Medical Where should I apply?

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Goro

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So I did the WARS calculator (WedgeDawg's Applicant Rating System (Updated Jan 2017)) and got a 104 score. I have phenomenal EC's I think, along with prestigious awards, fellowships, pubs, presentations, and patents. However, I am a little skeptical about the GPA part. I have nearly a 3.86 GPA and a 522 MCAT, so it puts me in the highest score bracket. However, I find it hard to believe that I should make the majority of my schools I will apply to Tier 1 schools because a 3.86 is either at the 25th percentile or at the 10th percentile for some schools. No T1 or, for that matter, T2 school has a 3.86 average.

I did engineering for undergrad, and my GPA was a 3.96 for half my undergrad, but after I came out as gay to my family, I was told I had a mental illness and was really depressed. I focussed less on school, and it dropped to a 3.86. The thing is, I am Asian, and I'm not sure if I have a shot at these schools if my GPA is the 25th percentile. Do you all have any advice for me?

My WARS categories were as follows:

stats: 10
research: 4
clinical experience: 3
shadowing: 2
volunteering: 3
leadership/teaching: 3
miscellaneous: 4 (I talked to someone else about this score, and they agreed it would be a 4)
undergrad school: 2
URM: 1 (except for some schools where LGBTQ is URM)
upward GPA trend: 1
Rock stars should aim high.

How many hours clinical exposure?
Shadowing?

Nonclinical volunteering?

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Your GPA and MCAT are excellent and should not hold you back. Everything at this point just hinges on your extracurriculars. If you're applying to top tier schools, you need to apply to more schools rather than less. Your stats are top tier standard. There is no difference, practically, between a 3.86 and a 3.96. I would apply to 10 schools that are solidly within your range, and I would wave your pride flag high in your application as that kind of diversity is extremely valued. After you have those 10 schools picked out, start picking out top tier schools and simply add them on as you wish.
 
I'm very interested in neurosurgery, so I shadowed neurosurgeons for about 150ish hours. Most of these hours came from spending a few weeks of summer with my uncle, who is a neurosurgeon. I shadowed neurosurgeons a little bit at my undergrad institution too.

Clinical exposure I think I have down very good as well, since I founded an organization that helps brain trauma and general brain injured people directly from my ugrad's hospital. I would say about 300-400 hours of volunteering with that group. I also won a Fulbright, and will be in India once COVID lets up for the remainder of the year until my medical school begins where I will be working directly with underprivileged patients with brain injury in low socioeconomic areas.

Nonclinical volunteering wise, I led a tutoring company where I did charge people, but donated all of the money to charity as part of my mission statement of the company. I also did some service abroad in Latin America while concurrently doing research with underserved populations. So I'd say another 300ish hours here.

I think pre-med anxiety may be getting to you a bit. With a fulbright along with your GPA and MCAT as well as your extracurriculars, I think you should aim high, as I said before.
 
Which 10 schools would you say I should choose? As of now, this is my list in descending order of difficulty (I'm technically instate in both Virginia and NJ, because parents are seperated):

Harvard
Yale
Stanford
Columbia
UChicago
Duke
WashU
UCSF
Penn
Hopkins
UCLA
Michigan
NYU
Vanderbilt
Pitt
Cornell
Northwestern
Mt. Sinai
Mayo
Emory
UVA
Dartmouth
Keck
Wake Forest
EVMS
VCU
NJMS
RWJ
Jefferson

Honestly, just buy the MSAR, find schools that you're within the range for, and throw darts unless there's something that makes you not want to apply to them. If you literally just applied to every school on that list, you'd be fine. Keep that list.
 
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Here's my take... where do you want to go? Which schools have you networked with and have a good idea about the culture, student support, and alumni support? Go to schools that really want a student like yourself and be taken for granted. Go beyond the marketing... go where you can really develop as a leader. Let them want you.
 
How do I do this? I've contacted the LGBTQ offices at the schools I'm interested in, and plan on tailoring my secondaries to each school, but is there anything else I could be doing? I tried to call upon some people I know at RWJ, NJMS, and Jefferson, who say they can help me, but I don't have anyone at Harvard or schools like that that I know.

Your application will speak for itself. You don't need to network with top tier schools to get in, and being Asian is not a disadvantage; it just isn't an explicit advantage.
 
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