Would it be advisable to apply this cycle? (MD programs)

[giizsb]

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Hello everyone.
I'm here to listen to some advice on whether I would be ready to apply this cycle. I literally have no one around me who is on this pre-med journey right now, and I really appreciate all the help that people give on SDN! 🙂
I am looking to apply to only MD programs. I listed my basic stats. The hours are only approximated.

- graduated with 3.80 gpa (science gpa: 3.7+) from well-known public university in CA ;
cum laude & departmental honors; graduated last spring.
- Asian California resident
- mcat: 509 (127/126/128/128)
- Letters: 2 science, 1 language, 1 from research prof, 1 from animal shelter, and i hope to have 1 from a doctor..

- Community Service/Volunteer - Medical/Clinical — 750 hrs
*Children's Hospital, surgery center (currently)
- Extracurricular Activities - Non-Clinical — 200 hrs
*Broadcasting Club, animal shelter (currently.. continuing from high school!)
- Leadership — 120 hrs
*Peer advisor
- Paid Employment - Medical/Clinical — None (yet). I will have this experience beginning from March as a part-time scribe
- Paid Employment - Non Medical/Clinical — 120 hrs
- Physician Shadowing/Clinical Observation -- 46 hrs -- hope to have more starting from March
- Research/Lab — 1500 hrs +
*Honors thesis, summer cancer research internship, volunteer animal technician

 

[Little Homie]

Prepare for next cycle

 

[theonlytycrane]

basic.

 

[Deleted member 750603]

"This cycle" meaning to matriculate 2018 or "this cycle" as in matriculate 2019?

Definitely not 2018.

Depends on your story I guess (all those hours you listed), but right now you look a bit "check boxy" with a good GPA and average MCAT. Wouldn't hurt getting letters from established professionals (post doc is ok but not great). Think about it in terms of who can vouch that you would make a good physician or rather who is more so qualified to make that judgement call and obviously knows you well to say that.

50,000 + applicants, with 60% rejected, think what will make you stand out.

I'm guessing you'd fall below your Asian peers in terms of MCAT. That way you're at disadvantage right away. Doesn't mean you won't get accepted somewhere but it's not a "solid" application to say you're a shoe in.

 

[giizsb]

Yes- meant matriculating in 2019 ! Sorry for the confusion.

 

[RedPanda55]

Cali kid huh? Welps, that hurts your chances already. If you weren't ruling out DO already, I'd say you have a good chance of getting in there but MD will be a bit tougher. Get on MSAR and apply broadly. Chances are you won't be staying in state for med school if you don't plan on retaking your mcat and scoring 515+. Also, the little clinical paid experience could hurt a little. Not saying your chances are 0 though. Make them fall in love with your stories, and some rock solid LOR's will help!

 

[PhilzCoffeeAddict]

Yes, apply broadly. You're an asian american and california resident.. going to be a bit harder because of this but apply broadly.

 

[Faha]

I suggest applying to these schools with your stats:
Vermont
Quinnipiac
Albany
New York Medical College
Penn State
Drexel
Temple
Jefferson
George Washington
Eastern Virginia
West Virginia
Oakland Beaumont
Western Michigan
Medical College Wisconsin
Rosalind Franklin
St. Louis
Creighton
Tulane
NOVA MD
California University
Seton Hall
Loma Linda
UC Davis
UC Irvine
any new schools that open for 2019 (Kaiser, Roseman)

 

[M1i]

Yes, apply broadly. You're an asian american and california resident.. going to be a bit harder because of this but apply broadly.

Apparently this seems to be obvious to everyone in this thread. But not me, so if you don’t mind me asking. Why is he at a disadvantage for being Asian and a California resident. Is it because of the difficulty of getting into Cali schools, which sort of eliminates home field advantage? Also this has me a little concerned because although it’s some time till I apply. He has just about everything that I will have on my application and then some. So Where does that put me? He seems to have a pretty broad range of ECs (apart from lower end shadowing hours and no employement history) and a decent gpa. Why such reluctance? Just trying to understand thank you!

 

[freedoctor17]

Apparently this seems to be obvious to everyone in this thread. But not me, so if you don’t mind me asking. Why is he at a disadvantage for being Asian and a California resident. Is it because of the difficulty of getting into Cali schools, which sort of eliminates home field advantage? Also this has me a little concerned because although it’s some time till I apply. He has just about everything that I will have on my application and then some. So Where does that put me? He seems to have a pretty broad range of ECs (apart from lower end shadowing hours and no employement history) and a decent gpa. Why such reluctance? Just trying to understand thank you!

Pretty much because Asian = ORM so and California schools are very competitive. I think he'll be fine if he applied broadly out of state though. Everyone here is so cynical. They look at an application and think they're too checkboxy. Believe it or not, not every premed has an amazing story...

This person has a great GPA, a ton of clinical hours, a lot of research, and some leadership and shadowing. They have a decent MCAT score although in California it'll be hard to stand out since a lot of the schools have high scores they can still do great at a ton of MD schools.

I have yet to apply so that's only my opinion but I hate to see people telling others to delay for a year for stupid reasons like thinking their application looks too checkboxy. Of course it'll look that way when they're listing it on here for a quick critique. The actual application will have more room to discuss the activities.

 

[M1i]

Pretty much because Asian = ORM so and California schools are very competitive. I think he'll be fine if he applied broadly out of state though. Everyone here is so cynical. They look at an application and think they're too checkboxy. Believe it or not, not every premed has an amazing story...

This person has a great GPA, a ton of clinical hours, a lot of research, and some leadership and shadowing. They have a decent MCAT score although in California it'll be hard to stand out since a lot of the schools have high scores they can still do great at a ton of MD schools.

I have yet to apply so that's only my opinion but I hate to see people telling others to delay for a year for stupid reasons like thinking their application looks too checkboxy. Of course it'll look that way when they're listing it on here for a quick critique. The actual application will have more room to discuss the activities.

Thank you!

 

[sunshine859]

How were your scores on MCAT practice tests?

 

[RedPanda55]

Apparently this seems to be obvious to everyone in this thread. But not me, so if you don’t mind me asking. Why is he at a disadvantage for being Asian and a California resident. Is it because of the difficulty of getting into Cali schools, which sort of eliminates home field advantage? Also this has me a little concerned because although it’s some time till I apply. He has just about everything that I will have on my application and then some. So Where does that put me? He seems to have a pretty broad range of ECs (apart from lower end shadowing hours and no employement history) and a decent gpa. Why such reluctance? Just trying to understand thank you!

Great questions! Guess I didn't word it properly above. We're not saying he won't get in with his numbers and neither are we being cynical. I think most of us are just realistic with his situation. He's a good candidate. Per AAMC 2016 matriculant GPA/MCAT data he would have about a 66% chance of matriculating (https://www.aamc.org/download/321508/data/factstablea23.pdf) however taking into account that he's Asian and ORM, that number will probably drop to the 50-60% in addition to being from California where it's even thougher to get in, he loses his instate advantage like you said therefore decreasing his chances even more. He's also ruling out DO's which he would more likely than not be accepted to. There's nothing on his EC's that will really rule him out for acceptance but also nothing that makes him really stick out (Olympic athlete, Rhodes, etc.) so therefore it is kind of check-boxy. There's nothing wrong with that since those experiences are necessary but it also doesn't make him stand out from the thousands of other applicants (Just like you!) who have done those exact same things. Therefore his chances then are probably at best close to 50%. That's not terrible hence we say apply broadly because if he applied only to CA allopathic schools (9) and a few out of state, his chances plummet. Personal statement, secondaries, and LOR's will also now play a bigger role too!

 

[Deleted member 750603]

Apparently this seems to be obvious to everyone in this thread. But not me, so if you don’t mind me asking. Why is he at a disadvantage for being Asian and a California resident. Is it because of the difficulty of getting into Cali schools, which sort of eliminates home field advantage? Also this has me a little concerned because although it’s some time till I apply. He has just about everything that I will have on my application and then some. So Where does that put me? He seems to have a pretty broad range of ECs (apart from lower end shadowing hours and no employement history) and a decent gpa. Why such reluctance? Just trying to understand thank you!

I got these stats from AAMC and approximated them for the purpose of this thread but you can check for yourself.

Table A-24: MCAT and GPA Grid for Applicants and Acceptees by Selected Race and Ethnicity, 2013-2014 through 2015-2016 (Aggregated) - Applicants and Matriculants Data - FACTS: Applicants, Matriculants, Enrollment, Graduates, MD/PhD, and Residency Applicants Data - Data and Analysis - AAMC

Acceptance rate for an asian applicant is 42% from 30,000 applicants with majority of the applicants having MCAT > 30
Acceptance rate of a white applicant is 45% from 80,000 applicants with majority of the applicants having MCAT > 28
Acceptance rate of a hispanic applicant is 44% from 13,000 applicants with majority of the applicants having MCAT > 25
Acceptance rate for a black applicant is 36% from 12,000 applicants with majority of the applicants having MCAT > 24

The point of this is to show that asian students tend to perform well academically, at least on the MCAT.

There's a few reasons why being asian CAN put you at a disadvantage from an academic standpoint. And that's not a bad thing or a good thing, we as humans are just trying to figure out how to make it a fair game for everyone. Anyway that can be a can of worms discussion but....

Any given school, for the most part, will have a "healthy" mix of people and races. Those people being men and women which are typically divided 50/50, though not always, but you would not see 100/0 ratio (never say never but probably not). Then you get down to races so again likely you won't have a class comprised of all asians or all white or all black or all hispanic. There again will be some "representative" blend and what that blend will be is up to the school and how they want to represent their community.

So you're not really competing against other races necessarily, you're competing somewhat within your own (again I have to qualify with that its not a 100% and there is global discussion of course). So if you have 1000 asian kids applying to your school and their stats are averaging 3.9/520 you'd have to dig deep before you find someone with lower stats. If it was academic performance based then medical schools would mostly be comprised of asian and white, but it doesn't mean that hispanic and black can't cut it in medical school. There are lots of reasons for academic disparity and so understanding this you try to balance it out a bit. Some people are just born at a disadvantage day 1 while others have all advantages they could dream of from day 1. To reflect the society and community medical school or anyone for that matter don't accept/hire purely based on merit.

Anyway moving on. Some schools know that even though there are 1000 asian kids applying with 3.9/520 most of them will probably go into other schools if your school is not part of that "creme de la creme" ranking so some of them won't even get interviews to low tier schools under the assumption that those are their safety schools so why even waste an interview. So individual stories do matter and you don't have a good one then the school moves on. It's a bit of a dating game and need some majestic peacock feathers to get any attention.

The point is though what is that thing that makes you stand out in this statistical sea, because if a school has 100 seats and gives equal weight to white/black/asian/hispanic then there are 25 seats per race and if there are 5000 applicants then you are competing for being 1 of 12 in your class (taking gender into account).

Hope I didn't discourage or disillusion anyone. It's a complex world with complex decisions to be made 🙂