Hi all -
I was pre-vet in college, but had a traumatic experience in college that made me shy away from wanting to be on a college campus for four more years after undergrad. Since then, I've worked as a consultant at a company that designs learning/materials for (human) healthcare, among other things. I can elaborate more, but in short, as time has passed and I've put distance between myself and my college experiences, I've changed my original tune from wanting to go to vet school to an interest in human medicine. Since I'm a few years removed from college, I don't have a pre-health advisor to bounce anything off of, so I came here. What I'd like to know is what the biggest holes are in my application and how, if at all, I should frame my work experience. Here's me:
28 years old
BS in a hard science
Overall GPA ~3.7-8; sGPA ~3.4-3.5 (I had a ~3.8 in science classes my latter two years of college if that's an indication of trend)
Haven't taken MCAT yet
College highlights
What would I need to do (besides take and do well on MCAT) to be a competitive applicant? I'm an Indiana resident, if that helps.
I was pre-vet in college, but had a traumatic experience in college that made me shy away from wanting to be on a college campus for four more years after undergrad. Since then, I've worked as a consultant at a company that designs learning/materials for (human) healthcare, among other things. I can elaborate more, but in short, as time has passed and I've put distance between myself and my college experiences, I've changed my original tune from wanting to go to vet school to an interest in human medicine. Since I'm a few years removed from college, I don't have a pre-health advisor to bounce anything off of, so I came here. What I'd like to know is what the biggest holes are in my application and how, if at all, I should frame my work experience. Here's me:
28 years old
BS in a hard science
Overall GPA ~3.7-8; sGPA ~3.4-3.5 (I had a ~3.8 in science classes my latter two years of college if that's an indication of trend)
Haven't taken MCAT yet
College highlights
- Worked in a lab
- Volunteer in the vet hospital
- Worked at a vet clinic
- Involved in a club sport
- Most recently, I've managed the development of an app that seeks to teach chronically ill patients to self-manage their care. I've worked directly with a group of patients and healthcare providers to hold a design session to identify their challenges and desires both when it comes to the care and management of this disease as well as training challenges, then continued to work with a core group of patients to get feedback on and refine successive iterations. My experience included visiting treatment centers to observe patients receiving treatment and conduct interviews with them about their care and experience learning to manage their disease. I've also worked with a group of nurses to manage the development of a provider side of the app that includes resources and training materials for teaching patients.
- Also recently I've worked with a group of physicians to create an app to teach other physicians about a public health issue (being a little intentionally vague here). This has been a year+ long project that again has involved a design phase to identify needs, managing the actual software development, personally writing the in-app content, and working to solicit collaboration with other medical groups. The lead physician is co-presenting this with me at a conference early next year.
- On the research side, I've worked with several physicians on clinical trial development. This has been less hours than the other two as I was in a managerial role, though it did cement that research is not the place for me.
- Countless more projects working to develop solutions for the launch of new biomedical devices, diagnostic tools, etc.
What would I need to do (besides take and do well on MCAT) to be a competitive applicant? I'm an Indiana resident, if that helps.
