Here's mine. Anybody who has read it 17 times feel free to stop, but it may help to repost it here people don't have to search for it.
Let me preface this story with a little factoid of my undergraduate experience. I was fortunate to have my parents pay for my school so I did not need loans. However, I had a serious girlfriend (now my lovely wife) going to KU and I did not want to live in another city. So I had to pay my own way as far as living expenses. To accomplish this I worked at Dillon's during my first two years of college about 30 hours per week (many weeks it was 40). During my Junior year, a job at Lawrence Memorial Hospital more or less fell into my lap through a curious set of circumstances and I scaled back Dillon's to 25 hours a week so I could get in the medical experience and hours at LMH. My weekly total was still around 35 hours, and I worked 12 out of every 14 days for two years. Toward the end of my junior year I also managed to get another job which was supposed to be temporary in Kansas City and I am still at and wrapping up in the next month to go to school. So for my Senior year, I was doing three jobs in two different cities while attending school in a 3rd. At this point, I'm more like 45 hours per week. After I graduated, I immediately began taking classes at KU that I did not have a chance to at my school. Attending a small liberal arts college meant little choice for some classes. I had some classes that I had to have and were only offered once during my four years there. So I took things like Microbiology, Calculus, Cell Bio, Human Anatomy, Human Physiology and Genetics at KU. I don't post that to make you feel sorry for me, just for some perspective.
In light of all these other time commitments, I took 15-16 hours of pre-med classes each semester and always attended Summer school sessions. I was very persistent and driven to finish in 4 years because that is all my parents would pay for. So in four years I did manage to graduate with a B.S. in Psychology and I double-minored in Chemistry and Biology. With those time commitments plus significant travel time between all my jobs, I managed a pretty decent GPA. Not top notch by any means, but considering I effectively lost 40 hours (on a light work week) to 55 hours that all my pre-med classmates had, I felt I was really showing something to the committee. If I could do as well as I did missing so much time, just think of where I could have been if someone handed my 40 extra hours per week to study? You get my point.
On to the MCAT. Round 1 was my junior year, April of 2005. I took a prep class from a lady named Mary Dunkin at KU. It was helpful but I never studied. When could I? I basically showed up on Saturdays, struggled to remember what I had been taught in class and then went home well as you can imagine, it did not go so well. I think I got 19 or so. I did not apply.
Round 2 I believe was April of 2006. Refer to a few paragraphs ago about time my Senior year. I took a prep course online through Kaplan which I was more diligent in and performed quite a bit better and went ahead and applied with that. I was rejected outright. I called and spoke with Sandy and she gave me some thoughts but they weren't real helpful that particular time as I already knew them. Raise your GPA, raise your MCAT score, no community service. So I set about tackling those things that were holding me back so next time, they'd have to pick some other reason not to let me in. I got involved with a soup kitchen and with Habitat for Humanity in Lawrence where I actually had two significant roles with some previous construction experience.
I had listened to Dean McCurdy speak a few times before I applied--once at my school, once at KU, another time at KU Med. Each time is was asked (and not by me interestingly) how they view people with jobs. She said there is no way they can say someone with a 4.0 who does not have to work is any better than someone who is 3.5 and does have to work. I kind of assumed based on that information that they would see my file, see my time commitments and understand any shortcomings. No such luck and I would not count on that if you were thinking you would.
Round 3 was actually computerized and I took it in June of 2007 I think. This time I went with Exam Krackers which I really liked and I should have done better but actually scored one point less then round 2 and thus did not apply.
Round 4, yes I know...R-O-U-N-D 4 was in June of 2008 through Exam Krackers also. However, this time I really dedicated myself to it more than I ever had and did it every pay off. I blew my other MCATs out of the water all the while taking a class or two per semester, working 40 hours per week and commuting. However, now with only one job and one or two classes, my grades were excellent and I slowly pulled my GPA up by 0.01 points per 3 hour "A."
During these rounds, I'd me remiss if I failed to mention that is was the most difficult years of my life. Telling people what I want to do and be and then looking them in the eye for the third time and saying, "No, I didn't get in again. Ill try again next year," was difficult to say the least. I had people telling me to go for PA or be a nurse so you can at least be in the medical field, but that was not what I wanted and I knew that so I pushed on.
Most everybody on here knows the story from this point. I applied again, got an interview which I thought went really well. I was wait listed at #9 and given the list of people taken off the WL since 2000 where the average over 9 years was 32 and change and I was elated. The comes the great news that they called 7 people off the WL and they were ready to call #8 when the first day of classes started. I was so close I could taste it so you bet I applied again. This time I called again and Dean McCurdy sounded very apologetic to me on the phone. She read me my comments from my interviewers who all gave me excellent marks and it effectively came down to the subjective nature that was spoken of before, a few people were a few hundredths of a point higher so I was #9 instead if #7 and was left out. I was also rejected without interview from Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and University of Illinois at Chicago. I was offered an interview at Rosalind Franklin University but it was so late in the cycle I had figured I would not want to there even if I were accepted. KU was my dream school.
After that application cycle I finished my genetics course and applied again, I was also fortunate to have my letter writers stick with me the whole time. They believed in me more than I did sometimes and I can't thank them enough. I actually applied EDP per Dean McCurdy's advice on the phone call and did not get an interview (which was shocking to me, to say the least). but I was in the first batch of regular decision and was accepted two weeks after my interview. Let me say that the acceptance letter (which is still hanging on my wall framed, yes I'm cool) made all the heartache worth it.
I'm sorry if this was like 2500 words more than what you wanted but I have been in your shoes before and this is the type of answer I would have liked. As detailed as possible. You can PM me if you want to send me some hate mail or if you have any other questions.
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Anybody else have the same problem?
