WAMC/School list - 508 MCAT, 3.97 gpa

[risamarisa]

Undergrad GPA: 3.97
MCAT: 128/127/124/129 (508) - particularly concerned about the fact that Bio/Biochem section is below 125 - thoughts?
Demographics: Asian Indian female
Undergrad institution - one of the top 2 UCs in CA
State of residence - CA, permanent US resident
First time applicant

Clinical experience: 2000+ hours as an MA in OBGYN, few hundred hours as Scribe one summer
Research: research in moss (totally unrelated to bio/medicine), simple independent project published as first author and best poster award at a conference. Another research started recently - qualitative study in field of OBGYN.
Shadowing: 20 ish hours (15 urologist surgeon and 5 anesthesiologist). Plan to get more hours here before I apply (and idk if i can count some MA hours towards this too)
Non-clinical volunteering - international service trip through a campus club (education, health, sanitation etc) for 2.5 weeks, campus health center front desk volunteer, college orientation program for freshmen.
Mix clinical + nonclinical volunteering - medical advocate with a local organization for 700 ish hours. (idk if this is clinical volunteering but one of the tasks is being present with the patient and doctor in the room during visit, facilitating communication/ensuring understanding). this medical advocate experience is really important to me and my application/personal statement is shaping up to be underserved and advocacy focused.

Leadership experience - officer positions in some clubs (was president of a religious club, different officer positions in premed related and service focused clubs)
Other: writing tutor (on campus job). No athletics.

Graduated in 3.5 years, in my first gap semester right now and planning on applying this cycle. I don't have any ties to other states or family in other states. My partner is going for grad school in Pittsburgh so that's consideration when making school list but otherwise no geographical preference.

I am retaking the mcat in ~10 days but my score has not been increasing considerably. It will probably be 1 or 2 pts or higher ahh but i don't know what to do at this point.

Would appreciate insights on wamc for MD schools and DO schools and what schools to apply to. I would ideally like to attend MD school because I (with my limited knowledge rn) am interested in surgical specialities. Given my MCAT, I do want to apply to DO schools as well. Thank you so much!

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[Faha]

You can assign 30 hours of your scribing to shadowing. I suggest these schools with your stats:
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Albany
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Penn State
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
Wake Forest
Methodist (when it opens)
NOVA MD
Belmont
Alice Walton
Roseman
TCU
Rosalind Franklin
Medical College Wisconsin
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Loma Linda (if you fit their mission)
California University
UC Davis
UC Riverside (if you are from that region)
Post your new MCAT score when available

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Mix clinical + nonclinical volunteering - medical advocate with a local organization for 700 ish hours. (idk if this is clinical volunteering but one of the tasks is being present with the patient and doctor in the room during visit, facilitating communication/ensuring understanding). this medical advocate experience is really important to me and my application/personal statement is shaping up to be underserved and advocacy focused.

Why do you think this is not clinical if you are in the room with a doctor and a patient? Is there more?

Your other non-clinical volunteering experiences do not comprise service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax prep, legal support, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation). You should have 150 hours before applying or your application might get screened out at most schools.

If geography is important to you, LECOM and DUQCOM DO programs are near Pittsburgh. (WVU is also, but I don't think you have a mission fit there with rural Appalachian medicine.) Your current MCAT is strong enough.

 

[risamarisa]

Why do you think this is not clinical if you are in the room with a doctor and a patient? Is there more?

Your other non-clinical volunteering experiences do not comprise service orientation activities (food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax prep, legal support, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation). You should have 150 hours before applying or your application might get screened out at most schools.

If geography is important to you, LECOM and DUQCOM DO programs are near Pittsburgh. (WVU is also, but I don't think you have a mission fit there with rural Appalachian medicine.) Your current MCAT is strong enough.

Thank you so much for your response. So the medical advocacy experience includes going out in a bay area underserved community door to door, where most people are uninsured and underinsured to offer them donated appts with our volunteer provider. I also help organize these full-day medical sessions where we organize a volunteer doctor to provide care to patients in our office. If it's a specialist check-up happening at the doctor's office, we offer transportation services and I accompany the patient to their clinic and ensure everything goes smoothly. Also, looking for health assistance programs and arranging for free resources like inhaler. And, assisting them with bill expungement, assessing what government programs they could qualify for like Health PAC, Medical, Medicare. Finally, we do lots of tabling, community outreach, collecting food donations and I also cook for volunteers sometimes - whatever task is needed at the office. I am wondering if all these tasks would be non clinical volunteering - it's a mix of what you mentioned? The clinical volunteering aspect is that during our organized medical sessions I am present with the patient and physician and facilitate that interaction, take notes etc.

And what about the international service trip for non-clinical volunteering? To be more specific about what it entailed- organized a menstrual health and hygiene event for girls, distributed 1000+ reusable menstrual pads, a seminar for high school students about post-grad, invited doctors from different cities to host healthcare camps, conducted door-to-door surveying in Hindi to collect information about the village. I also continued doing remote work in the village through the same student organization after the service trip (you work remotely over the year and go in person over the summer so I did this since Freshman year and went for the service trip to India once). Other things we have done is distributing trash cans, funding salaries for teachers at school etc.

And yeah, I see, the orientation leader role (leading groups of incoming students - facilitating activities, sharing info etc) is not service related?

So, I would need to have non-clinical volunteering aside from this? Would you recommend I start something in May while applying this cycle?

 

[risamarisa]

You can assign 30 hours of your scribing to shadowing. I suggest these schools with your stats:
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Albany
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Penn State
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
Wake Forest
Methodist (when it opens)
NOVA MD
Belmont
Alice Walton
Roseman
TCU
Rosalind Franklin
Medical College Wisconsin
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Loma Linda (if you fit their mission)
California University
UC Davis
UC Riverside (if you are from that region)
Post your new MCAT score when available

Thank you so much! As for Loma Linda, I am not Christian but may be a fit for their service mission. And I am from/in the bay area so Riverside would likely not work?

 

[Faha]

Thank you so much! As for Loma Linda, I am not Christian but may be a fit for their service mission. And I am from/in the bay area so Riverside would likely not work?

Only apply to Riverside if you are from that region. You could also try Ponce in St. Louis.