MD WAMC/School List Help, 3.93, 516, Student Athlete

[trackmed2435]

Finally got MCAT back and am just starting up with school list and am struggling to get it nailed down. Any help is appreciated!

Stats: cGPA: 3.93, sGPA: 3.89, MCAT: 516 (128,128,129,131), White male, low ranked undergrad university.

Residence: CO, ties to AR

Shadowing: 50 hours (split between Oncology, Ortho, and Primary Care)

Clinical Experience: 450 hours, helping at a cancer rehabilitation clinic as a phlebotomist. Lots of direct patient interaction and a MME.

Research: 350 hours, also through cancer clinic, resulting in 4 posters (1st, 1st, 4th and 5th authors) and 1 pub (5th author). The posters were all abstracts that were presented at a journal’s annual conference.

Volunteering: 150 hours between soup kitchen and animal shelter.

Awards: 4x Dean List, 4x highest GPA academic award for track/cross country, highest academic merit scholarship at undergrad university, cross country MVP award.

Leadership: Four-time cross country/track & field captain (including a Team Leadership Award).

Hobbies: Music production (including piano, guitar, and drums), as well as video production through running a YouTube channel.

Athletics: NCAA track and cross country at the D1 level with six school records and two conference championship medals (probably around 5000+ hours..?).

Letters of Rec: 1 strong letter and 1 average letter from science professors, 1 strong letter from non science professor, 1 letter from Lab Manager, 1 letter from DO Primary Care Physician I shadowed, and 1 strong letter from my coach.

Other: I switched to premed near the end of my junior year so pretty much all hours are from that point on. Thankful I took the extra year to graduate and the gap year on top of it. I am planning on continuing my non-clinical volunteering activities during the application cycle. I also have a phlebotomy certification and job lined up for my gap year so that should help the clinical hours.

School list (based on MCAT Percentile):
Moonshot (10th-25th)
- Harvard
- Yale
- Weill Cornell
Reach (25th-50th)
- Stanford
- Mayo Clinic Alix
- Pitt
- Michigan
- Case Western
- Albert Einstein
- Rochester
- Brown
- UA Phoenix
Target (50th-75th)
- Colorado (IS)
- UCSF
- UCLA
- Emory
- Cincinnati
- Minnesota
- Western Michigan
- Geisel
- UMASS
- UCONN
- Tufts
- Jefferson
- UVM Larner
- Indiana
- Iowa Carver
- VCU
- Hackensack
Baseline (75th+)
- Wake Forest
- UAMS
- MCW
- Quinnipiac
- Drexel
- UIC
- Penn St.

My MCAT is definitely low for the moonshots and a couple of the reaches, but my advisors have noted I can still be competitive at top schools with my research and extracurriculars. Is there any merit to that? Any guidance there is helpful. Thanks!

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[Mr.Smile12]

my advisors have noted I can still be competitive at top schools with my research and extracurriculars

Could you provide more details about this? 350 hours of research with several posters will make a bunch of people jealous, but I then wonder what you did for "research."

150 non-clinical service orientation hours: more soup kitchen hours; animal shelter is not helpful in this category (unless you want to go to vet school). For the type of application profile you believe you have, this must be at least 250 hours (soup kitchen only or similar activities: shelter volunteer [human], job/tax services, transportation services, or housing rehabilitation as examples).

Also, running is clearly your passion and your "job" while in college. Since then, what have you done? Nothing you have listed even hints at a part-time job (1000 hours). Phlebotomy in your gap helps the clinical hours, but you also should raise your soup kitchen or other service orientation hours.

Yes, being a D1 champion-level athlete is an awesome achievement, and some schools will be drawn to it. But you need the rest of the package.

 

[Faha]

I suggest these schools with your stats:
Colorado
Kaiser
TCU
Medical College Wisconsin
Rosalind Franklin
Western Michigan
U Michigan
USF Morsani
Miami
Belmont
Wake Forest
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
George Washington
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
Penn State
Pittsburgh
Cincinnati
Hackensack
Hofstra
New York Medical College
Albany
Rochester
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Tufts
Alice Walton (when it opens)

 

[trackmed2435]

Could you provide more details about this?

Thank you for the feedback!! My research projects have been on sleep quality and lactate threshold in cancer patients undergoing exercise training. I also worked with several PhD students doing wet lab genetic research.
I’ll for sure up the non clinical hours once I get out of school. I do think they are somewhat low. And I am still currently in school and running, in regards to my hours doing that.
My part time job was at a running specialty store as a sales associate from my freshman year to junior year (before I ever did anything clinical or research). I might’ve listed that confusingly: I got 1000 hours of my sales associate job from the early half of college. I will have another 1000 hours in phlebotomy over the course of the application cycle, but I haven’t listed it since it’s projected.
Thank you again for the help!

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Thank you for the feedback!! My research projects have been on sleep quality and lactate threshold in cancer patients undergoing exercise training. I also worked with several PhD students doing wet lab genetic research.
I’ll for sure up the non clinical hours once I get out of school. I do think they are somewhat low. And I am still currently in school and running, in regards to my hours doing that.
My part time job was at a running specialty store as a sales associate from my freshman year to junior year (before I ever did anything clinical or research). I might’ve listed that confusingly: I got 1000 hours of my sales associate job from the early half of college. I will have another 1000 hours in phlebotomy over the course of the application cycle, but I haven’t listed it since it’s projected.
Thank you again for the help!

As a D1 athlete, what community service experiences have you done with other athletes? Ultimately you want to show you can do similar experiences without the umbrella of being part of the athletics department, but some of what you are doing might help.

Oh, so state residency. Where did you spend most of your childhood/graduated from high school: CO or AR? Just confirming you researched this.

 

[trackmed2435]

As a D1 athlete, what community service experiences have you done with other athletes? Ultimately you want to show you can do similar experiences without the umbrella of being part of the athletics department, but some of what you are doing might help.

Oh, so state residency. Where did you spend most of your childhood/graduated from high school: CO or AR? Just confirming you researched this.

At my university we have had community service events such as cleaning up trash at parks and running kids camps, but they have been sparse and no where near as consistent as my involvement with the other ECs. Probably have like 10-15 hours total I could add onto my application.
And I am a CO resident, but my family is from AR and we visit several times a year. So I am applying to CU in state and AR OOS. I’ve looked into it and they mention you have to show strong ties to AR, but I think it’s worth a shot on the app considering I love the area and my family there.