WAMC and School list help

[busypremed]

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Hello, this is my first cycle applying coming up as a traditional applicant. Any advice is appreciated, and recommendations for a school list. Thank you!

Stats:
GPA: 4.00 / sGPA: 4.00
MCAT: 522
State: California
Race/Ethnicity: Asian/Male/Citizen
Undergrad School: T100

Clinical Experience:
EMT (911): ~500 hours by application / 300 projected.

Research:
Cell Biology Wet Lab: 3 years in the same lab (1500 hours)
- 2 poster presentations and 1 second author publication

Shadowing:
Shadowing: 40 hrs
- Ortho

Non-Clinical Volunteering:
Local city homeless shelter (200 hours)
- food distribution

National homeless shelter and soup kitchen organization (100 hours)
- also food distribution

Additional Extracurriculars:
- TA for physics (320 hours)

- Eagle scout

- Professional piano teacher at a music company (600 hours)

Letters of Recommendation:
- One from lab PI, one from Ochem professor, and one from English professor. I am ghostwriting 2 of the 3, so they are overall strong.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

What support are you getting from your prehealth advisors? What is your purpose as a physician? Where are your campus leadership opportunities? No hospital volunteering?

 

[Faha]

I suggest these schools with your stats:
The UC's (except Riverside unless you are from that region)
USC Keck
Kaiser
Stanford
Washington University (in St. Louis-almost a guaranteed interview with your stats)
Vanderbilt
Emory
Duke
U Virginia
Johns Hopkins (free tuition)
U Penn
Pittsburgh
Northwestern
U Chicago
U Michigan
Case Western
Cincinnati
Hofstra
Einstein (free tuition)
Mount Sinai
NYU (free tuition)
Columbia
Cornell
Harvard
Yale
Dartmouth
Brown
Boston University
UMass

 

[busypremed]

What support are you getting from your prehealth advisors? What is your purpose as a physician? Where are your campus leadership opportunities? No hospital volunteering?

Hello, thank you for taking the time to respond. I am receiving a committee recommendation from my prehealth advisors. I had an interview already, which went really well, so they will also write a letter to include in the packet. They didn't really give me much advice outside of the mock interview that we held. My purpose for becoming a physician is I want to help serve the underserved in my city, particularly those who can't receive care because of cost barriers. I come from a city with a really high homeless population, and working 911 shifts as an EMT has primarily placed me in less affluent neighborhoods. From many of the conversations I have had with patients and people who come to the shelters, their health was almost always a significant contributing factor to the circumstances that they were now in. I want to invest in people in one aspect of their lives to at least give people the opportunity to live the life they want and are capable of. As for my campus leadership opportunities, I don't really have any outside of being a TA for a class, which I understand is mostly academic. I did not feel great vibes from my school's "premed" clubs, so I kind of skipped over them. The only other leadership activity I can think of is helping every year in my school's admissions committee to recruit people, interview them for my major, and decide on scholarship awards. Not really sure if this counts as leadership though. Do you have any recommendations for any leadership opportunities I should pursue? I do not have any hospital volunteering, my only clinical experience is my job as an EMT. Is this something you would recommend I start on?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Hello, thank you for taking the time to respond. I am receiving a committee recommendation from my prehealth advisors. I had an interview already, which went really well, so they will also write a letter to include in the packet. They didn't really give me much advice outside of the mock interview that we held. My purpose for becoming a physician is I want to help serve the underserved in my city, particularly those who can't receive care because of cost barriers. I come from a city with a really high homeless population, and working 911 shifts as an EMT has primarily placed me in less affluent neighborhoods. From many of the conversations I have had with patients and people who come to the shelters, their health was almost always a significant contributing factor to the circumstances that they were now in. I want to invest in people in one aspect of their lives to at least give people the opportunity to live the life they want and are capable of. As for my campus leadership opportunities, I don't really have any outside of being a TA for a class, which I understand is mostly academic. I did not feel great vibes from my school's "premed" clubs, so I kind of skipped over them. The only other leadership activity I can think of is helping every year in my school's admissions committee to recruit people, interview them for my major, and decide on scholarship awards. Not really sure if this counts as leadership though. Do you have any recommendations for any leadership opportunities I should pursue? I do not have any hospital volunteering, my only clinical experience is my job as an EMT. Is this something you would recommend I start on?

The question I have is whether you have enough exposure to hospital settings, either in your shadowing or working/volunteering. Serving underserved or marginalized communities should be everyone's goal in healthcare, and you are backing that part up with your experiences, but it's not as clear how shadowing orthopedics connects with the rest of your statement to help those who cannot access care due to costs. (Have you shadowed podiatrists? Worked in free clinics, or is the shelter part of one?) Since most of your upcoming education will happen in academic medical centers, I want to be sure you know what that's like, especially in more primary care/internal medicine settings.