State/Country of Residence: Illinois
ORM: So white it hurts to look at me
Year in School:
Research Experience:
Other Extracurricular Activities:
Awards:
Other Employment History: Paid research assistant freshman year for around 140 hrs.
Immediate family members in medicine?: No
Specialty of Interest (if applicable): I want to go into neurology, specifically conducting research + implantation of brain-machine interfaces. Companies like Neuralink / Kernal. I was into this before Musk made it cool
Interest in Primary Care (Y/N): N
Interest in Rural Health (Y/N): N
School List:
TL;DR: Unimpressive school, weird application, weird career goals. Help?
ORM: So white it hurts to look at me
Year in School:
Graduating with a B.S. in Dec 2020 (Rising Senior grad in 3.5 years). Unimpressive State School - I did not make an effort in HS, which I have regretted since.
Undergraduate Major(s)/Minor(s): Major in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Significant coursework (for fun) in CS + full calculus sequence cGPA: 3.94
sGPA: 4.00
MCAT Score: 521 (130/130/131/130) **I studied around 4 weeks total due to distraction from my startup. Really unsure how I got this score. Should I mention this in my secondaries / interview? Most people seem to study much longer, I wonder how much better I could've done**Research Experience:
3 years in the same lab working studying cellular biology/metabolism, ~1143 hours. Leading independent project and working towards first-author manuscript, hoping to submit to a medium-impact journal in early Fall. Winner of a $5000 merit-based named fellowship
Publications/Abstracts/Posters: Working on the manuscript mentioned above, fourth author on PLOS pathogens. Have THREE papers with significant contribution (3rd author on all) that are in limbo. Presented at three school-level poster conferences.
Clinical Experience (paid or volunteer): 189 hours as volunteer hospice caregiver around 4+ different clinics (hopefully AMCAS can verify... nobody recorded hours)
Shadowing: 120 hours with a couple of different doctors. Specifically in interventional radiology
Non-Clinical Volunteering: 22 hours in non-clinical hospice
72 hours in health-tech startup, working with LCSWs for dementia caregiver support
Other Extracurricular Activities:
600 hours: Taught myself how to code on open source projects
2246 hours: Founded an app-based startup. Now I am CEO, lead a team of 4 + 3 interns. 1500-2500 more hours projected working full-time spring
^ some hard-hitting stuff about mental health + hospice that I talk about here. Saving it for an interview, because it's a touchy topic
2715 hours: Bodybuilding. Competition cancelled due to COVID, not sure if I'll have the time to compete soon .
.^ have an interesting story about losing 100lbs prior to this in HS that I'm saving for interviews. Changed my life.
Awards:
$1,000 merit scholarship for hospice work
$5,000 named fellowship for research
$2,500 entrepreneurship merit scholarship
$10,000 business funding (top 11 from 72 applied)
$1,000 award for best startup pitch in campus competition
NSF I-corps Fellow
Dean's list every semester
Honors concentration in major (1 of 24 students selected from major / year)
Gonna get magna cum laude, not that it matters
There's like 4 or 5 campus "student highlight" articles about me -- didn't list it on my app, but seems abnormal IMO. At least my school thinks I'm cool
Other Employment History: Paid research assistant freshman year for around 140 hrs.
Immediate family members in medicine?: No
Specialty of Interest (if applicable): I want to go into neurology, specifically conducting research + implantation of brain-machine interfaces. Companies like Neuralink / Kernal. I was into this before Musk made it cool
Interest in Primary Care (Y/N): N
Interest in Rural Health (Y/N): N
School List:
I have weird career goals and only think I can truly fulfill them at (1) Stanford or (2) Yale (I want a research-heavy education with some degree of freedom). Not sure if I'm up to snuff, though. I got really distracted with this startup when it began to explode. Interested where else I should apply if I'm not 100% on practicing medicine, but want to work in the medical startup field. I don't care if I don't get paid much, it's more interesting to me, personally. Carle-Illinois seems interesting, but I don't know bunch about them and I kinda want to get away from this cold state. Dumb reason, but it's starting to get to me.
TL;DR: Unimpressive school, weird application, weird career goals. Help?
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