Few Clinical Hours MD/PhD App!!!!

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>I'm currently a senior planning to take one more semester next fall.
I'm a Math/Genetics double major with 1 publication (2nd author) and will have 3 years experience in the same lab and hopefully a full-time summer research position somewhere.(potentially another publication in the future but probably not by AMCAS app time)</p>

<p>GPA: 3.97, Major GPA: 4.0, likely to go down a bit but should end up above 3.9
No MCAT yet, but GRE: 360/370 (166 Verbal, 164 Quant) and I'm anticipating an MCAT of ~35 or more as long as I put the time in.</p>

<p>I've been pre Neuroscience PhD for a while so have great research hours but no clinical. I've watched people who came into undergrad as pre-med drop like flies through the med school required courses I took along side them so I started to give medical school more and more thought. I'm hoping to do Neuroscience as applied to humans(either neurodegenerative focussed on ageing or developmental focussed on disorders such as autism), so I figured an MD/PhD would provide great research opportunities and the patient contact would fit well with my personality.</p>

<p>Problem is, I have a laundry list of volunteering (2 summers teaching ESL full time to Japanese students, helping middle-schoolers prep for a science olympiad, and water treatment for central America, etc.) but I don't have any clinical hours. I'm going to get started this semester and hope to put in 200+ hours through the end of this summer but realize I am quite far behind I should have some shadowing and 100-150 hours of clinical experience by application time. I also plan to take part in a companionship volunteering program for developmentally disabled individuals once a week. I'll also get as much shadowing in as possible between now and applications. Of course, this shadowing/volunteering will be helpful in deciding whether to pursue an MD/PhD or just simply a PhD.</p>

<p>My main question is, with my small amount of clinical experience, is it worth applying for this upcoming round? I feel like my research background is strong and I will have a great letter from my PI, who is a big name in Neuro. If I get through the main AMCAS app I feel like I will have a strong MSTP application. I just worry that my lack of volunteering with be a red flag when compared to the MD applicants who came in as pre-med freshmen. </p>

<p>Also, I know that the English requirement varies from school to school (English</a> Requirements) , but I was wondering if anyone had run into problems because of a lack of composition courses. I currently don't have any specific English courses but have had lots of composition through biology courses.</p>

<p>I'm not 100% against waiting an extra year to apply, but at this point an entire year seems like a whole lot of time. I'm continually searching this site so thanks so much to anyone who is actively participating!</p>

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<p>MD/PhD programs do not care about your clinical hours, for the most part. As long as you’ve had some experience, you’ll be fine. You need to be able to show that you’ve encountered doctors/medicine in a clinical setting, but ultimately your research and stats will be far more important. I would try and fit 50 hours of shadowing in and some clinical volunteering (100h is definitely sufficient)–but go ahead and apply this cycle provided your MCAT is good.</p>

<p>I wound up in a top MD/PhD program with 50 hours of shadowing and no clinical volunteering at the time of application (some hours during the application cycle)–and I forgot to put either of these on my primary app! I had to write to schools separately–so yeah, don’t have kittens over this. Ace the MCAT and apply early.</p>

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<p>While more hours is always good, I had NO shadowing or clinical volunteer work at the time AMCAS was submitted and then spent the application cycle volunteering/shadowing 3hrs a week at free clinic with way less research than you.</p>

<p>Excuse my ignorance but is that a good GRE score? It’s not necessary for MD/PhD so I honestly know nothing about it.</p>

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<p>^ I believe that a “(166 Verbal, 164 Quant)” in the new system would have been a (760 V,740 Q) under the old(SAT style) system(but I could be wrong). Great scores (I think) :slight_smile: .</p>

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<p>Actually the new GRE is shifted a bit from the old to try to normalize the Verbal and Quant scores. The Old GRE had too low of an average for verbal and too high of an average for quant. Because of this my verbal score looks more impressive than it actually is and my quant looks less so. 166V,164Q is equivalent to 700V,790Q on the old system. If anyone has scores they want to convert here is the official concordance table: <a href=“http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/concordance_information.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ets.org/s/gre/pdf/concordance_information.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Percentiles are what schools will really consider. I don’t think any MD/PhD programs require GRE scores but I know some accept them as supplement. Since I took it while planning on a PhD and did pretty well I’ll take a look at whether or not it’s worth adding. I know the MCAT requires more specific knowledge but hopefully doing well on one is indicative of doing well on the other.</p>

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<p>^anecdotally, I don’t know how true that last part is. A buddy of mine went the opposite direction (planning on medicine and MCAT, switched over to PhD and GRE) and swears the GRE was a walk in the park compared to MCAT prep. Ended up with similar scores as you and was projecting a mid-30s MCAT (36 ACT–and yes, I know, weak correlation, but still!). </p>

<p>Which is mostly to say, it seems like the approach to prepping for the MCAT is different than that of the GRE. Good luck!</p>