MD & DO WAMC/School List; International Student; 3.97/513

[jessiezhao815]

I'm an international student and going to apply for this upcoming cycle (2024-2025). Please take a look at my school list. Thanks for any advice!!!

• cGPA and sGPA: 3.97 & 3.96
• MCAT score(s) and breakdown: 509 -> 510 -> 513 (131/124/130/128)
• State of residence or country of citizenship (if non-US): International student. GA for college.
• Ethnicity and/or race: Asian, ORM.
• Clinical experience (volunteer and non-volunteer)
  
  • Volunteer: 200 hours in total
    
    • Volunteered in Anesthesia Department and patient transport ~150 hours (not sure if it's clinical or not. I prepared and cleaned OR and stocked supplies, but no patient interaction)
    • Volunteered in a small clinic for Social Service and Medical Assistant ~50 hours
  • Non-volunteer: 600 hours by application, projected to be 1800 hours
    
    • work full-time as medical assistant in urgent care ～ 600 hours by application, projected to be 1800 hours
    • worked as clinical lab technician for one month ~ 150 hours (not sure if I should mention since I only worked for one month. Left because I think I can learn more working as a medical assistant)
• Research experience and productivity
  
  • Research assistant in a genetic lab ~1500 hours
    
    • follow a postdoc, train new lab members, edit experiment protocols.
    • 2 mid-author paper in preparation
    • got a strong LOR from PI.
  • Lab technician in a molecular biology lab ~ 50 hours
    
    • worked only 2 hours per week but had good connection with PI. Can ask for a good LOR.
• Shadowing experience and specialties represented
  
  • Orthopedic and Pain management clinic ~ 50 hours
• Non-clinical volunteering
  
  • Church service to help immigrants and international students get accustomed to life here ~ 200 hours
  • Food bank ~ 30 hours
  • Right now looking for other community service opportunity before application.
• Other extracurricular activities (including athletics, military service, gap year activities, leadership, teaching, etc)
  • Peer Tutor ~ 100 hours
  • hobby: write fan fictions? It's been an important hobby for me and I have hundreds of followers, but I'm not sure if it's appropriate to include.
• Relevant honors or awards
  
  • one scholarship during undergraduate.
• School List:
  • MD:
    1. Anne Burnett Marion School of Medicine at TCU
    2. State University of New York Upstate Medical University Alan and Marlene Norton College of Medicine
    3. University of California, Davis, School of Medicine
    4. Frederick P. Whiddon College of Medicine at the University of South Alabama
    5. University of Illinois College of Medicine
    6. Tulane University School of Medicine
    7. West Virginia University School of Medicine
    8. Medical College of Wisconsin
    9. Loma Linda University School of Medicine
    10. Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine
    11. Wayne State University School of Medicine
    12. University of Hawaii, John A. Burns School of Medicine
    13. University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine
    14. Saint Louis University School of Medicine
    15. University of Connecticut School of Medicine
    16. Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University
    17. Emory University School of Medicine
    18. University of Colorado School of Medicine
    19. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine
    20. Rutgers New Jersey Medical School
    21. NYU Long Island School of Medicine
  • DO:
    1. Michigan State University College of Osteopathic Medicine
    2. Rowan University School of Osteopathic Medicine
    3. Nova Southeastern University Dr. Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine
    4. Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine - Erie Campus
    5. William Carey University College of Osteopathic Medicine
    6. Liberty University College of Osteopathic Medicine - LUCOM
    7. Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine Virginia Campus

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[Mr.Smile12]

Suggestions
1) Raise your food bank hours to 100 hours to balance with your church-related volunteering that is focused on immigrants/refugees and international students. If you can expand your church-related involvement to other needy communities (adjacent would likely be domestic homeless or low-income families), that would be good, but raise the food bank/distribution work more. Your patient transport could be classified as "non-clinical" for a possible bump up to "clinical" if you are helping patients directly. The back office work for the anesthesia department could go as "non-clinical" but it won't be community service/service orientation even if the work is useful.

2) Focus more on your medical assistant/urgent care experience rather than your clinical lab tech (since you were only doing that for one month).

The challenge I see is that many of the schools on your list have a general preference for students from their own area. Make sure these schools favorably consider international applicants like yourself. Reach out to the AMSA chapter officers to see if they can find someone similar to you among their student body who you can talk to.

 

[chilly_md]

International students have low odds of obtaining admissions to a US MD school. You have many schools that rarely take out-of-state students let alone internationals. Some of the schools require US citizenship or a greencard (for instance, VCOM). From the latest data about which schools actually accept multiple international students, you would be competitive at these (double check for the latest policies):

TCU
Georgetown
Saint Louis
Jefferson
Tulane
University of Illinois
Wayne State

DO:

AZCOM
CCOM
KCU-COM
MSUCOM
NSU-KPCOM
UNECOM
WCU-COM
WESTERN

 

[jessiezhao815]

Suggestions
1) Raise your food bank hours to 100 hours to balance with your church-related volunteering that is focused on immigrants/refugees and international students. If you can expand your church-related involvement to other needy communities (adjacent would likely be domestic homeless or low-income families), that would be good, but raise the food bank/distribution work more. Your patient transport could be classified as "non-clinical" for a possible bump up to "clinical" if you are helping patients directly. The back office work for the anesthesia department could go as "non-clinical" but it won't be community service/service orientation even if the work is useful.

2) Focus more on your medical assistant/urgent care experience rather than your clinical lab tech (since you were only doing that for one month).

The challenge I see is that many of the schools on your list have a general preference for students from their own area. Make sure these schools favorably consider international applicants like yourself. Reach out to the AMSA chapter officers to see if they can find someone similar to you among their student body who you can talk to.

Thank you for your suggestion. That's a very good point that I didn't consider before! I'll try to build up my community service experience and do more research!

 

[jessiezhao815]

International students have low odds of obtaining admissions to a US MD school. You have many schools that rarely take out-of-state students let alone internationals. Some of the schools require US citizenship or a greencard (for instance, VCOM). From the latest data about which schools actually accept multiple international students, you would be competitive at these (double check for the latest policies):

TCU
Georgetown
Saint Louis
Jefferson
Tulane
University of Illinois
Wayne State

DO:

AZCOM
CCOM
KCU-COM
MSUCOM
NSU-KPCOM
UNECOM
WCU-COM
WESTERN

Thank you! Some schools in my list said they accept International students but they didn't accept any last year. I should research more closely. Thank you for making the list for me!