What should my school list look like? Safeties?

[Iwannaknow]

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[Mwooster]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for taking the time to read this. I am grateful for my luck in my stats, but I am a little worried that some mid tiers will reject just because I am overqualified, even though I would love to go to a school like UCI. With some bad luck, I might also be rejected from the top 20 schools, which will leave me with no acceptances. Though I am aiming for top 5/10/20, my goal is to get into Medical school period.

Country/state of residence: CA

Cumulative GPA: 3.93 (will prob go up another .01, but who cares at this point)

Science GPA: 4.00

MCAT Scores: 526 (132/131/132/131)

Research -
Did 1 year of research in high school + 1 summer and 1 winter in college. Got 2 posters at a national conference out of it.
2 years (as of now) at a lab at school. I had 1 poster at our school poster conference, and my PI is trying to get me on a paper before I apply, but I don’t think that will happen. Probably spent > 1000 hours here, am going to get a great letter of rec, and it was a defining experience for me. I was also funded like 8000 bucks by my school for my work.
<100 hours at an ER doing clinical research.
I’ve spent the last year working with a surgical department on a project. It’s entirely mine. I wrote the IRB, the protocol, did the lit review, came up with a question and hypothesis. We just got IRB approval, are starting to collect specimen, and I will be doing lab work on them throughout my gap year. For now, I get to be in the OR for 4 hours a week with my PI so we can preserve the specimen right after his surgery (so cool!). Have been funded 2000 to do this. This is what I am doing through my gap year and I should get 1-2 publications as first author on it, but definitely not in time for my application.

Volunteering (clinical) –
About 300 hours at a hospital (all kinds of departments) (4 hours a week for the past 1.5 years, but will continue through to graduation and probably my gap year) I will probably have 400 hours by the time I apply
Something like 50 hours from 1 summer at another hospital’s ED
I got 40 hours of ambulance shadowing while I was training to get EMT certified. I didn’t end up using the certification for anything though.

Physician shadowing – About 80 hours in ENT, Optho, Neuro, Neurosurgery, Surgery, Heme/Onc, internist, Peds.

Non-clinical volunteering - About 50 hours at a local soup kitchen. Something like 20 hours at another type of event.

Letters of rec: Should be solid.

Misc. Extracurricular activities - President of 1 research-based club. Financial Director for another club that puts on an annual event for kids. Mentor for 2 freshman at my school.

I have another question you all may be able to help me with. So, in terms of volunteering, I currently have 300 in hospital and 50 in a soup kitchen. If I continue at my regular pace in the hospital, I'll hit 400 by the time I apply. I was thinking about quitting my lab (the one I spent >1000 hours in), or at least cutting back on the time, and instead focusing on my surgery research and doubling down on my hospital volunteering. If I do, I should be able to break 500 hours in the hospital come June. I'm really leaning towards this option, just because I think my application may be way too research oriented without a comparable number of volunteering hours, and because, after 2 years, I'm starting to get bored with my research, even though it was a defining experience. I also will be really really stressed/busy if I attempt to juggle 2 labs as my surgical project starts to take off. I definitely need to at least cut back on the 16 hours a week I currently spend in this lab. I keep getting varied opinions, but whats your take on this? Keep in mind I'm gonna ask this PI to write me a letter of rec in February, but I don't think he'd have hard feelings if I explained that I wanted to get more involved in more clinically relevant research, but he may not be as open to getting me published. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place on this option haha. I might ask him to allow me to train another individual, just so I don't leave him empty handed. Another option is to increase my non-clinical volunteering by tutoring inner city kids.

Thanks SO MUCH

I'd use Wedgedawg's ARS to give yourself a better idea. With your great GPA & MCAT and very good ECs (I don't see you serving the underserved, though) all the Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools like BU and Albert Einstein should be good adds.

 

[Iwannaknow]

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[GrapesofRath]

You're probably one of a few out of 50,000 applicants with a 3.9+ and 43+ MCAT in the entire world.

You're making this way too complicated. Pick a list of schools. Even if it is a mediocre list expect plenty of II's. Don't be a complete clown at the interviews. Then at the end of the cycle pick the school that provides you the most money and the biggest name. Go to a fantastic med school. Become a doctor. Problem solved.

If you are that worried on the "safety" types look into OOS public schools. Ohio State, Wisconsin, UTSW, UVA, Stony Brook come to mind. Here a couple more to fiddle with that aren't public schools but could be "safeties": Hofstra, Emory, USC, Rochester, Case Western.

 

[Iwannaknow]

You're right. I am making this complicated. Thanks for saying that to me, I needed it!

Any advice on the second part of the post?

Edit: Also I thought the general advice was not to apply to OOS publics because of the low acceptance rate for OOS students. Is it just b/c of my stats?

 

[GrapesofRath]

You're right. I am making this complicated. Thanks for saying that to me, I needed it!

Any advice on the second part of the post?

Edit: Also I thought the general advice was not to apply to OOS publics because of the low acceptance rate for OOS students. Is it just b/c of my stats?

Yes your stats are exactly the type of thing that can attract interest from a OOS public school. Again some of them might still look at you as low yield but then again you could perhaps argue this for almost any non top 20 school potentially.

 

[Iwannaknow]

This is the list I built on the fly (and with input I got from a few people):

Harvard
Hopkins
Stanford
WUSTL
Columbia
NYU (I want to do the tertiary direct-to-residency program)
Icahn Mt. Sinai
Vanderbilt
Yale
Geisel Dartmouth
Duke
Pritzker
Northwestern
Perelman
Weill Cornell
WashU
UCSF
UCLA (Geffen)
UCSD
Vanderbilt
Baylor
Mayo
Case Western
Emory
AECOM
UCI
UC Davis
UT Southwestern
USC
Emory
Ohio State

I think it may be too many, but I'll cut them as I start research them.

 

[GrapesofRath]

This is the list I built on the fly (and with input I got from a few people):

Harvard
Hopkins
Stanford
WUSTL
Columbia
NYU (I want to do the tertiary direct-to-residency program)
Icahn Mt. Sinai
Vanderbilt
Yale
Geisel Dartmouth
Duke
Pritzker
Northwestern
Perelman
Weill Cornell
WashU
UCSF
UCLA (Geffen)
UCSD
Vanderbilt
Baylor
Mayo
Case Western
Emory
AECOM
UCI
UC Davis
UT Southwestern
USC
Emory
Ohio State

I think it may be too many, but I'll cut them as I start research them.

Looks fine

 

[Goro]

You're golden. Aim high.

Consider:

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