WAMC + School List (3.96/523) ‘26-‘27 Cycle

[DonPetohmi]

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1. cGPA and sGPA as calculated by AMCAS or AACOMAS
• cGPA: 3.96
• sGPA: 3.94

2. MCAT score(s) and breakdown. Include all (non-voided) attempts
• Score: 523
• Breakdown: 132/128/131/132

3. State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US)
• Pennsylvania (PA)

4. Ethnicity and/or race
• White — ORM
• Male

5. Undergraduate institution or category
• Public State School
• Major: Biochemistry
• Minors: Chemistry, Exercise Science
• Certificate: Ethics/Philosophy of Medicine

6. Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer)
• 250 hours – Nursing Assistant (nursing home)
• 220 hours – Scribe at pediatric cardiology clinic
• 200 hours – Volunteer at cancer center
• 150 hours – Hospital food services (delivered food to patients and helped them eat; unsure if this counts as clinical, could certainly smell them)

7. Research experience and productivity
• 1500 hours – Cancer immunotherapy lab (most meaningful)
• 3 posters at university fairs
• 1 poster at national conference (also planning on applying to NCUR this year)
• 1 mid-low author publication
• 1 second-author manuscript in prep (expected submission Spring 2026)
• Thinking about NIH IRTA Postbac during gap year (‘26-‘27). Would love some feedback on this and if it would be better to just stick with my current lab as a technician, or look elsewhere.

8. Shadowing experience and specialties represented
• 100 hours across ~10 physicians in:
• Internal Medicine, General Surgery, Orthopedics, Ophthalmology, Plastic Surgery, Radiology, Emergency Medicine

9. Non-clinical volunteering
• 200 hours – Crisis Text Line
• 280 hours – Soup kitchen (2 years)
• 80 hours – Conversations to Remember (weekly video calls with seniors)

10. Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc.)

Leadership / Teaching
• Suicide prevention club: 1 year member, 2 years on executive board
• AMSA mentor: 2 years
• STEM UTA: 2 semesters
Hobbies / Interests
• Lifting/bodybuilding (5 years) – Passionate and ties into exercise science minor. (Unsure if I will include)
• Movies (Lifetime?) – Over 1000 rated on Letterboxd, could talk about this with interviewers extensively (Unsure if I will include)
• Learning Spanish (1 year) – Started learning 2 months ago and got obsessed. Currently at low B1 level. Expecting to be conversational (B2ish) by app time; very interested in language acquisition and its science, but newer hobby. (Unsure if I will include)

11. Relevant honors or awards
• University’s Honor’s College
• Merit-Based University scholarship (10K/yr for all 4 years)

12. Anything else not listed you think might be important

Letters of Recommendation
• Research PI — Strong (known 4 years in lab and attend his “at-home” lab dinners, very confident in LOR)
• STEM professor (TA’d for) — Decent
• Certificate professor — Said would be “very good,” but hasn’t uploaded to Interfolio after few months so a little worried, still in no rush though.
• Unknown second STEM professor — TBD during senior year (beginning in fall)
• Soup kitchen staff — Considering asking (they’ve offered multiple times and I know a lot of staff on a personal level, recently helped manager, and likely writer, move into his new home)

Not sure if I should select low SES due to complicated divorced parent situation. I was raised by a single mother with full custody of 3 who constantly had 2-3 jobs to provide for us, however we did receive child support from my father who is a physician and fairly wealthy. The support however was limited and outside of this there was no further assistance. I have qualified each year for Pell Grant and similar state grants and this year received 5K from Pell. Also will quality for FAP. So, in short, I really don’t know what to select because I’ve seen some classifications of low SES focus on qualifications for these grants and others look at education/profession of parent(s).

One thing I’ve been debating regarding my school list is how many schools to apply to. Rn it is quite long, but I also know that reapplying is quite costly and I want to make sure there is as small of a chance of that as possible. However, if I could reduce my list, I would like to. Also please let me know if there’s anything you think I should focus on in my last year (going into 4th year of undergrad) to strengthen my app. I’m still not exactly sure how I’ll be tying my app together (I have yet to start prewriting although I’d like to start soon) but I do know I’m shooting for research focused schools and that an interest in cancer work will be talked about. I have other interests like mental health, fitness, etc. that I may talk about too. I’m also not sure what to select for my other meaningful experience, to me, volunteering at the soup kitchen was quite meaningful, but I haven’t yet decided if I’ll select it. Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance for reading! You all have been so helpful thus far!

Harvard
UCSF
Johns Hopkins
Columbia
Duke
Penn
NYU
Stanford
WashU
Michigan
Yale
Mayo
UCLA
Vanderbilt
Northwestern
Pitt
Cornell
Mt. Sinai
Chicago
Einstein
Emory
Ohio State
USC Keck
UVA
Case Western Reserve
Brown
Colorado
Rochester
BU
Cincinnati
Hofstra
USF Morsani
TJU Kimmel
Georgetown
Geisel
VCU
Temple
Penn State
Drexel
Geisinger

 

[Faha]

You have a good list and should receive several interviews. You could remove VCU since they will "yield protect".

 

[AsclepiusAdvisingLLC]

Strong on-papers. A candidate like you will receive unique scrutiny with a guiding question - "will this person actually attend our school if admitted?"

They will assume that other schools will be admitting you and you're going to no doubt be applying to the top schools (and they would be right in this). This is a hurdle to start building momentum towards early.

Your candidacy will benefit from early school research in terms of academics, research areas (especially for your interests), and the student body that you want to be around. We've spoken with many candidates like yourself who made their school decisions based off of their conversations with groups at the schools. They reached out through the admissions office about talking with someone to learn more.

They had a chance to talk with people at those schools and it meant something to them that they were willing to take time to do so.

Obviously, you will also be expected to have excellent written materials.

If you have a parent with a graduate professional degree - then you're considered not applicable by AMCAS, on paper. You would benefit from contacting AMCAS and explaining your situation. Go straight to the source 🙂

 

[Mr.Smile12]

You need to be in a position where the schools want to recruit you. You must be picky, and students need to convince you why their program is "perfect" for you. This requires you to have a strong idea of your purpose as a physician, or you might be easily bedazzled by "prestige."

If you have enough money to buy a mansion, be selective because every mansion is going to look impressive. They should.

 

[DonPetohmi]

You have a good list and should receive several interviews. You could remove VCU since they will "yield protect".

I wondered about this, but I have both an uncle and Dad who have attended this school so I thought maybe these ties would override yield protection? What do you think?

 

[DonPetohmi]

Strong on-papers. A candidate like you will receive unique scrutiny with a guiding question - "will this person actually attend our school if admitted?"

They will assume that other schools will be admitting you and you're going to no doubt be applying to the top schools (and they would be right in this). This is a hurdle to start building momentum towards early.

Your candidacy will benefit from early school research in terms of academics, research areas (especially for your interests), and the student body that you want to be around. We've spoken with many candidates like yourself who made their school decisions based off of their conversations with groups at the schools. They reached out through the admissions office about talking with someone to learn more.

They had a chance to talk with people at those schools and it meant something to them that they were willing to take time to do so.

Obviously, you will also be expected to have excellent written materials.

If you have a parent with a graduate professional degree - then you're considered not applicable by AMCAS, on paper. You would benefit from contacting AMCAS and explaining your situation. Go straight to the source 🙂

Thanks for the great advice! I will contact AMCAS and also some admissions offices to get some contacts that might help me learn about this school. I didn't think to do this before, but that's a good idea and could be extremely helpful!

 

[DonPetohmi]

You need to be in a position where the schools want to recruit you. You must be picky, and students need to convince you why their program is "perfect" for you. This requires you to have a strong idea of your purpose as a physician, or you might be easily bedazzled by "prestige."

If you have enough money to buy a mansion, be selective because every mansion is going to look impressive. They should.

Okay thank you! This is a very helpful perspective, and I'll definitely try to re-evaluate my list while keeping this in mind. The only difficulty is that, although I would love to be in the position where I take my pick and the schools want to recruit, I'm not sure how realistic this is and at the end of the day I really just want to be a doctor. There are certainly schools I'd love to go to more than others, but I just wanted to be cautious because I might not have the funds for another cycle. I still have a lot of time to revise this list and mull it over though so if you have any other words of wisdom, I would love to hear!

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Okay thank you! This is a very helpful perspective, and I'll definitely try to re-evaluate my list while keeping this in mind. The only difficulty is that, although I would love to be in the position where I take my pick and the schools want to recruit, I'm not sure how realistic this is and at the end of the day I really just want to be a doctor. There are certainly schools I'd love to go to more than others, but I just wanted to be cautious because I might not have the funds for another cycle. I still have a lot of time to revise this list and mull it over though so if you have any other words of wisdom, I would love to hear!

As Asclepius has noted, network with schools that you want to attend. Check with students at the schools or through AMSA or APAMSA chapter officers. You must figure out what you are looking for in a school. Every mansion has a bathroom in it, so you can't just be satisfied with "any" house as an outhouse would also work fine.

 

[Faha]

I wondered about this, but I have both an uncle and Dad who have attended this school so I thought maybe these ties would override yield protection? What do you think?

You could apply there with that connection.

 

[DonPetohmi]

As Asclepius has noted, network with schools that you want to attend. Check with students at the schools or through AMSA or APAMSA chapter officers. You must figure out what you are looking for in a school. Every mansion has a bathroom in it, so you can't just be satisfied with "any" house as an outhouse would also work fine.

Yeah that makes sense. I'll think over it and hopefully in the next few months develop a slimmed down version of this list with only schools I truly feel some sort of connection to based on specific qualities I can find out about through research.

 

[mike-sheree]

I wondered about this, but I have both an uncle and Dad who have attended this school so I thought maybe these ties would override yield protection? What do you think?

If you feel you would like to go there certainly apply. If you don’t want to go there or it’s low on your list don’t apply. It doesn’t appear you will have a difficult time getting in at one of the many other places you listed. You don’t need a real long list. You’re going to get in someplace. Be realistic and stop stressing..

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I wondered about this, but I have both an uncle and Dad who have attended this school so I thought maybe these ties would override yield protection? What do you think?

Your dad? Are you close with him? You said...

Not sure if I should select low SES due to complicated divorced parent situation. I was raised by a single mother with full custody of 3 who constantly had 2-3 jobs to provide for us, however we did receive child support from my father who is a physician and fairly wealthy. The support however was limited and outside of this there was no further assistance. I have qualified each year for Pell Grant and similar state grants and this year received 5K from Pell. Also will quality for FAP. So, in short, I really don’t know what to select because I’ve seen some classifications of low SES focus on qualifications for these grants and others look at education/profession of parent(s).

You want to apply to a program where your father got his medical degree but claim low-SES because he was an absent parent, and your family survived on his child support. How will you describe this situation to that school?

 

[DonPetohmi]

Your dad? Are you close with him? You said...


You want to apply to a program where your father got his medical degree but claim low-SES because he was an absent parent, and your family survived on his child support. How will you describe this situation to that school?

Yes, it’s a complicated situation and something I know I’ll need to be ready to talk about. My dad and I aren’t super close, but growing up I saw him occasionally, including holidays. He wasn’t a financial support system, but I still heard about his life and his time at the school. We did have a personal relationship, but that’s separate from the reality of our financial situation.

Another commenter mentioned that a parental graduate degree (my mom has a master’s) disqualifies me from “low SES” in AMCAS, so I may not select it. That’s tricky for me because my life was still strongly shaped by these experiences, and combined with being from a very rural area, I faced challenges many peers didn’t. I might just share that in essays rather than the checkbox, since I don’t want to claim anything technically inaccurate. I’ll admit I may have misunderstood the SES definition, it’s surprising to me that a degree can outweigh significant financial hardship and complex family dynamics.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Yes, it’s a complicated situation and something I know I’ll need to be ready to talk about. My dad and I aren’t super close, but growing up I saw him occasionally, including holidays. He wasn’t a financial support system, but I still heard about his life and his time at the school. We did have a personal relationship, but that’s separate from the reality of our financial situation.

Another commenter mentioned that a parental graduate degree (my mom has a master’s) disqualifies me from “low SES” in AMCAS, so I may not select it. That’s tricky for me because my life was still strongly shaped by these experiences, and combined with being from a very rural area, I faced challenges many peers didn’t. I might just share that in essays rather than the checkbox, since I don’t want to claim anything technically inaccurate. I’ll admit I may have misunderstood the SES definition, it’s surprising to me that a degree can outweigh significant financial hardship and complex family dynamics.

You might not be EO-1, but experienced admissions committees look at more than just the EO score. That's where your own narrative on their secondaries makes a difference.