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- May 10, 2013
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Applied to 45 schools, 2 IIs, one of which turned into a WL, other one is next month but its OOS acceptance rate is 30%.
Wondering how I can improve my app to reapply since it seems like I will have to.
3.86/519, ORM/IL/Big 10 state school
Clinical volunteering: 30 hours free clinic (started in fall 2019 but cut short due to COVID), 300 hours physical rehabilitation hospital volunteering over 2 summers, 100 hours doing free health screenings over 4 years in college
Non-clinical volunteering: 300 hours food pantry over 2 summers, 60 hours hospice volunteer over 2ish years, 170 hours head server at soup kitchen over 3 years
Research: 680 hours in a human development lab over 1.5 years, 900 hours from 2 years in a bench research lab, no posters/pubs/presentations though
Shadowing: 60 hours (peds GI 40 hours, PM&R 15 hours, FM 5 hrs)
Teaching: 600 hours teaching assistant for 3 classes over 4 semesters, 80 hours tutoring at risk students at local HS
Non clinical employment: 680 hours retail/delivery driver
Other: 125 hours leadership in club improving health in the community
Awards: "make a difference" service award
I also have an IA from 3 years ago where I put food in a tupperware in my dining hall, was removed from my record but I still reported it.
Currently in my gap year I am continuing in my human development lab, I have been leading a team of undergraduates and am working on a paper but it likely won't be done anytime soon. In my secondaries I talked about being interested in population health and helping low-income communities, but perhaps my story wasn't cohesive enough? What else can I do to improve my app? I'm not sure where I went wrong. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
I was complete starting in mid-Aug til end of Oct. My 2 IIs are from schools I was complete at mid Oct, and last wk of Oct, both mid-tiers.
School list:
Albert Einstein Boston Case Western Columbia Duke Emory George Washington Georgetown Harvard Hofstra Icahn Mt Sinai Indiana Jefferson Johns Hopkins Keck USC Loyola Stritch Mayo Clinic MC Wisconsin NU Feinberg NYU OSU Penn Pitt Rochester Rosalind Franklin Rush SLU Stanford U Chicago Pritzker U Cincinnati U Colorado U Miami U Michigan UCF UCLA Geffen UCSF UIC USF Morsani UVA Vanderbilt Wash U Weill Cornell Western Michigan Wisconsin Madison Yale
Where did you get your LORs from?
Despite a stellar academic record and MCAT, I will say the majority of your app is pretty cookie cutter and nothing stands out much. You have research experience without any scholarly work to show for it which if you compare the other applicant also applying to the medical schools you applied (aka a bunch of t10 Med schools), they hve everything you have, plus some. So you have a few options:
1) when you reapply, you need to apply not so top heavy if you don’t have significant changes to your app from an EC perspective
2) if your eye is on t20-t10 Med schools, I would suggest waiting a year or two to reapply in order to really hone in on parts of your application that you are particularly passionate for (like waiting for that paper to get published).