Hi, was looking for some feedback on my school list. Any schools I should add/remove?
CA ORM (white LGBT woman)
MCAT 516 130/124/131/131
GPA 3.96 Major: Pharmacology
Graduated in 2022 (taking 3 gap years)
ECs:
Paid clinical
- 2000+ hours as an EMT, worked for an ambulance company and now as a tech in an emergency room
Unpaid clinical
- 40 hours as a volunteer EMT for a street medicine nonprofit
Unpaid non-clinical
- 20 hours doing science experiments with kids at an elementary school (cut short due to covid)
- 15 hours tutoring a homeless child with autism thru a nonprofit (this is ongoing, will have ~40 by the time of application and will continue tutoring thru application cycle)
- 100 hours working as a peer mentor/learning assistant/tutor for biochemistry and genetics courses
- 200 hours processing medical records for a nonprofit clinic that serves unhoused/low-income patients (unsure if this should count as clinical or non-clinical, don't have any patient contact so I put it in non-clinical).
Leadership
- Associate Director of Community Service for my school's pre-med club: helped organize a fundraiser to get PPE for a nonprofit clinic at the height of covid, helped organize a teleconference showcasing on-campus volunteer opportunities
Paid non-clinical
- Had summer jobs as a hostess and as a dog hotel employee
- Worked as an exam proctor for my school's disabled students program and as an admin assistant at our school's testing center until COVID made everything go remote.
Shadowing
- 40 hours shadowing a pediatrician
Research
- 300 hours as a student research assistant in a bioengineering lab, helped on some projects but no posters/pubs.
Hobbies/Other
- I've been a dancer my entire life, was on a dance team in college and am still dancing now
- I'm pretty good at oil painting??
- I'm pretty good at speaking Spanish, I do a lot of translating for Spanish-speaking patients at my job.
Current School List:
I know my MCAT score has a big red flag in it with the CARS section (I have no idea what happened, all my CARS scores on my practice full lengths were fine) so I I have struggled to figure out what schools to apply to. I am looking to add more schools to my list w/ a mean MCAT in the 512-514 range because I know I will be hurt by the low CARS at schools w/ 516 MCAT averages.
CA ORM (white LGBT woman)
MCAT 516 130/124/131/131
GPA 3.96 Major: Pharmacology
Graduated in 2022 (taking 3 gap years)
ECs:
Paid clinical
- 2000+ hours as an EMT, worked for an ambulance company and now as a tech in an emergency room
Unpaid clinical
- 40 hours as a volunteer EMT for a street medicine nonprofit
Unpaid non-clinical
- 20 hours doing science experiments with kids at an elementary school (cut short due to covid)
- 15 hours tutoring a homeless child with autism thru a nonprofit (this is ongoing, will have ~40 by the time of application and will continue tutoring thru application cycle)
- 100 hours working as a peer mentor/learning assistant/tutor for biochemistry and genetics courses
- 200 hours processing medical records for a nonprofit clinic that serves unhoused/low-income patients (unsure if this should count as clinical or non-clinical, don't have any patient contact so I put it in non-clinical).
Leadership
- Associate Director of Community Service for my school's pre-med club: helped organize a fundraiser to get PPE for a nonprofit clinic at the height of covid, helped organize a teleconference showcasing on-campus volunteer opportunities
Paid non-clinical
- Had summer jobs as a hostess and as a dog hotel employee
- Worked as an exam proctor for my school's disabled students program and as an admin assistant at our school's testing center until COVID made everything go remote.
Shadowing
- 40 hours shadowing a pediatrician
Research
- 300 hours as a student research assistant in a bioengineering lab, helped on some projects but no posters/pubs.
Hobbies/Other
- I've been a dancer my entire life, was on a dance team in college and am still dancing now
- I'm pretty good at oil painting??
- I'm pretty good at speaking Spanish, I do a lot of translating for Spanish-speaking patients at my job.
Current School List:
| OUT OF STATE |
| Carle Illinois College of Medicine |
| Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University |
| Emory University School of Medicine |
| Georgetown University |
| Saint Louis University School of Medicine |
| Hackensack Meridian School of Medicine |
| Tufts School of Medicine |
| University of Cincinnati College of Medicine |
| University of Colorado School of Medicine |
| University of Iowa Roy J. and Lucille A. Carver College of Medicine |
| University of Massachusetts T.H. Chan School of Medicine |
| University of Miami Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine |
| Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine |
| Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine |
| UT San Antonio (mom moved to texas and lives 10 minutes away from campus) |
| IN STATE |
| California University of Science and Medicine-School of Medicine |
| Kaiser Permanente Bernard J. Tyson School of Medicine |
| Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California |
| Stanford University School of Medicine |
| University of California, Davis, School of Medicine |
| University of California, Irvine, School of Medicine |
| University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine |
| University of California, San Diego School of Medicine |
| University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine |
I know my MCAT score has a big red flag in it with the CARS section (I have no idea what happened, all my CARS scores on my practice full lengths were fine) so I I have struggled to figure out what schools to apply to. I am looking to add more schools to my list w/ a mean MCAT in the 512-514 range because I know I will be hurt by the low CARS at schools w/ 516 MCAT averages.
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