WAMC - 524/3.95. Very low research, school list help

[TXpremed01]

Hello, I am looking to build a school list and looking for advice on medical schools to apply this upcoming cycle. I have very little research but planning on getting it done over my gap year. Besides many of the TX schools, the others in my list are top 20 research heavy schools. Should I even apply to any of them with what little research I have so far? TIA!

1. cGPA and sGPA as calculated by AMCAS or AACOMAS
   1. cGPA- 3.98 AMCAS, 4.0 TMDSAS; sGPA- 3.95 AMCAS, 4.0 TMDSAS
2. MCAT score(s) and breakdown. Include all (non-voided) attempts.
   1. 524 (131/130/131/132)
3. State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US)
   1. Texas
4. Ethnicity and/or race
   1. Asian male
5. Undergraduate institution or category
   1. UT Austin
6. Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer)
   1. 75 hours non-volunteer as a medical assistant at an urgent care (triaging patients, swabbing, performing lab tests
   2. 165 volunteering as a medical assistant at the same urgent care
   3. 150 hours volunteering at a speech therapy clinic for stroke survivors, working 1 on 1 with clients
7. Research experience and productivity
   1. Minimal; ~50 hours collecting data at speech therapy clinic to aid in creating effective treatment plans, ~50 hours (predicted) rest of the semester analyzing data governance regarding brain research
   2. Aiming to get more during gap year
8. Shadowing experience and specialties represented
   1. 75 hours total
   2. Shadowed 3 family practice doctors, 1 OBGYN, 2 orthopedic surgeon, 1 allergist/immunologist, and 1 sports medicine doctor
9. Non-clinical volunteering
   1. 90 hours volunteering at a food pantry, processing/organizing food donations and sorting/shelving/maintaining stock levels in the warehouse
   2. 100 hours volunteering at an underserved elementary school, working 1 on 1 with them while reading and exercising
   3. 50 hours volunteering by helping provide blood pressure screenings to Austin’s homeless community and providing information about local non-profit clinics
10. Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc)
    1. 2 semesters working as a peer tutor in school learning center (~150 hours)
    2. 1 semester working as a Physics Demonstration Technician, setting up demonstrations for physics students to visualize concepts (~50 hours)
    3. Captain of IM basketball team and IM flag football team for 6 semesters of college
11. Relevant honors or awards
    1. Dean’s Honors list all 6 semesters of college
12. Anything else not listed you think might be important
    1. n/a

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School list:

1. Baylor
2. UTSW
3. McGovern
4. Dell
5. UT Long San Antonio
6. UTMB Galveston
7. TX A&M
8. UH
9. TX Tech
10. Harvard University
11. Stanford University
12. Johns Hopkins University
13. University of California—San Francisco
14. University of Pennsylvania (Perelman)
15. Washington University in St. Louis
16. Columbia University
17. Duke University
18. Yale University
19. New York University
20. University of Chicago (Pritzker)
21. University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
22. University of California—Los Angeles (Geffen)
23. Vanderbilt University Nashville
24. Northwestern University (Feinberg)
25. Cornell University (Weill)
26. University of California—San Diego
27. Emory
28. Albert Einstein College
29. Kaiser Permanente Pasadena CA
30. Mayo MN

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[Mr.Smile12]

Welcome to the forums.

I would be cautious about how you describe your speech therapy activity since you list a handful of hours doing "research." What hypothesis is being tested that requires the collection of patient data? The data governance project is interesting when it comes to research policies, but it's not research that we typically think about. When will you secure a research opportunity for your gap year? What community service will you continue doing?

While you don't need to apply to a ton of schools with your metrics, I would want to keep boosting your community service orientation activities to at least 250 hours. I think you have that, so keep going up there so there are fewer excuses about lowering your desirability. I consider your speech therapy work as non-clinical since you refer to "clients" instead of patients. Like if you were an athletic trainer.

Is there any area for improvement? I think a potential hole in your application is the lack of hospital-based exposure. It's not clear to me, but you seem to have accessed many private or stand-alone clinics. Kudos for that, but academic medicine is mostly a hospital-based environment.

That said, the collection of activities resembles the jack-of-all-trades well-roundedness that is fantastic for undergrad admissions. Sure, we want that for medical school admissions, but we also want a clear purpose you want to have as a physician and the specific expectations and opportunities you want to have to position yourself for a competitive residency regardless of specialty. Research will always be there in medical school so to me it's not a big deal. I think your more clinical/service-based activities make you more attractive to overall MD admissions committees provided they know why you're applying to them -- and not just because their average GPA/MCAT are high; they KNOW that already.

 

[TXpremed01]

Welcome to the forums.

I would be cautious about how you describe your speech therapy activity since you list a handful of hours doing "research." What hypothesis is being tested that requires the collection of patient data? The data governance project is interesting when it comes to research policies, but it's not research that we typically think about. When will you secure a research opportunity for your gap year? What community service will you continue doing?

While you don't need to apply to a ton of schools with your metrics, I would want to keep boosting your community service orientation activities to at least 250 hours. I think you have that, so keep going up there so there are fewer excuses about lowering your desirability. I consider your speech therapy work as non-clinical since you refer to "clients" instead of patients. Like if you were an athletic trainer.

Is there any area for improvement? I think a potential hole in your application is the lack of hospital-based exposure. It's not clear to me, but you seem to have accessed many private or stand-alone clinics. Kudos for that, but academic medicine is mostly a hospital-based environment.

That said, the collection of activities resembles the jack-of-all-trades well-roundedness that is fantastic for undergrad admissions. Sure, we want that for medical school admissions, but we also want a clear purpose you want to have as a physician and the specific expectations and opportunities you want to have to position yourself for a competitive residency regardless of specialty. Research will always be there in medical school so to me it's not a big deal. I think your more clinical/service-based activities make you more attractive to overall MD admissions committees provided they know why you're applying to them -- and not just because their average GPA/MCAT are high; they KNOW that already.

Thank you for your input.

I am in the process of applying for clinical research coordinator and similar positions at the local medical schools and hospitals in the greater DFW/Houston/Austin area. If that doesn't happen, I will apply for MA jobs in a hospital or continue working as a MA in the urgent care I have been working/volunteering with over the last two years.

I plan on continuing my weekly volunteering at the local food bank and maybe depending on my schedule, volunteer at a local hospice or nursing home.

At the speech lab where I volunteer, they are actually patients but they refer to them as clients hence I also wrote clients instead of patients.