<p>I hope my previous post didn’t come off as rude–it wasn’t intended to be. </p>
<p>You mention your GPA and your ECs are your strong points. Without question I agree with the GPA part. I felt like the same was basically true for me, and if you read back thru the 2010-2011 applicants thread you can find plenty about my profile. </p>
<p>As far as I’ve been able to tell, what really makes ECs a strong point of an application is being able to use ECs to demonstrate your passion, commitment, and leadership skills. This works well for applications especially because it gives you something to write about and talk about, in addition to how much you presumably enjoy it in and of itself. </p>
<p>Again, not trying to criticize. Just trying to give you an honest opinion when you asked for them. Here’s why I thought parts of your application were generic. </p>
<p>LOR: 1 non-science professor (generic), 2 science professors (generic), 1 from my PI (should be pretty good), 1 from an MD I know very well (should be very good)Strong LORs are important (probably not as much as GPA or MCAT). What’s preventing you from having 4 amazing ones? Is there anything you can do to change that? Given your great GPA, having strong LORs from profs should be possible. And while that MD one will be nice, the ones from profs are equally important and perhaps more important because they will speak about you as a student…which is ultimately what med schools are selecting you to be.</p>
<p>EC:
-Hospital volunteering 100hr: Many premed students do this, which makes it hard for your to distinguish yourself by being a hospital volunteer. When I hear that a premed is a hospital volunteer, I imagine them filing papers or transporting patients or cleaning up the waiting room or visiting with patients. Certainly important things, but nothing earth-shattering. Did you do something beyond that? If so, I would be more impressed by it.</p>
<p>-Shadowing in different specialties 50hrs: This isn’t a ton of time spent shadowing, and since you mentioned shadowing different specialties, I interpreted that as you probably spent a full day with like 5 different docs. This would make me wonder how much you got out of the experience because I would question whether you had time to observe patient care or get to know the doc you were shadowing. To me, this looks like another thing you did just to check off a proverbial box on the “I’m a good premed” list. </p>
<p>-Research for 3 years at my uni: This one has potential to be really cool, especially since you alluded to it above. If you’re doing really high level research and are actually getting to do stuff–meaning you’re not just cleaning dishes or coding samples or whatever–then this could be cool. But the thing is, a lot of premeds do extensive research. Figuring out how to distinguish yourself based on research experience is difficult because it’s such a common thing to do. </p>
<p>-Tutoring at my university in bio and chem for 2 years: Like the above, it depends on what you do with it. Sit in an office and wait for kids to come by looking for help? Work one night a week at a help session? Or is this a huge commitment and something you really care about? It’s hard to tell from the way you wrote it!</p>
<p>-Short term mission trip: I went on a 10-day med mission to Costa Rica and am headed to Mexico for two weeks soon, so I am definitely a fan of mission trips. However, there is some controversy about med mission trips–are you really doing anything to benefit the community? Are you just “using” the local population as training for things you aren’t allowed to do in the states? Are you really even doing anything, or is it just a glorified vacation? Or, was it not medical at all, and tied to your church? As far as I can tell, the default assumption about medical mission trips as they’re an exciting way for American students to be exposed to global health care, but can do more harm than good for the communities. I think they’re viewed somewhat skeptically by the medical community. Obviously there are great organizations out there that run very sustainable programs, but as far as I can tell they’re the exception.</p>
<p>-Heavily involved in non profit organization that promotes the eradication of HIV: Don’t know what to say about this one. So far it’s the only one that has to do with service (besides your short mission trip), and many schools really emphasize service, so I think it would be a good idea to elaborate here when you’re sending out your apps. Def has some potential though!</p>
<p>-Vice president of a student association of the above organization: VP is cool. Prez is better. Founder is better. While leadership’s not a must for med school apps, it certainly helps, and with your current MCAT score, you can use all the help you can find. Was this a pretty significant position? Most of the VPs I know (and I know quite a few as I had a very “involved” group of friends) didn’t do much work and just used their position as a line on their CV. If that’s not the case for you, I think you should explain it more.</p>
<p>-Working full-time at a research organization that’s affiliated with the hospital (constant patient contact, nurses, MDs, PharmDs, ect): you mentioned this above and it sounds like a cool project. Could this type of work be your hook? Are you the only student? </p>
<p>I guess what I meant by generic is that at this point, I’m not seeing anything that makes me think “OMG I have to meet this kid. Now.” and I don’t see any kind of “theme” that really unifies what you’re doing. Nothing really stands out as super awesome, although of course I recognize as a package it looks pretty complete (in that you’ve checked most of those proverbial boxes). As you’ve written it here, it reads like a kid who knows what the minimum hoops one must jump through to get into med school are, and maybe hasn’t taken advantage of all that undergrad has to offer in terms of developing a real passion for something.</p>
<p>I hope you won’t interpret this as a terrible critique. Of course I recognize that you have dedicated significant time and effort to the things that you do, and I’m sure you have a lot to be proud of. I’m not even looking for a response and wasn’t intending to challenge anything you said. I just wanted to point this stuff out so that if there’s really “more to it” (as I suspect there is), you can have some ideas about how to market it to med schools in a more effective way than you listed here (which isn’t to say you should be putting a lot of effort into marketing yourself to an anonymous internet board, and it isn’t to suggest this is how you’d write your app. I just wanted to give you some feedback!)</p>
<p>If I had your app, I’d work on figuring out a theme that’s tying it all together and from there would bulk up the service and leadership aspects according to said theme. The nice thing about a theme (other than it keeping your life consistent) is that it gives you proof that you do the things you say you do in an interview. Anyone can say they’re drawn to medicine because they like serving others, for example. But if you can back that up with years of service, leadership in service organizations, and maybe even some research work to benefit the demographics you care about, then you’re really showing it. Does that make sense?</p>
<p>I want you to find your hook! It’s there somewhere :)</p>
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