WAMC/School List - 526 MCAT, 4.00 GPA, CA ORM

[greenhondacivic]

---

Members don't see this ad.

Edit: I’m deleting for now. Thanks for your help!

 

[Faha]

What are the number of hours for each non clinical volunteering activity ?

 

[Mr.Smile12]

While we wait for your breakdown of non-clinical activity, if you intend to play ball with the high-metrics applicants for brand-name schools, you must have 250 hours of service orientation activities to stay in contention: food distribution, shelter volunteer, job/tax preparation, legal support, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation. Tutoring, teaching, and mentoring are academic activities that every premed has and will not help you stand out.

With that in mind, if you want to travel to Spain, do it without the specter of med classes or your job hanging over your head. Do it because you love the culture and the change of scenery, not to impress adcoms or your peers (because they probably travel to many other countries like Egypt, Japan, Mt. Everest, or Argentina... there are a lot of countries and bucket-list places). Castellano Spanish is not the same as Mexican Spanish (which you probably are familiar with in California and could be more practical). If you want to teach English there, you only live once (there are other opportunities in China, Japan, and parts of Africa, as you probably know).

I'm not sure if research is a "weakness" in your application based on what you described. You write for your undergrad research journal after all.

What is your passion when it comes to medicine, if it's not research? How much have you invested in learning about social inequities in your courses? Why aren't you considering Americorps or a similar year of service program in the United States? Aren't you doing culturally competent care in your community clinic? Are you worried you are just blowing jargon around without evidence? That's why I'm not sure about your Plan A being necessarily "better" for your application than Plan B. Or better yet, an actual Plan C where you devote your year to service.

 

[greenhondacivic]

Edit: Deleting for now. Thanks for all your help!

 

[Faha]

On your AMCAS application, itemize the 100 hours of food/water distribution and 50 hours distributing care kits. Some schools screen at 150 hours. You could add these schools to your list:
Harvard
Hofstra
Einstein (free tuition)
Mount Sinai
Pittsburgh
U Virginia
Duke
Vanderbilt
U Michigan

 

[Mr.Smile12]

• The tutoring specifically focuses on providing free tutoring and free educational resources to children and immigrants in low-income areas. Does that count as service orientation? We operate under our school's community service. I currently have ~150 non-clinical hours of volunteering/tutoring from there.

Clarify: are you tutoring or referring people to tutoring? What resources are you referring? If you are teaching or tutoring, it's an academic activity that won't help you stand out.

• The non-clinical volunteering breakdown gets tricky. 2/3 of the service orgs had a general mission of serving the area, so we collaborated with various nonprofits. My remaining 150 non-clinical hours are split between activities such as food distribution, water distribution, and packaging care kits for homeless shelters, but I did not itemize by the hour when I was recording these hours. I could estimate ~100 to food/water distribution, and ~50 to packaging and distributing care kits.

Ultimately, you must describe this in your work/activities. If you're doing random acts of service orientation... great, but people with deeper involvement can articulate and act further on their roles and impact rather than just appearing as a set of hands and feet. Nothing wrong with helping when needed, but just "being there" isn't enough. (Reiterating for everyone out there: strive for 250 hours by submission for your high-metrics applicant pools.)

• Ah, hope it didn't come across that way. Spain was a plan I made for myself, and I'm excited for it. I'm only writing about this now bc, after receiving some feedback, I started considering the possibility of reapplication and viewing my plans from the eyes of adcoms. (Note: There are differences between Spanish spoken in the different parts of the Spanish-speaking world, but I will take any exposure I can get! What's more is that I'll be in Andalusia, and Andalusian Spanish is allegedly notoriously difficult to understand, haha.)

I'm just saying you can do things because you want to do them, not because you want to impress admissions committees. 🙂 I personally like it when applicants (or anyone) decide to pause from the rat race of academia after graduating, even if it's just to live in a string of hostels throughout Asia or Europe (or wherever). Go to Alaska on a cruise by yourself before you can't do it. I'm a fan of tapping into your bucket list.

• My passion is, as expressed above, working with diverse and underserved communities. If I get to become an MD, I hope to be a part of efforts to increase health equity and advocate for universal healthcare. I have invested quite a lot in learning about social inequities. I chose an interdisciplinary biology/sociology major in ugrad, and our coursework focused on understanding social determinants of health and the historical, social, and economic factors that underlie health disparities. I took classes on global health, health and incarceration, race and ethnicity in America, etc. Sorry, my ugrad coursework primed me for generous usage of buzzwords lol so I apologize if I sound disingenuous but I have a lot of experiences to back it up! :’) (Also, for personal reasons, it was better that I go abroad. Even in Plan B and Plan C, I would look for research and service opportunities abroad, but long-term assignments were more difficult to find than Plan A. However, if it is the better choice for me, I will keep searching.)

Thank you for all your questions, and I look forward to hearing from you! (And I apologize for any typos)

That's why I'm surprised Americorps wasn't considered. Your university likely has experiential learning opportunities, including through international education/study abroad. Maybe some time as a court-appointed legal support aide or perhaps advocacy (which you didn't list?) in a subject like prison policy reform. There's a lot more you could do, and with a bio/soc combo major, I'm interested in what you took out of the classroom. That's what you're going to do a lot in medical school.

Charting Your Purpose by Writing Your Professional Oath | SDN

Premeds dream of reciting the Hippocratic Oath dressed in their new white coat embroidered with the crest of their medical school. The White Coat

www.studentdoctor.net

 

[greenhondacivic]

Clarify: are you tutoring or referring people to tutoring? What resources are you referring? If you are teaching or tutoring, it's an academic activity that won't help you stand out.


Ultimately, you must describe this in your work/activities. If you're doing random acts of service orientation... great, but people with deeper involvement can articulate and act further on their roles and impact rather than just appearing as a set of hands and feet. Nothing wrong with helping when needed, but just "being there" isn't enough. (Reiterating for everyone out there: strive for 250 hours by submission for your high-metrics applicant pools.)


I'm just saying you can do things because you want to do them, not because you want to impress admissions committees. 🙂 I personally like it when applicants (or anyone) decide to pause from the rat race of academia after graduating, even if it's just to live in a string of hostels throughout Asia or Europe (or wherever). Go to Alaska on a cruise by yourself before you can't do it. I'm a fan of tapping into your bucket list.


That's why I'm surprised Americorps wasn't considered. Your university likely has experiential learning opportunities, including through international education/study abroad. Maybe some time as a court-appointed legal support aide or perhaps advocacy (which you didn't list?) in a subject like prison policy reform. There's a lot more you could do, and with a bio/soc combo major, I'm interested in what you took out of the classroom. That's what you're going to do a lot in medical school.

Charting Your Purpose by Writing Your Professional Oath | SDN

Premeds dream of reciting the Hippocratic Oath dressed in their new white coat embroidered with the crest of their medical school. The White Coat

www.studentdoctor.net

I will DM you for further elaboration so that we do not clog up the thread!

If anybody else has any advice on schools, I’d gladly take it! My application for this cycle is pretty much set; ignore my musings about the gap year. :^)

 

[LeaveNoTrace]

Disagree. If the tutoring is for at-risk or vulnerable populations, it counts: it checks the box.