Hi all,
I received my MCAT score yesterday, and it pretty much destroyed my hopes of getting into a decent medical school this cycle. I have a unique background in that I migrated to the US right before college, and to adapt to the system and smoothen the cultural transition, started off at a community college. In the small community college, I got no guidance about the process to get in (I didn't know about sdn and reddit until second semester junior year). And I couldn't build any ECs during that time because everyone told me all I needed to do was keep up my grades (as it worked back home). Anyways, graduated from the CC with Associates in Science (4.0) in 1.5 years. Then transferred to top 5 public university. I'm graduating after this summer, and this is how my application currently looks:
State of Residence: NC
GPA: Community College 4.0, Uni: 3.82
MCAT: 132/124/130/127
Clinical Volunteering: ~150 hours in 3 different hospital units (Burn ICU being one of my most meaningful experiences); currently I'm doing 6 hours a week and I'm going to continue these over the gap year).
Non Clinical Volunteering: ~70 hours in a refugee serving organization (also had a leadership position with them), >100 hours of teaching extremely underserved girls to read and write (this was my initiative during high school outside of the US).
Shadowing: 56 hours in two specialities.
Research: 760 hours over 1 year at one of the NIH institutions (two great letters from a PI and a staff scientist there), presentations (part of my program): oral, poster, symposium (won an honorable mention in the 3-minute oral presentation) - a possible publication as co-author later this year (doesn't seem to be coming before secondaries go in).
Work Experience: Cashier/manager at a convenience store (2.5 years).
Teaching: peer mentor for Organic Chemistry only 1 semester.
Miscellaneous: Leadership position at the CC honor society, and 20 other patched hours of non clinical volunteers.
Immediate family in medicine: N (No woman in my entire family except me has ever tried to pursue a career - all of them are homemakers).
My big concerns: 1. extremely low CARS will probably get me screened at a lot of schools - I can possibly explain it with English being my third language, but this is a really common excuse and I was getting 127-128 in the FLs, just bombed the real one.
2. My ECs are squeezed into only the last 3 semesters of undergrad - might work against me.
I don't have a school list yet because I'm not sure if I should apply or not.
Any advice or suggestions about whether I should apply this cycle or take another gap year to retake the MCAT and keep working on my ECs are appreciated.
I received my MCAT score yesterday, and it pretty much destroyed my hopes of getting into a decent medical school this cycle. I have a unique background in that I migrated to the US right before college, and to adapt to the system and smoothen the cultural transition, started off at a community college. In the small community college, I got no guidance about the process to get in (I didn't know about sdn and reddit until second semester junior year). And I couldn't build any ECs during that time because everyone told me all I needed to do was keep up my grades (as it worked back home). Anyways, graduated from the CC with Associates in Science (4.0) in 1.5 years. Then transferred to top 5 public university. I'm graduating after this summer, and this is how my application currently looks:
State of Residence: NC
GPA: Community College 4.0, Uni: 3.82
MCAT: 132/124/130/127
Clinical Volunteering: ~150 hours in 3 different hospital units (Burn ICU being one of my most meaningful experiences); currently I'm doing 6 hours a week and I'm going to continue these over the gap year).
Non Clinical Volunteering: ~70 hours in a refugee serving organization (also had a leadership position with them), >100 hours of teaching extremely underserved girls to read and write (this was my initiative during high school outside of the US).
Shadowing: 56 hours in two specialities.
Research: 760 hours over 1 year at one of the NIH institutions (two great letters from a PI and a staff scientist there), presentations (part of my program): oral, poster, symposium (won an honorable mention in the 3-minute oral presentation) - a possible publication as co-author later this year (doesn't seem to be coming before secondaries go in).
Work Experience: Cashier/manager at a convenience store (2.5 years).
Teaching: peer mentor for Organic Chemistry only 1 semester.
Miscellaneous: Leadership position at the CC honor society, and 20 other patched hours of non clinical volunteers.
Immediate family in medicine: N (No woman in my entire family except me has ever tried to pursue a career - all of them are homemakers).
My big concerns: 1. extremely low CARS will probably get me screened at a lot of schools - I can possibly explain it with English being my third language, but this is a really common excuse and I was getting 127-128 in the FLs, just bombed the real one.
2. My ECs are squeezed into only the last 3 semesters of undergrad - might work against me.
I don't have a school list yet because I'm not sure if I should apply or not.
Any advice or suggestions about whether I should apply this cycle or take another gap year to retake the MCAT and keep working on my ECs are appreciated.
