MD & DO WAMC 2019-2020 Cycle

[sciencegirl1998]

Hello everyone, I'm a current senior looking to apply to medical school in May. I'm an undergrad in PA majoring in Bio with a minor in neuro and chemistry. I'm graduating a semester early with an overall gpa of 3.64 and sgpa of 3.57. I've had to retake 2 classes, one due to having a disolacted knee issue that semester. Besides that there's only one other C+ on my transcript with everything else being As and Bs I have over 500 hours on non-clinical volunteering and 300 hours of shadowing and clinical volunteering. I've held numerous leadership positions, have a doctor's LOR, and have 3 science professors LOR. I also have my own research project i"ve been working on for 2.5 years. I suffered a really bad knee injury my sophmore year. I'm taking the MCAT (hopefully) in January and March, but I might push the January one. I was wondering what score I would need to be competitive for an MD school or if I could only apply DO? In addition, I wanted advice on whether to work as a research assistant or do a postbacc? My top choices are Penn State, Drexel, Temple, University of Arizona, Tufts, Rush, and Rutgers.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Saturday’s Child]

DO NOT plan on taking the MCAT more than once from the get-go. This is not like the SAT where you can take it multiple times without consequence. Although many people do end up taking it more than once, you do not want to go in with the mindset that this will be your plan to. You want to prepare for it to the point where you are consistently scoring in your ideal range on multiple practice tests. THEN you want to perform to the best of your ability on the real thing the first time you take it, and go from there.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think you want 510+ for MD and 505+ for DO. Is there any trend to your GPA? You mention a bad injury your sophomore year, but have you shown marked improvement in your grades over the past 2 years since then?

With the schools you’re aiming for, I do not believe a research assistant position will be of much value, as those schools are not known to value research super highly—plus you’ve already got plenty of research experience anyways. I am not sure about a postbacc, but if you did that, I think you’d maybe want to do it before you apply so that you can have those new grades listed on your transcript from the very beginning of the app season. A GPA boost would never hurt, but you may want to calculate just how high you could raise your GPA to determine if it’s really worth it. What’s the breakdown of those 300 clinical hours—how much is shadowing, and how much is volunteering? If you don’t have at least 150 hours of clinical volunteering already, that may be something you can pursue before you apply.

 

[sciencegirl1998]

DO NOT plan on taking the MCAT more than once from the get-go. This is not like the SAT where you can take it multiple times without consequence. Although many people do end up taking it more than once, you do not want to go in with the mindset that this will be your plan to. You want to prepare for it to the point where you are consistently scoring in your ideal range on multiple practice tests. THEN you want to perform to the best of your ability on the real thing the first time you take it, and go from there.

I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think you want 510+ for MD and 505+ for DO. Is there any trend to your GPA? You mention a bad injury your sophomore year, but have you shown marked improvement in your grades over the past 2 years since then?

With the schools you’re aiming for, I do not believe a research assistant position will be of much value, as those schools are not known to value research super highly—plus you’ve already got plenty of research experience anyways. I am not sure about a postbacc, but if you did that, I think you’d maybe want to do it before you apply so that you can have those new grades listed on your transcript from the very beginning of the app season. A GPA boost would never hurt, but you may want to calculate just how high you could raise your GPA to determine if it’s really worth it. What’s the breakdown of those 300 clinical hours—how much is shadowing, and how much is volunteering? If you don’t have at least 150 hours of clinical volunteering already, that may be something you can pursue before you apply.

Thank you so much for the advice! I have 175 volunteering hours and the rest is shadowing. I've had an upward trend in my GPA. If I obtain higher than a 510 do you think I have a shot for these schools?

 

[Saturday’s Child]

Thank you so much for the advice! I have 175 volunteering hours and the rest is shadowing. I've had an upward trend in my GPA. If I obtain higher than a 510 do you think I have a shot for these schools?

Upward trend is good. Don’t need more shadowing, only do more if you just want to. A 510 is the general rule of thumb to get into an MD program, but I can’t speak to those schools specifically. A higher score will always be a good thing though, so try to treat 510 as a baseline. You should invest in the MSAR which gives info about each school, including the average MCAT and GPA for its students. Once you take the MCAT, post in here again and the experts will be able to tell you if you are competitive for the schools you are interested in—they tend to prefer to speak with certainty rather than speculate with a hypothetical MCAT score.