9 to values in the 3.7's but you could add Ohio State, Case, and UVA while seeing how receptive the other school are to your app.

 

[BlatantPlatitude]

Why don't you want to go to UW? It's a very well-respected school, and you should get an interview there. WSU will also favor the home team. So if I weren't from Washington state, my adcoms would want to know why you want to come out to our brand-name school.

Now the critique:

What service orientation non-clinical activities are in your profile? It looks like you have a lot of fundraising, but how much time did you actually spend with the special needs kids? Did you teach them tennis (which seems to be your hobby)?

What in your application do you think appeals to the T10 brand schools? If you think it's not your GPA, what balances this concern out? The 4 CNS publications? If so, are you applying to PhD?

Is your scribing/MA just in orthopedics or is some primary care also mixed in?

Describe your learning style and how it synchs with the curricula at the brand schools.

Seriously though, you have a very strong shot, but I want to see how you try to make the schools want you. Everyone wants good culturally competent (multilingual) communicators in their medical schools, so I don't know how you want to stand out.

Thank you for the feedback. I see the overall idea is that I have to have a specific reason or unique feature about myself that makes me a candidate for these schools, something that stands out somewhat and gives them a reason to select me over x person with all this but better grades. I think I was just looking for some reassurances that I would still be competitive with a GPA in the 10th percentile band of these school's accepted students (based on MSAR data).

My service section is certainly the weakest. I do have this volunteering and fundraising but I don't have as much in terms of stories or anecdotes or significant experiences here to weave in. It is very much focused on talking about my research experiences, my time in the clinical setting scribing or working as an MA and coordinating patient care. I know i'm a 'normal' person who can talk to people and shows this in my writing, and will show in interviews. My angle thus far has been about not wanting to hard M.D/Ph.D but still taking advantage of neuroscience specific research opportunities these schools have built into their 3rd year curriculum for example.

Another angle i'm considering is discussing interest in health policy/being upset at how the system doesn't work with current reimbursement models, insurance, overhead, etc. More from a business angle and discuss seeing issues from the private practice perspective. Still, i've been avoiding this as I don't have any concrete experiences to back this up or point to.

Let me know what you think. Thanks!

 

[BlatantPlatitude]

WAMC threads were merged. I do not know why you changed the GPA you listed from 3.85 and 3.9 to values in the 3.7's but you could add Ohio State, Case, and UVA while seeing how receptive the other school are to your app.

My first post was pre-verification and I had used a spreadsheet someone made which converted grades into numbers from letters. I think it had an error as it made my GPA appear like it was going to be higher, so when the AMCAS calculation came back, I had an "oh s**t" moment.

 

[chilly_md]

My first post was pre-verification and I had used a spreadsheet someone made which converted grades into numbers from letters. I think it had an error as it made my GPA appear like it was going to be higher, so when the AMCAS calculation came back, I had an "oh s**t" moment.

Add Hofstra, Rochester and Einstein as well as the 3 I had already mentioned to broaden the list then.

 

[LeaveNoTrace]

Leave the high-school stuff off; adcoms generally don't want to hear about that unless you either succeeded big - think Olympics or similar - or you did fairly well and continued it in college. Something like winning your state competition for running in high school and then being a Division I runner in college. All that being said, your app's a strong one and you've got a shot at stratospheric schools. Add in midtiers and UW and your acceptance is yours to lose...you should get maybe half a dozen interviews from 30 applications.

 

[BlatantPlatitude]

Leave the high-school stuff off; adcoms generally don't want to hear about that unless you either succeeded big - think Olympics or similar - or you did fairly well and continued it in college. Something like winning your state competition for running in high school and then being a Division I runner in college. All that being said, your app's a strong one and you've got a shot at stratospheric schools. Add in midtiers and UW and your acceptance is yours to lose...you should get maybe half a dozen interviews from 30 applications.

Thanks for the feedback. I do have UW in there and per the post above, added Hofstra, UVA, and Albert Einstein. Fingers crossed for this cycle.