Dd just completed 1 semester of freshman year. She has a 4.0 gpa so far. Biochem major and planning on minors in Spanish and sociology. We’re going to spend some time over break discussing ideas for shadowing/research/clinical experiences that she’ll need for her med school app.
Looking online I have seen articles suggesting around 40 hrs shadowing, 100-200 volunteer hrs, and 100-200 clinical hours. However, perusing various forums, I’ve seen students applying with thousands of hours in some of these categories.
Just wondering how much is necessary and what would be a reasonable goal for her to set for herself. I’m not suggesting she’ll just do the minimum, as she has a genuine interest in these types of activities. I’m just wondering about the target range for a successful applicant.
Interested in this topic for our D as well.
Partly it depends on the type of medical school your child is most interested in. Some programs are more service oriented than others.
Shadowing 40-60 hours, with at least a quarter to half of the hours with primary care physicians. More than 75 hours is overkill.
Community service w/ disadvantaged/disparaged groups-- aim for 150+ hours. Longitudinal service with a single organization or cause is strongly preferred over multiple short term, one-off projects. Service should be of the hands-on, in-person variety, not fund-raising. Service with the Peace Corps, Teach for America, Americorps is looked upon extremely favorably by med school adcomms. So is military service.
Clinical exposure-- aim for 150+ hours.
I would say these are probably the bare minimums one should have to have any reasonable expectation of getting a med school admission. Many applicants will have more, some will have significantly more. Working in a clinical exposure job during gap year(s) is very common.
However, what is more important than the absolute number of hours is what a student takes away from those experiences. Community service and clinical exposure are meant to be learning experiences for the student. A hundred hours of a meaningful activity where a student gains deeper insights about themselves, about medicine and about the human condition is better than a thousand hours of check-boxing busywork.
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Would someone hitting these targets (along with a high gpa and mcat score) have a good, strong application or need a lot of luck?
There are no guarantees for anyone–even for those who have a strong application portfolio. There are simply too many well qualified applicants and too few seats.
This is why every pre-med needs a viable Plan B career in mind.
While not a primary determinant, I would say there is some element of luck involved.
Students need to be savvy about where they apply and how they present themselves. But they have no control over who is assigned to be their application reader or interviewer (should they get to that stage). They also have no control over the quality of the other applicants they will be competing against for the limited number of seats offered by any given med school.
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I agree that every pre-med has to have back-up plans.
Adding…students have to ALSO research the requirements for the back-up plans, for example, if they are thinking Phys Asst school might be of interest should med school not work out, they need to look at those requirements. The arithmetic mean trimmed for hi/low outliers (M (T)) clinical hours of first-year enrolled PA students in 2020 (most recent data) was 2,854, here’s the data on the rest of the health care experience hours:
Average age of a PA matriculant is 25, as compared to med school’s age 24, so again, on average, a PA applicant had an additional year to add to their experiences.
Here’s the full report: https://paeaonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/program-report35-20201014.pdf
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Thanks, All! I appreciate the answers.
I don’t know why I am finding all of this so confusing. What would an applicant need in order to be a strong candidate?
Of course, there are no guarantees, but what would an applicant who has a good chance of getting in look like?
Here’s a grid of applicants and matriculants to med school arranged by gpa and mcat scores,
https://www.aamc.org/media/6091/download?attachment
A GPA> 3.79 and MCAT> 517 has 83% chance of getting at least 1 acceptance to med school.
MCAT 518 is the 96th percentile
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Strong candidate is going to look different at different schools.
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This is helpful! Thank you!
All med school applicants need:
good GPA
good MCAT
physician shadowing
clinical exposure thru work or volunteering
community service w/ disadvantaged groups
lab bench or clinical research experience
leadership roles in organizations they are active in
strong oral and written communication skills
cultural competency
ability to work well with others
be able to articulate clearly why they want to pursue medicine beyond the generic ‘I want to help people’
well written personal statement and secondary essays, esp the “Why x school?”
be strongly internally goal oriented
be persistent in the face of adversity/able to overcome obstacles
have personal maturity
And still the majority of applicants will not get a single acceptance.
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