WAMC/School List: VA, ORM, female, 523 MCAT, 3.93cGPA, 3.90sGPA

[fluk77]

1. cGPA: 3.93.
2. sGPA: 3.90
3. MCAT: 523(130/130/132/131)
4. T10 undergraduate
5. VA resident
6. ORM: Asian
7. Clinical experience: 300 hours
8. Clinical volunteer: 1000 hours
9. Research experience: 2000 hours, one mid author peer-review publication, one oral presentation and one poster at national conferences
10. Shadowing: 50 hours
11. Non-clinical Volunteering: 300 hours
12. LORs: decent LORs from lab PI, professors of my STEM and humanity classes
13. Will start work at DC, so prefer school around it

Plan to apply to about 30 schools. Currently, I have a list of 25 schools. Wonder if the list is top heavy. Please advise me how to adjust the list as well as add a few more to the list. Really really appreciate it.

Current school list
Harvard
Yale
Columbia
Penn
Duke
UCSF
Weill Cornell
Northwestern
Sinai
Mayo
Georgetown
George Washington
Einstein
Tufts
Case Western
Pitts
Michigan
Emory
USC
Emory
Brown
Thomas Jefferson
Wake Forest
UVA
Maryland

Considering following schools, in order of preference
Vanderbilt
Miami
Dartmouth
Rochester

Also consider following lottery ticket schools, but hesitate to waste application fee
JHU
NYU
Stanford
Chicago - location?
WashU - location?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Faha]

What is the breakdown of your 300 hours of non clinical volunteering?

 

[fluk77]

What is the breakdown of your 300 hours of non clinical volunteering?

Serve the under privileged groups - volunteer at food supply to homeless, domestic-violated women and music teaching to low-income school kids.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Serve the under privileged groups - volunteer at food supply to homeless, domestic-violated women and music teaching to low-income school kids.

Break down the hours for each.

 

[morak]

Just curious, why are JHU and NYU "lottery ticket" schools, when Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Penn, etc are on your list?

 

[fluk77]

Break down the hours for each.

Roughly 120 hours each for homeless and domestic-violation women. Another 50 hours for music for low-income kids

 

[fluk77]

Just curious, why are JHU and NYU "lottery ticket" schools, when Harvard, Columbia, Yale, Penn, etc are on your list?

JHU and NYU are both tuition free and tier 1/2 schools. I think that competition will be more intense than those at ivys.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Roughly 120 hours each for homeless and domestic-violation women. Another 50 hours for music for low-income kids

Keep adding to your shelter work. 250 is to keep pace with other high-metrics applicants. It always helps to get more since many of your peers will have hundreds to thousands more.

 

[fluk77]

Keep adding to your shelter work. 250 is to keep pace with other high-metrics applicants. It always helps to get more since many of your peers will have hundreds to thousands more.

Do you have any suggestions for the school list? Top heavy?

 

[Faha]

Roughly 120 hours each for homeless and domestic-violation women. Another 50 hours for music for low-income kids

I suggest these schools from your list:
Harvard
Yale
Columbia
Penn
Duke
UCSF
Weill Cornell
Northwestern
Sinai
Mayo
Georgetown
George Washington
Einstein
Tufts
Case Western
Pitts
Michigan
Emory
USC
Emory
Brown
Thomas Jefferson
UVA
Maryland
Vanderbilt
Miami
Dartmouth
Rochester
JHU
NYU
Stanford
WashU - (almost a guaranteed interview with your stats)
Add Virginia Commonwealth and Eastern Virginia

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Do you have any suggestions for the school list? Top heavy?

First off, you don't seem to have any safeties, such as all of your in-state options besides UVirginia.

Secondly, I don't get a sense of why any medical school would want to interview you. Metrics and experience hours are for spreadsheets. You have to be more than your numbers to get an interview; there are too many good candidates with more clearly articulated purposes.

Without any sense of purpose or why you would go to these schools:
I would look closely at your publics. Maryland doesn't really make sense and they field a ton of Virginia applicants, especially those growing up near DC. That's what the GW/GT/Howard pools are for (Howard of course being different as an HBCU); your metrics look like you want go to Hopkins instead of Maryland anyway. You have two California schools that stick out (UCSF, USC) and don't need to send them money if the rest of your list looks very East Coast. You've listed Emory twice. Mayo... how much do you love Mayo, show us the ways; if you love the Minnesota cold or the Arizona heat that much... it seems odd. I don't know why you want to go to Northwestern but question the geography of UChicago... that makes no sense.

For the rest of the top brand-name schools, your profile is solid cannon fodder and relatively indistinguishable. You would put your hopes on a lottery to select you for interview or an offer it sounds. Without more details about your application, that's all I have.

 

[fluk77]

First off, you don't seem to have any safeties, such as all of your in-state options besides UVirginia.

Secondly, I don't get a sense of why any medical school would want to interview you. Metrics and experience hours are for spreadsheets. You have to be more than your numbers to get an interview; there are too many good candidates with more clearly articulated purposes.

Without any sense of purpose or why you would go to these schools:
I would look closely at your publics. Maryland doesn't really make sense and they field a ton of Virginia applicants, especially those growing up near DC. That's what the GW/GT/Howard pools are for (Howard of course being different as an HBCU); your metrics look like you want go to Hopkins instead of Maryland anyway. You have two California schools that stick out (UCSF, USC) and don't need to send them money if the rest of your list looks very East Coast. You've listed Emory twice. Mayo... how much do you love Mayo, show us the ways; if you love the Minnesota cold or the Arizona heat that much... it seems odd. I don't know why you want to go to Northwestern but question the geography of UChicago... that makes no sense.

For the rest of the top brand-name schools, your profile is solid cannon fodder and relatively indistinguishable. You would put your hopes on a lottery to select you for interview or an offer it sounds. Without more details about your application, that's all I have.

Thank you so much for your feedback. I plan to add my in-state VA commonwealth and Eastern VA to my list.
I plan to remove USC, UCSF, Maryland and Mayo from list. Plan to add JHU and WashU to the list.
After the adjustments, I still have 24 schools on the list. Do you have any suggestion to add more schools?
My current school list looks like
Harvard
Yale
Columbia
Penn
Duke
Weill Cornell
Northwestern
Sinai
Georgetown
George Washington
Einstein
Tufts
Case Western
Pitts
Michigan
Emory
Brown
Thomas Jefferson
Wake Forest
UVA
VA Commonwealth
Eastern VA
JHU
WashU

 

[Faha]

You could add any of these schools:
Hofstra
NYU (free tuition)
USF Morsani
Miami
Remove Wake Forest since they will "yield protect" with your stats.

 

[fluk77]

You could add any of these schools:
Hofstra
NYU (free tuition)
USF Morsani
Miami
Remove Wake Forest since they will "yield protect" with your stats.

Thank you for your suggestion. For the schools in my list, any other has potential of yield protection? Will my instate VA Commonwealth and Eastern VA yield-protect me?

 

[Faha]

Thank you for your suggestion. For the schools in my list, any other has potential of yield protection? Will my instate VA Commonwealth and Eastern VA yield-protect me?

Your instate schools will not "yield protect". George Washington may.

 

[fluk77]

Your instate schools will not "yield protect". George Washington may.

I will work at DC when I apply, do you think that George Washington may still yield protect me? If I remove GWU, what else school that I could add?
NYU has too much competition for its free tuition. Hofstra USF, both ~35% OOS, are they considered OOS friendly? Miami, I read following comments from reddit, so my stats matter less for them.

• I cannot find the actual screenshot, but here's how they base who to interview "As you can see, GPA, MCAT, and undergrad "prestige" are only 120/300 points. Your experiences, LORs, overcoming adversity, etc. are actually given more weight at 180/300 points! So don't skimp on elaborating about those experiences."

 

[Faha]

I will work at DC when I apply, do you think that George Washington may still yield protect me? If I remove GWU, what else school that I could add?
NYU has too much competition for its free tuition. Hofstra USF, both ~35% OOS, are they considered OOS friendly? Miami, I read following comments from reddit, so my stats matter less for them.

• I cannot find the actual screenshot, but here's how they base who to interview "As you can see, GPA, MCAT, and undergrad "prestige" are only 120/300 points. Your experiences, LORs, overcoming adversity, etc. are actually given more weight at 180/300 points! So don't skimp on elaborating about those experiences."

Hofstra and USF Morsani are OOS friendly. George Washington knows that an applicant with a 3.9 GPA and a MCAT of 523 is likely to attend a higher tier school. However, the fact that you work in DC works in your favor.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I cannot find the actual screenshot, but here's how they base who to interview "As you can see, GPA, MCAT, and undergrad "prestige" are only 120/300 points. Your experiences, LORs, overcoming adversity, etc. are actually given more weight at 180/300 points! So don't skimp on elaborating about those experiences."

A

Post in: 'Evidence that medical schools do care about rigor of undergrad?'

Aug 5, 2015

This photo is from an event UMMSM hosts for College Students interested in applying to their medical school. It's the formula they use to score applicants:

As you can see, GPA, MCAT, and undergrad "prestige" are only 120/300 points. Your experiences, LORs, overcoming adversity, etc. are actually given more weight at 180/300 points! So don't skimp on elaborating about those experiences 😉

--------------------------------

Good luck to everyone applying!

Specific for Miami, but likely applies similarly...

• aegistitan

• 

Please note the date of the thread... 10 years ago.

 

[fluk77]

So after reviewing all comments by far, my list looks like
Harvard
JHU
Yale
Columbia
Penn
Duke
WashU
Weill Cornell
Northwestern
Sinai
Georgetown
George Washington
Einstein
Tufts
Case Western
Pitts
Michigan
Emory
Brown
Thomas Jefferson
Wake Forest
UVA
VA Commonwealth
Eastern VA
Miami
Hofstra
USF Morsani

Total of 27 schools. Still have some concerns on Hofstra and USF Morsani. Both of them has OOS rate about 35% and they are the schools with least OOS rate on my list. At what OOS percentage of a public school is considered OOS friendly?

Also start to have some concern about Emory. Their stats 516/3.88 is below its ranking. Is there any special about Emory admission?