Make sure that you fill in the Impactful Experiences essay describing that your circumstances including working during college.
Despite your academic benchmarks, there are many programs that will be interested in your application. In general, MSTPs are still graded in diversity (see
NIH notice) during study section review which means that they want you. However, top 20 MSTPs have those diverse applicants with 515+ scores. Your numbers and experiences appear to be good and adequate for the next 20 programs. Your state of residency is mostly irrelevant for MD/PhD programs.
MSTPs do not care for state of residence. For example, Texas aims for a 90% MD class who is TX resident, but MD/PhD programs in Texas don't care about that. If you look at the NIGMS website (link below) and arrange all programs by the # of NRSA slots, I think that you will be match with all of them who are within <15 training slots, and might get some interview invites of others higher up. PM me if you need.
My standard advice:
I tell applicants to be very open to applying broadly. Take AAMC table B-8 in excel from the
AAMC FACTS tables webpage. Calculate number of applicants per matriculating slot of all programs. Select the list of MSTP programs from the
NIGMS website. Arrange the spreadsheet by size of entry class. Examine table B-12 to see if a particular year was odd with more matriculants than it seems. Check their websites. For example, my program takes 7 applicants every year since 2018, we used to take 4-5 prior to that. We just received an Impact Score of top 5% in our T32 MSTP renewal, and we will be adding an extra slot per year (now 8/yr since 2022). Examine NIH funding tables at the Blue Ridge or NIH websites, particularly looking at funding from the NIH Institute of your area of interest (NCI, NIA, etc.).
Depending upon your stats, you will group the 53 MSTPs by groups of 15-20, and select several from each group for your list... You have to have different levels of difficulty to make sure that you get into the best program for you (interest, fit, location, etc. low in the scale is USNWR ranking or perceived prestige). Choose at least 5-10 from each tier (more in top tier if you wish)... Apply early, if you need to triage interviews, that would be a good problem to have. If you follow my advice, you will get MD/PhD acceptance early from the bottom tier, and might end up in one of your dream schools by matriculation date.
Another piece... Apply initially for 5 schools as you submit your Primary application. Apply early and get your transcripts (and LORs) uploaded Once the verification process by AMCAS occurs (takes 4-6 weeks), programs receive your application, which triggers Secondary applications. If you were applying to 30 schools, that is a lot of secondary applications at once. Schools monitor how quickly you reply to secondary applications (one week or so is fine, two weeks are ok, but 30 at once might take you more than that). Here is my suggestion, if you apply 5 additional schools every week, they appear into the respective school portals within a couple of hours. That is, you are able to apply early and stage your secondary application delivery as most are automatically triggered by computers. Adding 5 schools per week means that within 3 weeks (+/-1 day), you can apply to 20 MD/PhD programs and be more responsive to secondaries. My school has no secondary (no added fees/barriers, just adding a school)....
