<p>Hello. I read through quite some of the discussion pages, and I know this questions has probably been asked over and over again already, but I just wanted to get an opinion about my chances of getting into a decent medical school.
I am a third-year neuroscience and cognitive science double major. My current cumulative GPA is 3.56, and if I get 4.00's until I graduate, I can get roughly 3.7. I have been volunteering at a hospital on and off at the emergency department and shadowed a surgeon. I am mainly doing research at a lab at my university and will probably get a paper or two published by the time I graduate. I have yet to take my MCATs as I plan to take a year off, so I am going to take the exam in the fall. Would I still be able to get into a decent medical school? Thank you so much!</p>
<p>Your record is OK, but seems lacking in some areas–like ECs, leadership, community service, significant medical shadowing. How many total hours have you put in your medical volunteering?</p>
<p>The research is nice, but nothing out of the ordinary and won’t make up for having weaknesses in other parts of your application. Even having a publication (unless you’re first author and it’s ground-breaking) isn’t all that unusual for many pre meds.</p>
<p>Depending on where you live, you may have a chance at your state med school provided your MCAT is >31.</p>
<p>Well, I have about 260 hours of volunteering and at least three quarters of surgery shadowing (once a week for 4+ hours). I am not quite sure how good is shadowing? I have not done much community service other than volunteering. I am the co-founder of a club at my university and have been serving as teaching assistants or peer tutors since my first year of college. Would these count as leadership experiences?
Hm… is research not a very important component in medical school applications even if I am pursuing my own project? Would this be more significant if I were considering a MD/PhD program (though my understanding is that those are only for the top of the top pre-med individuals, which I am not by all means)?</p>
<p>TAing could be a leadership EC. Founding a club could be leadership. Peer tutoring might be an EC or might simply be a job (depends on if you’re paid or not…) But generally community service is done outside the college so peer tutoring it wouldn’t count for that.</p>
<p>Research is not a important component; it’s simply one of several equally important components for med school candidacy. (And thus no more or less important than community service, leadership, medical volunteering…)</p>
<p>MD/PhD programs are significantly more competitive than straight MD programs since you must accepted independently into both med school and grad school. And there are much fewer MD/PhD slots available nationally. (At our state med school, for example, they accept 95 med applicants, but only 2 MD/PhD applicants.) MD/PhD candidates do get some slack when looking at soft factors (community service, medical shadowing), but the research component is weighted much more heavily as is the MCAT score and GPA. And some MD/PhD programs require the GRE as well as the MCAT.</p>
<p>You have an average to slightly below average application portfolio. You have a decent chance at your state med school(s) assuming your MCAT≥31.</p>
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<p>D2 has been pursuing her own independent project and has for 2+ years. She designed it, wrote the research protocols and funding grant, did the data collection or oversaw 2 others who also did the data collection, and did all of the data analysis including wriing the computer programs to do the analysis. No big. Her data is being presented at a national conference this summer. She will have at least one second author publication before graduation. All of this is nice, but still not a slam dunk for med school. Nor entirely unusual, esp at competitive schools.</p>
<p>Heck D1 had two publications before she graduated…and she barely got accepted to med school. (Accepted at state school, rejected at 11 others.)</p>
<p>Wow. I see. So aside from the GPA and MCAT score, would you say community service is the most important EC? Or is it just having a good amount of everything?
Right now I am trying to figure out what I should do after I graduate since I plan to take a year off. Obviously, during the last year of college I would want to bring up my GPA as much as I can and get a good MCAT score. I want to make the most out of the gap year (assuming I get into medical school afterwards). </p>
<p>D1 and D2 seem very amazing to me!</p>
<p>I believe, your EC’s are just fine. Just pursue your goal of getting higher ovarall GPA and you should be fine. Apply to wide range of Med. Schools. D. got into 4 (2 in top 20) out of 8 Med. Schools of wide range. She is starting at one of them in few weeks. Her strong point was her almost perfect GPA and decent MCAT score. She had impressive list of EC’s both medically related and otherwise, but no published paper, no hiroic attemts at saving humanity from some desease(s) by going to Arfica. Every pre-med that she knows has many various EC’s, everybody is about the same in this area.</p>
<p>I see. Thank you very much!</p>