What should I change for re-applying?

[orthosurghopeful]

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[Mistasunshine]

1) Are your shadowing hours from this year all in specialities? Most schools like to see shadowing in an area of primary care, especially since most schools you're competitive at are probably more primary care and service oriented. With that said...

2) Add non clinical volunteering hours to the less fortunate, in the hundreds would be best since you're taking a gap year.

3) Did you get your essays in primary app and secondaries reviewed by other people? Def need to rewrite all of them as many schools you're a reapplicant at will compare you old and new app side by side.

4) Apply more broadly, check AMCAS tables or MSAR to see OOS vs IS % matriculants, make sure your MCAT is average at most schools you apply to, need some lower and u can have a few that are higher but make sure you can really sell your fit. What is your state of residence?

 

[Trollest]

Did you get secondaries from those schools?

Thanks for the response! I appreciate the help.

1. So far all of my shadowing is in Ortho, but I'm planning to do at least some ED shadowing this summer.
2. That sounds good, any suggestions for interesting things to do that I can get a few hundred hours doing?
3. Yeah, I had my primary essay reviewed by my school pre-med adviser, but I didn't get much help for submitting the secondaries. I didn't get most of my secondaries in until Mid-August so that may have hurt my chances at a few schools.
4. I'm from WI, so I thought I would be fairly competitive at UW-Madison and MCW. I was on hold at MCW for like six months but ended up being rejected.

 

[Mistasunshine]

Thanks for the response! I appreciate the help.

1. So far all of my shadowing is in Ortho, but I'm planning to do at least some ED shadowing this summer.
2. That sounds good, any suggestions for interesting things to do that I can get a few hundred hours doing?
3. Yeah, I had my primary essay reviewed by my school pre-med adviser, but I didn't get much help for submitting the secondaries. I didn't get most of my secondaries in until Mid-August so that may have hurt my chances at a few schools.
4. I'm from WI, so I thought I would be fairly competitive at UW-Madison and MCW. I was on hold at MCW for like six months but ended up being rejected.

1. You could also try to get some hours in pediatrics, internal med or family med, perhaps try asking the doctor you go to for your annual check ups.

2. For clinical, look up like a Planned Parenthood or free clinics in your area and see if you can volunteer and/or continue volunteering at the hospital. For non clinical try something you might enjoy/are interested in like food banks, homeless shelters, big brother big sister with underserved kids, etc. Also make sure you're doing things over a long period of time to show commitment rather than getting all your hours in one month.

3. It's very important to have everything complete early! Make sure your primary is ready to go the day you are allowed to submit and be verified. Secondary prompts often don't change so you can look them up from past years on sdn, pre-write before the summer you're applying, get them reviewed by multiple people, then you'll be ready to copy and paste the second you receive the secondary.

 

[curbsideconsult]

2. That sounds good, any suggestions for interesting things to do that I can get a few hundred hours doing?

Try looking here: VolunteerMatch - Where Volunteering Begins and here: Idealist. Craigslist isn't a terrible idea either.

3. Yeah, I had my primary essay reviewed by my school pre-med adviser,

Was it only your advisor? You might want to revamp your PS and shop it around to a couple more people.

 

[orthosurghopeful]

1. You could also try to get some hours in pediatrics, internal med or family med, perhaps try asking the doctor you go to for your annual check ups.

2. For clinical, look up like a Planned Parenthood or free clinics in your area and see if you can volunteer and/or continue volunteering at the hospital. For non clinical try something you might enjoy/are interested in like food banks, homeless shelters, big brother big sister with underserved kids, etc. Also make sure you're doing things over a long period of time to show commitment rather than getting all your hours in one month.

3. It's very important to have everything complete early! Make sure your primary is ready to go the day you are allowed to submit and be verified. Secondary prompts often don't change so you can look them up from past years on sdn, pre-write before the summer you're applying, get them reviewed by multiple people, then you'll be ready to copy and paste the second you receive the secondary.

That's super helpful, thank you! That makes sense, I'm hoping to find a couple things I enjoy that I can do over the course of the next year at least. I'm currently doing some ED volunteering (~25 hours so far since January), but I don't typically get much patient contact so it would be better to have volunteer experiences I can talk about on my applications/during interviews.

 

[sss1219]

Yep, I got secondaries from every school I applied to and submitted all of them within 2-3 weeks, but no II's.

School List:
MCW
UW-Madison
Minnesota
Rosalind Franklin
UIC
Indiana
USC
USF
Georgetown
Loyola
Mayo - MN & AZ

Agreed that your volunteer hours are severely lacking, you should have at least 100-150 hours of clinical and nonclinical hours on their own. But otherwise you also have a short school list with some questionable choices. Despite the upward trend USC/Mayo were far reaches with your stats, Gtown is low yield and gets a ton of apps (arguably RFU is as well), and then you have Minnesota in there which heavily prefers IS students (even USF so) and I'm assuming you're a Wisconsin resident with UW/MCW in there. That leaves less than half of your list as realistic, so you need to apply more broadly to new and low tier MD schools that are more OOS friendly next time - Tulane, Netter, SLU, TCMC, Wayne, OUWB, NYMC, VCU, Albany, Downstate, Philly trio, Creighton, and any new school e.g. Nova MD, Seton Hall, Calmed.

 

[Faha]

I suggest applying to all these schools in your next application:
U Wisconsin
Medical College Wisconsin
Rosalind Franklin
Loyola
Western Michigan
Oakland Beaumont
St. Louis
Creighton
Tulane
Vermont
Quinnipiac
New York Medical College
Seton Hall
Penn State
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
George Washington
Virginia Commonwealth
Eastern Virginia
NOVA MD
California University (new school)
Kaiser (new school)
Also apply to at least 5 DO schools and you are competitive for all DO schools.

 

[sss1219]

1. Since grad school won't do much about my undergrad GPA (which is a bit low), should I consider re-taking the MCAT? I'd like to think I could score a 520, which would definitely help my application, but I did study for about 3-4 months and took a few practice tests with similar scores.
- Probably not. At some point above a 515 the luck factor comes into play, so I wouldn't risk going for an improvement. It would be a huge mark on your app if you score actually went down, not worth the risk

2. Would it be helpful to get more clinical experience? My premed adviser said to think about some caregiver positions (those that don't require a CNA). Is the scribe experience I have sufficient for what most med schools are looking for, or is my clinical experience lacking compared to some of those who get accepted into higher-ranked schools?
- It certainly won't hurt, but at a glance the hole in your app is your nonclinical work, not your clinical volunteering

3. For during my MPH program, I'm planning to get a research or TA position to help pay. Is there anything in particular that would be best to apply for? Or are intro chem, bio or physics TA positions fine?
- It won't really matter what you TA, since ECs like that are meant to show your mentoring/leadership capabilities and those skills can be shown with any discipline. Teach the field you feel you enjoy most or pays the most, or even the one that allows enough free time to continue volunteering on the side

4. Last one - some of my interests are music and staying active (lifting/biking/running), any recommendations for ways I could use these to make my application more well-rounded other than just being hobbies? I've thought about getting a personal training certification, but I'm not sure what else I could do.[/QUOTE]
- Music therapy maybe? Or working in some sort of rehab capacity with the elderly or something? I think those sorts of roles would kill 2 birds with one stone in terms of your lacking volunteering.

 

[Dr. Meliodas]

Definitely work on your non-clinical volunteering. It would be best to do this by helping those less fortunate - work with the homeless, tutoring disadvantaged children, or working with refugees.

Faha's has given you a great list. If you are looking for more reach schools look at the MSAR and find schools where your GPA is around the 25% percentile of matriculants and your MCAT is above or at their medians.