Ehhhh.
After working in a hospital for a few years, there is no way I'm going to go shadow a doctor. Why would someone? The whole point is to know what you're getting yourself into.
It all depends on what you are doing. Being an ER scribe does not replace doing shadowing. As an ER scribe, you are performing a job, which in this context is a negative because it makes your focus performing a task, rather than learning about what you are getting into. You are exposed to the emergency room and health care administered there, which is very different from how 90%+ physicians practice. The purpose of shadowing is that you see what the daily life of a physician is. Interacting with patients, the paperwork, the conferences, the business, the science, the art, everything. Most jobs working at a hospital don't fulfill that. I interviewed someone a few years back for medical school who had 3 years of experience working as a ER tech and then as a Rad tech. They wrote down that they had something like 2500 hours of "clinical experience", but after talking to them, it was clear that those jobs were just that, jobs. They did the job very well, but that means they showed up, did their job and clocked out, nothing more. I want it to be clear, there is nothing wrong with that inherently. But if you are going to try to double count hours that you were paid during, you better have gotten something actually out of them. This is like someone doing 'research' by washing glassware in a lab. Being in the hospital and being able to smell the patients is one thing, but actually knowing what physicians do is something else. You can't replace that experience. Are there people who get in without that? Of course. But, the vast majority of admissions committees want to know that you at least tried to figure out what being a physician is like.
Okay I applied this year to about 24 medical schools (22 MD and 2 DO) and didn't get a SINGLE INTERVIEW. Not one. I have a
3.48 science and 3.54 cumulative GPA (with 2 withdrawals, accidentally missed drop deadline) with a
38 MCAT (though my first attempt was a 30). Basically, I want to know if there is some GLARING error in my application that could have prevented me from being getting an interview. I had most of my secondaries done by the end of July if not earlier. I applied pretty broadly, only 1 or 2 top tier schools, most mid tier, some low tier.
Here are some more stats:
40 hours PACU volunteer
1500 hours clinical experience for ED scribing
100 hours volunteer at Santa Cruz county medical society
300 hours of KZSC radio disc jockey volunteer
100 hours as kzsc mentor/TA volunteer
80 hours shadowing experience with paramedics
NO RESEARCH EXPERIENCE attachFull188737
A ton of work experience (I pretty much worked during all of college) including:
Pet store employee
UCSC orientation leader
AVID tutor
Taco hell
Central Valley After school Foundation
And I'm probably about to get a job with Kaplan as an MCAT teacher soon
Intermediate Spanish speaker; native English.
Here are some reasons I would expect for not getting an interview:
- Bad personal statement (I realized I used kind of a cliche intro in my PS, but would this really turn so many schools off??)
- No research experience, which I am about to remedy (speaking with a lab PI tomorrow)
- low GPA; however, I feel my MCAT is high enough to make up for this
- need more volunteer hours (about to go to Chile for 3 months to volunteer teach English starting in April)
- LORs, only one good professor LOR, the other two were probably meh. However, good LORs from docs I've worked with in the ED.
- MAYBE lack of shadowing experience, though I feel my work as a scribe should cover this
- I am white and well off, from California (not making an excuse! obviously rich white people from cali can still get in).
Let me know what you think please! I would love to be able to sit down and talk with a acceptance committee person from some medical school. Anyone have any ideas how I can make this happen??
Thank you,
Depressed Mr. MCAT
This is how I read your application:
3.48/38
Zero research
ER scribe
Zero altruism oriented volunteering
Below average personal statement
Below average LOR
Zero physician shadowing
Reasonable work history
ORM
Summary: Asymmetric academics, time outside of academics is largely spent working for pay despite not supporting family/others. No big unique factors.
3.48/38 applying widely and broadly is more than sufficient to get into medical school from an academic perspective. The fact that you had zero interviews indicates that something on your application stopped people from interviewing you. IAs/Criminal issues aside (assume that you don't have these), I think the biggest question for me is why should a medical school use a spot on you? What do you bring to the table that will help my medical school class. It is surprising that out of 24 schools, not a single one thought that your package outside of your stats was possibly what they were looking for. It is possible that a single something is holding you back, but those are usually pretty easy to suss out since there aren't that many that can do that.
If you have a lower GPA, you are competing with a lot more people. Your ECs have to be at a minimum cohesive and complete. Your personal statement and your LOR need to be at a minimum positive (not just saying, "He is a nice guy"). If you have an above average GPA/MCAT, the bar is a little lower, smaller deficiencies in an application are less magnified. You do NOT need some big unique thing to get you into medical school. But, you have multiple areas in your application that are sub-standard. When someone reviews your application for possible interviews, you have to either have something that draws them in and makes them say, "Ya, I want/need to meet this guy." or they have to say, "He is low risk enough that its worth getting him in here to see if he will fit."
I would examine your ECs. To me you are dominated by 'neutral' ECs. While by itself that is not a problem, it becomes one if you have sub-standard academics and nothing else on your application going for you.
Originally posted here:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/should-i-take-next-year-after-junior-year-off.1113782/
Understand that what I'm about to talk about is a very fuzzy topic. I'm putting boundaries on things that really don't have boundaries and explaining a thought process that is largely subconscious... There are three broad categories of ECs. Leisure activities, neutral, and altruistic. There is nothing wrong with enjoying or doing any of them. However, there is a reason adcoms are looking for certain kinds of activities. Medicine is a lot of science, but it is by and large a people profession. It is also a profession that is dominated by the concept of helping other people. No, you don't have to be the next Mother Theresa, but a good part of your time will be in the service of others. If you can't handle that, you will be miserable. No, it does not make you a bad person. It just makes you a poor fit for what most physicians do every day. No matter how bad of a day I'm having in the hospital, virtually every single one of my patients is having a worse day, after all, they are in the hospital, seeing me. Certainly not every physician's practice is like that, but most physicians will have something similar to say about helping their patients.
- Leisure activities are those that you do for yourself. The focus is on you. Most hobbies/sports fall into this category. I would say that if you could potentially scratch out an EC and it wouldn't negatively impact other people or your life, then it is leisure. We like to see people that have leisure activities. Being able to have fun and focus on non-academic things is important. Everyone wants to be around people with hobbies, it makes for a more interesting class.
- Neutral activities are things that you have to do. For example, if you have to work because you are paying for school or supporting family etc. It is a limitation on your time that is just something that has to be done. This is something that needs to be considered when looking at GPAs or how involved people are in other activities.
- Altruistic activities are things where the focus is on other people. Things that better the lives of others primarily. Things that demonstrate that you spend at least a small amount of your time thinking about the needs of others instead of your own. This is where the, "What % of your time do you spend doing different things?" comes in. I'm not saying that someone that devotes <1% of their free time to others can't be a good physician or get enjoyment out of it. But, everything else being equal, I'd strongly prefer someone that is much higher as I think that their chances of success are much higher.
Regarding productivity. Virtually any activity can be productive. It is more about what you do with an activity than what the activity itself is. For instance, if you are in research for 2000 hours, what did you produce? Conceivably, someone paid you or you got academic credits, or at the very least you invested your time into it. So, what came of it? What tangibly shows that you weren't goofing off and getting nothing out of it. The easiest to appreciate are publications, posters, abstracts etc. Strong letters of recommendation are another. I'm not talking about a good letter, I'm talking about, "It is tragic that none of his work was published because he has made significant contributions to our lab including X, Y, and Z." And more importantly in a LOR like that, what is your analagous
Wins Above Replacement, compared to if the lab hired someone else. I'm not that creative, so I'll go through the applications sitting on my desk right now and pick out the single most "productive" things I can find that they did before medical school.
Restructured soup kitchen, tripled meals served by reallocating resources.
Top 3 rank, nationally fencing
2 years research, x1 first author in low impact, 2 presentations
2 years research, x2 non-first author publications, one in Cell, the other PNAS
1 year research, x2 presentations, x1 award from presentation
3 months fundraising and 3 months (Summer) digging wells in Kenya
5 years habitat for humanity from HS to present
2 Summers teaching English in a Lebanese refugee camp
Yes, I cherry picked from ~30 applications. There are certainly a lot of people with very good scores that played video games, worked on their hobbies and are perfectly good people. But, there are also a lot of pretty amazing people out there doing a lot of amazing things. Being productive is about dedication, passion, hard work and perseverance. ie. what we want from our medical students. I interviewed at most of the top 10 as well as several other more local places. Virtually everyone you meet on the trail is going to be a good student. Some better than others. But, it was very obvious when talking to other applicants at the top schools that I was a small fish in a very big sea of stellar applicants.
