What are my chances + Help me with list please!

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mrpanderson

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Year in school: Senior (Taking a Gap Year next year~)

Country/state of residence: California (but currently in Maryland at Top 10)

Schools to which you are applying: I need help compiling a list (but I live in Irvine and would love to go to UC Irvine and I love anteaters)

Cumulative GPA: 3.62 GPA: 3.6 MCAT Scores 517

Research – Worked in labs for 1000+ hours, working to get a publication through within the next couple months.

Volunteering (Clinical) – Applying to some right now. I need advice on what I should apply for (I want the most hands-on kind of clinical volunteering)

Physician shadowing – Shadowed a General Surgeon for an entire month in California. 5-8 hours a day, 5 days a week. (100+ hours)

Non-clinical volunteering- 50+ Hours working with blind/autistic children for a year. Helping out underprivileged Baltimore kids after-school program (a semester so maybe like 25 hours)

Extracurricular activities- Executive Board of Student Government, Music Director of an a capella group (and we won awards too! idk if anyone cares lol). On the Counseling Center Advisory Board. School Orchestra for a Year. I got some more, but not worth writing those they are just school club things.

Employment history- Worked at Insomnia Cookies, Center for Social Concern at Hopkins, worked at UCI Summer Premed Camp for High School Students, SAT Teacher for a class of 20 freshmen (it was sooo hard).

I have no immediate families in medicine...

Specialty of interest- Who knows, they all say that you change what you want to do after you get into med
school.

Graduate degrees: Nope

Interest in rural health (y/n) probably not

Was wondering how competitive I looked, and where I could improve. I see all these What are the chances people and I feel so inferior, but just thought maybe I should give it a try and get hit with the reality of things.

Help me bring together a list of 15-20 schools that I should consider applying to please!

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Strongly suggest getting in clinical and non-clinical ECs, especially those involving service to others less fortunate than yourself. You have rock star numbers, so now you need the ECs to go with it, since you want to, and should, aim high.

Also, shadow some longitudinal care providers as well.

I suggest the following:

Harvard
Wash U
Yale
Stanford
U Chicago
U Penn
U VA (maybe)
U MI (maybe)
U AZ
U Colorado
U VM
Ohio State
Jefferson
UCSF
UCLA,
UCSD,
UCI,
UCR (IF you’re from the Inland Empire)
U Cincy
Miami
Albert Einstein
Tulane
Loyola
Emory
BU
USC/Keck
JHU
Mayo
Pitt
Northwestern
NYU
Vanderbilt
Columbia
Sinai
Cornell
Duke
Case
Hofstra



Year in school: Senior (Taking a Gap Year next year~)
 
Would you mind explaining why your list has so many top schools on it? Sure, that's a great MCAT score. But the GPA is incredibly low for those schools, and I don't see any really incredible ECs that would make up for it (in the context of top schools). Did you maybe misread OPs GPAs as 3.9s instead of 3.6s?

Strongly suggest getting in clinical and non-clinical ECs, especially those involving service to others less fortunate than yourself. You have rock star numbers, so now you need the ECs to go with it, since you want to, and should, aim high.

Also, shadow some longitudinal care providers as well.

I suggest the following:

Harvard
Wash U
Yale
Stanford
U Chicago
U Penn
U VA (maybe)
U MI (maybe)
U AZ
U Colorado
U VM
Ohio State
Jefferson
UCSF
UCLA,
UCSD,
UCI,
UCR (IF you’re from the Inland Empire)
U Cincy
Miami
Albert Einstein
Tulane
Loyola
Emory
BU
USC/Keck
JHU
Mayo
Pitt
Northwestern
NYU
Vanderbilt
Columbia
Sinai
Cornell
Duke
Case
Hofstra
 
The GPA is low, but > 10th %ile. The MCAT score is nothing to sneeze at. Thus, with some really good ECs, OP is in striking distance. OP should NOT target 100 top schools, but have a range, hence my inclusion of U Miami, BU and Tulane.

At the worst, consideration can be something like Harvard OR Yale; JHU OR Pitt OR Northwesterm NYU OR Mt Sinai, etc. I agree that OP needs to get the ECs in.

Would you mind explaining why your list has so many top schools on it? Sure, that's a great MCAT score. But the GPA is incredibly low for those schools, and I don't see any really incredible ECs that would make up for it (in the context of top schools). Did you maybe misread OPs GPAs as 3.9s instead of 3.6s?
 
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