Pre M.D./PhD Advice

[greatscott12]

Med School Advice

Hello everyone, thank you in advance for taking your time to read and respond to my post. I wanted to provide a little bit of a background. I am a first generation college student so everything of higher education is extremely new to me and somewhat intimidating. To be honest I don't even know how I have come this far, my father and I were homeless for 2 years. I am a junior neuroscience major attending UCSD and have a 3.5 GPA/ sGPA of 3.6. I have 100+ hours of volunteering experience at the UCSD Moores Cancer Center and work as a Lab Technician doing research for neurodegenerative diseases at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies. I take care of my father who is chronically ill and does not receive any government assistance because of his undocumented status so I am financially responsible for the both of us (long story short mom left when I was 2 months). I am 22 years old and have continued pushing to finish school, it has been a long road. I have tried to juggle everything while selling cars at a dealership working 60+ hour work weeks and thankfully that is over now lol. There has been a lot of bumps on the road but that is a part of life and all I can do is push forward.

I was just looking for some advice on how to be a stronger candidate, I would love to enroll in a PhD/M.D. program as I love research and would like to dedicate my life to research for potential cures. Also, during med school applications does my life story matter? Will I be able to tell my story? Or will my stats be most important. I have not taken the MCAT yet, I plan to take it June-September of 2020. I have built a routine of daily MCAT questions through Kaplan and plan to get other study materials as soon as I can.

Again thank you all very much. I wish you all the best and happy holidays.

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[Seihai]

You should consider posting here: Physician Scientists

I can't comment on the rest quite yet, but your priority should be getting to a stable stage in your life before you consider applying to medical school, much less to MD-PhD programs.

 

[kingdomheart]

I can relate to this, Im not sure how I was able to make it to this point either. Im a current applicant in the 2019-2020 cycle, im having a pretty solid cycle so far. If you're set on an MD/PhD program your MCAT will need to be around the 515+ range and pubs would help, if you're shooting for just MD then 509+. These are just recommended numbers.

You dont need a prep course to do well on the MCAT, there are enough free resources out there to help. You just need the official AAMC material + a set of kaplan review books (or whatever prep company you prefer). Be sure to sell yourself well when the time comes to apply.

Anyways as the above poster recommended, check out that thread.

 

[tessellations]

@greatscott12 you will definitely have the opportunity to discuss your story on your application. There is a section on the primary application where you can marked that you are disadvantaged (you definitely are), and you will be able to discuss your experiences about that.

Definitely check out the physician-scientist forums. Also, along with your research, for the MD portion, make sure you have shadowing, clinical experience (either volunteering or paid), and non-clinical volunteering with underserved populations.

You mentioned that your father is undocumented. If you don't mind sharing, what country is your family is originally from? You may potentially get a small boost in your application if you are an underrepresented minority in medicine.

 

[gyngyn]

Moving to Physician Scientists.