Reapplying for next year, app deficiencies?

[rockyc88]

Hi all,

I applied this year to ~25 schools and have received 2 pre-II holds and 1 R from IU.

State/Country of Residence: CA
Ties to other States/Regions: N/A
URM? (Y/N): N
Year in School: Graduated from UCB in 2020, currently in second gap year
Undergraduate Major(s)/Minor(s): Mechanical engineering
Graduate Degrees (if applicable): none
Cumulative GPA: 3.59
Science GPA: 3.71
MCAT Score(s): 509 (128,127,127,127)
Research Experience: half a year in a nanobatteries lab (300 hours)
Publications/Abstracts/Posters (include how you were credited e.g. first author, second author, etc.): none
Clinical Experience (paid or volunteer): clinic volunteer scribing (192 hours)
Physician Shadowing: virtual shadowing (30 hours)
Non-Clinical Volunteering: disadvantaged student mentor (50 hours)
Other Extracurricular Activities: Chem TA (120 hours),
Other Employment History: tutor (240 hours), National lab engineering intern (240 hours), national lab engineering intern (680 hours), Stanford hospital office assistant (started working full-time in August-current and my contract ends in March)
Immediate family members in medicine? (Y/N): Y
Specialty of Interest (if applicable): N/A
Interest in Primary Care (Y/N): Y
Interest in Rural Health (Y/N): Y
Essay Focus: more so on primary/rural health but probably shouldn't have been for my secondaries considering my lack of rural experience.
Medical School List:
MD: AMC, Carle Illinois, Drexel, NYMC, OUWB, PSU, UVM, SUNY Downstate, USUHS, UCD, UCI, UCLA, UCR, UCSD, WVU, IU
DO: Western University-Pomona, ATSU-Kirksville, CCOM, Marian University, ACOM, Touro University-Nevada

Made another thread before for WAMC and got some good advice, but now I'm preparing myself to reapply and wanted to get some extra opinions on all the deficiencies in my app. Planning on retaking the MCAT, and will be starting a non-clinical volunteering opportunity at an animal shelter in a few days (also have applied to a few other places like a food bank, etc.). I'm also interviewing for some lab tech positions after my contract at the hospital ends. I'll also apply to more DO schools next time and rewrite my essays to be less focused on rural health when the time comes. Should I take extra classes to boost my cGPA? Any other non academic aspects to focus on? Thank you!

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[calixd123]

school list?

EDIT: didn't see school list in OP sorry. I think UCLA/UCSD is a waste, UCR is a waste unless you are from the Inland Empire.

For MD I would consider MSUCHM, EVMS, CalMed, Quinnipiac, Seton Hall, Temple, Creighton, Jefferson, GW, NOVA MD, VCU, Wayne, Oakland Beaumont, MCW, Rosalind Franklin, Rush, St. Louis, Creighton, TCU-UNT, Wake Forest.

Clinical experience & underserved service seems to be lacking IMO.

 

[LindaAccepted]

A few suggestions:

1. Get more clinical exposure. I realize you're working in a hospital, but it's not clear if you are interreacting with patients and their families at all in your current role. If you are not, either work or volunteer in a capacity where you are doing so. If you are, make sure that you clarify that your current role is clinical.
2. Raise your MCAT, which I realize you're trying to do.
3. If you can, do more non-clinical volunteering.
4. Given that you have little or no exposure to rural medicine, drop that in your application. It doesn't fit with what you've done in the past. Or, move to a rural area where you can volunteer and become familiar with rural medicine.
5. apply to more DO programs as you indicated and more MD programs where you are competitive based on your stats.
6. If your grades had an upward trend, you probably don't need a post-bac, but if there was no trend or it was a downward trend, you may want to consider it.

Good luck!

 

[rockyc88]

A few suggestions:

1. Get more clinical exposure. I realize you're working in a hospital, but it's not clear if you are interreacting with patients and their families at all in your current role. If you are not, either work or volunteer in a capacity where you are doing so. If you are, make sure that you clarify that your current role is clinical.
2. Raise your MCAT, which I realize you're trying to do.
3. If you can, do more non-clinical volunteering.
4. Given that you have little or no exposure to rural medicine, drop that in your application. It doesn't fit with what you've done in the past. Or, move to a rural area where you can volunteer and become familiar with rural medicine.
5. apply to more DO programs as you indicated and more MD programs where you are competitive based on your stats.
6. If your grades had an upward trend, you probably don't need a post-bac, but if there was no trend or it was a downward trend, you may want to consider it.

Good luck!

1. I work as a radiology film librarian so the interactions with patients are pretty minimal, but I do have a chance to see how their health conditions impact their overall demeanor and I try to maximize their quality of care when transitioning between doctors since there's a lot of yellow tape when it comes to accessing their records. I get that it's pretty behind-the-scenes but would this be considered clinical or does it need to be more direct?

3. Does anything work or should it specifically be more human-facing? and when you say more do you mean in terms of hours or variety?

6. It has a slight dip the one year where I took only engineering classes, and back up after that. What would be a good cGPA to shoot for if I did decide to do a post-bac?

Thank you!

 

[LindaAccepted]

1. I work as a radiology film librarian so the interactions with patients are pretty minimal, but I do have a chance to see how their health conditions impact their overall demeanor and I try to maximize their quality of care when transitioning between doctors since there's a lot of yellow tape when it comes to accessing their records. I get that it's pretty behind-the-scenes but would this be considered clinical or does it need to be more direct?

3. Does anything work or should it specifically be more human-facing? and when you say more do you mean in terms of hours or variety?

6. It has a slight dip the one year where I took only engineering classes, and back up after that. What would be a good cGPA to shoot for if I did decide to do a post-bac?

Thank you!

To respond to your questions:

1. I'd like to see more human interaction with patients and with other care providers. Whether it's "clinical" or not is not really the question. It's not really great clinical exposure because you're not dealing with or observing regularly human beings, patients. It's not really showing you what the clinical practice of medicine is like as well as other forms of clinical exposure where you do interact with patients and their families.
3. You disadvantaged student mentoring was good. I would like to see more of it or other community service. It's pretty hard to do community service withot interacting with human beings somewhere, at least virtually.
6. The highest you can get. 4.0. While I advocate aiming for the highest, if you are asking what's competitive, that will depend on the schools you are applying to as well as your MCAT score. Again, I think you're on the bubble as to whether a postbac would really help you or not.