WAMC Reapplicant for Upcoming Cycle (Non-Trad)

[vDVDSVD]

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I applied for the 2024-2025 cycle and have not received any IIs. I am considering applying for the upcoming 2026-2027 cycle. I will share my details below and then my thoughts about what I may decide to do moving forward. I would appreciate advice on the feasibility of my plan and my alternatives. Thank you very much!

1. cGPA: 3.75
2. 509 (129/128/127/125), 514 (127/130/126/131), 509 (126/127/128/128)
3. CA
4. Asian ORM
5. CA Private; graduated '22
6. Total: 300 hours
   1. 120 hours undergrad
   2. 170 hours gap
   3. 90 hours gap: unhoused community population
7. Total: 2160 hours
   1. 1440 hours undergrad: basic science on antibiotic resistance, received 15k award at institution and honors for my research project (LOR)
   2. 720 hours gap: over 9 month period (2024-2025) in basic science on brain cancer (LOR)
8. Total: 100 hours
   1. 50 hours: preceptorship following pediatrics, heme/onc, general surgery, allergy, ID
   2. 50 hours: rheumatology
9. Total: 422 hours
   1. 262 hours gap: School On Wheels (tutoring underserved and unhoused students)
   2. 160 hours gap: Crisis Text Line
10. Total 7601 hours
    1. 895 hours: team water sport outside of school
    2. 5376 hours: personal training hobby taken to high level and nutrition for self and family
    3. 1330 hours: orchestra and outside music playing
11. (1) Honors in Science Major, 80k Merit Scholarship for undergrad, dean's List, 15k research award for undergrad
12. In submission clinical publication and maybe review paper. Listed CS Harvard programming course I took as advised by my premed advisor bc I didn't have much going on immediately post graduation.

Activities Thoughts:
I was told by one physician fellow that some of my hours might seem inflated or not significant over the amount of time I did it (i.e. how many hours per week). Some things like how I titled my activities sounds overly inflated as well. Random things like the CS course might seem like I was just trying to fill in categories in the activities list.

Clinical Hours:
I'm not sure if i have too little, given that I was/am 3-4 years post grad and that the hours may not seem that great being spread out over 3 different activities. The unhoused community clinical volunteering is something I am continuing with and was something that was listed as only anticipated hours and not complete at the time of submission for the 2024-2025 cycle.

MCAT:
To keep it simple, while providing some of my personal thoughts, I think this is what hurt me the most. I most regret my 3rd attempt. I was told by people not in the field (AKA medical adjacent family members) that my subsections in CP and BB from my 2nd attempt were too low despite my total 514 score being fine. I honestly had a good amount of people tell me it would be better to focus on my ECs at the time, but I went ahead with the 3rd attempt anyways (I am a huge overthinker and have a hard time with so many people, especially family, telling me what they think I should do). My 3rd attempt went terribly and affected the quality of my brain cancer research that I foolishly did simultaneously. My grandmother was very very sick and lives nearby, extreme personal and work stresses, and the CA fires occurred in Jan 2025 in the same month as I was taking the exam. I was very distressed and was worried about all this stress life being for nothing and didn't void. This was written about more professionally in the "Other Impactful Experiences" section of the primary.

LORs:
Do not know how great my LORs are. Although one of my PIs is a physician, none of my LORs were written about me in a clinical context.

PS:
From the advice I have received, I think the thing I need to improve most is making it very clear the reasons and experiences that cement my reason for pursuing medicine. I feel better about what I would like to write about how to improve it.

Secondaries:
I had a hard time and submitted the majority of my secondaries late. Out of 28 apps, I submitted 23 of them in September-November with most of them being in the latter months. Regardless of when I apply, I plan to actually pre-write and submit early/on-time. I think this was a huge huge problem for my past cycle.

School List:
West Coast: DGSOM UCLA, Keck USC, UCI, UCSD, UCSF, Colorado, University of Hawaii (have personal ties)
East Coast: Albany, Albert Einstein, Hofstra, Drexel, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Stony Brook, Larner Vermont, Thomas Jefferson, SUNY Upstate, Brown, Tufts, U Mass, Miami Miller, U Pitt
Midwest: Rosalind Franklin, Emory, Loyola Stritch, Rush, U of Illinois, Wake Forest



Moving forward:
Fortunately, I am in a position to be able to apply again and am able to apply in the 2027-2028 cycle if I wanted too. However, I do prefer to reapply the upcoming cycle. The things that would change for the coming cycle are having a physician LOR from my unhoused clinical volunteering and the hours would have actually gone through. I am not sure if I need more clinical hours/experiences and was considering doing EMT. For EMT, I can do an intensive hybrid course that lasts about 1 month in mid March or maybe April to May which I can list for hours/experience. Alternatively, I am considering changing labs and applying for clinical research positions. Maybe I can get a letter from that new research position, but it's a hit or miss in terms of the experience. I was hoping the clinical research can sort of double dip in terms of a new experience, research, and more clinical exposure. I hope the clinical pub I am on will get accepted soon as well.

Alternatively, I was thinking of being very intense in retaking the MCAT for a very risky 4th attempt. I think I would need to get basically a 519+ for it to not hurt me. I know medical schools value academic ability and want to see you are actually teachable. I think either way if I want to reapply this coming cycle or next, I would take it now so I do not disrupt any other activities I want to do in the future. I was considering maybe volunteering 1-2 days at the underserved clinical experience for 4 hours each day (Tuesdays and Wednesdays) and then studying full time to take the exam in May. I was told even volunteering one day might be risky for me and I should dedicate my all to the MCAT. If I do volunteer 1 or 2 days, I would want to do it at this new location I was offered to give myself a new experience that I also have a more personal connection to.

I don't believe anything is a guarantee, but do you think the MCAT plan with the volunteering (assuming all goes my way) could be enough for getting into an MD school the coming cycle? Or, do you think I need those extra clinical (EMT or clinical research) experiences to buff my experiences too?

I will be applying DO and think I have a decent shot for the coming cycle. Either way, I think I need to be more intelligent with my school list and actually applying on time. I don't know if I have enough to qualify for a good enough app this cycle with the new LOR, maybe MCAT/EMT/clinical research, and continued unhoused volunteering and new site. Thank you in advance for the advice.

 

[LelouchLamperouge]

Many schools average your MCAT scores. As of right now, that is about a 510. To get up to 515 average, you would need a 525. You are better off improving your application in other areas than retaking the MCAT. Who advised you to retake a 514? YOU are the applicant. Do not listen to your family. They are not the ones taking on the debt and risking their 20s to become a physician.

Your school list is questionable. You have more than a few reaches.

Feel free to PM if you have more questions.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Welcome to the forums.

Have you talked with any admissions recruiters at schools on your list? How did you come up with this list?

How did you choose your LORs in your past cycle? Did you check if schools had requirements (like professor letters)? Do you have a plan to include one or two science professor letters (assuming your PI counts as one, unless a school is more nitpicky wanting a lecturer)?

The bulk of your listed hours is with your hobbies, and they each exceed the amount of time spent in community service or clinical exposure. You have near zero service orientation activities, and your tutoring homeless children (very admirable) still counts as teaching, tutoring, or mentoring. But I don't see any other activities showing commitment to underserved populations since you also have a research job.

Even if I disregarded your personal hobbies, the listed hours seem low. You have been away from school at least two years, and it just looks like you hardly spent time working a full-time job. What have you been doing since you graduated? What you have done in the last 3 years post-grad count more than your activities in college (though it still has some value) as it shows how you really have prepared for medical school. Many others take about as much time as you building their experience bank with understanding community and social needs and services, deeply diving into research, and gaining near full-time exposure in clinical settings. I don't see your profile keeping pace with such applicants with whom I would compare you.

 

[Med Ed]

Agree with above, it looks like you have spent four gap years accumulating one gap year of experiences.

You are up against people who have thousands of hours post-grad working as MAs/PCTs/etc. You have zero usable non-clinical volunteering hours. You retook an 89th percentile MCAT and then used the OIE space to rationalize the poor outcome. You seem to think Emory and Wake Forest are in the midwest.

I think some last-minute tweaks for 2026 are very, very unlikely to work out for you. If you want to be truly competitive for MD then you need to spend the next 15 months doing serious rehab of your deficiencies. Don't touch the MCAT again unless you're up against score expiration.

 

[polymerization]

Honestly what comes across most clearly in your post is that your desperation to improve in any direction and appear accomplished is hurting you.

For starters, I agree that you probably should not have taken the MCAT again: schools average scores out so even if you had a 520 on your fourth attempt, you would still end up with a score lower than your highest score. Nothing to do here other than accept what it is. I'm curious as to what the advisors here will tell you with respect to this at this point, but my suspicion is that they will tell you to leave it alone.

You seem really confused about what schools consider clinical experience. Just going through an EMT training program and listing those hours is not what they are looking for. I'm not clear on what your clinical volunteering actually was, but whatever it is, it is insufficient in proportion to the rest of your activities. You are applying to medical school: schools are going to want to see that you chose to spend your time helping patients and unfortunately at the moment your application looks like you were more interested in research. (Related: no, please do not go out and get even more research experience.)

You can do EMT, if you wanted to, but it is not the only option, and it would not be a 1 month affair. You're looking at another year working full-time in one of the typical entry-level clinical jobs (MA, CNA, EMT, PCT, etc.). My recommendation is MA since you can be trained on the job without certification depending on what state you live in. I really worry about your prospects having graduated in 2022 and accrued ~300(?) hours around patients, if I'm reading this correctly? You are sending a strong signal in the wrong direction.

Your non-clinical volunteering does not show service orientation in the way medical schools prefer. They want to see you in a position of humility, and are suspicious of activities where you come across like a white knight. You want to do at least 150 hours of food bank, soup kitchen, etc. Something unglamorous and maybe even a little "dirty" that puts you in a situation where you're face-to-face with someone you might otherwise lack experiences engaging with directly.

Do not list that you took the CS50 MOOC at Harvard. It's not the same as actually taking the class at Harvard and it isn't worth noting in your activities. Anything academic admissions cares about is taken for credit and populates in your course history. It also doesn't make sense considering you are applying to medical school and have low hours in the categories that matter. Within that frame, it goes from being disjointed and unadvisable to coming across like you're scrambling to do anything except make contact with a patient. Again, a lot of effort in the wrong direction.

This one is just a personal pet peeve that I'm not sure resonates (and the advisors can correct me if I'm wrong)—but I think, proportionally, it is not the slam dunk you think it is to talk about your 7600+ hours of hobbies. Preparing to apply for medical school is a stressful process in which you have a vanishingly low degree of freedom given all of the things schools expect you to have. I get it: if you don't have those hours on your application, your hours look "light" in comparison, but you're assuming an hour is an hour is an hour, and I'm telling you that maxim doesn't exactly hold. Your hours already look light, to say you spent years in recreation comes across like a full-throated confession that there wasn't some urgent life circumstance getting in the way of better performance, you chose this, and chose wrong. It's fine if you want to talk about a hobby or two, but it's naive and self-defeating to put down hours orders of magnitude greater than the hours that actually count.

Finally, and probably most importantly, your school list was very optimistic to say the least. If you are applying in May, you have very little time to coordinate opportunities prior to application and your time is probably better spent preparing secondaries (you're looking to submit these as soon as physically possible... like, August is too late early). That means that, considering you would be applying with roughly this application, I don't see a broad MD application being feasible. You can shoot your shot with the new schools if you want to, but I think your primary competitive zone will be at DO schools.

To make a long story short, the problems with your application took a long time to form, and they'll take a long time to fix. If you're trying to go for a shorter on-ramp to medical school, you need to very drastically lower your expectations in a way that probably hurts to hear.

 

[vDVDSVD]

Agree with above, it looks like you have spent four gap years accumulating one gap year of experiences.

You are up against people who have thousands of hours post-grad working as MAs/PCTs/etc. You have zero usable non-clinical volunteering hours. You retook an 89th percentile MCAT and then used the OIE space to rationalize the poor outcome. You seem to think Emory and Wake Forest are in the midwest.

I think some last-minute tweaks for 2026 are very, very unlikely to work out for you. If you want to be truly competitive for MD then you need to spend the next 15 months doing serious rehab of your deficiencies. Don't touch the MCAT again unless you're up against score expiration.

Thank you for the thoughtful advice!

I definitely had a problem accruing like 120 hours of my clinical experiences during undergrad when I honestly wasn't sure if I was going to pursue medicine. This experience was also during COVID, so it was cut short for me. Post grad for ~1.5 years plus I tried pivoting away from medicine and science to experience potential new interests career-wise, so my experiences didn't really begin again until post that time and post my MCAT studies. As you've said about my experiences, I think they are rather lacking and am unsure about how to shore that up given my literal time gaps. By the time I begun some of my volunteer clinical activities, most of my week was taken up doing research starting in late 2024.

Also, I didn't realize people would consider Emory and Wake Forest to be Southeast US (I think). Sorry about that!

 

[vDVDSVD]

Welcome to the forums.

Have you talked with any admissions recruiters at schools on your list? How did you come up with this list?

How did you choose your LORs in your past cycle? Did you check if schools had requirements (like professor letters)? Do you have a plan to include one or two science professor letters (assuming your PI counts as one, unless a school is more nitpicky wanting a lecturer)?

The bulk of your listed hours is with your hobbies, and they each exceed the amount of time spent in community service or clinical exposure. You have near zero service orientation activities, and your tutoring homeless children (very admirable) still counts as teaching, tutoring, or mentoring. But I don't see any other activities showing commitment to underserved populations since you also have a research job.

Even if I disregarded your personal hobbies, the listed hours seem low. You have been away from school at least two years, and it just looks like you hardly spent time working a full-time job. What have you been doing since you graduated? What you have done in the last 3 years post-grad count more than your activities in college (though it still has some value) as it shows how you really have prepared for medical school. Many others take about as much time as you building their experience bank with understanding community and social needs and services, deeply diving into research, and gaining near full-time exposure in clinical settings. I don't see your profile keeping pace with such applicants with whom I would compare you.

Thanks for the response and welcome!

I did not consult any people or admissions recruiters for my school list. I definitely need to be much more strategic about it.

I chose my 2 research profs, one of which was my undergrad mentor. I also had some from head of departments and had known all 4 years at school. The one I always included was from a religious studies professor I had a closer relationship with.

I totally understand the hobbies problem. Most of my hours began in late 2024 after having decided to pursue medicine again post grad and after my MCAT attempts. The majority of my hours were spent doing my post grad research position. None of my previous activities pre-late 2024 are not relevant at all to medicine/science. What are your thoughts on that? I know that in comparison to other non-trads this many years out, I'm certainly not competitive.

 

[vDVDSVD]

Honestly what comes across most clearly in your post is that your desperation to improve in any direction and appear accomplished is hurting you.

For starters, I agree that you probably should not have taken the MCAT again: schools average scores out so even if you had a 520 on your fourth attempt, you would still end up with a score lower than your highest score. Nothing to do here other than accept what it is. I'm curious as to what the advisors here will tell you with respect to this at this point, but my suspicion is that they will tell you to leave it alone.

You seem really confused about what schools consider clinical experience. Just going through an EMT training program and listing those hours is not what they are looking for. I'm not clear on what your clinical volunteering actually was, but whatever it is, it is insufficient in proportion to the rest of your activities. You are applying to medical school: schools are going to want to see that you chose to spend your time helping patients and unfortunately at the moment your application looks like you were more interested in research. (Related: no, please do not go out and get even more research experience.)

You can do EMT, if you wanted to, but it is not the only option, and it would not be a 1 month affair. You're looking at another year working full-time in one of the typical entry-level clinical jobs (MA, CNA, EMT, PCT, etc.). My recommendation is MA since you can be trained on the job without certification depending on what state you live in. I really worry about your prospects having graduated in 2022 and accrued ~300(?) hours around patients, if I'm reading this correctly? You are sending a strong signal in the wrong direction.

Your non-clinical volunteering does not show service orientation in the way medical schools prefer. They want to see you in a position of humility, and are suspicious of activities where you come across like a white knight. You want to do at least 150 hours of food bank, soup kitchen, etc. Something unglamorous and maybe even a little "dirty" that puts you in a situation where you're face-to-face with someone you might otherwise lack experiences engaging with directly.

Do not list that you took the CS50 MOOC at Harvard. It's not the same as actually taking the class at Harvard and it isn't worth noting in your activities. Anything academic admissions cares about is taken for credit and populates in your course history. It also doesn't make sense considering you are applying to medical school and have low hours in the categories that matter. Within that frame, it goes from being disjointed and unadvisable to coming across like you're scrambling to do anything except make contact with a patient. Again, a lot of effort in the wrong direction.

This one is just a personal pet peeve that I'm not sure resonates (and the advisors can correct me if I'm wrong)—but I think, proportionally, it is not the slam dunk you think it is to talk about your 7600+ hours of hobbies. Preparing to apply for medical school is a stressful process in which you have a vanishingly low degree of freedom given all of the things schools expect you to have. I get it: if you don't have those hours on your application, your hours look "light" in comparison, but you're assuming an hour is an hour is an hour, and I'm telling you that maxim doesn't exactly hold. Your hours already look light, to say you spent years in recreation comes across like a full-throated confession that there wasn't some urgent life circumstance getting in the way of better performance, you chose this, and chose wrong. It's fine if you want to talk about a hobby or two, but it's naive and self-defeating to put down hours orders of magnitude greater than the hours that actually count.

Finally, and probably most importantly, your school list was very optimistic to say the least. If you are applying in May, you have very little time to coordinate opportunities prior to application and your time is probably better spent preparing secondaries (you're looking to submit these as soon as physically possible... like, August is too late early). That means that, considering you would be applying with roughly this application, I don't see a broad MD application being feasible. You can shoot your shot with the new schools if you want to, but I think your primary competitive zone will be at DO schools.

To make a long story short, the problems with your application took a long time to form, and they'll take a long time to fix. If you're trying to go for a shorter on-ramp to medical school, you need to very drastically lower your expectations in a way that probably hurts to hear.

I appreciate the detailed response on everything. It really helps me a lot and helps me focus through all the stress.

I have asked one other person here, but my initial impression for MCAT scores were that schools say they look at all scores, highest total, and/or last 3 attempts. This was according to MSAR. None of them mentioned an average as far as I recall. Is this averaging protocol explicitly known or stated anywhere? Just wondering for clarification, my school list definitely needs to be re-crafted much better. I had previously considered doing that retake for a very high score, but considering the averaging will definitely affect me. I think even if I apply a year later, I think this is the time to focus on the exam bc I do not want to think I need to retake later while I'm already immersed full-time in any activity I decide to put my all into.

For the CS50 course and hobbies, I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. I think these were all just such longer term things I had before deciding to go for medicine. To me now, it definitely signals that I didn't "care" enough for any of my relevant medicine-relevant activities and don't have a real conviction for a very life and morally/personality devoted career such as medicine.

The detailed response is very much appreciative. I overthink so much, and I think it's very self-sabotaging for me. I don't take personally anything you said to heart. Again, thank you so much for all the advice.

 

[Med Ed]

Of the commonly used methods, averaging scores usually gives the lowest result. Hence, it's the most conservative assumption.

Members of the admissions committee will see all scores, and once they are seen they cannot be unseen.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

When screening applications, one needs to be fair in comparing applicants with one vs. multiple scores. Would you be more "impressed" with someone who scores 518 in one attempt or someone who gets it on the third try? The answer is that MCAT performance is considered a proxy for your USMLE performance, where you want to just take those exams once.

I have asked one other person here, but my initial impression for MCAT scores were that schools say they look at all scores, highest total, and/or last 3 attempts. This was according to MSAR. None of them mentioned an average as far as I recall. Is this averaging protocol explicitly known or stated anywhere? Just wondering for clarification, my school list definitely needs to be re-crafted much better. I had previously considered doing that retake for a very high score, but considering the averaging will definitely affect me. I think even if I apply a year later, I think this is the time to focus on the exam bc I do not want to think I need to retake later while I'm already immersed full-time in any activity I decide to put my all into.

For the CS50 course and hobbies, I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. I think these were all just such longer term things I had before deciding to go for medicine. To me now, it definitely signals that I didn't "care" enough for any of my relevant medicine-relevant activities and don't have a real conviction for a very life and morally/personality devoted career such as medicine.

The detailed response is very much appreciative. I overthink so much, and I think it's very self-sabotaging for me. I don't take personally anything you said to heart. Again, thank you so much for all the advice.

From a forthcoming SDN article, watch this space:

The average MCAT score appears to be the strongest predictor of medical students' academic preparation. Research identifies the average MCAT score as the optimal and most equitable method for considering repeat test-takers, showing a correlation with similar Step 1 scores for both single-attempt and repeat-attempt matriculants.

 

[polymerization]

I appreciate the detailed response on everything. It really helps me a lot and helps me focus through all the stress.

I have asked one other person here, but my initial impression for MCAT scores were that schools say they look at all scores, highest total, and/or last 3 attempts. This was according to MSAR. None of them mentioned an average as far as I recall. Is this averaging protocol explicitly known or stated anywhere? Just wondering for clarification, my school list definitely needs to be re-crafted much better. I had previously considered doing that retake for a very high score, but considering the averaging will definitely affect me. I think even if I apply a year later, I think this is the time to focus on the exam bc I do not want to think I need to retake later while I'm already immersed full-time in any activity I decide to put my all into.

For the CS50 course and hobbies, I wholeheartedly agree with all of this. I think these were all just such longer term things I had before deciding to go for medicine. To me now, it definitely signals that I didn't "care" enough for any of my relevant medicine-relevant activities and don't have a real conviction for a very life and morally/personality devoted career such as medicine.

The detailed response is very much appreciative. I overthink so much, and I think it's very self-sabotaging for me. I don't take personally anything you said to heart. Again, thank you so much for all the advice.

No worries. I mean well... I remember what it was like to go to an unfamiliar office at my college asking for help from people and getting a lot of unclear, contradictory, sometimes-just-straight-up-bad advice. I wanted to shake people by the shoulders and yell at them "would you just tell me if it's crap so I can fix it?!" I could not afford to dilly-dally and go on long philosophical excursions to try and figure out what they were trying to tell me through all of the hedging and little hints. I wished someone would just tell me straight up.

I hope you're walking away with a better understanding of how your profile will be read by evaluators, so you can start making your own choices about how to improve. It's teaching a man to fish, as it were.

Out of caution for making it too far on the other side, you should know that it's not about "not caring." I'm not judging you for not being perfect or implying that you're not serious. You don't have to start planning for a career in medicine in the womb. That said, it cannot seem to evaluators like you decided you wanted to do this ~2 months before applying (hyperbole for effect). It is a very competitive process where you have way more qualified applicants than seats. You have to show (not in words) that you have devoted significant thought and effort over time to this goal. How you do that is up to you, but hopefully I could shake you out of the immediate confusion, so the next time someone tells you to take a free class for no credit, you can safely roll your eyes into the back of your head and ignore them knowing they are pulling your chain or woefully underinformed.

Sending you the most immaculate vibes through the electrons. Good luck on your journey!