WAMC/School List Help (526 MCAT, 3.603 cGPA, 3.523 sGPA)

[cranialnerve6]

1. GPAs
Undergraduate cGPA: 3.603
Undergraduate sGPA: 3.523
Masters: 4.00

• Undergraduate GPA Note: Significant Upward Trend (from between 1.9 - 2.7 first four semesters to 4.0 until graduation, 150+ credits of 4.0); failed 3 classes, and W from 1. Lots of Cs for the first two years. Repeated 2 pre-med courses because of C-
• As you will see below, my first two years as an undergraduate were very unbalanced for the sake of a better term. I was heavily focused on conducting research and often neglected my classes to do research. Though, I did eventually figure out how to balance everything, my GPA was simply too low for too long to bring up drastically despite 5 semesters of straight As.

2. MCAT
MCAT: 526 (132, 131, 132, 131)

3. State of Residence
MD Resident

4. Ethnicity/Race
White/Caucasian

5. Institutions
Undergraduate: University of Maryland, College Park

• Triple Degree (Graduated in 4.5 Years)
  • BS, Bioengineering + Minor, Computer Engineering
  • BS, Biochemistry
  • BS, Neuroscience

Graduate: University of Miami

• MS, Neural Engineering

6. Clinical Experience

• Neurosurgery Volunteer at 2 Hospitals ~ 1,000 hours
• Pediatric Emergency Department Volunteer at 1 Hospital ~1,000 hours

7. Research experience and productivity

• Published 27 papers primarily focused on translational projects and systematic reviews in neurosurgery (1st author for a majority of the projects)
• Helped write 4 NIH grants with the guidance of my PI
• Mentored 15 underclassmen by teaching them lab techniques and helped them expand their ideas on research to run their own projects
• Presented at numerous conferences & organized a conference for several undergraduate institutions to present undergraduate research together

8. Shadowing experience and specialties represented

• Neurosurgery Observer (OR and clinic) at 3 Hospitals for a total of ~2,000 hours

9. Non-clinical volunteering

• Neurosurgery Observer (OR and clinic) at 3 Hospitals for a total of ~2,000 hours
• Founded student organization to organize field trips to hospitals for middle school and high school students
• guest speaker at high school on topics related to biomedical engineering and how to get involved in research in college

10. Other extracurricular activities

• President & Editor-in-Chief of an undergrad research journal
• Founder & President of a neuroscience journal club
• University ambassador for an international premed conference (3 years)
• Founder & CEO of non-profit that pairs patients with pen pals
• Founder & CEO of non-profit that mentors high schoolers interested in pre-med
• Athlete for Club Boxing (3 years) and Club Soccer (2 years)

11. Relevant honors or awards

• Undergraduate honors college citation & honors thesis (completed & published with a group of 7, second author)
• 3 Undergraduate research awards
• Several awards at neurosurgical research conferences and undergraduate symposiums/research days
• Neuroscience Honor Society - Nu Rho Psi
• bioethics competition finalist
• medical ethics essay competition winner

12. Anything else not listed you think might be important

• Took two gap years to 1) stay an additional semester to complete three degrees and 2) to complete masters
• applying both md and md-phd

I would really appreciate some help on deciding which schools would be a good fit!! Thank you!

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[fhuiwela]

Your research is incredibly strong. I don't think you'll have trouble if you apply appropriately. Your overall GPA is not bad, and imo it's pretty impressive you got it up that high, considering where you started. I'll let the adcoms and more experienced people comment more specifically on your chances/school list.

I mostly wanted to chime in to say I highly recommend that you do not list that you were an "Observer" and then count it as volunteering. If you just observed, it's not volunteering. If you had responsibilities, you should title it differently. You also can't count something as both shadowing and non-clinical volunteering. If this was the type of role where you shadowed part of the time and were volunteering other times, you can list these separately with the appropriate hours for each. If it was in the OR/clinic, also make sure it was actually non-clinical and not clinical.