<p>I'm going to be a college sophomore at BU, and I desperately want to get into a medical school. I got a 3.5 for my frosh year, which I plan on bringing up, and this summer I took a job working with an endocrinologist to get experience about dealing with some of the medical but mostly business aspects of becoming a doctor. My sister and I also went on our own to raise money for the Humane Society and we've been planning fundraisers and what-not on our own and have been doing this for a couple of years. Besides upping my GPA and doing well on the MCATs, how can I really make myself stand out? Should I be doing ECs at BU, or more community service at home, or research, or what?</p>
<p>Yes more involvement and particularly leadership positions are important. But don't just do co-curricular or community projects simply for resume building. Find the projects that are important to you (volunteering at the humane society perhaps?), and be passionate about them. </p>
<p>Try to do more clinical experiences...shadowing docs, volunteering at the hospital etc.</p>
<p>If you can find research, then you should do it. </p>
<p>A 3.5 is a good start...I got in to med school with a tiny bit lower than a 3.5.</p>
<p>Thanks for your help...but can I ask you another question? How do you pick which medical schools you should apply to? Like how do you know which ones you have a good shot for, because while I would apply to all 125 medical schools, it runs kind of expensive lol. So when you were going through the application process, what made your decisions for you?</p>
<p>1.) I did not apply to any out-of-state publics.</p>
<p>2.) I applied to every school within my state (with one exception).</p>
<p>3.) I thought about my race (ORM) and decided not to apply to any school where I was not at least two index points* above their average.</p>
<p>4.) I did not apply to any school who explicitly made it a point to emphasize something (rural health, in my case) I was not interested in.</p>
<p>5.) I avoided schools with extremely low admissions percentages and sought out schools with higher ones. You'd be surprised. (BU's is much lower than WUSTL's or Columbia's, for example.) I know this is flawed because you also have to ask yourself what kind of students are applying, but this principle stands, I think, too.</p>
<p>Index=10*GPA+MCAT</p>
<p>Personally, I applied to only 7 schools through AMCAS (which I have since found out is a small number). I used the MSAR (medical school admissions requirements) book and the USNWR data to sort of match up with my GPA and what I thought I might be getting on the MCAT (I actually applied before knowing my score...I do not reccomend that). </p>
<p>I applied to the school in my home state (Kansas), the schools in the state where I went to college (Nebraska, Creighton), and then the rest as sort of out there based on geography and where my GPA matched with their average entering GPA (since my GPA was rather low and the thing I was most worried about): Missouri (a reach for sure-more of a geography decision), Michigan State, Boston U, and Tufts.</p>
<p>Yeah, I think BRM would have been qualified for a great deal more (i.e. numerically more) schools - I know a little bit about what Kaplan asks for in its teachers, and obviously his writing style is very strong - if he'd applied to more.</p>
<p>Yeah BU, does have an inordinately high number of applicants. I think part of it is that it's Boston, so the numerous colleges in the area funnel students to apply there, while other students (like me) looked at their entering GPA and though "hey, there's a chance"</p>
<p>PS: Our discussion of BU is totally irrelevant to the fact that this is where the OP goes. There's several other schools I could have used; Mayo, Stanford, and Wake all come to mind.</p>