WAMC/School list Review: 3.97 GPA, 511 MCAT

[PencilWise]

(Posting for friend)

1. GPA
   • cGPA: 3.97
   • sGPA: 3.95
2. MCAT
   • 511 (130/124/129/128). CARS is super low I know and am worried which schools may potentially screen me out just based on this.
3. State of residence
   • NY
4. Ethnicity/Race
   • ORM/South Asian
5. Undergraduate Institution
   • Public NYC school
6. Clinical Experience
   • 250 hours volunteering with wound care physician rotating at nursing homes (very hands on and expect a strong LOR) (most meaningful)
   • 150 hours hospital inpatient volunteer (most meaningful)
   • 500 hours ED scribe
   • 500 hours MA/scribe at surgeon outpatient office (most meaningful)
7. Research Experience
   • 350-400ish hours at chem lab. No posters/publications/conferences.
8. Shadowing
   • Unsure how to categorize as I did not have a truly passive separate shadowing experience. I was wondering if I should extract some hours from my clinical experiences into a separate shadowing category or it is not necessary? I do not have any primary care shadowing.
9. Non-clinical volunteering
   • 200 hrs helping at a food pantry serving the local underserved population
10. Other extracurricular activities
    • 150 hours chem TA
11. Awards
    • Dean's List
    • Honor cohort scholarship
12. Currently on one gap year.

MD preferred but I will also apply DO. Will likely apply to none/minimal top schools and don't particularly care too much about the tier rankings. No strong OOS ties. No strong regional preference/I will be willing to go literally anywhere in the country.

Current MD list:
All four SUNY
NYMC
Albany
Vermont
Quinnipac
Drexel
Temple
Tufts
Hackensack
Penn state
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
U Kansas
Eastern Virginia
Wake Forest
Nova
U Miami
Burnett TCU
Creighton
SLU
Loyola (not SDA or Catholic so wondering if it is still worth to apply?)
Rosalind Franklin
MS Wisconsin
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
NEOMED
U Minnesota
West Virginia

Current DO school list (I do not have a DO LOR):
NYIT-COM
TouroCOM- Harlem campus
DMU-COM
KCU
PCOM
ATSU
LECOM
MUCOM
UNECOM
CUSOM

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[chilly_md]

Remove Kansas, Neomed, Minnesota, and West Virginia. They take few OOS residents without ties (and will see you’re from NYC as opposed to a rural area). Miami is a reach. You can add Belmont when that school opens later this year.

You can subtract 50 hours from each of your scribe jobs and put them under shadowing.

Your DO list is good.

 

[PencilWise]

Remove Kansas, Neomed, Minnesota, and West Virginia. They take few OOS residents without ties (and will see you’re from NYC as opposed to a rural area). Miami is a reach. You can add Belmont when that school opens later this year.

You can subtract 50 hours from each of your scribe jobs and put them under shadowing.

Your DO list is good.

Sounds good I have removed all those schools from my list. Are there any other schools I should exclude that aren't really OOS friendly or too much of a reach? Any other schools you might suggest adding? Also in regard to shadowing can I group all of my shadowing into one submission or do I need to make a separate one for every single activity? In the ED scribe I also shadowed a lot of different providers so do I have to necessarily list the name of each physician or can I just say I shadowed a variety of doctors and what I learned? Thank you.

 

[chilly_md]

Sounds good I have removed all those schools from my list. Are there any other schools I should exclude that aren't really OOS friendly or too much of a reach? Any other schools you might suggest adding? Also in regard to shadowing can I group all of my shadowing into one submission or do I need to make a separate one for every single activity? In the ED scribe I also shadowed a lot of different providers so do I have to necessarily list the name of each physician or can I just say I shadowed a variety of doctors and what I learned? Thank you.

Keep the shadowing in 1 activity slot, it does not need to be separate for each setting or physician. Since it’s scribing, you could just say “shadowed Dr. X and various other physicians in the ED as part of my scribe job”.

The rest of the school list is fine with those removed. You could add Tulane and Georgetown. I would expect both MD and DO interview invites.

 

[PencilWise]

Keep the shadowing in 1 activity slot, it does not need to be separate for each setting or physician. Since it’s scribing, you could just say “shadowed Dr. X and various other physicians in the ED as part of my scribe job”.

The rest of the school list is fine with those removed. You could add Tulane and Georgetown. I would expect both MD and DO interview invites.

Great thanks chilly! Faha suggested Tulane and Georgetown also but I only excluded since I read Georgetown is very volunteer mission-based and Tulane has a quite a low amount of OOS interviews compared to OOS applications according to MSAR. Do you think Einstein and Rochester might also be worth applying to since they are in NY? Or not really since their mcat median is a bit higher and they are more research based?

 

[chilly_md]

Great thanks chilly! Faha suggested Tulane and Georgetown also but I only excluded since I read Georgetown is very volunteer mission-based and Tulane has a quite a low amount of OOS interviews compared to OOS applications according to MSAR. Do you think Einstein and Rochester might also be worth applying to since they are in NY? Or not really since their mcat median is a bit higher and they are more research based?

Yes, Tulane and Georgetown are the schools that get the most apps every year. The volunteer hours are still good for Georgetown and they do like to see a lot of clinical experience.

Einstein is worth trying for a NYC resident. I wouldn’t do Rochester.

 

[PencilWise]

Hey all so finished up my school list and wondering how it is looking so far? I currently have over 30 med schools listed and for financial/timing reasons I wanted to limit it to max 30 (MD + DO). Wondering if there are any schools I should remove to trim it down a bit or anything else I should add to finalize the list? So far it is:

All four SUNY
NYMC
Albany
Vermont
Quinnipac
Geisinger
Indiana
California Northstate (read about the accreditation issues so might be too risky?)
Drexel
Temple
Tufts (too low yield?)
Rutgers
Robert Wood Johnson
Penn state
Ohio state
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
Wake Forest
Creighton (saw in previous posts they screen for 125 CARS but they say they don't screen subsections in their current website??)
CMU
Georgetown
SLU
Loyola
Rosalind Franklin
MS Wisconsin
UWisconsin
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Einstein
Hofstra
Iowa
Cooper

DO:
NYITCOM
TouroCOM-Harlem
TouroCOM-Nevada
Rowan
PCOM
LECOM

 

[chilly_md]

Hey all so finished up my school list and wondering how it is looking so far? I currently have over 30 med schools listed and for financial/timing reasons I wanted to limit it to max 30 (MD + DO). Wondering if there are any schools I should remove to trim it down a bit or anything else I should add to finalize the list? So far it is:

All four SUNY
NYMC
Albany
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Drexel
Temple
Tufts (too low yield?)
Penn state
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
Wake Forest
Creighton
Georgetown
SLU
Loyola
Rosalind Franklin
MC Wisconsin
Oakland Beaumont
Wayne State
Einstein


DO:
NYITCOM
TouroCOM-Harlem
Rowan
PCOM
LECOM

See my edits above to keep it to 30.