You sound like a fantastic person and I’m sure you’re going to make a wonderful physician.
You need to tone down your language IMHO. “clinical experience” means something to the PLME admissions committee… and it’s not “cleaning up after surgeries”. It’s great that you know what it’s like to work in a hospital setting- but many successful BS/MD candidates DON’T have hospital experience. They’ve worked in homeless shelters, volunteered with the Red Cross, done “plain vanilla” volunteer work with vulnerable populations via Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, they’ve worked in food pantries, they’ve volunteered for hospice organizations and otherwise demonstrated their commitment to people who lack access to healthy food, regular preventative medical care, etc.
Committees want to see that you are a kind, compassionate human being who has some insights into the challenges of being ill, elderly, poor, unhoused, etc. AND have a demonstrated interest and aptitude in science. You don’t need to prove your chops as a teenage Mother Theresa, nor do you need dozens of EC’s. Focus on the three things that are the most meaningful for you, and you’ll be fine. Things like “Research at neurology department of very prestigious medical school” is going to prompt more questions than it answers.
I kept most of my ECs vague on purpose due to privacy reasons. Totally see how that could come across wrong, but I will elaborate on my applications : ) Thanks for the feedback.
I just don’t see how anyone will see all these as humanly possible - and that will create doubt - so it’s very important you demonstrate quantifable results.
And you said this is just the top 10. And that didn’t even include your Karaate - which is an awesome EC.
Crisis hotline operator will likewise raise questions about your training and whether you are operating outside your scope of practice.
However, the biggest thing that stood out to me in your list of achievements (which is considerable and impressive) is the lack of community service.
Med schools expect all applicants will have demonstrated compassion, altruism and a willingness to get their hand dirty by doing face-to-face [non-medical] service with those who belong to disadvantaged/disparaged groups.
You have time to remedy this. Start now and spend s few hours a month volunteering at food pantry, soup kitchen or homeless shelter, or at a daycare center for the elderly demented, or helping to.deliver meal to the housebound or something similar.
Totally understandable! Again, things are pretty vague here but the crisis line is more like peer support for runaway, LGBTQ, homeless, and mentally ill youth, not a suicide help line or anything. It also required 50+ hours of training.
You haven’t asked, but I started thinking about a list of colleges I might give if you were my kid. I focused in on larger cities or very close proximity to them, as that seemed a common thread to your list. I put a mix of larger and smaller schools, as you have some small ones (like Pomona) along with huge state schools. I put some on there that have a bit more cachet to them (as that also seemed to be a common theme) if that was important to you, but that also offer merit aid, a key to helping bring the price down for all the reasons mentioned above. Some schools would be shoo-ins for terrific merit aid, and others would be more a matter of shooting your shot. Alternatively, some of them just have lower costs of attendance than the schools on your list, so even without merit aid, they would just save you money on your education. I also avoided warmer areas of the country. The midwest has some amazing educational values, so they’re well-represented here.
I’ve sorted this list by my very fallible sense of what your chances for admission might be. I am not an admissions professional. Additionally, this doesn’t indicate the chance for getting sufficient merit aid to meet your family’s budget (whatever that is). For instance, not only is Wash U. an extremely difficult admit to get in, it’s extremely difficult to get merit aid. But, they offer very generous merit aid to that small number who gets it.
Extremely Likely (80-99+%)
Butler (IN): About 4500 undergrads in Indianapolis
Creighton (NE): About 4500 undergrads in Omaha
DePaul (IL): About 14k undergrads in Chicago
Emmanuel (MA): About 1900 undergrads in Boston and part of the Colleges of the Fenway consortium, where students can cross-register with several other Boston colleges and participate in sports and arts programs together.
Hamline (MN): About 1800 undergrads in Saint Paul
Lake Forest (IL): About 1700 undergrads in a suburb of Chicago
Loyola Chicago (IL): About 12k undergrads
Loyola Maryland: About 3800 undergrads in Baltimore. Part of an association of Baltimore colleges that allows students to take one class/semester at other colleges in the association, like Johns Hopkins and Goucher.
Marquette (WI): About 8k undergrads in Milwaukee
North Central (IL): About 2400 undergrads in a suburb of Chicago
Saint Joseph’s (PA ): About 4200 undergrads in Philadelphia and is acquiring or forming a relationship with the U. of the Sciences there, which will only strengthen its offerings in the sciences.
Saint Louis (MO): About 9k undergrads
U. of Cincinnati (OH): About 29k undergrads
U. of Nevada – Reno: About 17k undergrads and this is a WUE school, so you probably wouldn’t pay more than about $13k/year in tuition, at the worst.
U. of St. Thomas: About 6k undergrads in Saint Paul
Likely (60-79%)
Howard (D.C.): This HBCU has about 9k undergrads and also has a really cool science scholars program that @ChangeTheGame might be able to provide more insight on.
Toss-Up (40-59%)
Brandeis (MA): About 3600 undergrads in a suburb of Boston
George Washington (D.C.): About 12k undergrads
Lower Probability (20-39%)
Case Western (OH): About 5800 undergrads in Cleveland. If you’re interested in them, you want to make sure they know it.
Macalester (MN): About 2200 students in Minneapolis
Villanova (PA ): About 7k undergrads in a suburb of Philadelphia
This is not a good combination. Medical school will be expensive. You have GREAT public universities in California. Any of the Universities of California will prepare you very well for medical school. You can also get the psychology and neuroscience related classes that you will want to take as an undergraduate student at the various Universities of California.
Your goal here is psychiatry, which requires medical school. You need to focus on being able to afford 8 full years of university without crippling yourself with debt. You really can get far enough into debt to make it impossible to finish your degree. There are doctors who are paying off loans quite far into their career. You do not need to do this.
I would not ED to a school that you know is going to cost you more than $85,000 per year unless you can afford this without loans. At a minimum I think that you should not apply ED, and thereby gain the opportunity to compare offers before you decide where to attend.
No. I missed the index score by two points or something. I really regret not studying, especially since I missed most of my points in the math section where most concepts can be explained overnight. Much different from reading and writing, where a single study session wouldn’t make much of a difference. I can’t take it again in junior year sadly
This is true…BUT IIRC, CA is one of the hardest states in which to gain acceptance to medical school even as an instate student…simply because so many apply. A large %age of students from CA attend medical school outside of the state.
